Share this page
Quick links
Add feed
|
|
The Persuader
My personal blog, started in 2006. No paid or guest posts, no link sales.
Posts tagged ‘nature’
26.06.2022
When I first started commemorating Matariki a few years ago, I had figured out, since both ancient MÄori and Chinese worked out the lunar calendar, that it was roughly five lunar months after ours. I was also told that it marked the MÄori New Year.
Maybe itâs due to local iwi, but my recollection was that Matariki was about three days before exactly five months had passed, which would make it today, June 26.
As itâs incredibly common among Chinese people to have calendars that show both the Gregorian dates and our dates side by side, I began looking for a MÄori equivalent. In fact, hereâs my Windows version:

I came across this page from Te Papa (our national museum, for those who mightnât know), which at least gives the names of the months in te reo MÄori. And this was a pleasant surprise:
In the traditional MÄori Maramataka, or lunar calendar, the new year begins with the first new moon following the appearance of Matariki (Pleiades) on the eastern horizon. Usually this takes place in the period June-July.
In other words, Matariki might mark the start of the New Year for MÄori but isnât the exact date.
From what I can understand, and I am more than happy to be corrected by tangata whenua, the Matariki holiday can encompass the exact first day of Pipiri (the first month of the lunar year under the Maramataka), and this is among the celebratory period.
Whatâs exciting for me as a person of Chinese ethnicity is that there is an exact parallel between our cultures in how we mark new months with new moons, and that this extends to the year, too.
In the interests of cross-cultural sharing, Iâve taken the MÄori months and placed them alongside ours, so we can figure out when each of our people celebrates the New Year.
Itâs so delightfully simple and way easier to convert than, say, the Islamic or Jewish calendars to Gregorian.
Pipiri |
ć
æ |
HĆngongoi |
äžæ |
HereturikĆkÄ |
ć
«æ |
Mahuru |
äčæ |
Whiringa-Ä-nuku |
ćæ |
Whiringa-Ä-rangi |
ćäžæ |
Hakihea |
ćäșæ |
KohitÄtea |
äžæ |
HuitÄnguru |
äșæ |
Poutƫterangi |
äžæ |
PaengawhÄwhÄ |
ćæ |
Haratua |
äșæ |
I assume MÄori, like us, figure out when repeat months happen in order for Pipiri to fall right after Matariki, which technically makes their calendar lunisolar, too.
It’s then very easy for someone with a Chinese calendar to figure out when the MÄori New Year begins, namely ć
æćäž, and it’s very easy for someone with a MÄori calendar to figure out when ours begins, namely Whiro, or the first day, of KohitÄtea.
Celebrating Matariki has always come very naturally to me, and even how we observe it (family time, giving thanks to the year gone and for the one ahead) is similar. And no wonder.
I apologize if this is way too simple and already basic general knowledge but I only found out today!
PS.: It does mean, for instance, that this page (and presumably, many others) from the Parliament website is dead wrong. January 26, 2017 is not the same as 26 KohitÄtea 2017:

So it seems it isn’t basic general knowledge.
P.PS.: There’s a lot more information confirming the above here, including the leap months. However:
The maramataka was revived in 1990 by Te Taura Whiri i te Reo MÄori (the MÄori Language Commission). Instead of using transliterations of the English names, such as HÄnuere for January and Mei for May, they promoted the traditional names cited by TĆ«takangÄhau. However, lunar months were dropped in favour of calendar months, so that, for example, Pipiri became June.
To me, that’s a shame; there’s a reason ancient MÄori created their lunar calendar. I can understand why the Commission did it, in order to keep the names of the months alive, and of course these names are preferable to transliterations. (Something similar has happened with our culture, but we don’t have cool names for the months as MÄori do.) It’s just that Pipiri isn’t June, and this year, it spans more of July. Therefore, the conversion table only works with the traditional Maramataka, not the one adapted to the colonists.
Tags: 2022, Aotearoa, calendar, China, Chinese, culture, MÄori, nature, New Zealand Posted in China, culture, Hong Kong, New Zealand | No Comments »
19.10.2020

My partner Amanda and I are part of Medingeâs presence at Dutch Design Week this year.
Since Medinge couldnât celebrate our 20th anniversary due to COVID-19, some of our Dutch members, helped by many others, took the opportunity to get us into the event, which is virtual this year.
We had done a lot of work on Generation Co earlier in 2020, thanks to a load of Zoom meetings and emails. This takes things even further, but builds on it.
The programme can be found here, and is titled âPutting the Planet First: a New Orientationâ.
The description: âInstead of thinking about the 3Psâyour challenge is to adopt a new perspective. Always put Planet first. Then people. Then profit.â
After signing up for free, you can head into our virtual rooms.
From the page: âOnly 21/10/2020, 10:00â13:00 lectures and livestreams from members of the Medinge Think Tank: a group of brand experts and visionaries from around the world whose purpose is to influence business to become more humane and conscious in order to help humanity progress and prosper. With international speakers who have worked on these rights and bring in the perspective from indigenous people who co-exist with the rivers.â
On Tuesday the 21st at 10 a.m. CET is Amandaâs presentation on the Whanganui River, which was given the rights of a legal person in legislation enacted in March 2017.
Amanda worked at the Office of Treaty Settlements at the time, so this is really her talk. I just set the laptop on the table, with a microphone generously lent to me by my friend Brenda Wallace. Then I edited it in video-editing software with all the skill of an amateur.
But thatâs the year of COVID-19 for you.
The way the talk came about was in discussion in 2019 with my colleagues at Medinge Group. The concept of legal rights on natural resources and indigenous rights came up, as did the case of the Whanganui River, which is known beyond our shores.
They had no idea Amanda worked on it, and proudly I mentioned her role.
From then on she was part of the programme, and it all came together last Friday.
In the talk, youâll see me on a much lower chair than her, propped up by a bag of rice that slowly sags as the recording wears on.
Thereâs only so much furniture at her Dadâs studio but it was the most comfortable place we could think of for the filming.
More important are the contents of her talk, which I thoroughly recommend. She worked really hard on the responses over a few weeks to make sure it was thoroughly rigorous.
Itâs followed by a talk from my good friend and colleague Sudhir John Horo. Pop over, itâs going to be a really eventful day in virtual Eindhoven.
Tags: 2020, Amanda Satterthwaite, anniversary, Aotearoa, Astrid Benneker, branding, Christof ZĂŒrn, Dutch Design Week, Eindhoven, Jack Yan, law, MÄori, Medinge Group, natural resources, nature, New Zealand, Sandra Horlings, social responsibility, Sudhir John Horo Posted in branding, business, culture, design, leadership, marketing, New Zealand, politics, social responsibility, Sweden, Wellington | No Comments »
13.11.2015

I can be staunch on IP protection in a lot of casesâbut in the case of Martin Shkreli of Turing Pharmaceuticals AG hiking the price of an Aids drug from $13·50 to $750 per pill, not so much (for obvious reasons). If youâre in pharmaceuticals, then there has to be some element of wanting to benefit enough of humankind so that they can be, well, alive to better societyâor, if you want to be monetarist about it, so they can consume more products and services. Whichever side of politics youâre on, productive people are a good thing for everyone except the armsâ industry. Yet the pharmaceutical industry is the one thatâs trying to patent natural ingredients and phenomenaâand thatâs a step too far. It was something we were taught at law school that could not happenâhow can a corporation own nature?âso for the industry to challenge both that jurisprudence smacks of greed. If you didnât originate it, you shouldnât be able to own it. Even if it could be protected, nature has been around long enough for that protection to have lapsed. Patenting genes? Please.
Sure, everyone has the right to make a buck from intellectual endeavours, but their track record needs to be a lot cleaner. Why was there so much opposition to TPPA et al? Because there had been far too many cases of corporations taking the piss when it came to basic rights and established laws, and governments havenât upped their game sufficiently. I love the idea of global trade, the notion âweâre all in this togetherâ, but not at the expense of the welfare of fellow human beings. Simply, I give a shit. Hiking the price of something that costs $13·50 to $750 is laziness at the very leastâletâs profit without lifting a fingerâand being a douchebag at the worst. And I donât believe we should reward either of these things.
I have a friend who is against vaccinationsânot a position I agree withâbut his rationale boils down to his mistrust of Big Pharma. And why should he trust them, with these among their worst cases? (As far as I know, he doesnât oppose other forms of IP protection.) Somewhere, thereâs something that kicks off various positions, and corporate misbehaviour must fuel plenty.
Meanwhile, hereâs Martin Shkreliâs point of view, where he doesnât see his actions as wrongful, as told on Tinder, and as told by Yahoo. His view is that Turing isnât making a profit and he needs to find ways where it does. He has a duty to his shareholders. It seems incredibly short-termâone would hope that innovation is what turns around a pharmaceuticalsâ businessâand we come back to the notion that it all feels a bit lazy.
A version of this post originally appeared on my Tumblog.
Tags: 2015, business, capitalism, globalization, health, humanity, intellectual property, IP, law, nature, politics, society, Switzerland, trade, USA Posted in business, leadership, social responsibility, USA | 1 Comment »
|