Eamon Sloan

  Matariki, Navigation, Animism and Language So Matariki (the Maori New Year celebration) has come and gone and the question I am asking is how many New Zealanders really participated or were in any way aware of it. For myself I was vaguely aware of it but only through occasional references seen or heard in the media. Some media pieces referred to Maori navigation skills. Are we being asked to believe that Maori were professional navigators and astronomers able to sail the high seas without the aid of map, clock, compass or sextant? The answer however might well be that Maori were taught astronomy and the allied sciences by the early colonialists. The colonialists would have had available all of the modern instruments of the day. There is nothing wrong with that as an idea and it would have helped to bring a primitive culture up to date. To me Maori probably arrived here purely by accident. If I am not mistaken there is no evidence, oral or otherwise, of Maori (pre or post co...