I don’t want to pretend to be an expert on te reo at all. “Mānawatia a Matariki” is a phrase developed by Professor Rangi Mātāmua and Hēmi Kelly:

“Matariki doesn’t come out of a western context, it’s Māori” Rangi says, ”so if you’re trying to apply a greeting to the Matariki celebration where you say hari (happy) Matariki or meri (merry) Matariki – it doesn’t make sense.”

So Rangi and Hēmi developed the phrase Mānawatia a Matariki – meaning to honour, acknowledge, and welcome in Matariki. “It’s important that if we’re going to celebrate something that comes out of a Māori context, we use the correct terms and the correct language around the celebration.”

Hēmi Kelly explains more of the origin and meaning of the phrase in a video on Facebook. Mānawatia a Matariki has been chosen by the government as the recommended phrase to wish each other a “happy” Matariki.

The other one, “Ngā mihi o Matariki, te tau hou Māori”, is how Massey University recommends you say “happy Matariki” in te reo. I ran that one through Google translate so if the translation is wrong, someone please let me know.