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A different perspective..........
Topic Started: Jan 16 2007, 04:14 PM (455 Views)
Kahu
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I'm getting a little bored with the other 'Christian threads'. These arguments have been debated since,....since....well.......'when Adam was a cowboy!' and we're still fighting tooth and nail! Who says that the 'pagans' had all it all wrong and are heading to hell in a handbasket?!

While thinking and writing about such a prosaic topic such as 'News', and a few lateral thinking exercises later in trying to explain the situation to an international audience. Something else occurred to me..........before I do.........

I declare long and loud, that I unashamedly pro New Zealand.........and anyone else playing Australia!

I have long links to Aotearoa - New Zealand. One of my ancestors was a missionary with the Church Missionary Society who came with Rev Samuel Marsden from Sydney, NSW to preach the first Christmas Service to the maori in the Bay of Islands in 1815. Marsden was chaplin of the penal colony,and was a strict disciplinarian. He is referred to as 'Flogger Marsden' and reviled in Australian history, but is regarded almost saint-like and benevolent in our history. The Rev John Gare Butler, brought the first plough and oxen to begin our agricultural and pastoral heritage. The first permanent pre fabricated European house was built for him at Keri Keri, which still stands, next to the trader's first stone store, which also still stands. However petty rivalries within the missionary society conspired against him, and he was exiled. He came down to what is now Wellington, and died crossing a flood swollen Hutt River not far from where I'm sitting......

Now having established my whakapapa (genealogy).....so others who know the story and family.......may add their views.

In the course of writing about the haka and what it means to New Zealanders, a thought struck me. The NZ Army performed at the Edinburgh Tattoo with a seemless transition between European and Maori cultures, and the assembled audience really applauded it. I was that proud!
Tumatauenga The maori God of War - Tumatauenga is used as a unifying element within our army. God, the Christian God, is still there as Io the supreme being, but in the background. Now with the Maori cultural Renaissance towards retaining the language and other cultural treasures.........this is utilising an ancient culture or understanding in a modern day setting.

There equally are others too.........Papatuanuku (the Earth Mother) Ranginui the sky father, Tane, lord of the forest...........all with highly spiritual, evironmental, practical conservation of resources, climate changes which people are still discussing all over the world.

Maori are not alone in this type of thinking..........

What do you think......................?
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Kahu
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Maori Theology

Mything Links

Culture & Society

Maori Catholicism
Quote:
 
A Maori theology? I have always seen theology as that branch of learning defined as discourse about God, either from the point of view of what can be known about him from the created world by the natural power of reason (natural theology) or from the point of view of a revelation given by God, and received by man in faith (sacred theology).

Frankly, I cannot see why a Maori theology is necessary at all. A Maori spirituality, Yes, because the Maori are a very sensitive people and deeply spiritual by nature. There are aspects of their life we can absorb and be the better for. But a Maori theology? It seems to me that a theology based on race is a contradiction.


Quote:
 
Maori gods
The pastoral plan proposes liturgical developments. Good, provided they do not become compulsory in other than Maori services. 1 can even see a place for a Maori rite, if that is what the Maori people would like. But even that would not need a Maori theology. Here I think of the Middle East and of the variety of Catholic rites there. But there is still the one theology.

Lastly, there is the problem of the place of the old Maori gods. Not everyone in the Church here, I fear, would consign them to myth. Indeed the old Maori "departmental" gods (see below) are still very alive in the minds of many Maori, Christian and non-Christian alike. They are treated with respect and their powers feared, much as "pointing the bone" is with Aborigines.

For instance, my wife recounts a disturbing incident involving heitikis (carved pendants, usually of greenstone or bone). Many Europeans as well as Maoris wear them as a gesture of respect for Maori aspirations. I have a simple one carved from ordinary bone; my wife has a striking one, carved for her from whalebone a century old. It is a sign of the mana my wife enjoys among the Maori people because she speaks and teaches their language and was responsible for introducing it into St Paul's (now Kavanagh) College, Dunedin.

A few months ago she attended a Mass at which a diocesan Maori chaplain said he would bless any heitikis those present had. They might, he said, already have had a church blessing, but that would not be enough to prevent any harm flowing from them, from a variety of sources, to the wearer. Only a Maori blessing could end that threat.

My wife who was wearing her heitiki stood fast. But the principal of a major Catholic secondary school was quick to have the church blessing 'topped up.' I've often wondered since if he stopped to consider what his action told the pupils present about the relative powers of Christ and the Maori gods.



Feminist Theology from a Maori Perspective
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Kahu
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Maori and the Coast

Coastal areas are significant to Maori both spiritually and as a source of food, weaving and carving materials. People have reduced the coast’s natural values and its ability to provide food and other resources but there are many things we can do to help restore our coasts and respect traditional beliefs.

Coastal resources continue to provide sustenance and identity to coastal Maori. Rare weaving materials, such as pingao, grow on coastal dunes. Harbours and estuaries are important breeding, nursery and feeding grounds for fish and birds such as patiki (flounder), matamata (whitebait) and kuaka (godwits).

Maori regard the coastal environment as 'baskets of food' providing kaimoana for the coastal community. As a food source, the coast needs to be treated with respect. For example, it is inappropriate to discharge waste into coastal areas.

Sand dunes contain many important cultural sites including: middens - New Zealand’s early domestic rubbish dumps remains of general living areas with stained sands from ovens

urupa (burial grounds).

These sites are very significant spiritually to Maori. They also provide a tangible reminder of our history and help us understand the past better.
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Kahu
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No this is not in the wrong thread.........these are spiritual values which are firmly held and are practical aspects of protecting the environment for ALL of us.

Protecting our environment
Atawhaingia nga tamariki o Rangi raua ko Papa

Maori are concerned about the effects of resource use on land, air, water, coasts, geothermal resources and the plants and animals which live there. They are concerned about the changes made to these resources and development on tapu areas. Maori feel there needs to be more protection for the customary uses of plants and animals and more monitoring to get a better picture of the environment’s health.

Important concepts
He pou tikanga whakaaro

Maori have comprehensive customs to manage and protect their resources, for example whakapapa, kaitiakitanga, rahui and the significance of mauri.

All things in the Maori world can be traced and explained through whakapapa. The whakapapa of the natural world – animals, plants, mountains, rivers, lakes, air, coasts - is linked to that of Maori. Maori have an ancestral obligation to ensure that these taonga are protected and managed when passed on to the next generation.

Mauri is the life force that generates, regenerates, and binds the physical and spiritual elements of resources together. For Maori, maintaining and enhancing the mauri of the taonga is the focus of environmental management.

Kaitiakitanga implies an obligation and responsibility for tangata whenua to be custodians, protectors and guardians of tribal interests, its taonga and the resources it owns.

When a rahui is placed upon a river, lake, forest or harbour, this bans people from using some resources. For example, a rahui might ban people from gathering shellfish at a beach. Many Maori tribes use the practice of rahui to conserve or replenish a resource.

Heritage
Nga taonga tuku iho


Waahi tapu and waahi tupuna are spiritually and culturally important places for Maori. Most waahi tapu sites are linked to past battles or historic events. For Maori, these places help to give meaning to their lives and tribal society, providing ‘windows to the past’. Waahi tapu sites are often located on:

* rivers
* lakes
* harbours, estuaries and coastlines.

This means they are more likely to be disturbed by developments such as:
* flood protection works
* pastoral farming activities
* residential subdivision
* Government developments
* private industrial developments
* other construction.

Maori believe local tangata whenua should have unrestricted access to waahi tapu sites, but that public access should be restricted.






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Kahu
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Maori protest tapu road at Mahia
The Dominion Post | Tuesday, 23 January 2007

Up to 20 metres of road linking two Hawke's Bay towns may be fenced off by local Maori who claim the land as sacred burial ground.

Members of hapu, or sub-tribes, from the Mahia Peninsula in northern Hawke's Bay want to permanently enforce the closure on a section of road symbolically sealed off yesterday when two large pine trees were cut down between Opoutama and Mahia.

More than 50 locals declared the section of Ormond Rd to be part of the nearby Ruawharowharo cemetery and therefore private property.

Protest organiser Alice Wairau, of Rakato marae, said locals believed the closed section had never officially been part of the road.

"Three of our ancestors are buried here under this road, and we cannot continue to let people drive over them," she said.

Wairoa Mayor Les Probert said though the road ran across Maori reserve land designated in the 1950s, it was sealed and maintained by the council. "There's been public access for a long number of years and a legal precedent to say we can keep it open," he told One News before a meeting with protesters last night which led to the trees being cleared.

Earlier, more than 25 police officers in six cars and two paddy wagons attended the protest.

Mr Wairau said the existing urupa, or burial site, extended not only under the road but into the Blue Bay subdivision.

"The most sacred part of our whenua is the cemetery," she said.

"There is a public road along the beach in front of the Blue Bay development that the Wairoa District Council could open instead."

Some residents said the alternative route proposed by protesters would add an extra 15 minutes to travel times.

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VickiNC
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I've just found this thread, and was just reading about Maori Feminism in Theology. Super reading!
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