In my fascination with the island country that is New Zealand, I’ve been reading quite a bit about the indigenous people, the Māori. There is a beauty in their culture and people that I find amazing. To give some background, my genealogy on my father’s side runs back to the Cherokee Tribe. When reading in grade school about how America was colonized and how the native people were displaced, killed, and infected with European diseases, it was a very disgusting realization. A realization that many cultures were wiped out completely for greed or because of racism and ignorance. I’ve always wondered what it would have been like in modern days if the original settlers of America integrated with the native people instead of destroying them. Remember the battles between the ‘Cowboys and Indians’ and how the Euro-Americans bravely fought off the savage tribes? Yeah well… I wonder why they were described as be evil and savage to the new ’settlers’ (see: invaders). Maybe similar to how all Middle-Easterners are advertised to most Americans today as being dangerous and scary. Ok I’m done with the rant. My point was that I’m always interested to read about cultures and the
One of the interesting characteristics of the Māori is that they are not one singular group. They are a group of groups. There is not one person that speaks for all. Most people would equate the Māori to a Native American tribe. This is not accurate. The Māori are a group of iwi (tribes) with their own culture, leaders, ideas, etc… It would be more accurately compared to the group often called American Indians or Native Americans as there are groups underneath this group. The difference here is that the Native American tribes were vastly different in many ways. They were grouped into the words Native American by geological location not by culture. The Māori are a collective group of tribes with the same religion and language. They didn’t get wiped off the island when their island was colonized by the British. Even with the British colonization and ‘purchase’ (see: swindling) of New Zealand land, the Māori have retained their culture and even in modern days have been a strong group sticking to their guns and not becoming 100% ‘Westernized’.
I have to share this photo. I have gotten permission from the photographer to post this here so please do not copy/steal it. Please check out his site and his Flickr page.
I’m continually researching and reading and finding new things about the Māori people. This is just part one of I’m sure many!
