This article needs to be updated.(November 2021) |
Total population | |
---|---|
Portuguese 1,365 New Zealanders Roughly 0.03% of New Zealand's population [1] | |
Languages | |
Portuguese · New Zealand English Portuguese Creole | |
Religion | |
Roman Catholicism · Protestantism | |
Related ethnic groups | |
Portuguese · Portuguese Australian · Portuguese Canadian · Portuguese Brazilian · Portuguese American |
Portuguese New Zealanders are either Portuguese who migrated to New Zealand, or New Zealanders of Portuguese descent. According to the latest 2018 New Zealand census, 447 residents of the country declared Portugal to be the place of their birth, and it is estimated that Portuguese migrants and their descendants number approximately 1,365, [2] up from 900 in 2006, and 1000 in 1996.
On 22 April 2010, Portuguese New Zealanders were recognised by the Office of Ethnic Affairs as an official community of New Zealand, [3] having tied the 70th ribbon to Parliament's mooring stone on the Parliament House Galleria. [4] The Portuguese Embassy in Canberra, Australia is accredited to New Zealand, [5] while there are two honorary Portuguese consulates in New Zealand, [6] one in Wellington and the other in Auckland, both of which operate through the Portuguese Consulate-General in Sydney.
As well as having been recognised as an official community, the Portuguese in New Zealand hold several annual meetings and celebrations such as Portugal Day, and are organised through a friendship association. [7] [8]
In the 19th and early 20th centuries there were more Portuguese than Spaniards in New Zealand. [9] This was probably a reflection in part of the close commercial links between Portugal and England. Portuguese were recorded amongst New Zealand's early colonists, one Ngāti Kahungunu family has a Portuguese whaler in its whakapapa (genealogical chart), and Auckland singer Bill Worsfold [10] claims to be the descendant of this whaler, and wrote a ballad about his tough life and arrival in New Zealand. [11] Other arrivals included António Rodrigues, who migrated from the island of Madeira with his wife in the 19th century and eventually settled in Akaroa, [12] where he built the "Madeira Pub Hotel", which is still in activity. [13] Another early settler was Francisco Rodrigues Figueira, also from Madeira, who owned a prison labour gum-digger's camp in West Auckland in the late 19th century. Known as "Don Buck", Figueira was a colourful and violent character and he is remembered in such west Auckland placenames as Don Buck Road, Don Buck Primary School, and Don Buck Corner Reserve. [14] In the mid-20th century, Portuguese migration to New Zealand nearly stagnated with only 12 Portugal-born migrants being registered in the 1951 census, but the Portuguese diaspora gained a new momentum in the 1960s, and later after the Carnation Revolution when the number of Portuguese migrants to New Zealand rose even further.
Portuguese-born Dutch photographer Fernando Pereira was the only victim of the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior in the port of Auckland. On 10 July 1985, two French DGSE agents bombed the Rainbow Warrior , Greenpeace's flagship, which was scheduled to depart New Zealand to disrupt nuclear testing in French Polynesia. This was to date the only foreign attack on New Zealand's soil.
Today, the Portuguese are part of an even larger Portuguese-speaking community in New Zealand, that also includes Brazilians, East Timorese, Macanese and Cape Verdeans. Despite constituting 0.03% of New Zealand's population, some 0.22% of New Zealanders speak Portuguese according to the latest census.
Name | Birth and death | Occupation | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
Brooke Fraser | 1983– | Singer songwriter | Portuguese descent |
Bernie Fraser (rugby union) | 1953– | Rugby union player | Portuguese descent |
Melanie Rodriga | 1954– | Film maker, lecturer, author | Portuguese descent |
Manoel Santos | 1940–2013 | Boxer | Portuguese descent |
Joseph Musaphia | 1935– | Writer, actor | Portuguese descent |
Bernie Rao | 1978– | Writer, director, producer | Portuguese descent |
The demographics of New Zealand encompass the gender, ethnic, religious, geographic, and economic backgrounds of the 5.3 million people living in New Zealand. New Zealanders predominantly live in urban areas on the North Island. The five largest cities are Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Hamilton, and Tauranga. Few New Zealanders live on New Zealand's smaller islands. Waiheke Island is easily the most populated smaller island with 9,140 residents, while Great Barrier Island, the Chatham and Pitt Islands, and Stewart Island each have populations below 1,000. New Zealand is part of a realm and most people born in the realm's external territories of Tokelau, the Ross Dependency, the Cook Islands and Niue are entitled to New Zealand passports.
New Zealanders are people associated with New Zealand, sharing a common history, culture, and language. People of various ethnicities and national origins are citizens of New Zealand, governed by its nationality law.
Massey is a northern suburb in West Auckland, New Zealand. It was formerly a northern suburb of Waitakere City, which existed from 1989 to 2010 before the city was amalgamated into Auckland Council. The suburb was named after former Prime Minister of New Zealand William Massey. Massey is a relatively large suburb and can be divided into three reasonably distinctive areas, Massey West, Massey East and Massey North. Parts of Massey East are also known as 'Royal Heights', which is home to the Royal Heights shopping centre.
New Zealanders of European descent are mostly of British and Irish ancestry, with significantly smaller percentages of other European ancestries such as Germans, Poles, French, Dutch, Croats and other South Slavs, Greeks, and Scandinavians. European New Zealanders are also known by the Māori-language loanword Pākehā.
Chinese New Zealanders or Sino-New Zealanders are New Zealanders of Chinese ancestry. The largest subset of Asian New Zealanders, many of the Chinese immigrants came from Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, or other countries that have large populations of Chinese diaspora. Today's Chinese New Zealand group is also composed of diasporic communities from Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam and Singapore. As of 2018, Chinese New Zealanders account for 4.9% of the population of New Zealand, and are the largest Asian ethnic group in New Zealand, accounting for 36.3% of Asian New Zealanders.
Indian New Zealanders or informally known as Kiwi Indians are people of Indian origin or descent who live in New Zealand. The term includes Indians born in New Zealand, as well as immigrants from India, Fiji, other regions of Asia, parts of Africa such as South Africa and East Africa, and from other parts of the world. The term Indian New Zealander applies to any New Zealander with one or both parents of Indian heritage. Although sometimes the Indo-Kiwi definition has been expanded to people with mixed racial parentage with one Indian parent or grandparent, this can be controversial as it generally tends to remove the ethnic heritage or identity of the foreign parent or grandparent, which may be seen as insensitive to those with mixed parentage, who tend to value both their Indian and non-Indian parents and grandparents.
Iraqi New Zealanders constitute a small population immigrants from Iraq and New Zealand-born people of Iraqi heritage or descent.
Māori Australians are Australians of Māori heritage. The Māori presence in Australia dates back to the 19th century when Māori travelled to Sydney to trade, acquire new technology, and learn new ideas. The Māori population in Australia remained marginal until the 1960s. During the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries, thousands of Māori would emigrate from New Zealand to pursue employment opportunities in blue collar occupations such as shearing, construction, manufacturing, and mining. In 2013, there were approximately 140,000–170,000 people with Māori ancestry living in Australia. Māori Australians constitute Australia's largest Polynesian ethnic group.
American New Zealanders are New Zealand citizens who are of American descent from American-born citizens from the United States. American New Zealanders constitute a small minority of New Zealand's population.
Portuguese Australians refers to Australians of Portuguese descent or Portuguese-born people living in Australia.
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 a distinct 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.
New Zealander Sikhs number over 53,000 people and account for 1.1% of New Zealand's population as of 2023, forming the country's fastest-growing and fifth-largest religious group. New Zealand has the world's third-largest Sikh proportion behind Canada (2.1%) and India (1.7%). While there are Sikhs in all sixteen regions of New Zealand, over half of Sikhs lived in Auckland Region in 2018.
Don Buck was a Portuguese immigrant in New Zealand in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. He was known for working newly released prisoners as gum diggers and trading the gum for a profit.
Southland is New Zealand's southernmost region. It consists of the southwestern portion of the South Island and includes Stewart Island. Southland is bordered by the culturally similar Otago Region to the north and east, and the West Coast Region in the extreme northwest. The region covers over 3.1 million hectares and spans 3,613 km of coastline. As of June 2023, Southland has a population of 103,900, making it the eleventh-most-populous New Zealand region, and the second-most sparsely populated. Approximately half of the region's population lives in Invercargill, Southland's only city.
Japanese New Zealanders are New Zealand citizens of Japanese ancestry, which may include Japanese immigrants and descendants born in New Zealand. Japanese people first began immigrating to New Zealand in the 1890s. Until 1920, 14 Japanese citizens resided in New Zealand. Japanese immigration was halted during the period of the Pacific War and recommenced around the 1950s. From this period onwards, Japanese immigration remained small until the 1990s. In 1997, Japanese peoples were the 19th-largest ethnic group in New Zealand. As of the 2018 census, 18,141 New Zealand residents identify themselves as Japanese New Zealanders.
The term Irish New Zealander refers to New Zealanders of full or partial Irish ancestry. This includes Irish immigrants as well as New Zealanders of Irish descent. The term makes no distinction concerning religion and encompasses both Catholic and Protestant immigrants and their descendants; nonetheless, the chief criterion of distinction between Irish immigrants, especially those who arrived in the nineteenth century, is religion.
Buddhism is New Zealand's third-largest religion after Christianity and Hinduism standing at 1.5% of the population of New Zealand. Buddhism originates in Asia and was introduced to New Zealand by immigrants from East Asia.
Lebanese New Zealanders refers to citizens or permanent residents of New Zealand of Lebanese ancestry. The community is diverse, having a large Christian religious base, being mostly Maronite Catholics and Greek Orthodox, while also having a small Muslim group of both the Shia and Sunni branches of Islam.
Pasifika New Zealanders are a pan-ethnic group of New Zealanders associated with, and descended from, the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Islands outside of New Zealand itself. They form the fourth-largest ethnic grouping in the country, after European descendants, indigenous Māori, and Asian New Zealanders. Over 380,000 people identify as being of Pacific origin, representing 8% of the country's population, with the majority residing in Auckland.
Rotuman New Zealanders are Rotuman immigrants in New Zealand, typically from Rotuma Island or Fiji, their descendants, and New Zealanders of Rotuman ethnic descent. At the time of the 2018 New Zealand census, 981 people in New Zealand were surveyed as being of Rotuman descent.