Where have all the Maori gods gone?

Sunday, 9 August 2015

Many moons ago, shortly after the birth of my first child, I took her onto a mMarae for a traditional Maori blessing from our local kaumatua.

Why, some might ask. I was brought up Catholic, attended Christian/Anglican schools and traversed through Presbyterian, Methodist and 'other' doctrines.

I attended Sunday school and Mass at a number of different churches, all the while wondering why. Why were they so different, yet so similar? I simply could not make a choice, and damn me to hell should I choose wrong!

So, when my eldest came along, I decided to make a choice. I chose to choose something different.

I wanted a choice that seemed more natural and less fabricated by the political machinations of man. Something like the 'salt of the earth', untouched by an industrious civilised society.

CULTURE

Personally, I always felt an affinity with American Indian values and principles, but that was a little out of my reach in 1998.

State schooling offered me the answer I thought I was looking for. School taught Maori culture alongside other cultures. We learnt all about the different gods, demi-gods and mythology that came from one of the last tapped indigenous cultures in the modern world.

While I didn't expect Tane Mahuta to keep me safe in the forests, nor pray to Rongo for a bountiful harvest (from the greengrocers); I respected and was aware of the gods in the Maori culture. After all, it was New Zealand culture too.

Anyway, I approached our kaumatua for a blessing and got just that. A Blessing. From 'God'.

I was not prepared, I did not expect it and I wondered, where have all the Maori gods gone?

TRADITION

Truth be told, I didn't really know what I expected. However, a Christian blessing was not what I sought or expected to find.

I guess I naively thought that on a marae old values and traditions would be upheld in much the way other traditions are upheld.

I had no idea that in our colonialism of New Zealand one of the first things to go was the 'old gods' while one of the first things to come was the bible translated in Maori.

Perhaps, one must look for the old gods or they in turn might come and find you - such was the revelation I encountered when I started a new job a few years back and was told my employer is Tūmatauenga, god of war (I work for the New Zealand Defence Force).

Are the old gods still out there, hiding in plain sight? Are there other incarnations in other aspects of our lives? Or are the old gods already dead and buried, relegated to school textbooks and Wikipedia entries, and gone with the fairies like the Patupaiarehe?

Where have all the Maori gods gone?

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