amuletsHei matauhei matau

The shape carries a story about the country it is worn in. Māui caught the North Island out of the sea using a woven line and a hook made from his grandmother's jawbone; the Māori name for the North Island, Te Ika a Māui, the fish of Māui, holds the account, and the shape of Hawke's Bay is where the hook caught in the fish's side.

For Māori the hei matau is taonga, a cultural treasure. Wikipedia's summary of what it stands for is not a list of wishes: it represents the land, and prosperity, fertility and safe passage over water; it marks the importance of fishing to Māori and their relationship to Tangaroa, god of the sea. Matau were worn as pendants for safekeeping and were often treasured family heirlooms.

Material is where the modern record gets complicated. Traditionally matau were carved from bone, ivory, shell, wood or pounamu. Today most are cattle bone. Some Māori carvers still work whale bone, valued for its beauty, its cultural and historical weight and its scarcity; under current law against whaling they must use ancient stock, pre-existing supplies, or bone from whales that strand. New Zealand tradition and law give Māori first claim on part of the skeleton of any whale that strands and cannot be refloated, which is a very limited supply.

And then there is the other production line. Manufacturers in China mass-produce items resembling hei matau for the New Zealand visitor market, usually in a paste of bone and resin, and, in the words of the cited account, "have attracted criticism for their appropriation of Māori designs". That criticism is reported here with its subject named and is not adjudicated.

Carved from bone, whale bone, shell, wood or pounamu, worked down and polished, drilled and strung. Pounamu work is slow: the stone is smoothed by abrasion and bored with sticks and water. A hei matau is worn, given and inherited, not retired.

Carved by Māori artists and by collectives established by iwi that export their work, and worn by Māori and by other New Zealanders who take the hook as a New Zealand sign. Viggo Mortensen wore one after filming The Lord of the Rings, which the cited account names as part of a wider international interest in Māori art. The Chinese-made bone-and-resin versions sell on the same tourist market.