MITHS AND LEGENDS

By getting involved more and more in depth on New Zealand’s culture, we have to learn about myths and legends belong to the society in general; furthermore, these are an important part in the social upbringing and social education. Myths and legends have arrived to us from ancestor through many generations, and they tell us, many incredible stories about many themes, such as the world’s creation or maybe an incredible war in which participated some gods or extraordinary creatures of fire, ice or winged.

Before continuing, we are going to define both terms according to Oxford Dictionary, in which Myth is defined as “A traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events” (Oxforddictionaries.com). 
In addition, legend is defined as “A traditional story sometimes popularly regarded as historical but unauthenticated” (Oxforddictionaries.com). So we can understand that myths are stories related to supernatural events and legends are popular o historical stories but without a valid support.

Knowing already the meaning from both terms, we can continue with the issue, although firstly we must specify that the Myths and legends related to our country –New Zealand- belong to the entire continent of Oceania, in which apart from our country New Zealand, includes Australia, Fiji, Nauru,  Kiribati, against other countries. We can say that all of those countries have something in common due to their myths and legends, although with minimal changes in versions of every one.  But we are really interested in how myths and legends are involved inside the New Zealand’s Society and knowing some of these interesting stories.

First of all we have to know how it everything began. In the beginning there was only darkness, it did not exist any sky, earth or gods, just nothingness. From this nothingness born the mother earth, Papa  and the father sky Ranginui. This two were in love and embraced in the darkness, they had many children –who now are the gods of earth. But the children were mad because they had to be in darkness and nothingness just like their parents.  So they decided to separate their mother and father of the embrace, one by one tried but with no succeed, until Tane-Mahuta –God of forest –put his head against his mother and his feet against his father and for a long time tried to separate them, finally succeeding. The sky was finally separated from the earth. However there was a child that was not agree with the separation, he was the god of storms and thunders called Tawhiri Matea, he saw what his brother did and got angry, so he decided to join his father in the sky, after provoking terrible storms and thunders on earth.

Now we know how earth was created and all the things in this world, lets see the story of New Zealand. There was a Goddess that had a premature child his name was Maui. When a child born premature bad things happens around him, because of that she did not want him and threw him into the ocean. The God of sun took him barely dead and raised him until his adolescence.  He returned to earth and took revenge with their mother and brothers for what they had done, he stole the jaw of her sister Muri-Ranga and made a hook. One day he went fishing and used that hook, because he wanted to fish something amazing –and he surely did –he caught a huge piece of land, it was so big that when he lift the hook, the piece of land broke in two, forming the North and South Island of New Zealand.

We talked about some myths of New Zealand, know we are going to talk about some legends, for example a huge animal similar to the famous Yeti, completely covered with hair, big teeth and takes persons to the deepest part of the forest. Maori people call him “Moehau”. Many people are sure that they have seen him.  In 1969 an expedition was made, the only thing found was big footsteps of something unknown, but there is no scientific proof that he really exists.

Other important legend is how people came to New Zealand. The legend tells that Maori people came in canoes around 1350. As a result of an unexpected visit of Kupe – a fisherman of Hawaiki –he one day was fishing in his canoe and a giant octopus grab his hook, he started to follow him trying to trap it, after a lot of effort he did it and noticed that he was in a strange land. He travelled across the new land and found amazing places and animals, marveled by those things he sailed back to his home and talk to his people, telling great stories of that new land. All the people were exited to meet those new things, so they sailed there and called that land “Aoteaora”.

SOCIAL SCIENCES

The best way for knowing and learn thoroughly about a country is through social sciences; due to it is a wide science which brings a huge quantity of information from many topics of human being and its social behavior.

As a brief introduction, the term “Social sciences” is only the base of a big tree, which has a lot of branches that involves the study of the human and society behavior. These branches are geography, international relations, political sciences, economics, education, inter alia. Social sciences study the human being and its behavior through time, in the past, in a determinate time or even how the human being will behave in a future time.

Every one of those branches are issues which we will raise through the essay, but due to those topics are very extensive issues, we will tackle a brief review of some of them.

Before of starting, New Zealand is a very young and multiethnic country. Owing to there is a great and growing young population; New Zealand is considered a young country –on comparison to other western countries. It is also considered as a multiethnic country; due to it has a high birth rate of Maori people; moreover, it has a relatively high immigration rate from Asia and Great Britain.

We are going to tackle the society issue from the point of view of the young and student people, and how it is built or formed to the youth.

New Zealand’s society or also known as “The Kiwi Society” –named in this way by foreigners and local people, and in honor to its national icon; the little native bird called “Kiwi”. How this is a young society, New Zealand has invested on its youth by means of scholarships, for example. Although New Zealand has a high rate of public investment –especially on public transport, the living costs are equally high for students and people in general. The living cost in New Zealand, in comparison to Chile, is higher but, cheaper than Europe or US. 

The minimum income to live (not the same than minimum salary) is around $1600 NZD [New Zealand Dollar] –approximately, $627, 297.6 CP [Chilean Pesos] –conversion according to Labolsa.com on Saturday 21, June. But in every city of New Zealand and even between North and Southern Islands, the living cost varies depending on the zone and economic activity.

New Zealand is an active member of the WTO (World Trade Organization) since 1995. The aim of this organization is to help the producers of goods, the exporters and importers to improve their activities. This helps to the economy of New Zealand to grow in a better way.

New Zealand’s economy is particularly based on exportations –it is dependent on international trade, especially with European Union and Australia. “Kiwi Economy” is mainly based on primary industries (agriculture), with a great dependence on international trade and foreign investment. New Zealand could be a great producer of different goods and in great quantity, but it prefers producing a little quantity of goods in a safe market and concentrates its economy on a massive production of exporting goods. Although New Zealand has a market economy, this depends on government as the same manner that depends of the entrepreneurs. Due to the government have many programs for helping to exporters and enterprises, which can become big exporters; with the only one goal of maintain the economy growth. Internal market from New Zealand is not a great consumer of goods and services, society from this nation prefers consuming external goods and only the necessary from internal goods, because of this, New Zealand economy is depending on exportations; nevertheless, thanks to its beautiful landscapes and a lot of touristic attractions, which was gifted, a significant percentage from economy comes from tourism. Whereby, we can say that New Zealand is definitely a country totally dependent on exportations and it is prone to be affected by economic crisis from its main buying countries, Australia and England. 

New Zealand with its multicultural society has known how to capitalize its education system. It has a clear focus on how to improve the education, a matter that is very important for this country. The 10 percent of the government budget is for education, this allows children to study for free. The studying years for children begin from 6 to 16 years old, the system is composed of eight levels of elemental education and then it is divided on high school with two more years. To maintain the good education of Maori children the Educational Review Office gives to the government periodical evaluations of all the educational buildings. In most of the schools children has their classes in English, because the educational system is based on the British system, but there are other schools specialized to Maori children and their classes are given in Maori. As an extra cultural statistic according to this matter, in Chile we have an educational counselor from the embassy of New Zealand; we have a bilateral agreement according to education with New Zealand. Thanks to this in 2008, 524 Chilean students went to New Zealand to study there.

New Zealand has barely an area of 269 km2 –that means three quarters of Japan –it doesn’t have land borders. The south island is the biggest of both islands, it has a quarter of the total Maori population, and it’s divided lengthwise by the Southern Alps. It has 18 picks and the highest pick is Mount Cook or Aoraki with 3.754 meters. We can say that the southern island is the mountainous part of New Zealand.

The Northern Island is less mountainous but is marked by volcanism, the most famous mount is Ruapehu with 2.797 meters and it is an active volcano. The biggest lagoon of New Zealand is in this island and it is called Taupo, this lagoon was created after the biggest eruption in history of the last 70.000 years.

In conclusion, New Zealand has always been a strong nation, it has known how to create a firm society; however, relating to economy it is on thin ice, because New Zealand is very dependent to other countries. Due to it has an economy based on exporting and foreign investment, if some economic crisis affect to some of the countries which buy to or invest on New Zealand, the economy of this nation will be affected and this is not some good for country. On the other hand, New Zealand is a nation, which is worried about the education and his population. It has invested on education through of many scholarships and the society on public transport, and it is a nation, which cares environment too. Furthermore, New Zealand gives many opportunities to foreign people by means of scholarships. New Zealand’s education is well-recognized on the rest of the world and many foreigners studying there. And as a last point, this is a nation, which we would go to study or living there, with a well-constituted society and its geography is similar to Chile; and despite of, it has a living cost higher than Chile and it is located to the edge of the world, it continues being a great country to live for anyone. 

CUSTOMS AND TRADITIONS

For knowing a nation, we have to learn about it, not only its politic organization, economic system or history facts, but also we have to be able to understand that nation from its inside. For learning about a nation we have to be between the population, knowing and being part of their customs and traditions. Through of the customs and traditions from a nation in particular, we can learn more thoroughly their culture and language.

A customs is defined as “a traditional and widely accepted way of behaving or doing something that is specific to a particular society, place, or time” (oxforddictionaries.com, point 1.). And tradition is defined as “the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation, or the fact of being passed on in this way” (oxforddictionaries.com, point1). After we have given the correct definitions about both terms, we can establish that customs are ways of behaving from a nation, which are transmitted for generations. And we must have very clear what means every one of these terms for knowing and understand how people behave; better said the culture of a nation.

How in every nation, we can see in New Zealand customs and traditions such a celebrations and holidays, marriage and family customs or social habits. We will tackle these issues; furthermore we will see the different beliefs they have adopted through the time pass by.

In matter of social behavior, the way of saluting is shaking hands no matter the genre, but if it’s a woman with a man in a formal way, the man waits for the woman to do the first movement. Maori people use a hug as a salute or the traditional hongi, which consists on getting closer nose to nose, closing their eyes and making a sound like “mm-mm”. Another salute called Kia Ora consists on wishing good blessings to the other person; nowadays this salute has being used more and more by people in general.

For the Maori people the family is very important, they still have families with a lot of members and is a tradition those generations of the same family live together in the same house. For the Maori people there is also important the communitarian place called Marae, in that place they do their ceremonies, reunions and all kind of activities.

Family is very important, not only to Maori People, but on New Zealand in general; furthermore, families are very worried about houses, or their homes. Families invest too much money to improve their houses; and thus feel good and being comfortable. Almost all New Zealand’s people is worried about purchase their own home, almost no one rents a house. The higher number of houses rented is by foreigner, who need live temporally there or people, who have not raised the enough money to buy one.

New Zealand’s families like spending their free time in their homes and do barbecues –this are very, very popular in the whole country-; moreover, people is very hospital and they often invite persons to their homes, only a little after know them.

Marriage is celebrated with a big party and a lot of food, along with music and dances. But nowadays the percentage of marriages has been decreasing; due to the percentage of couples living together in the same house has been increasing. Nonetheless, Maori consider the marriage yet; though the number of women and men who live together with no marriage is creasing, but in a minor number. 

New Zealand has a national day called “Waitangi”, celebrated every year on February 6, in this historic day people celebrate that in 1810 the British council firmed an agreement allowing New Zealand to be a British colony and the protection of Maori people under the British. Celebration begins a day before the Waitangi, this day is called Ngapuhi Te tii marae and it is a speech from the Iwi, in that speech are presented the problems that the country is facing during the year.

There are many other festivals, which New Zealand celebrates, such as the Auckland Folk Festival (celebration of music, singing and dance), New Zealand International Arts Festival (celebrated every two years and during –practically- one month) and other ones less important such as Biennial Wellington Jazz Festival, New Zealand Fringe Festival, the International Comedy Festival, Folkloric Wellington Festival, against other festivals.

Other days of celebration are the Anzac and the birthday of the queen Elizabeth II –or queen, who is in the moment-. Anzac is a day, which honors the army of New Zealand who fought in the World War I; in this day there are special rugby games and dances. The birthday of the queen is celebrated the first Monday of June, in this day there is a parade in her honor and the cavalry shoots 41 shots, all of this accompanied with music and dances. Against other days are the workday (fourth Monday of June), Christmas (twenty-five of December) and the Boxing Day (twenty-six of December).

Many of those festivals, allow to the population learn more about his country, and also enjoy a while between friends or family, under the sound of bands or folklorical groups of music and dance.

The religion is based on Christianity since the British colonizers –one of the most important legacies from England-. Anglican with 554,925 members, Roman Catholic with 508,810, Presbyterian Christians with 400,445 and Methodist with over 100,000 members is the largest sub sects among the Christians (statistical data extracted from Spainexchange.com). Christmas and Easter are the most important Christian days of this country. New Zealand is a country very believing Christian; even its national anthem is called “God Defend New Zealand”.

New Zealand’s nation is a nation, who likes enjoy and have fun, have a great quantity of different kind of festival internationally known, from one day to almost one month. Moreover, society from New Zealand is familiar society; this could be owing to the close relationship between Maori people and the New Zealand Society (as we established in a previous essay and we already know, the New Zealand’s society is a mixed society). Moreover, as other interesting point, we would like highlighting the great quantity of money, which New Zealand’s society invest on their homes, though this is comprehensible to us, for trying to create a comfortable home to live, spend a lot of money, worth it.

And as a last point, we could say that New Zealand; and as a last point, we could say that New Zealand; continues being an interesting nation, owing to its multiculturalism and its being way, one never finish to learn about it.

LITERATURE

Literature, the art of the written words, a special, unique and strong art, which has the capacity to change the people mind and affect to the behavior of these ones, a beautiful art which has been between us from the creation of writing. Literature has a different importance in every place, every country, every person, native people or even who do not read. The nowadays society has gave to the literature a great importance, but it depends of every one to accept this importance or give it more or less importance.  It is certain that literature is an important player inside of every one of world’s countries, because literature has played a direct or indirect role in the nation development and the society formation; moreover, through literature we can know and learn many different things such as important or famous dead people, historic facts, our imagination capacity grows more and more, new vocabulary or lexical acquisitions, inter alia.

Talking about New Zealand’s literature -and starting with our issue on itself- it is very important and has played an important role on the national development and it has influenced to the society behavior. New Zealand is the birthplace of great authors or writers such as Katherine Mansfield, Janet Frame, Roger Hall or Witi Ihimaera, against others authors.

At the beginning of New Zealand, when it was a colony, disembarked on the islands the British literature and the world literature in general, native people found in colonizers “the writing”, which was used by natives (Maori people) for writing their oral traditions on paper, and from this way, while the time passed by, writers were born on the islands and the New Zealand literature too. Nevertheless, nowadays, there is a debate between many writers from this country, because of some writers said that there is not a New Zealand literature, only exists a “British literature”, or as Witi Ihimaera name it “the Commonwealth literature”.

Witi Ihimaera in his essay “New Zealand literature: writing from the edge of the universe” said that the New Zealand’s literature is recently creating its own identity, but have achieved to separating from the “Commonwealth literature”.

If we can give a look through New Zealand’s literature history, we can appreciate that its literature is until today a sub-type of Britain literature, because in this last one, New Zealand literature has based on. Researching through some websites and writer opinions, we could make an opinion about New Zealand’s literature. We think that this literature cannot be named “commonwealth literature”, together with the great writers from New Zealand and their amazing books, essays and all of their important works, allow to New Zealand have an own literature; furthermore, New Zealand’s literature is a mix of Maori culture and New Zealand culture and there are writers, who write in Maori, which are another point in favor to this theory.

Continuing with literature; poetry is the most influenced by New Zealand places and times. However, poetry has been on the islands so much time before English settlement. Maori culture has had a kind of sung poems called “waiata”. And after the English settlement, sung poems were predominantly on almost all the poetry in those times.

Children literature is also an important kind of literature on New Zealand Country; but according to us, it is the most important kind of literature –not only on New Zealand whether on the whole World; because of this literature is very influential in children and teenagers. Through of the children growth, it is typical reading them tales or short stories from children books. One of the most important writers in this aim is Margaret Mahy who won on forming the children mind and creating a new individual who will be, in a future, one more person in the society and exactly the children behavior depends on how to children reared the Hans Christian Anderson award thanks to her writings for children.

New Zealand’s playwrights are a community extremely active, and are supported by the Playmarket. The major exponent between New Zealand’s playwrights is Roger Hall, who is also an actor and his magnum opus is “Middle Age Spread” (1978). Coming back to Playmarket, it is a national organization which; moreover, sells and publishes scripts and plays. This Organization represents Maori people and the pacific islands.

But, on the other hand:

“Another issue that affects this question is that, as far as this new identity is concerned, New Zealand is a very youthful society – yours in Japan, by comparison, is centuries older. As a consequence, our artistic and, in particular, written literary production is still relatively young.” (Witi Ihimaera, p. 2)

As a W. Ihimaera mentioned in his essay, the literature of New Zealand is a very youthful nation, but we think that with almost two hundred years of antique, has been able to forge an artistic and literary base; which until today has been an indispensable part of the society formation, and an kind of rope, which has been linked two cultures, New Zealand culture and Maori culture. Furthermore, it has been a door for New Zealand will be open to the world.

Despite of debatable origins of New Zealand’s literature between the writers, this literature; which comes from the edge of the world, from two great islands, is a great and powerful literature which brings us a huge and rich cultural legacy. This cultural legacy every one of us is able to access and study it or learn more about it, in other words, enjoy it. Under our point of view, we can recognize that New Zealand’s literature has been linked to the English literature or “Commonwealth literature”; nevertheless, New Zealand’s literature has been able to be totally divided from English literature. The way which this literature has been adding Maori cultural resources, for this reason and another ones, we can say that the literature from New Zealand is a literature with a well-deserve own identity; and also for us, an unmistakable identity.

It is really amazing, how things change with the time passed by, who thought that two and isolated islands as New Zealand had dream places, which were used by producers like J.B. Tolkein in his worldly famous movie “The Lord of the Rings” or by the producer C. Lewis in his also worldly famous movie “The Chronicles of Narnia”. We can discover or imagine this places by pictures, movies or through of literature, in words of poets which express those beautiful places in beautiful words, able to make us believe that we are there and to be able to say “here is where dreams come true”. 

MUSIC AND ART

New Zealand Art has a great variety or kind of expressions, such as woodcarving and tattoos, which, also possess a cultural meaning; moreover, magnificent paints made by artists, who were able to go beyond of the common and able to capture the only and wonderful landscapes from New Zealand over canvas. Folklore music from New Zealand, which through of commemorative and narrative epic hymns is able to reflect in the letter of their songs the culture and traditions from country; moreover, these songs are companied by dance and, for the other hand, the important of the national dance, which express in an only way the nation great passion and fortitude.In general, music and art are a mix of Maori culture and New Zealand’s culture, fact which allows to New Zealand to have a wide variety of exponents inside every one of art branches and thanks to the huge variety of landscapes, weathers and cultures New Zealand brings to the art more and more issues. Due to these facts, New Zealand possesses an innovative and creative art.Nevertheless, before of a depth analyze of New Zealand, we are going to know some information about it; in general, New Zealand as a nation, its geography and history.New Zealand is a big country limited to two great islands and some little islands, such as Great Barrier Island and Stewart Island; furthermore, there are two island called Cook and Niue, which are autonomous states. New Zealand is isolated from the rest of the continents, due to New Zealand’s wildlife is singular, and this wildlife is dominated by birdlife, but many of these unique species were wiping out due to arrival of humans and also, those mammals introduced by humans.The New Zealand Island’s origins are based in the native people from the zone, the Maori, who with their native history, six hundred years before the very first arrival of European people, who came back one hundred years after to colonize the islands to establish the new colony on New Zealand’s Islands.New Zealand, in addition to being a rich country in matter of terrestrial and marine wildlife, is one of few countries; at the same than Uruguay, who until today keeps and uses; proudly, their own native tongue and culture.Nowadays, New Zealand is an institutional monarchy, furthermore and at the same time, it is a Parliamentary democracy but its constitution is not codified. New Zealand’s head of state is the Queen Elizabeth II, who is represented by the governor, whose advisor is the prime minister. Prime minister gives an exclusive consultancy to the governor. Parliament is the legislative power representative of New Zealand, which to make difference of Chile, is formed by an only one house, the House of Representatives.In all related to climates; New Zealand, at the same than Chile, is a very complete country, owing to the great diversity of climates, which vary according to geographic location, and it is possible to find from tropical landscapes to sceneries completely covered by snow or snowy; as well as, deserts and humid place and climates.Prior to this little description about New Zealand, we come back to the main issue; art, which is an mean where artists show everything whose belongs to New Zealand, such as its sceneries, its popular culture, its ancestral culture (Maori culture) and some historical factsOver the very New Zealand’s beginning, art was divided In two parts, Britain art (brought by England colonizers) and the Maori art, both arts were mixing throughout of the time (Maori art needed the Britain art for expressing themselves through of the writing), and were creating a new kind of art, named New Zealand’s art.This art, in many of its representations, has great exponents such as Sara Hughes (painter), Jeffrey Harris (painter), Neil Pardington (photographer) o Chris Booth (sculptor).On the 19^th century, Colin McCahon introduces the cubism in his works, being the first artist in use this technique on New Zealand. This fact gave way to a kind of “liberation” between the artists, because they were introducing to their works the European Modernism and this was mixed with Maori.  This fact, as a whole, marked an important phase in the New Zealand Art’s history, because this gave way to the foundation of the famous art college “Te Puia”, located in Rotorua.The tattoo, which is purely Maori, is an exceptional body art, their ancestors used tattoos to represent the social status that they had or the tribe that they belonged. Nowadays tattoos represent the strong identity that they feel for being Maoris, using the same designs or patterns of their ancestors.One of the important kinds of art is the music, which is influenced by the Maori culture (ethnic and social group most important in the country) and is influenced by other styles from the pacific regions. As well as every country has its own music style that distinguishes it, this country also has one. It is folk and is composed by “Maori music”, this can have a smooth touch or an active melody with strong voices along with a lot of vocal energy. It is lyrics can be related with war or love. Instruments are built with bones, stone, wood, or shells. These instruments are mainly for percussion or can be wind instruments, and with this the folkloric music takes an amazing form.The contemporary music is represented in several styles, some well-known artists are the rapper OMC and the rock band Crowded House.The most popular styles of music at this time are Dubstep, Electro and Maori reggae. There are two famous bands of reggae called Fat Freddy’s Drop and Herbs. The other two styles are influence of other countries.There is a famous festival that happens only once in a year called Big Day Out (BDO), this takes place in New Zealand and Australia. This festival has eight sceneries each one with groups of metal, rock, electro music and other artists not so well-known.As well as music is a New Zealand’s cultural expression it is also art. In this cultural area the carvings on wood, abstract paintings and tattoos or “Moko” (called in Maori) are the most relevant. One of the most influential and acclaimed artist is Frances Hodgkin, New Zealand’s artist who painted the most beautiful landscapes of this country along with several portraits.As a conclusion we can appreciate that music and art represent in a unique way New Zealand, which it’s closely related with its ancestors and with the traditions of its land. Also it demonstrates that it is a warrior country which it takes form through music and art. As a final point, we can establish that New Zealand, at the same than the rest of countries, art is one of the means by a country show itself to the world, and the mean by New Zealand show its culture, popular and native traditions, through great artistic works with world famous exponents. Furthermore, artistic works are closely related with the traditions from their land, and it is able to demonstrate by means of these arts, this country, with a warrior birthplace, closely related with tribal tattoos and expressed in its music and folkloric dancing.