Canoe navigation

One of the fascinating things is, how did Māori actually navigate to New Zealand. I mean this was over thousands of miles of sea, not a lot of islands, and what this entry tells us about is some of the things they used. They used the stars and this is an amazing star chart, so that they could locate where their boat was relative to the stars. And here you can see the waka, and out here different stars and this allowed them to exactly know what route they were travelling.

They also used birds; you know they would follow the migration of the birds. Every year as you know a lot of birds leave New Zealand, go off to the Northern Hemisphere, and then come back. And they would often follow the routes of the birds. And the other thing of course they did, famously, was follow the whales. There’s a big migration, particularly of hump back whales, down from the Pacific to New Zealand every year, and it’s pretty clear that Māori, as they came to New Zealand, would follow the whales down. And a lot of people have said, well you know, that’s one of the reasons why whales and the whole story of Paikea for example, the story that’s in Whale Rider – this is actually a clip from the film Whale Rider – why whales are so important as part of the founding traditions of Polynesian people, Māori people in New Zealand.