title: Te ahi tawhito, te ahi tipua, te ahi nā Mahuika: Re-igniting native women’s ceremony

authors: Murphy, Ngahuia Aroha Grace

subjects: Native women's ceremony

abstract: This research examines the multiple ways in which Māori, and Hawai’ian and Native American women, are re-activating feminine ceremonial forms and recovering sacred relationships with customary feminine deities. Attention is focused on the creation of personal ritual practices that respond to contemporary decolonising and ecological contexts.
A mana wahine theoretical and methodological framework motivated by emancipatory agendas that seek to facilitate transformation is used. Key to mana wahine projects is the creation of space for Native women to define themselves and their own stories and knowledges. This is important because Native women’s voices, knowledge and ritual histories continue to be marginalised. Furthermore, debased colonial renditions of femininity, which have been reproduced, perpetuate patriarchal and colonial politics that engender discord in Native communities today.  
The study used a suite of complimentary methods to engage 45 Native women and men. Interviews and kōrero (discussion), ceremony, mana wahine wānanga (women’s sacred learning space), Native sacred site visits, solicited journals, collaboration in ritual theatre productions, and analysis of mana wahine artworks as discursive texts were employed to gather stories of spiritual continuation that are unique and largely unchartered in academia. 
The empirical material is organised around four themes in four different chapters. The first of these empirical chapters re-interprets colonial ethnographic material alongside karakia (incantations), mōteatea (songs), cosmological and tribal stories, to reveal bold examples of Māori female ritual leadership. The second empirical chapter comprises an analysis of key colonial processes that have attempted to erase Native women’s ritual ontologies and the strident expressions of Native women’s resistance to colonial imperatives. The third empirical chapter investigates the multiple channels through which Native women are restoring their ceremonial lives. The fourth chapter investigates rerenga atua (menstruation) rituals that celebrate the Native feminine body as a cosmological site of communion with feminine deities. 
The rich weave of Native women’s stories of ceremony, old and new, threads into decolonising Indigenous scholarship around the world that also seeks to recover the sacred feminine as a key site of Native sovereignty. These discussions reveal a self-renewing Native belief system based on vibrant and evolving rituals that respond directly to current socio-political, spiritual and ecological realities.

text: Te ahi tawhito, te ahi tipua, te ahi nā Mahuika: Re-igniting native women’s ceremony This research examines the multiple ways in which Māori, and Hawai’ian and Native American women, are re-activating feminine ceremonial forms and recovering sacred relationships with customary feminine deities. Attention is focused on the creation of personal ritual practices that respond to contemporary decolonising and ecological contexts.
A mana wahine theoretical and methodological framework motivated by emancipatory agendas that seek to facilitate transformation is used. Key to mana wahine projects is the creation of space for Native women to define themselves and their own stories and knowledges. This is important because Native women’s voices, knowledge and ritual histories continue to be marginalised. Furthermore, debased colonial renditions of femininity, which have been reproduced, perpetuate patriarchal and colonial politics that engender discord in Native communities today.  
The study used a suite of complimentary methods to engage 45 Native women and men. Interviews and kōrero (discussion), ceremony, mana wahine wānanga (women’s sacred learning space), Native sacred site visits, solicited journals, collaboration in ritual theatre productions, and analysis of mana wahine artworks as discursive texts were employed to gather stories of spiritual continuation that are unique and largely unchartered in academia. 
The empirical material is organised around four themes in four different chapters. The first of these empirical chapters re-interprets colonial ethnographic material alongside karakia (incantations), mōteatea (songs), cosmological and tribal stories, to reveal bold examples of Māori female ritual leadership. The second empirical chapter comprises an analysis of key colonial processes that have attempted to erase Native women’s ritual ontologies and the strident expressions of Native women’s resistance to colonial imperatives. The third empirical chapter investigates the multiple channels through which Native women are restoring their ceremonial lives. The fourth chapter investigates rerenga atua (menstruation) rituals that celebrate the Native feminine body as a cosmological site of communion with feminine deities. 
The rich weave of Native women’s stories of ceremony, old and new, threads into decolonising Indigenous scholarship around the world that also seeks to recover the sacred feminine as a key site of Native sovereignty. These discussions reveal a self-renewing Native belief system based on vibrant and evolving rituals that respond directly to current socio-political, spiritual and ecological realities.

year: 2019

title: Ngā waka o tawhiti

authors: Tuaupiki, Jackie Whetumarama

abstract: Mai anō ngā terenga waka a te Māori, ko ōna kōrero tuku iho i whakatauira tuatahingia e ngā atua tonu, taka mai ki te iwi tāngata o Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa. Tā tēnei tuhinga, he wānanga i te mana o te kōrero tuku iho e haupū nei ngā pūrākau terenga waka onamata i takoto ai te tūāpapa mātauranga whakatere mō ngā waka tūpuna i heke iho i Hawaiki ki Aotearoa. Nō reira, ka riariakina ngā pūtoi whakatauiratanga waka a te Māori i ōna atua me ōna tūpuna me te ahunga mai o ana terenga mātāmua, ka aromātai hoki i te takiwā o ngā tau i tauria ai e ōna takere Te Ika-a-Māui e takoto nei.

text: Ngā waka o tawhiti Mai anō ngā terenga waka a te Māori, ko ōna kōrero tuku iho i whakatauira tuatahingia e ngā atua tonu, taka mai ki te iwi tāngata o Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa. Tā tēnei tuhinga, he wānanga i te mana o te kōrero tuku iho e haupū nei ngā pūrākau terenga waka onamata i takoto ai te tūāpapa mātauranga whakatere mō ngā waka tūpuna i heke iho i Hawaiki ki Aotearoa. Nō reira, ka riariakina ngā pūtoi whakatauiratanga waka a te Māori i ōna atua me ōna tūpuna me te ahunga mai o ana terenga mātāmua, ka aromātai hoki i te takiwā o ngā tau i tauria ai e ōna takere Te Ika-a-Māui e takoto nei.

year: 2017

title: Semigroups with if-then-else and halting programs

authors: Jackson, Marcel

subjects: transformation

abstract: The "if–then–else" construction is one of the most elementary programming commands, and its abstract laws have been widely studied, starting with McCarthy. Possibly, the most obvious extension of this is to include the operation of composition of programs, which gives a semigroup of functions (total, partial, or possibly general binary relations) that can be recombined using if–then–else. We show that this particular extension admits no finite complete axiomatization and instead focus on the case where composition of functions with predicates is also allowed (and we argue there is good reason to take this approach). In the case of total functions — modeling halting programs — we give a complete axiomatization for the theory in terms of a finite system of equations. We obtain a similar result when an operation of equality test and/or fixed point test is included.

text: Semigroups with if-then-else and halting programs The "if–then–else" construction is one of the most elementary programming commands, and its abstract laws have been widely studied, starting with McCarthy. Possibly, the most obvious extension of this is to include the operation of composition of programs, which gives a semigroup of functions (total, partial, or possibly general binary relations) that can be recombined using if–then–else. We show that this particular extension admits no finite complete axiomatization and instead focus on the case where composition of functions with predicates is also allowed (and we argue there is good reason to take this approach). In the case of total functions — modeling halting programs — we give a complete axiomatization for the theory in terms of a finite system of equations. We obtain a similar result when an operation of equality test and/or fixed point test is included.

year: 2009