Marae Visit

I recently joined about 100 BCNZ students to stay overnight on a local marae. The marae is central to the Maori cultural identity and understanding - a place of refuge for the Maori community. The leaders of this particular marae were very strong Christians, so it was a wonderful time for us to learn more about how their beliefs are expressed within Maori culture and to also individually reflect on the contextualization of Christianity within Japanese culture.

We were initially welcomed onto the marae by an elderly woman of the tangata whenua (the local community) singing a karanga (song). All of the female manuhiri (guests) then walked into the marae in front of the male manuhiri for our formal powhiri (welcome). We removed our shoes according to Maori protocol and entered the wharenui (meeting house) for a series of mihimihi (speeches) and songs, before the presentation of the koha (gift of love and respect for the tangata whenua’s hospitality) by the last speaker of the manuhiri. The powhiri ended with hongi (greeting by pressing noses) between the tangata whenua and the manuhiri.

The weekend program consisted of fabulous dining (we soon learnt ‘haere mai kite kai’ which means ‘please come for the meal’), explanations of the carvings within the meeting house (not worshiped as idols, but thought of as ‘photos’ of their ancestors), personal introductions where each of us introduced our whakapapa (genealogy), a concert which we put on ourselves (I sang two praise songs in Japanese with my guitar), a Q&A time about Maori issues, a worship service with the local Maori community, and a hangi (feast of meat and vegetables steamed below the ground - please see the photos above). 100 of us slept, or tried to sleep!, in the wharenui.

Whakapapa is very important to Maori people. We were welcomed onto the marae, seen not as individuals, but as representing our ancestors. Traditionally, Maori people can trace their whakapapa back to the first waka (canoe) in which their ancestors arrived in Aotearoa ('the land of the long white cloud', or New Zealand). However, only a small people on each marae can now do this. It was fascinating to hear everybody’s introduction of their whakapapa based around their name, and the waka, tribe, mountain and river they most affiliate themselves with. I introduced my surname Toplis as coming from a small town between London and Wales, one of my wakas as arriving from Lithuania via England (my Jewish great-grandfather on my Dad’s side of the family) and another from England via the Pacific Islands (my great-grandparents whose ancestors left England with the London Missionary Society on my Mum’s side of the family), my tribe as Ngapuhi because of Dad’s upbringing in Northland, my mountain as Mount Hobson in Auckland close to where I grew up, and my river as Kamo River in Kyoto!

During my time on the marae I reflected on how biculturalism begins with an appreciation of difference, and the acceptance of the right for disagreement. One of the devotions we had was based on the letter to the Galatians in the New Testament, speaking directly to bicultural issues. The Galatian ‘problem’ was that the ethnically dominant group in the church of the day was of Jewish background. With their heritage and links back to the birthplace of the Good News they assumed that they were the authority on how Christianity should develop. They consequently insisted that everyone wanting a real relationship with Christ must also embrace aspects of their Jewish religious heritage. The history of Aotearoa reflects the Galatian situation in which the dominant Pakeha (European) culture, has expected the Maori culture to take on board their expectations, laws and customs. This has included the attempt to assimilate Maori Christian identity into the dominant colonizing culture.

Experiencing the marae as the meeting place for Maori people, of whom many are believers of Christ, was both challenging and exciting for me. As John Hitchen, Head of the School of Global Mission at BCNZ, speaks of in his article Why Bother About Cultural Differences?, the ultimate goal of God’s activity in this present age involving representatives of every culture sharing His rule as royal attendants in His kingdom (Rev 5:9-10). Christians are called to go and make disciples of all nations (Matt 28:18-20). This requires cultural sensitivity as we are not called to go and pluck people out of their cultural groups, but to go to them as cultural groups. The Good News belongs in every cultural setting. People do not have to adopt another dominant culture’s way of life to become a follower of Christ. Meeting Christ at the heart of Maori culture reinforced to me the power the Good News has to meet every person in his or her own cultural setting and transform them as Christ’s people.