Political and Family Structure

SKIN STORIES www.pbs.org/skinstories Due to the highly tribalized and stratified nature of ancient Maori society, moko had great status, and was used to differentiate between and within social classes. There was enough variation in Maori tribal styles that it was possible to determine regional or tribal affiliation based on the patterns and placement of the moko. For some tribes, the moko also indicated the rank, genealogy and even the occupation of the wearer. It is interesting to note that the spiral motif was found only among the Maori of Aotearoa. The overall style of moko was curvilinear and flowed with the natural curves of the human body. Among the Maori, the spiral (generically called a koru) was very common in tattooing, carving and other arts. (Prof. Kealalokahi Losch, University of Hawai’i) To learn more about moko, including the unique way it was appplied, or to learn about tattoo in other cultures, visit SKIN STORIES, at www.pbs.org/skinstories.

Like all of the other Polynesian cultures, Maori culture has many unique features, but it is also typically Polynesian in numerous ways. This is hardly surprising when Maori culture is understood to have developed in isolation in New Zealand out of an ancestral east Polynesian cultural base.

Anthropologists describe the cultures of Polynesia as being very "hierarchical." Conceptually, this means that the cultures were shaped like a pyramid where the chief sits at the top of the pyramid, lesser chiefs in layers in the middle and people who were not chiefs at the bottom. The position of the chief and other people in the structure was determined primarily by whakapapa — or genealogy. Genealogy and kinship underpinned all traditional Polynesian culture, society and politics — including that of the Maori.

Among Maori, genealogies were compared and ranked against each other to determine a person's position in the hierarchy. The ranking was based on the ability of people to trace ancestry back to a particular ancestor that lived in the past. Often these were the original ancestors after whom tribes (iwi) and sub-tribes (hapu) were named. For the most part, the ability to trace ancestry back to the founding ancestor of the group through the oldest male line was considered to be more significant than tracing descent in either a female line or through younger brothers. In some tribes, however, female lines are also considered to be just as important as male lineages, but this tends to be the exception rather than the rule.

This means that the chief of the group has the "senior" genealogy. He is the chief because his father was chief before him, and his father before him and so on back in time. Ideally, chieftainship was passed down generations from father to oldest son, but if the oldest son was not an entirely suitable leader it could be passed to the second or third son instead. If there were no sons then the chief's next oldest brother or his nephew could become the chief.

The basis of Maori social and political life centered on the family or the whanau. Maori whanau were typically Polynesian in that they were much larger then standard nuclear families in New Zealand households today. Not only did they include parents and children, they also included the brothers and sisters of the original parents, and all their children as well. The parents of the original mother and father, (the grandparents of the children) were also included in the whanau. The head of the whanau was typically the original father.

The whanau was the basic unit of Maori social and political life. Family members typically worked together in the daily activities associated with gardening, fishing, and seasonal hunting and gathering. They tended to live in permanent base camps for most of the year but in summer, moved to other parts of their territories to exploit specific resources where they stayed in temporary camps.

Over time, as the population expanded and spread out, the social and political life became more complex. As a part of this, whanau started to band together into bigger units called hapu. It is likely that for most of the pre-European period the hapu was the major social and political unit. Each hapu had a rangatira who was the person with the most senior whakapapa, drawn from the leaders of each whanau. In addition, each hapu staked out a territory on the landscape that it claimed as theirs, and over this they asserted mana whenua, or control. This territory was defended from the advances of other whanau and hapu when required.

Iwi were bigger aggregations, comprised of hapu that were related to each other by whakapapa. Each iwi also had a rangatira, who usually had the most senior whakapapa of the hapu chiefs. Today there is some speculation that the development of iwi as social and political units may have occurred after the arrival of Europeans in New Zealand. At this stage however there is not enough evidence to say this conclusively.

Maori political and social life, like that of other Polynesian cultures, became more complex over time. In New Zealand this involved the creation of larger and larger political groupings of people. The biggest political unit created was the so-called waka confederation that was an amalgamation of iwi connected by whakapapa. It is likely that these did not form in pre-European times and there was sometimes no clear leadership associated with these either. It is also likely that waka confederations did not operate at a daily level in New Zealand and only assembled occasionally for particular political purposes.