New ZealandNew Zealand (Aotearoa aɔˈtɛaɾɔa) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island (Te Ika-a-Māui) and the South Island (Te Waipounamu)—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island country by area and lies east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and south of the islands of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga. The country's varied topography and sharp mountain peaks, including the Southern Alps, owe much to tectonic uplift and volcanic eruptions.
Austronesian peoplesThe Austronesian peoples, sometimes referred to as Austronesian-speaking peoples, are a large group of peoples in Taiwan, Malay Peninsula, parts of Mainland Southeast Asia, Maritime Southeast Asia, Micronesia, coastal New Guinea, Island Melanesia, Polynesia, and Madagascar that speak Austronesian languages. They also include indigenous ethnic minorities in Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Hainan, the Comoros, and the Torres Strait Islands.
PolynesiaPolynesia (UKˌpɒlᵻˈniːziə, US-ˈniːʒə) is a subregion of Oceania, made up of more than 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are called Polynesians. They have many things in common, including language relatedness, cultural practices, and traditional beliefs. In centuries past, they had a strong shared tradition of sailing and using stars to navigate at night. The largest country in Polynesia is New Zealand.
SavaiʻiSavaii is the largest and highest island both in Samoa and in the Samoan Islands chain. The island is also the sixth largest in Polynesia, behind the three main islands of New Zealand and the Hawaiian Islands of Hawaii and Maui. Samoans sometimes refer to the island of Savaii as Salafai: This is its classical Samoan name, and is used in formal oratory and prose. The island is home to 43,958 people (2016 census), and they make up 24% of the population of Samoa. The island’s only township and ferry terminal is called Salelologa.
Māori peopleMāori (ˈmaːɔɾi) are the indigenous Polynesian people of mainland New Zealand (Aotearoa). Māori originated with settlers from East Polynesia, who arrived in New Zealand in several waves of canoe voyages between roughly 1320 and 1350. Over several centuries in isolation, these settlers developed their own distinctive culture, whose language, mythology, crafts, and performing arts evolved independently from those of other eastern Polynesian cultures.
HōkūleʻaHōkūlea is a performance-accurate waa kaulua, a Polynesian double-hulled voyaging canoe. Launched on 8 March 1975 by the Polynesian Voyaging Society, it is best known for its 1976 Hawaii to Tahiti voyage completed with exclusively traditional navigation techniques. The primary goal of the voyage was to explore the anthropological theory of the Asiatic origin of native Oceanic people (Polynesians and Hawaiians in particular) as the result of purposeful trips through the Pacific, as opposed to passive drifting on currents or sailing from the Americas.
Polynesian navigationPolynesian navigation or Polynesian wayfinding was used for thousands of years to enable long voyages across thousands of kilometers of the open Pacific Ocean. Polynesians made contact with nearly every island within the vast Polynesian Triangle, using outrigger canoes or double-hulled canoes. The double-hulled canoes were two large hulls, equal in length, and lashed side by side. The space between the paralleled canoes allowed for storage of food, hunting materials, and nets when embarking on long voyages.
Māori languageMāori (ˈmaːɔɾi), or te reo Māori ('the Māori language'), commonly shortened to te reo, is an Eastern Polynesian language spoken by the Māori people, the indigenous population of mainland New Zealand. A part of the Austronesian language family, it is closely related to Cook Islands Māori, Tuamotuan, and Tahitian. The Maori Language Act 1987 gave the language recognition as one of New Zealand's official languages. The number of speakers of the language has declined sharply since 1945, but a Māori-language revitalisation effort that has begun since the late 20th century has helped to slow the decline.
Māori cultureMāori culture (Māoritanga) is the customs, cultural practices, and beliefs of the indigenous Māori people of New Zealand. It originated from, and is still part of, Eastern Polynesian culture. Māori culture forms a distinctive part of New Zealand culture and, due to a large diaspora and the incorporation of Māori motifs into popular culture, it is found throughout the world. Within Māoridom, and to a lesser extent throughout New Zealand as a whole, the word Māoritanga is often used as an approximate synonym for Māori culture, the Māori-language suffix -tanga being roughly equivalent to the qualitative noun-ending -ness in English.
Samoan languageSamoan (Gagana faa Sāmoa or Gagana Sāmoa; ŋaˈŋana ˈsaːmʊa) is a Polynesian language spoken by Samoans of the Samoan Islands. Administratively, the islands are split between the sovereign country of Samoa and the United States territory of American Samoa. It is an official language, alongside English, in both jurisdictions. It is widely spoken across the Pacific region, heavily so in New Zealand and also in Australia and the United States. Among the Polynesian languages, Samoan is the most widely spoken by number of native speakers.
