The Treaty of Waitangi, sometimes referred to as Te Tiriti, is a document of central importance to the history of New Zealand, its constitution, and its national mythos. It has played a major role in the treatment of the Māori people in New Zealand by successive governments and the wider population, something that has been especially prominent from the late 20th century. The treaty document is an agreement, not a treaty as recognised in international law, and has no independent legal status, being legally effective only to the extent it is recognised in various statutes. It was first signed on 6 February 1840 by Captain William Hobson as consul for the British Crown and by Māori chiefs from the North Island of New Zealand.
The New Zealand Wars took place from 1845 to 1872 between the New Zealand colonial government and allied Māori on one side, and Māori and Māori-allied settlers on the other. Though the wars were initially localised conflicts triggered by tensions over disputed land purchases, they escalated dramatically from 1860 as the government became convinced it was facing united Māori resistance to further land sales and a refusal to acknowledge Crown sovereignty. The colonial government summoned thousands of British troops to mount major campaigns to overpower the Kīngitanga movement and also conquest of farming and residential land for British settlers. Later campaigns were aimed at quashing the so-called Hauhau movement, an extremist part of the Pai Mārire religion, which was strongly opposed to the conquest of Māori land and eager to strengthen Māori identity.
Pākehā is a Māori-language word used in English, particularly in New Zealand. It generally means a non-Polynesian New Zealander or more specifically a European New Zealander. It is not a legal term and has no definition under New Zealand law. Papa'a has a similar meaning in Cook Islands Māori.
Kāwanatanga is a word in the Māori language of New Zealand, derived from the English word "governor". Kāwanatanga was first used in the Declaration of Independence of New Zealand, 1835. Kāwanatanga reappeared in 1840 in Article 1 of the Treaty of Waitangi, where the Māori text "te Kawanatanga katoa" corresponds to the English text "all the rights and powers of Sovereignty".
The Moriori are the first settlers of the Chatham Islands. Moriori are Polynesian settlers who came from the New Zealand mainland around 1500 CE. which was close to the time of the shift from the archaic to the classical period of Polynesian Māori culture on the mainland. Oral tradition records migration to the Chathams in the 16th century. The settlers' culture diverged from mainland Māori, and they developed a distinct Moriori language mythology, artistic expression and way of life. Currently there are around 700 people who identify as Moriori, most of whom no longer live on the Chatham Islands. During the late 19th century some prominent anthropologists proposed that Moriori were pre-Māori settlers of mainland New Zealand, and possibly Melanesian in origin.
The Musket Wars were a series of as many as 3,000 battles and raids fought throughout New Zealand among Māori between 1806 and 1845, after Māori first obtained muskets and then engaged in an intertribal arms race in order to gain territory or seek revenge for past defeats. The battles resulted in the deaths of between 20,000 and 40,000 people and the enslavement of tens of thousands of Māori and significantly altered the rohe, or tribal territorial boundaries, before the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. The Musket Wars reached their peak in the 1830s, with smaller conflicts between iwi continuing until the mid 1840s; some historians argue the New Zealand Wars were a continuation of the Musket Wars. The increased use of muskets in intertribal warfare led to changes in the design of pā fortifications, which later benefited Māori when engaged in battles with colonial forces during the New Zealand Wars.
The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards are literary awards presented annually in New Zealand. The awards began in 1996 as the merger of two literary awards events: the New Zealand Book Awards, which ran from 1976 to 1995, and the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards, which ran from 1968 to 1995.
Sir Raymond William Firth was an ethnologist from New Zealand. As a result of Firth's ethnographic work, actual behaviour of societies is separated from the idealized rules of behaviour within the particular society. He was a long serving professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics, and is considered to have singlehandedly created a form of British economic anthropology.
Elsie Violet Locke was a New Zealand communist writer, historian, and leading activist in the feminism and peace movements. Probably best known for her children's literature, The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature said that she "made a remarkable contribution to New Zealand society", for which the University of Canterbury awarded her an honorary D.Litt. in 1987. She was married to Jack Locke, a leading member of the Communist Party.
Dame Claudia Josepha Orange is a New Zealand historian best known for her 1987 book The Treaty of Waitangi, which won 'Book of the Year' at the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Award in 1988.
Dame Judith Mary Caroline Binney was a New Zealand historian, writer and Emerita Professor of History at the University of Auckland. Her work focussed on religion in New Zealand, especially the Māori Ringatū religion founded by Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki and continued by Rua Kenana. She also wrote extensively on the history of Ngāi Tūhoe.
The Māori protest movement is a broad indigenous rights movement in New Zealand. While there was a range of conflicts between Māori and European immigrants prior to the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, the signing provided one reason for protesting. Disagreements in the decades following the signing sometimes included war.
Māori 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, crafts, and performing arts evolved independently from those of other eastern Polynesian cultures. Some early Māori moved to the Chatham Islands, where their descendants became New Zealand's other indigenous Polynesian ethnic group, the Moriori.
John McEffer Shera was a Liberal Party Member of Parliament in Auckland, New Zealand.
Margaret Shirley Mutu is a Ngāti Kahu leader, author and academic from Karikari, New Zealand and works at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She is Māori and her iwi (tribes) are Ngāti Kahu, Te Rarawa and Ngāti Whātua.
Mana motuhake is a phrase in the Māori language that means self determination, with the principle being autonomy and control. It is sometimes translated to the concept of sovereignty.
Raewyn Mary Dalziel is a New Zealand historian specialising in New Zealand social history.
Margaret Rose Orbell was a New Zealand author, editor and academic. She was an associate professor of Māori at the University of Canterbury from 1976 to 1994. During her career, Orbell wrote several books on Māori literature and culture, edited numerous collections of songs, poetry and stories, and brought Māori works to a wider and international audience. She was an editor of bilingual magazine Te Ao Hou / The New World in the 1960s, and expanded the magazine's literary and historical content. In 2002, she was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to Māori and literature.
Aroha Gaylene Harris is a Māori academic. As of 2020, Harris is an associate professor at the University of Auckland, specialising in Māori histories of policy and community development. She is also a member of the Waitangi Tribunal.
Atholl John Anderson is a New Zealand archaeologist who has worked extensively in New Zealand and the Pacific. His work is notable for its syntheses of history, biology, ethnography and archaeological evidence. He made a major contribution to the evidence given by the iwi (tribe) Ngāi Tahu to the Waitangi Tribunal.
