All the advances in space sciences are due to the fact that a long time ago, our ancestors have looked at the stars in wonder, trying to figure out what they really were. The calendar was invented just by looking at the gigantic celestial clock, the mathematics has roots in calculating planets orbits and history has cyphered its most important survival information into legends of the night sky. The Right Ascension and Declination is a Global Positioning System of the stars' coordinates in the sky.
How was that possible?
The Polynesian New Year starts after the Winter Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere. Which is around the 21st of June.
It relies on the tohunga watching the heliacal rising of the Pleiades (also known as Matariki) after the New or Full Moon. The tohunga are the wise man of the tribe specialised in one area - in our case Tohunga Tatai Arorangi - astronomers.
Not all tribes marked the beginning of the New Year by observing the heliacal rising of Matariki. Some used the star Rigel (Puanga).
But all tribes inherited the genes of the greatest navigators of the world: The Polynesians.
The Polynesians entrusted their life in the stars and sailed through the Pacific Ocean like it was their backyard. They figured out that the sky configuration is changing with the latitude and from season to season. The sky was for them not only a perfect time keeping tool but also a great map where they looked for directions.
The Europeans figured out as well that the closer you went to the equator the shadow at noon become shorter. They also understood that some stars were only visible from southern latitudes. An example is "the Southern Cross" that two-three thousand years ago could be seen by the ancient Greek who incorporated it into the constellation of Centaurus. The Europeans had too great fleets to navigate the Mediteranean sea. However, compared to the immensity of the Pacific Ocean, Mediteranean Sea is much smaller and dead reckoning was the system they firstly developed. Dead reckoning is one navigates close to the shore and takes into consideration landmarks. The ancient civilisations of Europe solved the latitude issue but figuring out the longitude was going to take another 1800 years until the British Harrison was going to invent the modern chronometer to measure time.
So while the Europeans applied logic and mathematics to their astral endeavours, the Polynesians applied creativity and statistics (which is too a branch of mathematics). The way Polynesians managed to remember all that statistical information was by telling stories. They had stories they linked to all the constellations of the night sky as most of cultures do. What differentiated Polynesians from others was how they created a different story for the same grouping of stars throughout the year.
There is a debate about Matariki being visible only once a year - around the winter solstice.
This is true if we "see" things from the cultural perspective of the Polynesians.
Maoris included the same asterisms (groupings of stars) into different constellations marking different times of the year. This is how they mapped the passage of time and their position on Earth. They cyphered this information into stories that had very different meanings even if for the Europeans seemed that they referred to the same stars. For the ancient Greeks and Romans, Orion will be called Orion no matter if they saw it in the dawn sky or in the evening sky. But whilst the ancient Europeans had just the small Mediterranean Sea to navigate through, the Polynesians would have been lost in the immensity of the Pacific Ocean if they did not master a different way to use the stars to show them the way.
The Polynesians are looking for (the starcluster) "Matariki" - the Eye of God (Mata Ariki) in the sky only once a year - around the time of the longest night (winter solstice - end of June). In November, the same starcluster (M45) is part of the Great Waka of Tamarereti, visible along the horison after sunset. What we knew as Matariki becomes now the feathers of the back of the waka. Giving different names to the same asterisms according to the seasons of the year is one of the reasons why the Polynesian astronavigation was so successful. The Polynesians were able to remember not only most of the stars in the sky by linking their position to stories but also the seasons according to the star's altitude and appearance. In November, it would make sense to include the Pleiades as part of the great Waka of Tamarereti that lies in the evening November sky marking the beginning of the navigational season. November was the time when the waka could sail back to Pacific/Rarohenga and that was the most important message to transmit throughout the generations of navigators. (Similarly the constellation of Scorpius can be the prow of Te Waka o Tamarereti in November but it is called "Manaia Ki Te Rangi" in July and August when is at Zenith.) In November, the Pleiades is rising exactly on the opposite side to the Sun setting. So the star cluster we see in the November attached to Te Waka o Tamarereti, is not Matariki, it's not the Eye of God.
In June M45 reappears in the morning sky, as if it was reborn, just before the sunrise like a true Eye of God.
Marking the beginning of the New Year, we remember the ones who are gone.