{"id":521894,"date":"2026-07-12T05:22:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T05:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/521894\/"},"modified":"2026-07-12T05:22:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T05:22:08","slug":"skycity-matariki-night-markets-welcome-maori-new-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/521894\/","title":{"rendered":"SkyCity Matariki night markets welcome M\u0101ori New Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

They huddled together on the floor with their bags of shellfish and nestled in behind the large Auckland sign out front.<\/p>\n

\"CrowdsCrowds pack the porte-cochere, tucking into kai. Photo \/ Annaliese Shortland<\/p>\n

Children and adults alike lit up after having their face painted with traditional M\u0101ori moko, some of which glowed in the dark.<\/p>\n

\"AA man beams, his glowing moko caught on a phone. Photo \/ Annaliese Shortland<\/p>\n

A large semicircle of people formed around Dr Valance Smith who was singing and playing the guitar. <\/p>\n

A member from the crowd wowed the audience with his beautiful voice when he began singing along, Smith called him up to the stage to perform alongside him. <\/p>\n

The crowd cheered as he sang with a big toothless smile on his face.<\/p>\n

\"MusicianMusician Dr Valance Smith sings for the crowd. Photo \/ Annaliese Shortland<\/p>\n

While admiring the large selection of gorgeously designed pounamu at one of the vendors\u2019 stalls, I got to witness a special moment where a young girl was gifted a pounamu. <\/p>\n

She beamed with joy and happy tears as she hugged her loved ones.<\/p>\n

\"AA girl tears up with joy after being gifted pounamu. Photo \/ Annaliese Shortland<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They huddled together on the floor with their bags of shellfish and nestled in behind the large Auckland…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96819,51,238315,9260,177,20388,158169,156,564,4999,71,27509,258648,46662,10938,5844,5829,220,191513,43770,9062,2720,117,111,139,2551,69,384,5411,50216,8529,1962,94230,258647,24359,5007,1845,540,379],"class_list":["post-521894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-annaliese","tag-auckland","tag-bustling","tag-captured","tag-celebrate","tag-connection","tag-crisp","tag-entertainment","tag-food","tag-friday","tag-from","tag-gathered","tag-glowinthedark","tag-headed","tag-herald","tag-journalist","tag-many","tag-markets","tag-matariki","tag-moko","tag-moments","tag-mori","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-night","tag-nz","tag-people","tag-shortland","tag-sights","tag-skycity","tag-special","tag-stalls","tag-steamy","tag-these","tag-visual","tag-welcome","tag-where","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521894","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=521894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}