St Mary\u2019s Church in Tikitiki is commemorating 100 years as a place of worship, a memorial to soldiers, and a cultural repository of traditional M\u0101ori arts and crafts.<\/p>\n
Initiated by Sir Apirana Ngata, the heritage building was opened on February 16, 1926, and built in honour of Ng\u0101ti Porou men who served in World War I. It now also stands as a general commemoration for the military service by the people of the region.<\/p>\n
Matanuku Mahuika, chairman of the St Mary\u2019s Church and Cemetery Trust, said initially they planned to hold a celebration event to mark the centenary.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the church was opened it was a really significant event so there were something like 2000 people in attendance. The then-prime minister and governor-general were there, quite a number of M\u0101ori dignitaries were there as well so we thought that in order to properly commemorate a hundred years we needed to have an event of some sort as opposed to having a service amongst ourselves. That was the intention.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, the recent storms and flooding in the region caused road closures which forced the postponement of the event. A new date has yet to be decided.<\/p>\n
Mahuika said they planned to host dignitaries and a number of iwi that contributed to the building of the church, the likes of Waikato who donated the carved altar rails and Te Arawa who donated the carved pulpit.<\/p>\n
But they didn\u2019t want to impose on people while it was difficult to travel within the region, he said, especially for people in neighbouring Te Araroa and Hick\u2019s Bay. <\/p>\n
“We didn\u2019t want to have a situation where people were being excluded [due to road closures], and actually, it was just a general feeling that with our wh\u0101nau to the north still suffering as a result of the floods, we didn\u2019t feel like it was appropriate for us to be having a celebration at the same time.”<\/p>\n
Instead, they will mark the day with a service and h\u0101kari (feast).<\/p>\n
“We haven\u2019t gone out of our way to broadcast it; it\u2019s just word of mouth. It\u2019ll be largely our own people that\u2019ll be there but it\u2019s still the day of the centenary and felt we needed to mark it somehow.”<\/p>\n
On the outside, St Mary\u2019s is a simple, ecclesiastical style church with European Christian architectural traditions, but its interior is more akin to a wharenui featuring stunning ornate M\u0101ori carvings and designs. <\/p>\n
Mahuika said a key focus for Ngata in adorning the church with whakairo (carvings), k\u014dwhaiwhai (M\u0101ori pattern work) and tukutuku (woven panels) was to retain M\u0101ori arts and crafts.<\/p>\n
“This was a way of keeping those things alive and current within the community, perhaps at a time when they weren\u2019t being practised to the same extent. So it was very much a motivation which was not just about carving a church for the sake of it but was about maintaining those traditional arts.”<\/p>\n
The church tells the journey and melding of Christian and M\u0101ori beliefs, said Mahuika, and it commemorates the contribution that the people of those generations made to try and improve the standing of M\u0101ori in years to come. <\/p>\n
“I\u2019m not talking about fighting against the Germans and fighting against tyranny and that sort of thing. I am talking about the sort of message that Ngata gave which was about proving the value of the M\u0101ori people through military service so that the position of generations to follow would be better that they found themselves in in that time,” he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThose are all very significant things that are associated, not just with this church, but this church is an example of that. And I think that\u2019s an important thing that the church represents.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"St Mary\u2019s Church in Tikitiki is commemorating 100 years as a place of worship, a memorial to soldiers,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12553,4432,111,43,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-283708","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-iwi-hapu","9":"tag-maori-issues","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283708","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=283708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}