Today, Matariki is honoured as an official holiday for the first time in post-colonial Aotearoa! I have always had a fascination with the Pleiades constellation, and hoped this occasion would be honoured and eventually enduring as a unifying and universal celebration, transcending religions and cultures.
IN FACT, in my dystopian series, set in a distant future, I reimagined Matariki merged with an introduced Spirit Festival, to represent the melting pot of future Xinland. The Pleiades star cluster even features on the cover of Unnatural (and the book opens with a poem written about it).
