Z G06: I&S Culture Shock: Maori

Dozens of students gather beneath the carved timber roof of a traditional meeting house. They are watching a play at Wellington High School in New Zealand. The play is performed entirely in te reo Maori, the language of New Zealand's indigenous Maori people. Indigenous people are the first group of people to live in a particular area.

Maori are members of a Polynesian people of New Zealand. They first arrived on the islands in the early 13th century. According to Maori history, Maori migrated from a land they called Hawaiki. Historians are not sure if Hawaiki actually existed or if it is just part of the Maori oral tradition. However, they generally agree that the first inhabitants were from eastern Polynesia in the central Pacific.