Kia Ora Aotearoa — How Science and Legend Combine in Māori Culture

photo credit: Tess Halpern

They call this the seventh most beautiful beach in the world. Raising my camera as I sink my feet into warm, coarse sand, I focus the image on the lapping waves, running bright blue and cold over the beach. Around me, the few people with whom we’re sharing this slice of Abel Tasman National Park start to wade into the water, the waves barely making it up to their ankles. The slope is so slight that people become miniatures of themselves before the water makes it all the way up their legs. On either side of the bay, lush, green mountains contrast with the ocean, protecting us in their wings. I snap a picture, holding my breath and trying to stop time.

Last month, I had the privilege of visiting New Zealand, or Aotearoa in te reo Māori, the region’s indigenous language. With my Cascades group, I traveled to the northern tip of the South Island and explored culturally sacred freshwater springs, climbed a mountain, descended into a thousands-of-years-old cave, and took part in a welcoming ceremony at a Māori village (marae). Over the course of our trip, we were able to connect to Māori culture through learning some of the language, visiting important spaces, and participating in different traditions like mau rākau (traditional stick fighting) and the hungi (a Māori greeting). Throughout the program, a New Zealand instructor whom we met through our program, mātua Mike, focused on sharing with us particular aspects of his culture as a member of the Māori community. He told us stories, introduced us to mau rākau, and acted as our advocate when we visited the marae. The legends he shared with us, about everything from the separation of the Sky and the Earth to the demigod Maui, were fascinating and opened a new door into Māori culture and language. Most of the stories featured real places in New Zealand and connected directly to real patterns in nature. I wanted to learn more, so I approached him to ask about connections between science and traditional Māori legends. The stories that follow, and their connections to the inner workings of the beautiful Aotearoa, come directly from him and his knowledge of the place. 

The first legend Mike shared with me is called Maui and the Big Fish. This legend tells the story of the demigod, Maui, who tricked his four brothers into bringing him on their fishing trip. By hiding in the bottom of their waka (canoe), Maui, who was more skilled and quick-witted than all of his siblings put together, traveled secretly out into the ocean until his brothers stopped paddling to let down their hooks. Scheming Maui knew this spot wouldn’t yield any good fish, so he decided to scare his four brothers by jumping out of his hiding place. His brothers were so shocked and afraid at his appearance that they obeyed him when he ordered them to continue paddling. They rowed all day and all night, each brother dropping off from exhaustion as the time wore on. Maui, meanwhile, showed no sign of stopping. Finally, as the brothers awoke, frustrated and confused, the next morning, they noticed that the canoe had stopped and Maui was preparing to cast down his fishhook. Maui’s four brothers refused to let him use any of their bait as utu (revenge) for his tricks, so Maui hit his own nose with his jawbone hook and used instead his own blood as bait. Down the fishhook fell into the depths, until it struck something: a wooden carving buried in the back of a giant being. Unbeknownst to Maui, he had struck land. As Maui pulled with all of his strength on his line, the creature resisted him, fighting to remain in the ocean, its home. It became a battle of wills, and Maui used karakias (prayers) as he worked to pull up the creature and introduce it to the light. Finally, Maui succeeded. The giant fish was lifted, bit by bit, to the surface where Maui and his brothers sat in their waka. It was so unfathomably large that the waka was lifted onto the smooth back of the fish, and as far as the eye could see, the floating creature created a flat, even landmass that even Maui’s brothers had to admit was breathtaking. Wanting to retrieve his hook from the fish’s back, Maui walked away from his canoe, instructing his brothers not to touch the creature while he was gone. The moment he was out of sight, though, his brothers began to cut and hack away at the poor fish’s smooth back, thinking that they deserved a share of the catch. When Maui finally found his hook and pulled it out of the ground, he turned around to see a land of jagged mountains and valleys. The island, his fish, had been changed behind his very back. 

The science associated with this legend, Mike tells me, is all about the tectonic formation of Aotearoa. What we think of as the island of New Zealand is actually the most elevated part of a submerged continent, Zealandia (Te Riu-a-Māui). Much like a stingray, this landmass has a raised middle and low-lying sides. In other words, the country of New Zealand comprises the highlands of Zealandia. The landmass bridges two tectonic plates, the Australian plate and the Pacific plate. They sit on molten mantle underneath the Earth’s crust and push against each other, raising up New Zealand. 

Over the eons, New Zealand has experienced a heated tug-of-war with the ocean, occasionally falling into the depths for millions of years before rising out again. 23 million years ago, it was lifted out of the ocean by a combination of tectonic and volcanic activity. The Māori legend of Maui and the Big Fish could have been a representation of this tectonic event. It’s possible that this legend was used in the past by Māori storytellers to explain a complicated geological event to children in accessible, understandable terms: instead of volcanic activity pushing a submerged continent to the surface, it was Maui the adventurer with his karakias, willing the land to come into the light.

The second story that mātua Mike told me is a local one specific to the Rangitane tribe of the Kuruhaupo waka, in the Marlborough Sounds region. The story is about a man called Uenuku, and his foolishness when it came to love. Uenuku, a mortal, fell in love with Hinepūkohurangi, a mist maiden and elemental being. She had only three rules while they were together. The first was that Uenuku was to tell no one about her. The second: he was never to lie to her. The third: Uenuku must always protect her. Hinepūkohurangi would come to Uenuku every night after sunset and leave before first light, when her sisters would come to Uenuku’s home and tell Hine that their father was waiting for her. Uenuku, in rapture over his love, couldn’t run fast enough to tell everyone about his beautiful Hine. Whenever he told a friend, however, they would laugh and tell him to prove that this so-called beauty even existed. Time and time again, Uenuku would try to explain that she was real and was met with ruthless mockery. Worse still, he had already broken two of Hine’s rules. 

Unable to stand the gossip and disbelief any longer, Uenuku came up with a plan. That evening, as the last strains of sun were beginning to slip under the mountains, he put black material over all of his windows and in the cracks of all the doors in order to trick Hine into staying, partly so that he could enjoy her company for longer but mostly to prove to the villagers that she did exist after all. All went according to plan. Hine came under cover of darkness, and the dawn came with the hush of slippered feet. Uenuku knew that the sun was rising, that it would soon brush molten light on every inch of the earth. Hine felt that something was different, but upon looking out the window and seeing a starless black sky, she relaxed. Hours later, when she stepped outside, the warmth of the sun warned her, a split second too late. The moment that golden rays hit her face, lighting it up in a brief moment of blinding brightness, she burst into steam, her feet leaving only a fading mark on the stone. The villagers all looked on as Uenuku came out of the house, confused, searching for his love. “She has left you,” they all explained. Uenuku, hurt and ashamed, assumed that Hine was seeing another man and, heartbroken, walked up a mountain in search of her. She did not return to him. The cold on the peak of that mountain took Uenuku’s life. The sacred mountain of the Rangitane tribe is known as Tapuae o Uenuku, the Sacred Steps of Uenuku, in his memory. 

This story’s scientific connection is simple: it represents the evaporation cycle of dew, serving as a tool to remember and explain water’s forms. Hine, who represents water, condenses during the night and evaporates in the hot sun. Uenuku lost his love to trickery and the heat of daylight, but it was all too good to last. She would have slipped through his fingers sooner or later. 

The last Māori belief that Mike shared with me refers to the Māori relationship to whales. Rather than a legend, this belief relates to a long-standing relationship with whales and how Māori people have thought about them throughout history. The belief says that whales live in the ocean because of a wrongdoing by one of their ancestors. The whale, a long time ago, broke a tapu (a sacred rule) and was cursed by Tanemaahuta (the God of the Forests) to his brother Tangaroa’s domain, the ocean. When modern whales wash up on beaches, they are believed to have worked off their curse and are ready to return to the land. This belief shows that thousands of years ago, the Māori people knew something that Western scientists only discovered in the 1980s: that whales once walked on land. In studying whale DNA, scientists noticed that there were distinct genetic similarities between them and a group of hoofed mammals called Artiodactyls. The group includes pigs, deer, giraffes, and deer, and these animals weren’t what researchers in the 1980s expected to find for the closest relatives of whales. This hypothesis was strengthened when archeologists in Kashmir, India, dug up a 47 million year old hoofed mammal specimen which they called Indohyus. The animal’s earbone, a thickened, plate-shaped device that helps with underwater hearing, had previously only been seen in whales. Today, it is a widely accepted fact that whales evolved as land creatures, then returned to the water until the present day. The only question scientists don’t yet know the answer to? Why the transition happened. Who knows: maybe it had to do with a tapu and a very angry Tanemaahuta.

At the end of our interview, I talked with Mike a bit about how these legends are perceived in New Zealand. Some think that these overlaps with science are coincidence, just fanciful stories that aren’t based on real life. “That’s what happens to a lot of our stories,” says Mike, his eyes bright from years of hearing the same sentiment. “They get turned into myth or legend. But they’re not.” 

“Indigenous cultures,” he continues, looking at me hard, “evolve with the rhythms of the land that they’re a part of [...] and that’s because of observation.” Māori people have had a lot of time and motivation to study the systems that they’re a part of over time, like noticing the way the stars move in order to travel from one continent to another without a compass or map. “My people have 128 phases of the moon,” Mike shares proudly. None of this is coincidence. For millennia, Māori people have been navigating using the stars and using the harakeke plant to create medicines and clothing. As someone whose family has lived in New Zealand for 47 generations, Mike’s relationship to place runs deep and strong. Whenever he heard a bird singing or brushed by a low branch, Mike could always tell me the name of the species and something about it. Mike’s deep and careful knowledge of Aotearoa, his home, made me want to connect more with mine.