Hei Tiki

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Well, it’s a fact that you can usually recognize a New Zealander when they’re overseas by their Maori pendants, carved from jade, shell or bone.  You can’t see it in my photo, but I’m wearing a bone fish-hook that Alice tagged me with before I went home for a holiday.  They seem to hold a lot of importance to both Pakeha (New Zealanders of European descent) and Maori, although, of course, they mean a lot more to Maori.

The most famous Maori carving design is the “hei tiki” which represents ...
the first man, and is attributed with fertility-boosting powers.  Pre-European Hei-Tikis were usually painstakingly carved from old jade adzes and subsequently worn for a lifetime.  The individual carvings were often given names, and worn with great respect. When people died, they were buried with their Hei Tiki, but I have read that later the Hei Tiki would be retrieved from the grave to represent the departed in traditional ceremonies.
New Zealand jade (pounamu) comes from the west coast of the South Island, and is much darker than asian jade.  This jade is so hard that it was used to make blades for axes and weapons of war.

This youtube video is published by Wellington's Te Papa museum and tells the story of the Hei Tiki that belonged to a famous tour guide in Rotorua called Hinerangi Tepaia ("Guide Sophia"). In 1886 there was a huge volcanic eruption. Days before the eruption Hinerangi had some premonitions that danger was coming and warned about 62 villagers who lived near the volcano and gave them shelter in her house.



In Maori culture, you can’t buy a greenstone ornament for yourself; you have to buy it for someone else, bless it, then give it to the recipient.  The bigger and more beautiful the carving, the higher the“mana” (which is similar to status or respect) of the reciever.   Because it is both sacred and scarce, New Zealand jade is pretty expensive, and if you want to honor someone you love by buying them something made from real New Zealand jade, there really are no shortcuts.  But then…..
In most souvenir shops, you can find carvings that are cheaper, either made from imported jade, or the cheaper materials such as bone, shell, or even wood.  As I mentioned before, Alice, who is a Pakeha, was perfectly content to issue me with a carving made from bone.  (Maybe on some anniversary she will buy me something more impressive….)   And since all the pounamu comes from the South Island (not the North Island), why not buy pendants that have been carved by local Maori using jade from other countries?  Surely jade is jade, and as long as it is blessed and payed for, it’s all good?
Of course, I’m a stickler for the real thing.  I like my beds 100% wooden, my cheese free of plastic wrapping, and my pottery hand-made (not cheap and mass-produced).  But Alice’s lust for kitsch knows no bounds.  She and a lot of kiwis are rather fond of these mass-produced resin Hei Tikis.  Not necessarily something to be buried with when you die, but probably okay for the flight back home to Germany.