New Zealand’s Maori history

New Zealand is one of very many countries that had been inhabited by an indigenous population for many years before the first European settlers arrived. These indigenous people — the Maori — accommodated to the climate they found in New Zealand, they brought plants with them and managed to start growing some of them in this newly found country, they used their weapons to hunt the animals they found there, and they even began to settle down in one place, thereby ending their formerly nomadic lifestyle.

Then, many years later at the end of the 18th century, European sailors began to arrive and settle in this lush country. With their arrival, tension and also wars between the Pakeha (the Europeans) and the Maori were not far into the future.

Nowadays, around 75% of the people living in New Zealand are of European descent and around 15% are Maori. Although they arrived first in this country, Maori are now a minority, having to cope with the massive majority of European descendants. There are still tensions between the two races, e.g. concerning the country’s national holiday. On the 6th of February 1840, Maori and Pakeha signed the Treaty of Waitangi, in which the British gave Maori several rights they had been denied before. Nowadays, the 6th of February is New Zealand’s national holiday — much to the dismay of some Pakeha, who would rather not have a national holiday acknowledging the Maori’s rights.

When I was in Australia, I also observed that many Aboriginees are not treated equally by Australians and are rather marginalised, although they had been living in Australia for thousands of years before the first Europeans arrived and just took their land. It is true that the government nowadays and in recent history has been trying not to undo but at least to repair the damage that has been done to the Aboriginees, but we are still a long way away from treating and regarding them as equals.

I can imagine that the situation in New Zealand probably is similar to the one in Australia. And I wish and hope that we could all see beyond our differences and rather focus on what we have in common to finally do away with all the prejudices and acknowledge that New Zealand as well as Australia belong to the indigenous people as much as to us Pakeha — if not even more to them than to us.