New Zealand's culture: a language taken back by its own speakers

How te reo Māori was nearly lost

Māori was an unwritten language until missionaries gave it an alphabet. Thomas Kendall published a first book in 1815 and, after travelling to England with the Ngāpuhi chief Hongi Hika to work with the linguist Samuel Lee, a grammar and vocabulary in 1820 that set the foundations of the written language. William Williams's dictionary followed in 1844. Through the nineteenth century much of the spoken tradition was written down, Māori-language newspapers were published from 1842, and in 1858 the first government Acts were printed in Māori.

School was where the language lost ground. George Grey's Education Ordinance 1847 required teaching in English, and Te Ara records that an 1890 policy aimed to replace Māori with English as a child's first language by the time the child left school. Teachers adopted the "direct method" in the early 1900s, and children were sometimes punished for speaking Māori at school. A stable bilingualism held until the 1930s, with Māori spoken at home and on the marae and English at school and with officials.

The decline came between 1920 and 1960. The world wars took many Māori men, families moving to the cities were encouraged to integrate, and under a policy known as "pepper potting" Māori households were placed among non-Māori ones. English became the language of Māori homes because many came to see it as the language of advancement. Richard Benton's survey of the language in the mid to late 1970s showed how far it had fallen, and Whatarangi Winiata's plan of 1975 for Ngāti Raukawa, Te Āti Awa and Ngāti Toarangatira began from the fact that those iwi had no speakers under 30.

How the language was brought back

The revival was organised from below. In 1972 Ngā Tamatoa and the Te Reo Māori Society gathered more than 30,000 signatures on a petition asking for Māori to be taught in schools, and the society set up Māori Language Day the same year, extended to a week in 1975. Ruatoki Bilingual School opened in 1978. Elders meeting at Waiwhetū marae from 1979 decided that learning had to start at birth, and the first kōhanga reo, a pre-school language nest, opened at Pukeatua in Wainuiomata in 1982. Kura kaupapa, full-immersion schools, followed for the children who left the kōhanga, and Te Wānanga o Raukawa, a Māori tertiary institution, opened in 1981.

The legal step came through the Treaty. In 1984 the Wellington Māori Language Board lodged a claim with the Waitangi Tribunal seeking official status for the language, the first generic Māori claim made to the tribunal. In 1986 the tribunal recommended that te reo be recognised as a taonga under Article II of the Treaty and as an official language, and the Māori Language Act 1987 did both and set up Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori, the Māori Language Commission.

There are three dialect groups, eastern North Island, western North Island and South Island. Ngāi Tūhoe pronounce "ng" as "n" and Ngāi Tahu as "k", so the iwi's own name is also written Kāi Tahu. Long vowels are marked with a macron; Waikato people were still writing them as double vowels in the 2000s. New Zealand Sign Language, derived from British Sign Language, became official in 2006: in April by Wikipedia's account and on 10 August by Britannica's. Te Ara records that English became an official language from 2026.

Who New Zealanders are by census

The census of 7 March 2023 counted 4,993,923 usual residents. People could name more than one ethnic group, and 67.8% identified with a European ethnicity, 17.8% as Māori and 8.9% as Pacific peoples, with the Asian and Māori groups growing most in number since 2018. Counted by descent, a separate measure based on whakapapa, 978,246 people were of Māori descent, 19.6% of the population. In the Gisborne region 56.0% were of Māori descent in 2023. The median age of the whole population was 38.1 years and that of the Māori descent population 27.2.

Pākehā, the New Zealanders of European descent, came mostly from Britain, with English settlement strongest in Canterbury, Scottish in Otago and Southland and Irish on the West Coast; Dalmatians settled in Northland and Danes inland in Hawke's Bay. Until about the 1950s many Pākehā thought of themselves as British. Dutch and central Europeans arrived in the 1950s, Pacific Islanders from the 1960s and Chinese, Indians and South-East Asians from the 1980s. South Auckland has strong Samoan links, and Auckland holds Polyfest for school cultural groups and the Pasifika festival each year.

What happens on a marae

Māori community life is most visible at the marae, a group of buildings around an open space where families and tribes gather for occasions such as pōwhiri and tangi, and for weddings, funerals and church services. Visitors usually remove their shoes before entering the wharenui, the meeting house, because the ancestors carved into it are held to be present. The meeting houses seen now took their form in the mid-nineteenth century; from the early twentieth century Āpirana Ngata led a revival of carving and of tukutuku, the woven wall panels, and many new houses were built in the old style.

Māori describe themselves as tangata whenua, the people of the land. Tapu, the sacred or restricted, applies to objects, people and places, mountains among them. Māori values and history are expressed through haka, tā moko (tattoo), waiata (song), carving, weaving and poi. Kapa haka, song and dance performed by a group (kapa means rank or row), has its own national competition, Te Matatini, held since 1972 and now every two years, and groups perform in schools, universities and workplaces. A haka is often taken to be a war challenge only; the All Blacks perform one before rugby internationals.

Some religious movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries joined Māori belief to Christianity around a prophet: Pai Mārire, Ringatū and, in the early twentieth century, Rātana. In the 2013 census 50,565 people gave their religion as Rātana and 16,419 as Ringatū.

What New Zealanders believe and how that has changed

Missionaries arrived from the Church of England in 1814, followed by other Protestant churches and the Catholic Church, and large numbers of Māori converted from the 1830s. The Scottish settlement of the south still shows in Presbyterian congregations there, and te Hāhi Mihinare, the Anglican missionary church, took root among Māori in the mission period.

The census shows a steady move away from religion. In 2013, 48.9% of people who stated an affiliation named a Christian denomination, down from 55.6% in 2006, and 41.9% said they had no religion. The same census counted 88,919 Hindus, 58,404 Buddhists, 46,149 Muslims and 19,191 Sikhs. In 2013, 174 languages were in use, with Samoan spoken by 2.2% of people, Hindi by 1.7% and Northern Chinese, including Mandarin, by 1.3%.

What goes into a New Zealand meal

Māori cooking came from tropical Polynesia and changed to suit a colder country: kūmara, fern root, taro, birds and fish, cooked in the hāngī, an earth oven, or in geothermal areas boiled or steamed in hot pools. After British settlement Māori took up pork and potatoes, and the potato transformed the Māori farm economy. Introduced predators thinned the birds, forests were cleared, and seafood such as toheroa and whitebait was over-harvested. Two dishes of Māori origin are in everyday use: the boil-up of meat and vegetables in broth, and the hāngī, kept for special occasions.

Pākehā cooking began as British cooking. Chinese and Indian food spread in later decades, New Zealand chefs such as Peter Gordon helped shape fusion cooking, and cafés serving espresso are now common across the country. Before European settlement Māori did not drink alcohol; from the First World War until 1967 the law closed pubs at 6 p.m.

Who pays for the arts and what they show

The government's definition of the arts covers six areas: visual arts, craft and object art, performing arts, literature, Pacific arts and Ngā toi Māori, Māori arts. Creative New Zealand is the main funder, and Te Papa in Wellington is the national museum and art gallery. The Ministry for Culture and Heritage measured the arts and creative sector at $14.9 billion, or 4.2% of the economy, in the year ending March 2022, with 115,000 people mainly employed in it, 32% of them self-employed.

Settler painters brought European landscape painting, and two of the best-known nineteenth-century artists, Charles Goldie and Gottfried Lindauer, painted Māori portraits. Some meeting houses of the same century have walls painted with portraits and plant designs. Later Pākehā artists looked for a style of their own, Rita Angus through the landscape and Gordon Walters through Māori motifs, while Māori artists such as Paratene Matchitt and Shane Cotton joined modernism to customary forms. Pacific heritage runs through the work of Fatu Feu'u, John Pule and Michel Tuffery, and Urban Pasifika music began in the Pacific Island community.

Earthquakes have shaped the built culture. After the earthquake of 1855 Wellington built more in wood and less in brick, Napier was rebuilt in Art Deco after 1931, and the Christchurch earthquakes of 2010 and 2011 moved building towards steel frames. New Zealand English carries its own vowel shifts, the "i" of kit drawn towards the schwa and the "e" of dress towards "i", and some influence from Māori speech and from Scottish and Irish settlers.

How sport and national symbols carry identity

New Zealand has two national anthems of equal legal status, "God Save the King" and "God Defend New Zealand", the second often sung with its verses alternating between Māori and English; George Grey had Thomas Bracken's words translated into Māori in 1878. The Southern Cross appears on the flag, the silver fern on military insignia and sports uniforms, and the kiwi has stood for the country since the early 1900s; Kiwi is now a nickname for New Zealanders.

Rugby union, cricket, netball, basketball, football, rugby league and hockey draw the most players. The All Blacks won the first Rugby World Cup, in 1987, and other national teams took their naming pattern, among them the Tall Blacks in basketball. Edmund Hillary's ascent of Everest in 1953 is part of a mountaineering tradition. In literature Katherine Mansfield, Janet Frame and Frank Sargeson made reputations in the twentieth century, and Keri Hulme's the bone people (1984) won the Booker Prize; since the mid-1950s Māori writers such as Hone Tuwhare, Patricia Grace and Witi Ihimaera have gained international recognition. Films made locally multiplied from the 1970s, and the scenery and government incentives brought productions such as The Lord of the Rings.

Two days of national remembrance fall in the calendar, Waitangi Day and Anzac Day, and each province keeps an anniversary holiday. Many New Zealanders in their twenties spend a period working abroad, known as the OE or overseas experience, and since the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement of 1973 they have been able to live and work in Australia on equal terms with Australians.