Puppetry a highlight of this year's Matariki

One of the images featuring in the Gate Pa exhibition that will be held over the month of Matariki. Photo/Supplied

A display of the traditional art of Maori puppetry will be the highlight of almost a month and a half of celebrations for Matariki, the Maori New Year.

The celebrations start today and a host of events will be staged throughout Tauranga starting on June 18 and running through to July 29.

For Maori, Matariki is the signal of a new year and is a time to prepare, learn, share ideas, and to celebrate the future.

Traditionally celebrations for the month would start at the rising of the new moon after the Matariki cluster of stars (the Pleiades) were sighted in late May.

This year, the month officially starts on June 28.

Tauranga City Library Maori services librarian Bernie Johnson said the celebrations would start with an exhibition from this year's Gate Pa exhibitions, being hosted at Tauranga Library.

A highlight of the month would include two Maori puppetry shows put on by Maori artist James Webster.

Maori puppets or Karetao are ceremonial marionettes with the body, legs and head usually carved from a single piece of wood. Arms and legs are operated by tightening and releasing cords which are tied through the back of the shoulders. Only a few have been preserved.

"Maori puppetry has just been revived and it's not something, a performance, that you see very often, so it's one of the unique programmes that we've got," Mrs Johnson said.

Mr Webster's show would look at the creation of New Zealand.

Kemu Maori, (Maori games), poi making, Maori stories and songs and weaving flax would also be taught across the city over the month.

Mrs Johnson said she had tried to create a bi-lingual Matariki programme for the month with information sheets and posters including both English and Maori words and some of the workshops being taught in te reo Maori.

"Matariki is about having fun, storytelling, carrying on traditions, we have been able to incorporate all these different themes in this programmes," she said.

Maori Language Commission board member Awanui Black said traditionally Maori used the month to determine their fortune for the coming year.

"When the cluster (of stars) was close together it was an omen of a year that wouldn't be so good. If the cluster was quite far apart it was a sign the year ahead would be a good one," he said.

How the Pleiades would appear in the sky also determined whether or not harvest, from the land or the sea, would be bountiful or not.

The revitalisation of Matariki began in a small school, Otepou, in Welcome Bay in about 1992, Mr Black said.

"There was a time when it was no longer practiced. The modern rebirth of Matariki began in Tauranga, the rest of the country picked it up some years after.

"We were the first in the country."

For information on the programme visit: http://library.tauranga.govt.nz/library-a-z/matariki.aspx