Whangārei Matariki Festival Organisers Call For Participants To Boost Event

Friday, 18 April 2025, 2:53 pm
Article: Susan Botting - Local Democracy Reporter

Whangārei will once again host a month-long Puanga Matariki festival, with the local council is calling for events to make it hum.

The city's 2025 festival is on between May 27 and June 24, with Matariki Day falling on June 20 this year.

More than 500 people turned out to the Festival of Light in Whangārei Town Basin in 2024 - one of the city’s many Matariki events.

The Whangārei festival celebrates Puanga and Matariki stars in a special series of cultural events for people to come together and celebrate.

Puanga is the star that guides Matariki to the New Year.

Whangārei District Council (WDC), which coordinates the Puanga Matariki festival, is seeking events that carry the spirit and values of this time of year.

Puanga on a Plate will have local eateries presenting unique dishes reflecting values of home, family and identity.

Each dish will tell its own story while the community bonds over food.

The values behind Matariki

Puanga and Matariki is a time to encourage whanaungatanga, share stories and kai.

It also marks the beginning of the Māori New Year, which traditionally was time to plant trees, prepare the lands for planting crops and more importantly renew links with whānau and friends.

It’s also a time of pausing to remember, reflect and honour loved ones who have died since the constellation’s last rising.

It is an opportunity for people to come together to celebrate and give thanks for what they have been blessed with and share times together with food and festivities.

It’s also a time to mark the start of the Māori New Year, Te Tau Hou Māori, and plan for the coming year.

Matariki or Māori New Year celebrations were once popular around New Zealand, but had largely stopped by the 1940’s.

Celebrations were revived in the 2000’s and Matariki became an official public holiday in 2022.

Matariki is an abbreviation of ‘Ngā Mata o te Ariki Tāwhirimātea' (The eyes of the god Tāwhirimātea) and refers to a large cluster of stars, known in some European traditions as the Pleiades.

According to Māori tradition, the god of the wind, Tāwhirimātea, was so angry when his siblings separated their parents, Ranginui the sky father and Papatūānuku the earth mother, that he tore out his eyes and threw them into the heavens.

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