A new playground in South Auckland is using play to bring maramataka knowledge back to whānau beside the Puhinui River. Located at Wai-akatea (Raataa Vine Stream Reserve) directly beside the Puhinui stream, the space uses interactive play to connect local whānau with the environment.
The project was driven by maramataka practitioner Ayla Hoeta, who designed the playground to introduce the Māori lunar calendar to the community near her awa.
“The idea around a papa tākaro was to make this mātauranga more accessible for whānau and for tamariki, and so, through the papa tākaro, they get a basic understanding of maramataka through play.”
The playground features large posts carved at varying heights to map the phases of the moon physically, and the maramataka dial helps users navigate these shifts in real time.
“The dial has all of our 30 days of the maramataka in alignment in order, and then they are colour-coded based on the energy flow and the mauri states.
“We’ve used mauri states to try to explain the āhua of that time.”
Hoeta has also brought this knowledge to adults by helping develop Ao Maarama, a well-being app that lets users track their daily mauri and hauora straight from their phones.
Restoring the Awa’s Mauri
The project is the result of years of mahi by Hoeta alongside her iwi, Te Waiohua, who chose to build this educational hub directly beside their tupuna awa, the Puhinui River.
“Our tupuna awa has taken a beating,” she says. “It runs through an industrial area here in Manukau, so it became an ignored, sacred place that people were dumping rubbish and trolleys in. It was so sad to see the degradation of the awa.”
According to project organisers, getting permission to build the playground required navigating several years of local government regulations and council design frameworks to secure approval for the cultural installations on public land.
To support the return of the space, Te Waiohua has led ongoing community cleanups, planted native trees along the riverbanks to stabilise the soil, and advocated for stricter environmental controls on the surrounding Manukau industrial area.
Taking Maramataka Design Beyond the Playground
Hoeta’s design is backed by her role as a lecturer and researcher at the University of Auckland’s Faculty of Engineering and Design, where she focuses on making traditional knowledge a normal part of everyday life.
This mission previously saw her make history as the first Māori wahine researcher to travel to Antarctica to study how indigenous science sits alongside global climate research.
The extreme conditions there gave her a first-hand look at how the maramataka works in different environments, using the maramataka to track energy levels and well-being where standard clocks and calendars don’t apply.
She also flew the Tino Rangatiratanga flag to show that Māori voices belong in global science spaces.
For Hoeta, taking Māori science to the bottom of the world directly informs what she is building back in her community in South Auckland. Going forward, she wants to use this playground as a foundation to continue to design more public spaces, community gardens, and digital systems so local whānau can live in sync with the maramataka every day.
