Encountering the New Zealand Culture

Waitangi, hui, Maori, hai moana, iwi, kapa haka. These are words that were totally unknown to me or at least I had only a very vague idea of their meaning and significance until I read the articles “Fix injustices, then move on” by Christopher Finlayson and “Waitangi Day a complete waste” by Paul Holmes and did some research on the Internet. Without any context I would have classified them to be indian or some language I am not familiar with.
First of all, I must admit that I had noe idea of the New Zealand history until reading the two contrarian articles by Finlayson, Holmes and Harawira. Not only that I had no idea about it but also it seems to be a highly polarizing issue for the New Zealnd population. I was even surprised by the very different spelling and the very special and own „language“ that I encountered reading about the history.
Before I joined the „Cultural Studies New Zealand“ class I knew only few things about the country: its incredibly beautiful and diversified landscape, the proximity to Australia concerning its geographic position and that is is known as a a popular destination for (at least german) graduates for work and travel or „only“ travelling around and explore NZ. As it is not that close to Germany and bargains are quite rare I hadn’t the opportunity yet to travel there and explore that lovely country by myself.
However now that I read and heard something about the New Zealand culture and history it created an awareness for something I hadn’t thought about before and also aroused interest to learn more about that country on the end of the world.