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<\/p>\nRe-tracing the footsteps of his ancestors has seen Scotty Morrison travel to some far-flung places \u2013 throughout the Pacific and to Asia, South America, and even Africa \u2013 but this latest season of TVNZ\u2019s Origins takes place right here at home in Aotearoa. <\/p>\n
The show returns with Morrison at the helm to look at the first 100 years in Aotearoa from the perspective of its first wave of settlers \u2013 ancestors who came from Hawaiki on traditional waka. <\/p>\n
\u201c[We focus on] some of those major waka that we still refer to today, the arrival of some of those ancestors here and how they adapted over the first hundred years, the culture they created, the spirituality they created, the system of transmission of knowledge that they created and what they found here. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat the forest was like, what the ocean was like 800 to 1000 years ago, what they encountered and how they adapted. That\u2019s pretty much the premise of this series of Origins.\u201d<\/p>\n
It feels like a fitting culmination to a series whose first season saw Morrison and crew fly half-way across the world to visit Ethiopia. The country known as the \u201ccradle of humanity\u201d featured as a fascinating exploration of Western perspective on the origin of humanity and how it threads into traditional M\u0101ori narratives on the origin of tangata whenua.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first series you kind of feel like you\u2019re getting quite a distance away from our ancestral knowledge and our ancestral origin stories when you start heading off into Ethiopia\u2026 and the connections feel like they\u2019re not as strong as they should be,\u201d Morrison said. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou come to a place like Raiatea in Tahiti and you go, \u2018I can feel this, this is really strong here\u2019. You can feel that connection it\u2019s there. You feel like you\u2019re in the footsteps of your ancestors. So when you get here, when you get to Aotearoa it\u2019s like, well, this is it, you know? This is where we became tangata whenua. This is where our origin story really starts.\u201d<\/p>\n
Culture drives positive first encounters<\/p>\n
The M\u0101ori-led production has filmed three seasons of Origins, spanning thousands of kilometres of land and sea, travelling through time to a past preserved in nature, culture and language. <\/p>\n
The crew\u2019s encounters with other indigenous peoples and places of significance were informed and led by tikanga M\u0101ori.<\/p>\n
Morrison, an expert in te reo M\u0101ori and tikanga, said both cultural aspects played an important role when engaging with other indigenous cultures. <\/p>\n
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(Source: Supplied)<\/p>\n
While visiting an ancient marae on the Marquesas Islands, Morrison conducted a wairea \u2013 a particular karakia used to clear the space in a spiritual sense to allow them to enter on to sacred ground.<\/p>\n
\u201cHearing the locals say, \u2018man, our marae hasn\u2019t heard that language for so long\u2019 \u2013 because our language of karakia is very archaic\u2026 they can feel that spirituality and they can feel that mana that\u2019s emanating from those words, those archaic words of our ancestors, and you can just feel that the marae awakens, the place that we visit, it awakens, and the local people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Using te reo and tikanga made it comfortable for all involved, he said, leading to mutual respect.<\/p>\n
\u201cWherever we go to different areas around the world, and because we know that there\u2019s indigenous presence there, there\u2019s ancestral presence there, and there\u2019s spiritual presence there, we always make sure we show respect and that we show humility when we go to those places.\u201d<\/p>\n
Most of the tight-knit five-man crew were M\u0101ori and have been documenting the journey since the beginning. It\u2019s an involvement they don\u2019t take for granted.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody in the crew just thinks it\u2019s such a privilege to be doing because when we get to go to places not many people have an opportunity to go to, we get to talk to the local people and we get to listen to their stories and their knowledge and then they share it with us. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t put a value on something like that. It\u2019s just a huge privilege for all of us and I think the knowledge that it\u2019s a privilege has really bonded us together and created a brotherhood amongst us.\u201d<\/p>\n
What we can expect in this latest season<\/p>\n
Season two focused on exploring more of the Eastern Polynesian connections \u2013 the Marquesas Islands, Hawai\u2019i and Rapanui \u2013 through tracing the movement of k\u016bmara.<\/p>\n
In much the same way, this latest season focuses on pounamu \u2013 used by first settlers as a valuable tool and prized possession.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole pounamu story is a map of where you can source different stones across the country that helped them to make tools and that helped them to make whare, sort of [how to] adapt to life in Aotearoa,\u201d said Morrison.<\/p>\n
The show visits sites such as Motunui, Rangitoto and surrounding islands in Auckland\u2019s Waitemat\u0101 (Hauraki Gulf), as well as K\u0101 Tiritiri o te Moana, or the Southern Alps.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe cover right across the country but focusing in on some of those really well known areas that have got a really rich history around them and delving into that and who was there, what they did, what they encountered and how they consolidated their existence there and learnt how to sustain themselves in those environments where they ended up making their homes.\u201d<\/p>\n
The show also touches on the kinds of k\u0101k\u0101hu, or clothing, they wore, and the climate and environment they lived in.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/scotty-morrison-with-ngai-tahu-representatives-on-ka-tiritir-WXQG6PLK3JF5BLLXCWM666GV7Y.png\")
<\/p>\n
(Source: Supplied)<\/p>\n
Morrison hopes audiences will be transported back a thousand years to get a sense of what these first settlers were faced with.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat the forest was like, what the ocean was like, what the landscape was like, what the climate was like, and then how extraordinary and how amazing our ancestors were at being able to adapt, find food, create heat \u2013 do all of that kind of stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
They created a system of knowledge that allowed them to adapt to the environment, and then to transmit that knowledge to coming generations to adapt \u2018to the next level\u2019, said Morrison.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis one especially is for everyone that\u2019s living in Aotearoa. It\u2019s fascinating because you really get a look into our country\u2019s history that I don\u2019t think any other programme has done yet. If that\u2019s not going to make you watch I don\u2019t know what will because this is your country, this is where you\u2019re living. Let\u2019s have a look at what it was like when we weren\u2019t here and when our ancestors were here and how did they create Aotearoa that we now live.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new season of Origins starts on Tuesday, February 3 at 7.30pm on TVNZ 1 and TVNZ+<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Re-tracing the footsteps of his ancestors has seen Scotty Morrison travel to some far-flung places \u2013 throughout the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[156,4432,111,139,29721,69,22319],"class_list":["post-261539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-maori-issues","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-ngahau","tag-nz","tag-te-reo-maori"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}