Attendees at a climate change wānanga at Mākirikiri marae in Dannevirke. Photo: Suplied
Part of celebrating Matariki is looking to the environment for tohu or signs for the new year.
But as climate change takes hold around Aotearoa, models like the maramataka - the Māori calendar - may no longer be able to predict its effects.
So an iwi in Dannevirke held their own Climate Change Wānanga in the lead up to Matariki.
The wānanga was held at Mākirikiri Marae - to raise whānau awareness on the impacts of climate change.
For local iwi Rangitāne it was also about putting a plan in place for the effects of climate change, from extreme weather events, to rising temperatures, to loss of biodiversity.
Veteran climate activist - Mike Smith (Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Kahu) was one of the presenters - he said Matariki was the perfect time to have a kōrero about climate change.
"Our tīpuna at this time of year would gather out of the rain, the wind and the cold and talk about plans for the coming year.
"We talk about the Māori New Year and sometimes we equate it with the Pākehā New Year and it's a time to go out and celebrate, jump up and down and dance around the place, but really it was a time for planning, forecasting and for looking ahead into the future."
Smith wanted to enable people at a whānau level to be more aware of what climate change was, it's impacts and how to ensure it did not get worse.
He said the whānau was where the change was going to start - a change he hoped would filter up to the political level.
"All good things start at home. Particularly climate change it impacts severely on families and individuals within families and it escalates out from there to impact on communities and the wider society."
Mike Smith at the Climate Change Wānanga. Photo: RNZ/Pokere Paewai
Rangitāne Tū Mai Rā Trust chair Mavis Mullins said it was a great day for the iwi to talk around the challenges of climate change.
"I think the biggest learning for me was affirmation that the power lies within the whānau.
"Hapū, iwi [are] very important but the beach-head is in the whānau and if we can empower whānau to be resilient, to be ready then half the job is done."
It was only the first step on the journey to figure out Rangitāne's response, she said.
"It's the beginning really of our own quite concerted efforts to address then understand and then attack."
There were a variety of people attending the wānanga from environmental workers, to kaumātua, to students of the local kura.
Rangatahi needed to be part of the solutions too so when something goes wrong they could fix it - they could not just be passive observers, Smith said.
"I think young people they're not as invested in the status quo as say my generation is, by the time you get to my age a lot of my contemporaries are either invested economically, socially or politically in the status quo, in the orthodox, in the world that's been handed down to us, but younger people are more open to change."
Younger generations did not have big investments in dairy or mining so the idea of transforming those industries did not threaten them, he said.
Kaumātua needed to stand behind them, he said.
Climate Change Wānanga at Mākirikiri Marae in Dannevirke. Photo: RNZ/Pokere Paewai
Anaru Hauraki was among the next generation listening to the kōrero.
He works to bring kiwi back to the Ruahine Ranges and said any day in the bush was a good one.
"This is a good wānanga, [I've] learned a lot already, hopefully we're going to learn some strategies to get through climate change."
While Rangiwhero Smith, Mike Smith's son, said it had been nice to have input from students who were still in kura.
"It's nice to see the next generation putting their thoughts [in] as well. Because they're the rangatira for apōpō, so it's good that we've got inanahi (yesterday) in the room and apōpō (tomorrow) in the room."
Rangitāne were planning to have more wananga in the future to consider the complexity of the issues and solutions to climate change.
