The basic history and culture of New Zealand to get more from your trip

I once worked for an advertising agency in London while it was commissioned by Tourism New Zealand to undertake some extensive research into what immediately comes to mind for British people whenever they think of New Zealand. I imagine TNZ anticipated some combination of sheep, cinematic scenery, rugby, wine, kiwis, Māori, maybe the Lord of the Rings, to inform their upcoming marketing campaign. What in fact came back was the revelation that British people hardly ever think about New Zealand at all.

Of those I know who have been, half rave about the list expected in this word-association research, while the other half say it is all a bit like Wales in the 1950s with Sunday closing but added unisex toilet wokeness. So, I came to find out for myself, on a six week road trip, roughly three weeks on each of the two main islands. Now I can see both points of view.

New Zealand is more than 18,000 kilometres and thirteen time zones from Greenwich, half a world away, and even over 2,000km east of Sydney. It is in the south-west corner of the Polynesian triangle, with Hawaii in the north and Easter Island in the south-east. With a population of five million people and 25m sheep, woolly ruminants are certainly high on the list. With dramatic landscapes of mountains, volcanos, glaciers, rivers, lakes and even simple farmland, plus coastlines of picture perfect beaches and sub-tropical islands, the box marked cinematic scenery is ticked for sure. No wonder much of the Lord of the Rings trilogy was indeed shot here.

Everyone knows the All Blacks are the team to beat in world rugby, and brands like Squawking Magpie and Cloudy Bay from Hawkes Bay and Marlborough have been climbing up the global league of fine wines for the past quarter-century. In fact, there are seven wine regions and we visited them all.

Of course, kiwis are not just birds (and fruit from China that was later named after the birds), they are also metonymies, obviously referring to people from New Zealand. Well, mostly white people, with European ancestry. Māori, the indigenous communities, rarely apply this nickname, which was first coined for New Zealand soldiers fighting alongside British Tommies in World War One, to themselves. And that is only the beginning of the cultural complexity of the two main ethnic groups in this country.

New Zealand was formed in the Carboniferous Period, about 300-350 million years ago, by continental drift and shifting tectonic plates. In sum, sediments deposited by the Gondwana supercontinent were uplifted by volcanic activity as they moved into the Pacific Ocean. That means New Zealand sits right at the meeting of the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates, a fact that has literally shaped much of its topography.

These are thought to be the last substantial habitable territories on the planet to be settled by humans. Lapita people from Papua New Guinea started island hopping eastward in canoes from about 1600 BC, and their heirs, Polynesian islanders, began landing here from the thirteenth century. They established a unique Māori civilisation on what they accurately called Aotearoa, land of the long white cloud. The first European, or Pākehā, to arrive was the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1642, who named the place after the western province of the Netherlands. The first to circumnavigate and map the islands was the British cartographer Captain James Cook in 1769, after which there were increasing visits from foreign adventurers, traders and missionaries.

There was constant conflict between different Māori tribes, who immediately developed a warrior culture in hillforts known as Pā, mostly on North Island. These flared into the Musket Wars between 1807 and 1845, when natives first acquired firearms from Europeans and used them to gain territory or seek revenge for past defeats, killing as many as 40,000 Māori and creating disunity among tribal chiefs at the very time they most needed to stand together.

The defining moment in New Zealand history came in 1840 with the Treaty of Waitangi, by which various Māori rangatira, hereditary tribal chiefs, allowed the islands to enter the British Empire. The ramifications of this deal continue to cause tensions to this day, of course, and it took only three years for differing interpretations, and disputes over settler desire to purchase land from Māori, to erupt in localised conflicts that descended into widespread fighting lasting almost thirty years. In the West, these are now known as the New Zealand Wars; by Māori this period is called Te riri Pākehā, “white man’s anger”.

From 1845, the local battle lines were complex, with the colonialists and some allied Māori on one side, and Māori with some supportive settlers on the other. After 1860, however, the skirmishes escalated dramatically as the British came to believe they were facing united Māori hostility – resistance to further land sales and refusal to accept Crown sovereignty – led by the Pai Mārire and Ringatū religious and political movements, which were at least campaigning to strengthen Māori identity.

British troops used this as an excuse to invade the eastern North Island and confiscate large parts of the Waikato and Taranaki regions. At the peak of the fighting, 18,000 British troops – backed by New Zealand and Australia government forces – fought 4,000 Kīngitanga, the Māori King Movement, in a guerrilla war with disproportionate loss of Māori lives. By 1872, the Kīngitanga retreated to the hills of King Country in western North Island and the war was over.

British settlement then expanded rapidly, bringing European infectious diseases particularly dangerous to Māori, and imposing a European political, economic and legal system that seized most of the land and left local people impoverished.

Meanwhile, the self-government of New Zealand set up in 1857 began to establish uncommonly progressive policy precedents, including retirement pensions and female suffrage (in 1893 a New Zealander became the first woman in the British Empire to become a mayor and New Zealand became the first country in the world where all women had the right to vote in parliamentary elections). These successes were rewarded in 1907 when New Zealand transitioned from colony to self-governing dominion within the British Empire. It sent troops to both World Wars, and established a regulated economy with a welfare state.

Britain continued to appoint the Governor-General and direct foreign policy until 1947, when the local parliament won the sovereign right to pass its own laws. Yet it was not until much later still, with the Constitution Act of 1987, that New Zealand became independent, finally revoking all residual United Kingdom legislative power.

Māoritanga, Māori Culture

 

From their arrival in New Zealand, Māori have been organised in tribes, or iwi, each with their own chiefs and their own identities. As they lost territory and rights throughout the nineteenth century, much of their culture was also suppressed. During the 1950s, when Māori began migrating to urban areas in search of better lives, the hideous levels of racism in education, employment and housing were fully exposed. This triggered a protest movement and a cultural renaissance that has gathered momentum, and since the 1970s has started to change Pākehā attitudes and policies.

 

Our experience was that New Zealand and New Zealanders are now trying hard to accommodate Māori culture and make amends for history. Almost every human settlement and natural phenomenon has two names, and a lot of deference is paid at guided tourist sites to the local Māori iwi.

 

In recent years, campaigns have focussed on addressing Treaty of Waitangi grievances (a permanent commission to investigate nineteenth century injustices has been sitting since 1975), language rights (their tongue – te reo – was officially recognised at last in 1987), land rights (significant holdings have finally been returned), and general anti-Māori racism. They have also promoted Māori culture.

 

Most visible to casual visitors are traditional arts, including tā moko (tattooing), whakairo (carving), raranga (weaving), kapa haka (dancing), and whaikōrero (orating). Many, including the Air New Zealand logo, incorporate the koru motif, a spiral shape resembling a new unfurling silver fern front, an integral symbol used to symbolise new life, strength and peace.

 

Despite the successes of the early Christian missionaries – and the Church remains highly influential in Māori society – much of their culture is based on traditional religious beliefs. For instance, all things are thought to possess a mauri (life force), so the god Tangaroa is that of all fish, Tāne is of birds, and Rongo is of plants.

 

It is not all a heritage industry though. In the twenty-first century, Māoritanga also includes contemporary arts such as film, television and literature. The novels of Witi Ihimaera (try The Whale Rider) and Patricia Grace (see Potiki) provide an insider’s view of the culture, while the 1985 Booker Prize Winner The Bone People by Keri Hulme has a significant Māori character.

 

Māori cultural values – known as tikanga – includes customs and practices about many aspects of human thought and behaviour. These are not enforced by a central authority but they are a fluid and dynamic set of practices policed solely through community accountability.

Before travelling, you must apply online for a New Zealand Electronic Travel Authority (NZeTA). They say it could take up to 72 hours to be processed, though mine took less than ten minutes to be issued. It costs only NZ$23 plus an International Visitor Conservation Levy of NZ$100, and it permits entry for up to six months without a visa. The checks on arrival to ensure you are not bringing plants or food into the country are taken extremely seriously. Given that the whole country is basically a protected botanical garden, I can see why.

The winter is wet and cold all over, so January to March is universally considered the best time to come, though as plenty of people will tell you, it is common to get all four seasons in a single day in New Zealand. Incidentally, rarely have I come across a sun that tans the skin so deep or bleaches the hair so fast.

In a country this brimming with things to see and do, six weeks will allow only a skim of its attractions. So there are of course plenty of things we missed this time, but we tried to craft a route that gave us insights into a broad range of what the country has to offer.

This was our route around North Island:

And this was our route around South Isand:

Both are both beautiful, but they are noticeably different. Insofaras there are urban centres, they are mostly in the north, along with the most visible Māori presence. The more spectacular geological features are in the south. Neither island has any litter, despite the policy of having very few public rubbish bins, or graffiti, except in the odd street art areas, though there is roadkill everywhere.

We toured North Island in a Jeep, booking hotels as we went along. On South Island, we had a campervan.

By fluke, the distances we travelled around each island were all but identical, though it took us a lot longer around South Island. This is because in the North we booked a Jeep while in the South we were in a campervan on much more twisty roads. Here are the rounded distances we went in kilometres, and in the time we took to drive directly from place to place:

You can find complete reviews of our tours on both islands at:

• North Island
• South Island

As they say in these parts, kia ora. Or, as they say even more often, sweet as.