Israel’s New Zealand envoy made an honorary Maori
Ambassador to New Zealand Ran Yaakoby and his family became honorary members of Ngapuhi, the largest Maori tribe in the country, with a traditional haka dance and ceremony on Sunday.
The official powhiri, a Maori welcome ceremony, came in honor of Earth Day, and Yaakoby and Ngapuhi leaders exchanged trees. Yaakoby gave the tribe an olive tree, and the Ngapuhi gave him a kauri tree, which the event’s emcee said “may bend but will never break.”
“Being accepted by the Ngapuhi, the guardians of the land, and being here with this beautiful tree we brought and the exchange of trees that will be planted on the sacred land... the same week of Earth Day, for Israelis symbolizes peace,” Yaakoby said at the ceremony.
The Ngapuhi has 125,000 members, and is based in northern New Zealand.
The event was six hours long, followed by a twohour economic discussion with a company established to strengthen ties between the Ngapuhi and Israel.
“The ceremony itself – acceptance as an honorary member of the Ngapuhi tribe – was offered to me and my family because I wanted to connect with the indigenous peoples [of New Zealand] and not just
have official government ties,” Yaakoby explained on Wednesday. “The ceremony is very rarely offered .... It is a great honor.”
Yaakoby was welcomed by the Ngapuhi with traditional Maori songs and dances, with men wearing traditional garb and carrying spears. Yaakoby was outfitted with an adorned cape.
The ceremony included symbolically checking Yaakoby’s
intentions, to be sure that he does not mean to attack them. He was presented with a wooden dagger, which he lifted in the air while making eye contact, to show that his intentions are not aggressive.
Next, Yaakoby presented his genealogy, so the tribe would know who it is welcoming.
Later in the ceremony, another group of men danced with oars and gave Yaakoby an hour-long ride on a waka, a Maori canoe, to symbolize his full acceptance into the tribe.
In a video distributed by the Israel Institute of New Zealand, a Ngapuhi elder explained welcoming Yaakoby into the tribe by citing Genesis 12:3, in which God says “I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.”
“If we want to be blessed, we bless [God’s] children,” he said. “I am only part of the fabric, the twine and the weave of what God is doing.”
between them, the archaeologists looked at their utensils and the way they manufactured them.
“Some technological innovations were easily replicable; others were more complicated to borrow, including the techniques to build stone tools,” Valletta pointed out. “These techniques usually were kept within the group, and this allows us to recognize a specific population through time, even if other cultural traits changed.
“What we found out is that in two of these sites, although the microliths presented different shapes, the artifacts were built in a similar way. Therefore, our conclusion is that we are not talking about two different groups but, rather, the same group, which, over the course of the millennia, evolved, but was still able to transmit its manufacturing techniques generation upon generation,” he highlighted.
“The development of a close connection between a specific group and a territory might have later evolved in an ever closer bond which emerged with the permanent settling and the establishment of the first villages,” he added.
The researchers also compared their findings from Ein Gev with artifacts found in other sites in the region. They found out that while the microliths presented similar shapes and therefore they might have been considered as manufactured by groups belonging to the same cultural entity, the techniques employed to produce them were actually different.
“Our interpretation is that characteristics that were easy to transmit, such as the shape of a tool, were shared between distinct populations, who therefore interacted and were able to swap