The Māori (/ ˈ m aʊ r i /, Māori: [ˈmaːɔɾi] ()) are the indigenous Polynesian people of mainland New Zealand ().Māori originated with settlers from East Polynesia, who arrived in New Zealand in several waves of canoe voyages between roughly 1320 and 1350. Over several centuries in isolation, these settlers developed their own distinctive culture, whose language, mythology, …

Relating to the Māori people. Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group; Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand; Māori culture; Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the Cook Islands; Cook Islands Māori, the language of the Cook Islanders; Ships. SS Maori, a steamship of the Shaw Savill Line, shipwrecked 1909; HMS Maori (1909), a …

19th century. There was no known prehistoric contact between Australian Aboriginal people and New Zealand Māori, although the Polynesian ancestors of Māori were accomplished navigators, who did establish short-lived settlements on Norfolk Island.The first Māori known to have visited Australia travelled to Sydney (then known as Port Jackson, or Poihākena in te reo Māori) in …

Māori traditional textiles are the indigenous textiles of the Māori people of New Zealand.The organisation Te Roopu Raranga Whatu o Aotearoa, the national Māori weavers' collective, aims to preserve and foster the skills of making and using these materials.. Textiles made from locally sourced materials were developed by Māori in New Zealand after migration from Polynesia as …

The Māori King Movement, called the Kīngitanga in Māori, is a movement that arose among some of the Māori iwi (tribes) of New Zealand in the central North Island in the 1850s, to establish a role similar in status to that of the monarch of the British colonists, as a way of halting the alienation of Māori land. The Māori monarch technically operates in a non-constitutional …

In Māori culture, Matariki is the name of the Pleiades star cluster and the celebration of its first rising in late June or early July. This marks the beginning of the new year in the Māori lunar calendar.Matariki was first celebrated as an official public holiday in New Zealand on 24 June 2022.. Historically Matariki was usually celebrated for a period of days during the last quarter …

In Māori society, the whānau is also a political unit, below the levels of hapū (subtribe) and iwi (tribe or nation), and the word itself has other meanings, i.e. as a verb: to be born or give birth. Whakapapa is Māori genealogy. First on the whakapapa comes the waka, the canoe on which the people first arrived in New Zealand. Second is the ...

Traditional Māori religion, that is, the pre-European belief-system of the Māori, differed little from that of their tropical Eastern Polynesian homeland (Hawaiki Nui), conceiving of everything - including natural elements and all living things - as connected by common descent through whakapapa or genealogy. Accordingly, Māori regarded all things as possessing a life force or …

The Māori scholar Hirini Moko Mead states the double meanings of the word hapū emphasise the importance of being born into a hapū group. As a metaphor this is "the members being born of the same womb", and "conveys the idea of growth, indicating that a hapū is capable of containing many whānau."

In Polynesian mythology, Hawaiki (also rendered as ʻAvaiki in Cook Islands Māori, Savaiʻi in Samoan, Havaiʻi in Tahitian, Hawaiʻi in Hawaiian) is the original home of the Polynesians, before dispersal across Polynesia. It also features as the underworld in many Māori stories.. Anne Salmond states Havaiʻi is the old name for Raiatea, the homeland of the Māori.