The demographics of New Zealand encompass the gender, ethnic, religious, geographic, and economic backgrounds of the 5.1 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 9,390 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.
Tangaroa is the great atua of the sea, lakes, rivers, and creatures that live within them, especially fish, in Māori mythology. As Tangaroa-whakamau-tai he exercises control over the tides. He is sometimes depicted as a whale.
The Chatham Islands are an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean about 800 km (430 nmi) east of New Zealand's South Island. They are administered as part of New Zealand. The archipelago consists of about 10 islands within an approximate 60 km (30 nmi) radius, the largest of which are Chatham Island and Pitt Island (Rangiauria). They include New Zealand's easternmost point, the Forty-Fours. Some of the islands, formerly cleared for farming, are now preserved as nature reserves to conserve some of the unique flora and fauna.
The Moriori are the indigenous Polynesian people of the Chatham Islands, New Zealand. Moriori originated from Māori settlers from the New Zealand mainland around 1500 CE. This was near the time of the shift from the archaic to classic Māori culture on the main islands of New Zealand. Oral tradition records multiple waves of migration to the Chatham Islands, starting in the 16th century. Over several centuries these settlers' culture diverged from mainland Māori, developing a distinctive 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 mistakenly 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 1807 and 1837, 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.
Ngāi Tahu, or Kāi Tahu, is the principal Māori iwi (tribe) of the South Island. Its takiwā is the largest in New Zealand, and extends from the White Bluffs / Te Parinui o Whiti, Mount Mahanga and Kahurangi Point in the north to Stewart Island / Rakiura in the south. The takiwā comprises 18 rūnanga corresponding to traditional settlements. According to the 2018 census an estimated 74,082 people affiliated with the Kāi Tahu iwi.
Pitt Island is the second largest island in the Chatham Archipelago, New Zealand. It is called Rangiauria in Māori and Rangiaotea in Moriori.
Moriori was a Polynesian language most closely related to New Zealand Māori and was spoken by the Moriori, the indigenous people of New Zealand's Chatham Islands, an archipelago located east of the South Island.
Various Māori traditions recount how their ancestors set out from their homeland in waka hourua, large twin-hulled ocean-going canoes (waka). Some of these traditions name a homeland called Hawaiki.
Edward Robert Tregear, Ordre des Palmes académiques (1846–1931) was a New Zealand public servant and scholar. He was an architect of New Zealand's advanced social reforms and progressive labour legislation during the 1890s.
Hāpūpū / JM Barker National Historic Reserve is one of four national reserves in New Zealand. The reserve is located close to Hanson Bay at the north-eastern end of Chatham Island, the main island of the Chatham Islands, and was created in 1979 following a gift of land from a local business. This was done to protect 33 hectares of kopi forest containing Moriori tree carvings called momori-rakau. In 1996, the reserve was officially designated as a national historic reserve, owing to the site's significance as a representation of Moriori traditions.
Brendon Ephia Tuuta is a New Zealand former rugby league footballer of Māori and Moriori descent.
Ngāti Mutunga is a Māori iwi (tribe) of New Zealand, whose original tribal lands were in north Taranaki. They migrated from Taranaki, first to Wellington, and then to the Chatham Islands in the 1830s. The rohe of the iwi include Wharekauri, Te Whanga Lagoon and Waitangi on Chatham Island, and Pitt Island, also part of the Chatham Islands. The principal marae are at Urenui in Taranaki, and on the Chatham Islands.
The Ngāti Tama is a historic Māori tribe of present-day New Zealand. Their origins, according to Maori oral tradition, date back to Tama Ariki, the chief navigator on the Tokomaru waka. They are located in north Taranaki, around Poutama. River Mōhakatino marks their northern boundary with the Tainui and the Ngāti Maniapoto. The close geographical proximity of Tainui's Ngāti Toa of Kawhia and the Ngati Mutunga explains the long, continuous, and close relationship among these three tribes.
Nunuku-whenua was a Moriori chief who is known for being a sixteenth-century pacifist.
Airini Ngā Roimata Grennell was a New Zealand singer, pianist, and broadcaster.
Mere (Mary) Harper, born Mary Apes / Mere Hipi and also known as Big Mary or Mere Hapa was a porter, cultural informant, and midwife of Kāi Tahu and Kāti Huirapa descent. She was the main informant for ethnographer William Anderson Taylor's work on Kāi Tahu history, and is credited as one of the midwives who paved the way for the creation of the Plunket Society of New Zealand.
The Moriori genocide was the mass murder and enslavement of the Moriori people, the indigenous ethnic group of the Chatham Islands, by members of the mainland New Zealand iwi Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama from 1835 to the early 1860s. The invaders murdered around 300 Moriori and enslaved the remaining population, causing the population to drop from 1,700 in 1835 to only 100 in 1870.
