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Google Alert - Piper Methysticum
Kava (Piper methysticum) belongs to the pepper family (Piperaceae) and grows throughout the Pacific. Also known as intoxicating ...
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Pasifika cultural leaders in New Zealand have performed the ancient Tu’i Tonga kava ceremony to honour tangata whenua.
Read this story in te reo Māori and English here. / Pānuitia tēnei i te reo Māori me te reo Pākehā ki konei.
It was part of a documentary – Kava ‘O Aotearoa – released on Wednesday featuring local community leaders, including Pakilau o Mana Moana, Manase Lua.
Lua, of Tongan heritage, said the sacred ritual was crafted specifically as a “gift to our tangata whenua in honour of their ancestors who also came from the moana”.
“This is a full evolution of the Kava ‘O Aotearoa performed at Ihumatao, and involves elements of the Tongan, Samoan and Fijian kava ceremonies.”
Other community leaders involved in the film included lawyer and Māori activist Pania Newton (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Maniapoto), Vakalahi o Mana Moana Christine Nurminen, a health advocate, and Luau o Mana Moana Therese Mangos, of Pacific Vision Aotearoa.
Producer Maria Tanner said each participant had expressed a direct connection to their fonua, home, and culture when they participated in kava. “It is a way to connect to their culture and identity despite being physically disconnected from their respective island homes.”
JINKI CAMBRONERO/SUPPLIED
Tongan taukava or kava mixer, Teokotai Paitai, flanked by the angaikava (assistants), tips the tanoa (kava bowl) toward the Olovaha where the king or high chief sits.
Fonua means land and its people and their ongoing relationship, Tanner said. “This is a concept present across Pacific cultures. In Fiji, it is vanua, in Samoa it is fanua, in Māori whenua and in the Cook Islands 'enua.”
Pacific peoples had been using and drinking kava in New Zealand since the 1960s but the use of kava among other ethnicities was increasing, said a Fijian academic at Waikato University, Apo Aporosa.
“We often forget that Māori originally came to Aotearoa from the Pacific.
“ Māori would have brought kava with them, which is encouraging, increasing numbers of contemporary Māori to re-engage with their pre-migration indigenous substance,” he said.
Kava means bitter in Tongan. But other names include ‘awa (Hawai’i), ‘ava (Samoa), yaqona (Fiji), sakau and seka (Federated States of Micronesia) and malok or malogu (Vanuatu).
WAYNE DOUGHT/NZPA
Fijian yaqona is offered to the late Hekenukumai Busby, kaumātua of waka, and Takutai Wikiriwhi, chief elder of Ngāti Whātua at the farewell ceremony for the Pacific vaka fleet in 2011.
Kava (Piper methysticum) belongs to the pepper family (Piperaceae) and grows throughout the Pacific. Also known as asava pepper or intoxicating pepper, the root crop is produced as a drink with sedative, anesthetic and euphoriant properties. Its active ingredients are kavalactones.
Because of its use in modern and alternative medicines, kava has become a valuable cash crop in the Pacific.
Aporosa said kava played a central role in almost every ceremony and celebration from birth to death in Fiji.
“This is because of the yaqona's link to mana [spiritual power], and the land, culture and its people. Fijians call yaqona 'wainivanua' or a drinkable/ingestible representation of the vanua – the land, the culture and the people.”
CHRIS SKELTON/STUFF
Pupils from Russell School in Cannons Creek celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Independence of Samoa in June 2012.
Tanner said the documentary chose to use this “humble root” as a learning tool – to educate audiences, reconnect Pacific Island communities to their culture and identity, to include and honour tangata whenua in a Pacific specific practice.
“The catalyst for the film actually stemmed from [director] Joshua Baker having filmed an earlier kava ceremony that was held on a waka in the marina of Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland) – a first for Josh who had never seen a ceremony conducted in this manner or location.”
Lua warned that culture that did not change was doomed to die. “We can’t come here, perform our kava and ignore the fact that we are on Māori land. We must change with the times, change with the environment that we are in ... we are here in Aotearoa.
“You can’t help but feel reverence, pride because you realize that you are drinking a part of your fonua and by the land, and that is what binds us together in the kava circle.”
Continue reading...
Pasifika cultural leaders in New Zealand have performed the ancient Tu’i Tonga kava ceremony to honour tangata whenua.
Read this story in te reo Māori and English here. / Pānuitia tēnei i te reo Māori me te reo Pākehā ki konei.
It was part of a documentary – Kava ‘O Aotearoa – released on Wednesday featuring local community leaders, including Pakilau o Mana Moana, Manase Lua.
Lua, of Tongan heritage, said the sacred ritual was crafted specifically as a “gift to our tangata whenua in honour of their ancestors who also came from the moana”.
“This is a full evolution of the Kava ‘O Aotearoa performed at Ihumatao, and involves elements of the Tongan, Samoan and Fijian kava ceremonies.”
Other community leaders involved in the film included lawyer and Māori activist Pania Newton (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Maniapoto), Vakalahi o Mana Moana Christine Nurminen, a health advocate, and Luau o Mana Moana Therese Mangos, of Pacific Vision Aotearoa.
Producer Maria Tanner said each participant had expressed a direct connection to their fonua, home, and culture when they participated in kava. “It is a way to connect to their culture and identity despite being physically disconnected from their respective island homes.”
JINKI CAMBRONERO/SUPPLIED
Tongan taukava or kava mixer, Teokotai Paitai, flanked by the angaikava (assistants), tips the tanoa (kava bowl) toward the Olovaha where the king or high chief sits.
Fonua means land and its people and their ongoing relationship, Tanner said. “This is a concept present across Pacific cultures. In Fiji, it is vanua, in Samoa it is fanua, in Māori whenua and in the Cook Islands 'enua.”
Pacific peoples had been using and drinking kava in New Zealand since the 1960s but the use of kava among other ethnicities was increasing, said a Fijian academic at Waikato University, Apo Aporosa.
“We often forget that Māori originally came to Aotearoa from the Pacific.
“ Māori would have brought kava with them, which is encouraging, increasing numbers of contemporary Māori to re-engage with their pre-migration indigenous substance,” he said.
Kava means bitter in Tongan. But other names include ‘awa (Hawai’i), ‘ava (Samoa), yaqona (Fiji), sakau and seka (Federated States of Micronesia) and malok or malogu (Vanuatu).
WAYNE DOUGHT/NZPA
Fijian yaqona is offered to the late Hekenukumai Busby, kaumātua of waka, and Takutai Wikiriwhi, chief elder of Ngāti Whātua at the farewell ceremony for the Pacific vaka fleet in 2011.
Kava (Piper methysticum) belongs to the pepper family (Piperaceae) and grows throughout the Pacific. Also known as asava pepper or intoxicating pepper, the root crop is produced as a drink with sedative, anesthetic and euphoriant properties. Its active ingredients are kavalactones.
Because of its use in modern and alternative medicines, kava has become a valuable cash crop in the Pacific.
Aporosa said kava played a central role in almost every ceremony and celebration from birth to death in Fiji.
“This is because of the yaqona's link to mana [spiritual power], and the land, culture and its people. Fijians call yaqona 'wainivanua' or a drinkable/ingestible representation of the vanua – the land, the culture and the people.”
CHRIS SKELTON/STUFF
Pupils from Russell School in Cannons Creek celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Independence of Samoa in June 2012.
Tanner said the documentary chose to use this “humble root” as a learning tool – to educate audiences, reconnect Pacific Island communities to their culture and identity, to include and honour tangata whenua in a Pacific specific practice.
“The catalyst for the film actually stemmed from [director] Joshua Baker having filmed an earlier kava ceremony that was held on a waka in the marina of Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland) – a first for Josh who had never seen a ceremony conducted in this manner or location.”
Lua warned that culture that did not change was doomed to die. “We can’t come here, perform our kava and ignore the fact that we are on Māori land. We must change with the times, change with the environment that we are in ... we are here in Aotearoa.
“You can’t help but feel reverence, pride because you realize that you are drinking a part of your fonua and by the land, and that is what binds us together in the kava circle.”
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