Temporal lies: A decolonial account of denatured seasonal celebrations in Aotearoa New Zealand

Politics, society, order, nature, natural rhythms and the climate are changing so fast they are like quicksilver, too slippery to grasp, splintering into new shapes the moment they seem containable. This is the end state of processes begun with colonial expansion, and the lies used to excuse colonial desecration of Peoples, lands, waters, of all that abided by natural cycles and limits. The article casts a lens over one ‘insignificant’ set of lies that forced northern seasonal temporalities upon the southern hemisphere's natural and cultural rhythms. It claims this was/is one aspect of the desire of settlers to dominate the natural in Aotearoa New Zealand and reflects on the ongoing legacies of suppression of the natural. Using the introduction of a ‘new’ winter celebration and public holiday – Matariki – as the catalyst for reviewing an upside-down celebratory calendar imposed by the settler colonial regime atop the seasonal patterns of the islands, it suggests it is little surprise that in a culture built on such obvious mismatched mistruths, it is not hard to convince either oneself or others that climate change is not real, that pollution is a small price to pay for industrialisation and so forth. I argue that these temporal lies are the forebears of the polycrisis and global turbulence.