The Mana of Digging a Grave

August 16, 2024 6:27 PM

Liam Rātana writes a beautiful piece about The mana of digging a grave. Some useful Māori words referenced in the article, although you can work out most of it from the surrounding context - mana, tangi, marae, Tāmaki Makaurau, nehu, whānau, kāuta, urupā, punga, karanga, karakia, kai.
posted by phigmov (11 comments total)

This is such a thoughtful and interesting piece, thanks for sharing!
posted by nouvelle-personne at 7:05 PM on August 16 [1 favorite]

I met with the executor of a deceased Maori, and she was asking for help to wind everything up as quickly as possible. "Everything needs to be finished before we can unveil his gravestone. His brother died a year before he did, and the family wants to come together for the unveiling of both stones, which cannot happen until everything is finished."

Another Maori tradition is that the body is not left alone - family and friends watch over it until it is buried.
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 8:22 PM on August 16

A word not glossed is ringawera, the cooks. Literally the hot-hands.

I always felt that tangihanga and sitting shiva had something in common. Although Jews bury ASAP rather than having the dead person lying in state in the wharenui, the concept of an extended period of communal mourning where everyone comes, rather than a funeral day and then it's over, is common to us both.

At my dad's burial I shoveled a spadeful of earth in after, as is customary. An old family friend had to make me do it. It was so final, I could hardly make myself pick up the shovel. I think I would have preferred to dig, I would have found that cathartic.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 8:49 PM on August 16 [2 favorites]

So reading this caused me to realize that I know eff-all about the historical relationship between the Maori and the Australian Aborigines; I'd somehow assumed that they shared some common origins due to their relatively close location and isolation from other large landmasses, but it turns out that that is totally wrong! (The reason I wondered is because there's clearly no "sorry business" taboo affecting the retelling of these events.)
posted by praemunire at 9:14 PM on August 16

I'm definitely not an anthropologist/historian but this is a useful reference - The Polynesian spread of colonization in the Pacific. Comparatively recent compared to the multiple-millennial history of Aboriginal Australians.
posted by phigmov at 9:36 PM on August 16 [2 favorites]

At the risk of detracting from the piece itself, which I found moving and also encapsulates a whole world unknown to most of us... "relatively close" isn't close at all. It's 4000km of Tasman Sea (2500 miles) and of course the next closest places where Polynesians settled are even further. There are a couple of artifacts and oral traditions that hint that maybe a trip or two was made? But there's no linguistic or cultural or DNA evidence that suggests any substantial contact between Māori and indigenous Australians. On the other hand, Australia IS close to Papua (80 miles/150 km at current sea levels, less during last glaciations) and there is definitely a long connection between people on the northern edge of Australia to Papua and beyond.

I once had a hilarious conversation with a German who thought Auckland and Sydney were connected by a bridge though.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 10:24 PM on August 16

Yeah, Aotearoa was one of the last places on earth to be settled by humans - after even Iceland and Madagascar
posted by mbo at 10:38 PM on August 16 [1 favorite]

Yes, relatively, as in "compared to the majority of other larger landmasses." (Obviously Papua New Guinea is closer.) They were actually part of the same landmass once. Hardly wild to conjecture that in a relatively (see?) thinly occupied stretch of ocean reasonably substantial and seagoing populations might have had some ethnic relationship. But, it turns out, not at all correct.
posted by praemunire at 11:12 PM on August 16

Sorry, just had a little attack of parochial superiority, carry on.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 11:39 PM on August 16 [3 favorites]

"I learnt that like any good neighbours, my relations from the two places didn’t always see eye to eye."
Arragh, thanks for that. Hereabouts in the Irish midlands, graves are still dug by shovel by the neighbours. Even neighbours who are officially in feud and will go back to not speaking after the grave is closed.
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:11 AM on August 17 [3 favorites]

What I’ve learnt is that every urupā and every foreman has a different tikanga or way of doing things.
posted by HearHere at 3:56 AM on August 17