Ngā Mōteatea Hōrū

Mōteatea are a glimpse into the world of our tīpuna. They give us a stories of the past, we can see the language, customs, beliefs, and the way of life of our tīpuna. In mōteatea we see stories of birth, death, love, war and important geographical features. They are filled with imagery, poetry and metaphors, a lot of the time the natural environment is used to portray this. There is a whole language, a reo o te taiao that is waiting to be recovered. Mōteatea are used to express ideas and a technique to retain kura huna to pass onto the next generation. This is what makes mōteatea are great resource to research when we are trying to reclaim our cultural practices. Its a continued art practice and we see some of the best being performed on national stage at Te Matatini. Te Wairere Ngaia composed an oriori that contains Tainui earthly knowledge about Puna and Papatūānuku that was published under He Kapunga Oneone’s Akoranga- Education Resources.

While doing research in another project that I was involved in, I came across a few waiata in Ngā Mōteatea by Tā Apirana Ngata and Dr Pei Te Hurinui Jones that mentions the use of hōrū (red ochre). Below are four waiata from this pukapuka, although it’s only mentioned in a sentence here and there, it gives us examples of its use in te ao tawhito which seems to be mostly describing ceremonial uses and body adornment.

These moteatea are from the series of books Ngā Moteatea vol 1-4 by Tā Apirana Ngata, Dr Pei Te Hurinui Jones and Tā Hirini Moko Mead. The translations were written many years ago and as Māori we realise that the English language cannot always capture the beauty of our reo. We also acknowledge that iwi and hapū have dialect differences and the translations of these waiata may not encapsulate the iwi and hapū essence of the waiata.