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Definition: Maori from Philip's Encyclopedia

Polynesian population, the original inhabitants of New Zealand. Traditionally, Maori lived by agriculture, hunting and fishing. They retain much of their language, culture and customs. In Maori society, tattooing, carving and weaving were developed arts, and their war chants (haka) are still kept alive. Since the 1970s, Maori political activity increased, and some of their land has been restored. See also Maori Wars


Maori

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Member of the Polynesian people of New Zealand . They number 435,000, about 15% of the total population, and around 89% live in the North Island. Maori civilization had particular strengths in warfare, cultivation, navigation, and wood- and stonework. Speechmaking and oral history, as well as woodcarving, were the main cultural repositories before the European introduction of writing, and Maori mythology and cosmology were highly developed. Their language, Maori, belongs to the eastern branch of the Austronesian family. The Maori Language Act 1987 recognized Maori as an official language of New Zealand. The Maori colonized New Zealand, probably from Hawaii and Savaii, from about 850 AD , establishing a flourishing civilization throughout the country and driving the original inhabitants, the Morioris, to the South Island and Chatham Island. First contact with Europeans came at the end of the 18th century. Until about 1860, relations between Maori and European settlers were generally…
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Full text Article Maori

From Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology: Health and Illness in the World's Cultures
ALTERNATIVE NAMES New Zealand Maori, Tangata Whenua o Aotearoa. LOCATION AND LINGUISTIC AFFILIATION Maori are the indigenous people of New Zealand. Of Polynesian descent, the first voyagers arrived in New Zealand around 1000AD in a series of planned migrations from Eastern Polynesia (probably…
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Maori
The distribution of major Maori iwi...
The native people of New Zealand. They are a POLYNESIAN people who began to settle New Zealand possibly around AD 900. Their oral tradition tells of the discovery of Aotearoa (the land of the ‘long daylight’) by the navigator Kupe. Subsequently waves of migrants arrived. Each major iwi (tribe) was…
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Full text Article Maori

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
(mä'ōrē), people of New Zealand and the Cook Islands, believed to have migrated in early times from other islands of Polynesia . Maori tradition asserts that seven canoes brought their ancestors to New Zealand. The Maori language is closely related to Tahitian, Hawaiian, and other languages spoken…
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Full text Article Maoris

From Encyclopedia of Warrior Peoples & Fighting Groups Full text Article ENTRIES
Native population of New Zealand. “I should think that a more warlike race of inhabitants could not be found in any part of the world than the New Zealanders.” 1 So said Charles Darwin when he arrived in the Bay of Islands at the upper peninsula of New Zealand's North Island in 1835. He had not at…
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Full text Article Maori

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Member of the Polynesian people of New Zealand . They number 435,000, about 15% of the total population, and around 89% live in the North Island. Maori civilization had particular strengths in warfare, cultivation, navigation, and wood- and stonework. Speechmaking and oral history, as well as…
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Full text Article Maori

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Any member of a Polynesian people of New Zealand. Maori traditional history describes their origins in terms of waves of migration from a mythical land between the 12th and 14th centuries, but archaeologists have dated habitations in New Zealand back to at least ad 800. Their first European contact…
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Full text Article Maoris

From Chambers Dictionary of World History
Polynesian people who were the original inhabitants of New Zealand. The first of them arrived, probably from the Marquesas, about 800, bringing with them dogs and rats, and some cultivated plants, including the kumara (sweet potato). They also ate fern roots, fish and birds, including the large…
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Also known as: New Zealand Land Wars The Maori wars, also known as the New Zealand Land Wars, stretched from 1843 to 1872. These continued periods of conflict occurred because of the British colonization of New Zealand, a process that began in the late 18th century. In 1840 the British officially…
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Full text Article Māori stories

From The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature
Stories from Māori mythology, which underpin much of the Māori world view and the Māori's system of beliefs and rituals, began to be collected and recorded on the page by European settlers in the 19th cent. Following the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, Sir George Grey (1812–98; from 1845 the Governor of…
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Full text Article Maori religion

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
The religion of the original inhabitants of New Zealand, having the god Io at its peak, who acts through an array of gods, spirits, and ancestors. The world of the dead is seen as the most dangerous because it overlaps with this world. It is filled with mana , a dynamic holy power which can spill…
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