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A pinwheel is a simple child's toy made of a wheel of paper or plastic curls attached at its axle to a stick by a pin. It is designed to spin when blown upon by a person or by the wind. It is a predecessor to the more complex whirligigs.
A similar toy had developed independently in Polynesia (known as pekapeka or peʻapeʻa) using either coconut palm leaflets or strips of pandanus leaves; [1] [2] in colder climates like that of Aotearoa (the toy also called pepepe in Māori ), phormium leaves are used. [3]
Today's most popular style of pinwheels is rooted in East Asia. The design for example is typical of a japanese origami folding technique for a pinwheel.[ citation needed ]
During the nineteenth century in the United States, any wind-driven toy held aloft by a running child was characterized as a whirligig, including pinwheels. Pinwheels provided many children with numerous minutes of enjoyment and amusement. [4]
The Southern Alps are a mountain range extending along much of the length of New Zealand's South Island, reaching its greatest elevations near the range's western side. The name "Southern Alps" generally refers to the entire range, although separate names are given to many of the smaller ranges that form part of it.
A toy or plaything is an object that is used primarily to provide entertainment. Simple examples include toy blocks, board games, and dolls. Toys are often designed for use by children, although many are designed specifically for adults and pets. Toys can provide utilitarian benefits, including physical exercise, cultural awareness, or academic education. Additionally, utilitarian objects, especially those which are no longer needed for their original purpose, can be used as toys. Examples include children building a fort with empty cereal boxes and tissue paper spools, or a toddler playing with a broken TV remote control. The term "toy" can also be used to refer to utilitarian objects purchased for enjoyment rather than need, or for expensive necessities for which a large fraction of the cost represents its ability to provide enjoyment to the owner, such as luxury cars, high-end motorcycles, gaming computers, and flagship smartphones.
Māori culture is the customs, cultural practices, and beliefs of the Māori people of New Zealand. It originated from, and is still part of, Eastern Polynesian culture. Māori culture forms a distinctive part of New Zealand culture and, due to a large diaspora and the incorporation of Māori motifs into popular culture, it is found throughout the world. Within Māoridom, and to a lesser extent throughout New Zealand as a whole, the word Māoritanga is often used as an approximate synonym for Māori culture, the Māori-language suffix -tanga being roughly equivalent to the qualitative noun-ending -ness in English. Māoritanga has also been translated as "[a] Māori way of life." The term kaupapa, meaning the guiding beliefs and principles which act as a base or foundation for behaviour, is also widely used to refer to Māori cultural values.
Cooties is a fictitious childhood disease, commonly represented as childlore. It is used in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines as a rejection term and an infection tag game. It is similar to the British "dreaded lurgi", and to terms used in the Nordic countries, in Italy, India and Iraq. A child is said to "catch" cooties through close contact with an "infected" person or from an opposite-sex child of a similar age.
The bullroarer, rhombus, or turndun, is an ancient ritual musical instrument and a device historically used for communicating over great distances. It consists of a piece of wood attached to a string, which when swung in a large circle produces a roaring vibration sound.
A wind vane, weather vane, or weathercock is an instrument used for showing the direction of the wind. It is typically used as an architectural ornament to the highest point of a building. The word vane comes from the Old English word fana, meaning "flag".
Waka are Māori watercraft, usually canoes ranging in size from small, unornamented canoes used for fishing and river travel to large, decorated war canoes up to 40 metres (130 ft) long.
A whirligig is an object that spins or whirls, or has at least one part that spins or whirls. It can also be a pinwheel, spinning top, buzzer, comic weathervane, gee-haw, spinner, whirlygig, whirlijig, whirlyjig, whirlybird, or simply a whirly. They are most commonly powered by the wind but can be hand-, friction- or motor-powered. They can be used as kinetic garden ornaments, and can be designed to transmit sound and vibration into the ground to repel burrowing rodents.
Sir Peter Henry Buck, also known as Te Rangi Hīroa or Te Rangihīroa, was a prominent New Zealand anthropologist and an expert on Māori and Polynesian cultures who served many roles through his life: as a physician and surgeon; as an official in public health; as a member of parliament; and ultimately as a leading anthropologist and director of the Bishop Museum in Hawaii.
Poi is a performing art and also the name of the equipment used for its performance. As a skill toy, poi is an object or theatrical prop used for dexterity play or an object manipulation. As a performance art, poi involves swinging tethered weights through a variety of rhythmical and geometric patterns. Poi artists may also sing or dance while swinging their poi. Poi can be made from various materials with different handles, weights, and effects.
Tapa cloth is a barkcloth made in the islands of the Pacific Ocean, primarily in Tonga, Samoa and Fiji, but as far afield as Niue, Cook Islands, Futuna, Solomon Islands, Java, New Zealand, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and Hawaii. In French Polynesia it has nearly disappeared, except for some villages in the Marquesas.
Tūhura Otago Museum, located near the city center of Dunedin, New Zealand, adjacent to the University of Otago campus, is one of the country's largest museums and a prominent attraction in the city. The museum's extensive collections encompass natural science specimens and humanities artifacts from the Otago region and around the world, which are featured in its long-term gallery displays. A notable feature of the museum is its interactive science center, which includes an immersive tropical rainforest butterfly house. In 2022, the museum was officially renamed Tūhura Otago Museum, incorporating the Māori name "Tūhura," meaning "to discover, investigate, and explore."
Polynesian navigation or Polynesian wayfinding was used for thousands of years to enable long voyages across thousands of kilometres of the open Pacific Ocean. Polynesians made contact with nearly every island within the vast Polynesian Triangle, using outrigger canoes or double-hulled canoes. The double-hulled canoes were two large hulls, equal in length, and lashed side by side. The space between the paralleled canoes allowed for storage of food, hunting materials, and nets when embarking on long voyages. Polynesian navigators used wayfinding techniques such as the navigation by the stars, and observations of birds, ocean swells, and wind patterns, and relied on a large body of knowledge from oral tradition. This island hopping was a solution to the scarcity of useful resources, such as food, wood, water, and available land, on the small islands in the Pacific Ocean. When an island’s required resources for human survival began to run low, the island's inhabitants used their maritime navigation skills and set sail for new islands. However, as an increasing number of islands in the South Pacific became occupied, and citizenship and national borders became of international importance, this was no longer possible. People thus became trapped on islands with the inability to support them.
Greenstone is a common generic term for valuable, green-hued minerals and metamorphosed igneous rocks and stones which early cultures used in the fashioning of hardstone carvings such as jewelry, statuettes, ritual tools, and various other artifacts. Greenstone artifacts may be made of greenschist, chlorastrolite, serpentine, omphacite, chrysoprase, olivine, nephrite, chloromelanite among other green-hued minerals. The term also includes jade and jadeite, although these are perhaps more frequently identified by these latter terms. The greenish hue of these rocks generally derives from the presence of minerals such as chlorite, hornblende, or epidote.
New Zealand art consists of the visual and plastic arts originating from New Zealand and comes from different traditions: indigenous Māori art and that brought here including from early European mostly British settlers.
Clifford Hamilton Whiting was a New Zealand artist, teacher and advocate for Māori heritage.
Kete are traditional baskets made and used by New Zealand's Māori people. They are traditionally woven from the leaves of New Zealand flax called harakeke and have two handles at the top. Other materials are sometimes used, including sedge grass or the leaves of the nikau palm and cabbage tree. Modern designs may also use dyed materials. Some kete, known as kete whakairo, or "patterned bag", feature intricate geometric patterns, while more everyday baskets are known as kete mahi or simply kete.
Oceanian culture encompasses the collective and diverse customs and traditions of art, architecture, music, literature, lifestyle, philosophy, politics and religion that have been practiced and maintained by the many ethnic groups of the geographical region of Oceania since prehistory. Cultures of Oceania reflect not only that of the region's indigenous peoples, but also the cultures brought by European colonisation and the United States, particularly through mass culture such as cinema and TV. Oceania is commonly divided into four geographic sub-regions, characterized by shared cultural, religious, linguistic, and ethnic traits: Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Most Oceanian countries are multi-party representative parliamentary democracies, and tourism is a large source of income for the Pacific Islands nations.
Pounamu is a term for several types of hard and durable stone found in the South Island of New Zealand. They are highly valued in New Zealand, and carvings made from pounamu play an important role in Māori culture.
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