Abstract
Prior to European contact, Māori partook in a number of traditional sports, martial arts, and leisure activities. Such participation would often be used to identify characteristics of young men or women and could, at times, serve to determine one’s position in the wider tribal hierarchy. Physical challenges, competition, and leisure were integral elements of “traditional” Māori life and would regularly be at the centre point of social gatherings. Sports (such as running, cliff diving, or, in particular, martial arts) could be used to preserve mana (authority, power, and prestige), face, and honour between iwi (tribes). Thus, sport and other leisure activities, with their competitive elements, became, according to Patrick Te Rito (MAI Review, 2006, 1), “quite inseparable from everyday life, ritual, and survival” (p. 11). Upon colonisation many of the traditional sports and leisure activities of, pre-European contact, Māori were dismissed as child’s play, folk games, or were simply not acknowledged as sport. The aim of this chapter will be to examine beyond the general, early Western, depictions of “traditional Māori pastimes” and provide an understanding of the roles that leisure and culture played, and continue to play, in Māori society.
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Notes
- 1.
Elsdon Best was born in New Zealand in 1856 and became one of New Zealand’s most notable ethnographers of his era. In the late 1890s and early 1900s, Best spent considerable time with the Tuhoe tribe on the central East Coast of New Zealand’s North Island. Through his engagement with Tuhoe, he was able to note considerable amounts of Tuhoe history and tradition, much of which he published through the Polynesian Society, later the Journal of the Polynesian Society.
- 2.
Tapu and noa were complementary forces that restricted and freed Māori society respectively. Akin to religion tapu and noa regulated most facets of Māori life. These forces were said to be derived from the gods and were not openly challenged or broken prior to European contact. Certain aspects of tapu and noa are still ahered to in contemporary Māori society, mostly in the form of etiqutte and ritual.
- 3.
See Hokowhitu. Tackling Māori Masculinity.
- 4.
The Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840. It was a treaty of secession that saw the transfer of sovereignty from Māori to the British Crown. The Treaty of Waitangi has since become an agreement of constitutional importance which establishes a partnership between the Crown and Māori in New Zealand. This partnership has been implemented across a wide ambit of policy areas including health and education, where Māori have sought to improve outcomes for Māori people and the upholding of culture and tradition.
- 5.
Formal greetings.
- 6.
Princess Te Puea Herangi was a prominent Māori leader of the twentieth century from the Tainui people. She was the niece of Mahuta Tawhiao, the third Māori king. Her leadership achievements included opposing conscription of Waikato men through the two World Wars; establishing a tribal community and headquaters after a quarter of the people at one settlement died from the influenza epidemic in 1918; and maintaining and placing a high value on cultural customs.
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Borell, P., Kahi, H. (2017). Sport, Leisure and Culture in Māori Society. In: Spracklen, K., Lashua, B., Sharpe, E., Swain, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Leisure Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56479-5_8
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