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The Māori word pounamu is derived from namu, an archaic word that describes blue-green (or 'grue') cognate with Tahitian ninamu. [2] Pounamu, also used in New Zealand English, in itself refers to two main types of green stone valued for carving: nephrite jade, classified by Māori as kawakawa, kahurangi, īnanga, and other names depending on colour; and translucent bowenite, a type of ...
Māori cultural history intertwines inextricably with the culture of Polynesia as a whole. The New Zealand archipelago forms the southwestern corner of the Polynesian Triangle, a major part of the Pacific Ocean with three island groups at its corners: the Hawaiian Islands, Rapa Nui (Easter Island), and New Zealand (Aotearoa in te reo Māori). [10]
The Māori settlement of New Zealand represents an end-point of a long chain of island-hopping voyages in the South Pacific.. Evidence from genetics, archaeology, linguistics, and physical anthropology indicates that the ancestry of Polynesian people stretches all the way back to indigenous peoples of Taiwan.
Cultural performance of waiata (song), haka (dance), tauparapara (chants) and mōteatea (poetry) are used by Māori to express and pass on knowledge and understanding about history, communities, and relationships. [133] Kapa haka is a Māori performance art [134] believed to have originated with the legendary figure Tinirau.
The Lay Association of the Free Church of Scotland, through a company called the Otago Association, founded Dunedin at the head of Otago Harbour in 1848 as the principal town of its Scottish settlement. Initially the best 120,000 acres from the Otago block sale were divided into urban (quarter acre), suburban (10 acre) and rural (50 acre ...
The land of Dunedin had already been divided up and settlers had drawn lots in Scotland to define the picking order. [1] About half of those to arrive were from the Free Church. Of the 12,000 immigrants who were to follow in the 1850s about 75% were Scottish. This can be determined from the diary and informal census of the Reverend Thomas Burns ...
The distinct values, history, and worldview of Māori are expressed through traditional arts and skills such as haka, tā moko, waiata (music), carving, weaving, and poi. The concept of tapu (meaning taboo or sacred [22]) is also a strong force in Māori culture, applied to objects, people, or even mountains. [23]
Māori mythology and Māori traditions are two major categories into which the remote oral history of New Zealand's Māori may be divided. Māori myths concern tales of supernatural events relating to the origins of what was the observable world for the pre-European Māori, often involving gods and demigods.