Wherein I capture a Twitter thread because apparently that’s how I do writing these days.
Why I believe we might not be doomed in terms of our lack of action on climate change. It has to do with how popular movements gather momentum. And we can see something like this with Matariki.
When I was growing up as a Māori child in the 70s and 80s in suburban Christchurch neither I nor any of my teachers or immediate family had any knowledge of Matariki. Neither as a word or a concept.
I took introduction to Māori culture 101 in my first year at Canterbury. As far as I recall, it was not covered. But by the early 2000s I was working in public libraries and things were happening. It started with a commitment to celebrating Te Wiki o Te reo Māori every year.
I think it was around 2003 or so that the library started celebrating Matariki as “Māori New Year”. We produced posters and put up displays of the few books about Māori astronomy, tātai arorangi, and maramataka that we had. It was very low key and probably not many people noticed but that quickly grew into being a regular annual thing and we included programming like basic raranga classes or waiata performances. Before long we were starting to get specific Matariki titles being added to the library collection as they were published. Just a few initially.
And slowly you noticed other organisations getting on board. Local preschools wanting to attend Matariki themed story time sessions, the occasional corporate having Matariki messaging, broadcasters mentioning Matariki. It still wasn’t mainstream at this point but you could almost feel the rising of the wave, that all this was going somewhere. The momentum was definitely building.
From there it just built and built, one year after the next with more and more people incorporating some acknowledgment of Matariki into their lives and work, and now we are 1 year away from it being an actual public holiday.
All that had happened in less than 20 years.
That’s on the large scale. On the small scale it’s the fact that I personally can name the 9 stars of Matariki and even tell you what their responsibilities are. It’s that as I’ve been composing this I have been hearing my 7 year old sing the Matariki Macarena.
It’s that he interrupted me part way through saying “do you know the story of the stars of Matariki” because he obviously wanted to tell me about it so I asked him to tell me about it. He learned all this at school, not from me.
That’s actually a remarkable cultural shift and one I could not have conceived of 20 years ago.
So to bring it back around to climate change, it feels very much to me like we’re at that rising wave part of it, maybe even a little further along…and if we all keep paddling like mad and stay the course I wouldn’t be surprised if change happens really quickly. Will it be enough change, soon enough? I don’t know. But hold onto hope, eh?
Kua mutu.