Mamao, Te Aho Ura

Kii: https://www.tahiti-rando.fr/rando-raiatea-mont-temehani-en.php

Mamao is a fighting art rooted in Hawaiian Lua fighting. It was a term used by the poe kahiko who remembered the connected relationship of Lua entwined within their own family fighting arts. Mamao means remote, far off, distant. Our Hawaiian Lua is a combination of various fighting traditions from ancient Tahiti, Marquesas, Samoa, and other ancient homelands. Hawaiian Lua encompasses many disciplines of fighting styles and techniques, from hand-to-hand fighting, wrestling, weapons fighting, and spiritual, religious practices. Hawaii refined all of these fighting techniques over hundreds of years to develop the Hawaiian fighting form called Lua. As our Hawaiian people sailed on to Aotearoa generations ago from Hawaii, the poe kahiko of these voyagers were well-trained lua fighters, and they established some forms of lua into the fighting arts of the poe Maori. The Polynesian Maori also had migrations from other Pacific islands such as Aitutaki, Atiu, Mangaia, Manuae, Mauke, Mitiaro, Palmerston, Rarotonga, and Takutea. and the northern group, Manihiki, Nassau, Penrhyn, Pukapuka, Rakahanga, and Suwarrow. These islands are known as the Cook Islands today. The Maori fighting arts are a combination of Hawaiian Lua and other various Pacific Island fighting styles brought over on their ancient migrations, as well as being refined over hundreds of years within their training.

Here is an old upu of the lua people connecting to their mamao of their ancestors.

Traditional K.K. Kuialuaopuna

Teie ta upu a ta aito

Te aho ula o Hawaiki

Ta wai tapu o Temehani

Ta hunehune mai ta rangi mai

Mai ta po mai.

E haere mai ahau i Tahiti nui

Tahiti roa, Tahiti pa mamao i te hono i wairua

Te aho ura o tatou, te aitoarii

Here is the prayer of our art

A sacred cord to Hawaiki

The sacred waters of Temehani

Very fine drops from the gods

From the realm of ancestors

I come from great Tahiti

Far off Tahiti, to connect with the source of our people

We are one, in this chiefly connection.