Maori People

Maori - mäˈōrē, people of New Zealand, believed to have migrated in early times from other islands of Polynesia. Their tradition asserts that seven canoes brought their ancestors to New Zealand. The Maori language is closely related to Rarotongan, Tahitian, Hawaiian, and other languages spoken on the islands lying E of Samoa in the South Pacific. In the early 19th cent., at the end of their war against European encroachment, they numbered about 100,000. The number later dwindled to 40,000. Largely through the efforts of their own chiefs, however, they have reemerged as an economically self-sufficient minority in New Zealand, and their population today is more than 500,000. The Maori maintain their own cultural identity apart from the general New Zealand community, while at the same time sending representatives to parliament and participating, at least to some degree, in most national issues. Legislation passed in the early 1990s provided for the settling of Maori land claims going back to the 19th cent., when land was seized by British colonists.

See A. J. Metge, Maoris of New Zealand (1967); W. Forman and D. Lewis, The Maori (1984); J. Irwin, An Introduction to Maori Religion (1984).

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