Traditional Māori weaving booming in the south

Thursday, 7 January 2021

Traditional Māori weaving of korowai (traditional Māori cloak) has been increasing popularity in Southland.

Ngāi Tahu kamātua Tā Tipene O’Regan said there had been amazing resurgence in the skills of weaving based in Awarua/Bluff.

In the past few years, there are more korowai being woven and decorated per year than any 30 year phase of his life, he said.

Since 2019, Helen Wilson has been holding wānanga classes once a month at Te Rau Aroha Marae in Bluff.

When the classes first started only 10 people attending now there was 25 to 30 ranging in ages from 14 years to 80.

Wilson’s journey started in 2015 when she did a traditional weaving course in Ngāruawāhia with Tānui master weaver Maata McManus as gift for her sister’s birthday.

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Since then, she has got hooked into weaving.

“It’s so soothing on the soul by the time you have done a row, any tension seems to go out of your body.”

McManus ran a course in 2015 at Te Rau Aroha which Wilson attended and continued to weave at home.

Wilson rang Awarua Rūnanga and asked if she could run her classes which it was supportive of and funded her to teach the classes.

Wilson hopes to pass on the skills and knowledge she has learned from McManus to others.

Through the wānanga, the ladies would spend a lot of time together and talk about things they wouldn’t just share over a coffee and had made some strong friends through the group, Wilson said.

Wilson has now been known to be teaching weaving and now gets birds delivered to her house used to make korowai.

Birds included tītī muttonbird, rosters, pigeons, Mollymawks and petrels.

Prior to the classes held in Bluff, Dunedin or Christchurch would have been the closest place to be able to learn traditional weaving, she said.

Awarua Rūnanga representative Gail Thompson​ said since the development of its wharenui it had stirred the creative juices of the rūnanaga and korowai weaving was a continuation of that work.

Through the wānanga, whanau now had access to their own korowai to use for ceremonies that told a southern story, Thompson said.

The rūnanga had utilised its connections with the Tītī Islands to supply weka and tītī in its korowai designs along with birds supplied from the Catlins, she said.

The rūnanga was looking to expand further into more creating projects and hosting regular carving wānanga, she said.