Tohunga - Practices and Knowledge

Practices and Knowledge

Tohunga held knowledge of most spiritual and temporal rites and knowledge in general were passed down through many generations by oral communication at wananga (places of learning/schools). Tools they also used were taonga pūoro for the purpose of calling on divine intervention or assistance from the gods.

Although Māori revered tohunga with high respect for their knowledge, skill or craft and practice, there was some uncertainty regarding their sources by which the early European settlers misunderstood and were regarded by Christian beliefs as a dangerous cult or even witchcraft when tohunga would touch on fear "of magic" of which the Christians believed and have long accused Māori tohunga of creating in their work.

Many tohunga declined to pass on their oral traditions after the Tohunga Suppression Act 1907 was enforced in New Zealand so this left the Māori people bereft of much of their traditional base, beliefs and practices for a long time until the Act was repealed in 1962. By this time, much of the language and traditions had been either corrupted or lost with tohunga that had long since died. There is no doubt that the enforcement of Christianity together with the Tohunga Suppression Act has played a dominant role in the obstruction of traditional Māori healing practises.

The concepts of mātauranga Māori (indigenous Māori knowledge) relate to the continuum of tohungatanga (priestly knowledge), the loss of which has left many scars on the holistic health and wellbeing of the Māori people, the land, the waters, the air, the bush, and the wildlife. The preservation and transmission of tohunga (high priest) knowledge was and is vital to sustain the future generations of all living and non-living things in the metaphysical world of Māori.

Whatever the overt intentions, there was a paradigm of the time amongst English colonists that Māori were a "lost race", the effect of banning the practices of spiritual and cultural leaders was that it hastened the assimilation of Māori. Fortunately although in hiding, there were few kaumatua and kuia (elders) that held steadfast and true to Māori traditions and continued to orally communicate their knowledge through the generations.

One observation to the survival of tohungatanga was the insignificance of the "female tohunga‟ perspective and yet women were the "most powerful tohunga" as they had a direct lineage and link to Te Ira Atua (spiritual realm of the gods) and are a class that have been ignored in any literature until now.