Talk:Māori people


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Indigenous?

I'm not sure if this has been discussed before but use of the term is, IMO, questionable. The definition in the Cambridge dictionary is used to refer to the people who originally lived in a place, rather than people who moved there from somewhere else, or to things that relate to these people. Well, Maori are defined by everyone as people who discovered and emigrated to NZ from somewhere else, thereby making them no more indigenous than Europeans. NZ is described as being a land uniquely was discovered twice, by an eminent NZ historian. A better description would be to say they were the first settlers of NZ rather than the indigenous population. In common usage the word indigenous generally describes people who have lived somewhere for a very long time. The first European contact was barely 300 years after Maori arrived and European settlement started 500 years after Maori arrived, which in the scope of human history is almost negligible. Other wiki articles about NZ refer to Maori as the first settlers not as indigenous. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 08:18, 28 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"b, usually Indigenous : of, relating to, or descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a place and especially of a place that was colonized" [1] - the meaning in use here. It is a highly non-mainstream and borderline conspiracy theory to suggest that Māori are not indigenous to New Zealand. Daveosaurus (talk) 09:34, 28 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not denying there are two ways to look at this, hence saying it is is questionable (ie not beyond doubt). Indigenous can also mean the first inhabitants I agree but the NZ situation is fairly unique, as I said. The 'b' definition fits better with places like Australia, the Americas of much of Africa where the people who were there had always been there. It fits less well in places where the first human settlers have a clear record of their arrival in the land and they define themselves as settlers from somewhere else, as do Maori. For example, Icelanders are better defined as Norse settlers rather than the indigenous population of Iceland. However, I accept that Iceland has not been later settled by other people so use of the word indigenous isn't usually necessary. I still think it is slightly better to refer to Maori as the first settlers rather than indigenous. Calling it a conspiracy theory is inaccurate. If it were mainstream we wouldn't get plenty of articles and publications where indigenous is not used. It could be said that referring to Maori as indigenous and settlers 500 years before other settlers is having it both ways - as being known as excellent navigators and settling a new land owned by nobody, and as being oppressed indigenous people who have always been living in the country. A more accurate way to approach this IMO is to view Maori as the first of two groups of settlers on an uninhabited land. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 11:04, 28 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A perusal of this article's history would have quickly revealed whether, and how often (how very very often), this has been litigated before. We have consensus going back years. "Indigenous" means the first inhabitants of a place, and is usually used in contrast with a later-arriving people, generally when there is a history of colonization. Both those conditions are met in the case of Māori. Length of settlement prior to colonization is not part of the definition. There is no place on Earth where the indigenous people grew out of the ground like mushrooms; everyone came from somewhere at some point. Hence making "did not come from somewhere else" part of the definition of "indigenous" would render the word referentless.
—VeryRarelyStable 11:28, 28 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the Americas, Eurasia, Australia, and the Pacific were all settled by people who originally came from somewhere else. Gawaon (talk) 12:08, 28 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, maybe there was earlier debate and consensus, I did not check. That still does not stop raising the question again though. Nothing is ever black and white with definitions, including the word colonisation. For example, India, NZ, the Falklands, Gibraltar, were all colonised by the British but what that actually entailed in each case is quite different, so putting a fixed meaning to colonisation is inappropriate. As above, I think 'first settlers' is a better description of Maori rather than indigenous. Using the word colonisation for the Chathams, for a more local example, is also open to debate, with three colonisations, all quite different.Roger 8 Roger (talk) 12:40, 28 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Do you want to right a great wrong? That fight about who deserves "first settler" status belongs outside Wikipedia, not here. Gawaon (talk) 12:45, 28 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The point about coming from somewhere else is that the first people had a clear understanding as part of their culture that they did come from somewhere else. That excludes most indigenous people in the Americas and Africa and Australia. It certainly does not exclude Maori or Icelanders. And, no, there is no righting a great wrong, it's called looking at the evidence and reporting that evidence accurately. As said before, there are two ways to view this and I lean slightly to one side, that is all. It appears from your comments that it is you whose mind is closed and assuming things. I suggest you stick to the point raised, open your mind to look at the evidence and avoid veering off topic. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 12:48, 28 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What do the sources call them? ―Panamitsu (talk) 20:57, 28 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Roger 8 Roger. Point 1: The OED defines 'indigenous' as "Born or originating in a particular place; spec. (now often with capital initial) designating a people or group inhabiting a place before the arrival of (European) settlers or colonizers." Seems clear-cut enough to me. Point 2: The article is about NZ Māori, even though it has the shorter title 'Māori people'. It is not about Cook Islands Māori, or Tahitian Maohi, or Hawaiʻi Maoli. In this edit last year, you said "... the people settling in NZ were, up to the point of arrival and settling, European. Even if we accept that pakeha is the commonly used term for them now, they weren't pakeha until after they arrived and settled." By the same token, 'NZ Māori' were not NZ Māori when they arrived in NZ from somewhere else. They were probably Cook Islands Māori or Tahitian Maohi. NZ Māori culture and language developed in NZ and the East Polynesian settlers became NZ Māori subsequent to their arrival. Māori seem pretty indigenous to me. Nurg (talk) 00:54, 29 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Panamitsu, Micheal King, in his History of NZ [1], in chapter One refers to Maori as the first human inhabitants of the country. I have taken the view that there will be no clear preference in sources, so we would then be free to take a uniform approach for the sake of uniformity on wikipedia. Some other wiki articles refer to Maori as first settlers, not indigenous, which is why I raised the question. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 01:13, 29 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Insofar as uniformity on Wikipedia is something to strive for, this is the main "Māori people" article, so other articles that mention Māori should take their lead from it, not vice versa. —VeryRarelyStable 02:42, 29 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But "first human inhabitants" and "indigenous" are not at all in disagreement? If King doesn't use the term "indigenous" then that only shows that he prefers other wordings, not that he considers the term as inapplicable here. To make your point, you would have to show a widespread tendency (not just a fringe view) in relevant works to accept the term "indigenous" for other peoples, but reject them for the Maori specifically.
Also, our own article Indigenous peoples defines them as "non-dominant people groups descended from the original inhabitants of their territories, especially territories that have been colonized". That seems to fit the Maori very well. Gawaon (talk) 03:17, 29 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That is not the point. The comparison to make is between Maori and other groups who have relatively recently settled in a place and use that settlement as part of their culture. That leaves only a relatively small group, including as Icelanders. These people IMO are not the same as people like Australian Aboriginals. The word indigenous is not specific enough, as various dictionaries show: its meaning, although generally being 'original inhabitants who have been living somewhere for a very long time', can vary depending on context. My point is that the NZ context makes that general meaning less appropriate than when used for somewhere like Australia or Brazil. The word coloniser is even more ambiguous and again depends on context. It does not fit with Maori 'very well'. No, there is no priority with wiki articles beyond the grading of quality so this article does not have priority. King's use of the phrase mentioned shows he used that phrase, that is all, and that is the point - some quality sources do not use 'indigenous' to describe Maori. Your use of 'fringe' weakens your argument, BTW. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 07:25, 29 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Given that the article describes the origin of the Māori people succinctly in the lede section immediately after using the word "indigenous", exactly what confusion do you think remains? Why is this such an important distinction that it must be made by overturning the existing terminological consensus?
—VeryRarelyStable 08:08, 29 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If King refers to somebody (but not the Maori) as "indigenous", I missed that in what you wrote above. If not, then my point still stands. Non-use of fringe sources is standard practice and should be entirely uncontroversial; nowhere did I write or imply that King is fringe. Gawaon (talk) 09:54, 29 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Once again, this is something about nothing, so in that sense I agree with VRS. In summary, the sentence in the lead with indigenous in it had a reference. I removed the word indigenous because the source did not use that word. I said use of the word there was OR because it wasn't referenced. I then said many sources and other wiki articles use first settlers, not indigenous, and then we entered the realm of assumptions that this was some sort of anti-maori swipe by someone, me, who dares not to join the treaty bandwagon but sticks to what boring old academic sources actually say. Is there something wrong with checking that the source used confirms what is written? The direction this discussion should have followed was first to get a rough division of what sources use - indigenous vs first settlers. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 11:02, 29 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm all in favour of sticking to what "boring old academic sources actually say"! Nevertheless, you seem to think there's a major difference between indigenous and first settlers? If one follows our own article on Indigenous peoples, cited above, and regards "original inhabitants" and "first settlers" as largely synonymous (as seems plausible to me), then they rather seem to boil down to the same thing. Gawaon (talk) 14:21, 29 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So which academic source drew a meaningful distinction between "indigenous" and "first settlers", and what (according to said source) was the difference in meaning? —VeryRarelyStable 21:27, 29 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What source do you have that says that Māori are not indigenous to mainland New Zealand? You're making the claim - you back it up.
we entered the realm of assumptions that this was some sort of anti-maori swipe by someone, me, who dares not to join the treaty bandwagon You're getting well into "doth protest too much, methinks" territory here. Daveosaurus (talk) 22:22, 29 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is silly, IMHO. By the common understanding of the phrase "indigenous people" (the original people of a land that was later colonised), the Māori certainly qualify. The fact that they were among the most recent-arriving (if not the most recent-arriving) of such original people worldwide makes them perhaps noteworthy, but still "indigenous".PatricKiwi (talk) 22:43, 30 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

References

Moriori origin

About today's changes, I am not giving an opinion, just referring to the source used in the lead sentence. Although not specifically stated, the source does indicate that Moriori originated more from early East Polynesians, than from early Maori, makng Polynesian a better word to use than Maori. Use of 'early Maori' is opinion, not in the source. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 23:25, 3 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Here are the relevant paragraphs in the cited article:
The Moriori are the indigenous people of Rēkohu (Chatham Island) and Rangihaute (Pitt Island), the two largest islands in the Chatham group, 767 km south-east of mainland New Zealand. It was once believed that Moriori were a Melanesian people, but it is now clear that they share the same Polynesian ancestry as Māori people.
Current research indicates that Moriori came to the Chatham Islands from New Zealand, or possibly also directly from East Polynesia, in the 1400s. Moriori traditions, however, hold that there were already people on Rēkohu when the canoe voyagers arrived.
Since this article is about Māori people, not Moriori people, and since this is the lede section we're talking about, I don't think it's either necessary or appropriate to go into close detail about the evidence for ancestral Moriori people having come from Archaic Māori origins in Aotearoa – the mainland trees they brought over with them, for example.
It is clear from archaeological and linguistic evidence that at least some of the ancestors of the Moriori people were Archaic Māori. The linguistics – the fact that ta rē Moriori is closer to te reo Māori even than Cook Islands Māori or Tahitian – indicates that it was the Archaic Māori segment of the population whose language continued to be spoken as the culture evolved, for which the simplest explanation is that they were the majority.
Given the events of the 19th century and their ongoing aftermath I understand and respect why Moriori people might want to de-emphasize their ancestral connections with Māori. That doesn't alter the evidence, however.
Of course in describing the situation – especially in describing it succinctly for a lede paragraph – we run into the problem inherent to all language, that of drawing arbitrary boundaries between categories which are in fact continuous: in this case East Polynesians and Archaic Māori. Since the people we're talking about had already been living in Aotearoa for over a century, I think it is less misleading to say Archaic Māori; except that in the lede section we don't and shouldn't use the technical term Archaic before taking the time to define it and explain its usage, hence the phrasing some early Māori.
—VeryRarelyStable 00:39, 4 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
All well and good. I was just pointing out that the sentence in question had a source attached and from that source the better word to use is Polynesian. The solution is to alter the lead sentence, including the unnecessary source - the lead should summarise the article below. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 01:48, 4 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I agree it should be removed. The source doesn't support the claim and it isn't related to Maori people very much. When Polynesians arrived in New Zealand they were not Maori — they became Maori at a later point when they formed a distinct culture and ethnicity. Traumnovelle (talk) 05:30, 5 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
They did not "become Māori at a later point". That's not how culture works. There was no day, no month, no year, and no decade at the beginning of which they were not Māori and at the end of which they were. We can just barely delineate the century in which that could be said to have happened. To quibble over whether they were Māori yet is to ask a question without an answer. I suggest reading up on the sorites paradox.
The Te Ara source isn't the best; I'm adding in a reference to Michael King's book Moriori: A People Rediscovered. Unfortunately the Google Books preview doesn't have page numbers, and I presume the foreword and possibly the prologue have Roman numerals and the main numbering starts later on. Fortunately he discusses Moriori origins in the very early chapters.
As for why I think the sentence should stay, I think we do need to mention just once that New Zealand has two indigenous peoples rather than one; but because there is a widespread and persistent myth about Moriori having been the original inhabitants of the mainland, I think we also need to describe the historical relationship between the two peoples as succinctly as possible. I don't think you can get much more succinct than what we've got.
—VeryRarelyStable 08:17, 5 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Are you saying they were Polynesian as they jumped out of their waka but the moment their feet touched dry land they were Maori? Roger 8 Roger (talk) 10:11, 5 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I refer you also to the sorites paradox. —VeryRarelyStable 10:57, 5 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
(Also, nitpick – Māori have never stopped being Polynesian.) —VeryRarelyStable 10:57, 5 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
They were both. See the disambiguation page Māori for cognates of the word throughout Polynesia.
To put it into perspective: can you name a date where the German and Danish immigrants into Britain 1500 or so years ago decided that they were going to be "English" instead of random Germanic tribes? Daveosaurus (talk) 06:22, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Michael King states: 'The ancestors of the Moriori were the same as the ancestors of the New Zealand Maori: East Polynesians'
'Some early Māori moved to the Chatham Islands, where their descendants became New Zealand's other indigenous Polynesian ethnic group, the Moriori.' is a misrepresentation of the sources -- none of the sources state that Moriori are descended from Maori.
As to the idea that they were always Maori (an idea that doesn't exist in modern anthropology): 'The key assumptions were that New Zealand was settled by a relatively small number of people and that classical Maori society emerged from its tropical Polynesian roots after centuries of gradual adaptation and culture change.' [2]
Cited in this article to make a similar claim.
'As for why I think the sentence should stay, I think we do need to mention just once that New Zealand has two indigenous peoples rather than one; but because there is a widespread and persistent myth about Moriori having been the original inhabitants of the mainland'
We don't base our leads on dispelling fringe ideas, that isn't what an encyclopaedia is. The lead already says that Maori are the indigenous people of mainland New Zealand. Traumnovelle (talk) 18:50, 5 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
A fuller quote from King:
From East Polynesia, some of their descendants migrated north to Hawaii, others to Easter Island, and still others south-west to New Zealand; and from New Zealand, sometime between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries A.D., to the Chathams.
Evidence that the final migration was from New Zealand is explicit. Artifacts have been found on both Pitt and Chatham Islands – but more especially on Pitt – made from New Zealand materials (obsidian and argillite). Other Chathams artifacts – necklace units, bird spear points, quadrangular adzes – are shaped in styles known to archaeologists as New Zealand Archaic; and some of them have been found only in New Zealand and on the Chathams. Sections of Moriori vocabulary reveal inextricable links with New Zealand (kawhai [Moriori] and kahawai [Maori] for the fish caught off the Chathams and New Zealand, for example; and kopi, the Moriori name for the karaka tree is a Maori name for the tree and its fruit, and the tree is found nowhere else in Polynesia other than the Kermadecs). The Moriori language as a whole shows a far closer affinity to Maori than to any other Polynesian dialect, with shared innovations that set them apart from other Polynesian languages and reveal their common origin.
Boldface emphasis mine (italics original). So King states very clearly that the settlers of the Chathams were from mainland New Zealand.
The dates of the two settlement events have been narrowed down considerably since King's book was written, and they're about 150 years apart (c. 1350 for mainland New Zealand, c. 1500 for the Chathams). Even giving a generous 50-year margin of error at both ends, that's still a couple of generations of settlement in Aotearoa before the migration to Rēkohu.
And even if we stick strictly to King's own statements, the fact that Moriori shows a closer affinity to te reo Māori than to any other Polynesian language (even Cook Islands Māori and Tahitian) necessarily implies that te reo Māori had already diverged from Cook Islands Māori and Tahitian by the time of the migration.
King may refer to the culture of these migrants as "New Zealand Archaic", but present-day archaeologists call this culture "Archaic Māori", which is the usage followed by both this article and the Māori culture article.
Archaic Māori culture was the ancestor of both Classic Māori and Moriori culture, and as such it was not identical to either; but it was already distinct from the culture of tropical East Polynesia. If we're using cultural distinctiveness from East Polynesia as our benchmark for whether we call a population "Māori" or not, these people were Māori.
As I recall, when I inserted the word "mainland" into the opening sentence a few years ago, people kept taking it out again until I made it clear, in the lede paragraph, that this word was necessary to distinguish Māori from Moriori. My first fix was to make the distinction in the opening sentence itself, which made it clumsy and awkward; another user came up with the solution that we now have.
—VeryRarelyStable 00:04, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I'm removing the claim. It fails WP:V, please do not re-add it until you have a source that explicitly states that the Maori moved to the Chatham Islands and became Moriori. Traumnovelle (talk) 00:54, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
King literally says exactly that but for a purely terminological nicety over the usage of a word. Consensus has not been reached. —VeryRarelyStable 02:14, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Two users have stated that the content isn't supported by the reference and you are the only one who is saying otherwise. WP:ONUS suggests that without a consensus to include it should be excluded, so either way the content should not be included as it currently stands. Traumnovelle (talk) 02:19, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
By what criterion do you distinguish "Māori" as such from other East Polynesians? —VeryRarelyStable 02:24, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't matter how I distinguish it. Sources do not support the claim that Maori went to the Chatham Islands and became the Moriori, they support the claim that a common ancestor of the Maori and Moriori did so. Traumnovelle (talk) 02:27, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Those common ancestors being of what ethnicity? —VeryRarelyStable 02:29, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
A parallel statement: "Sources do not support the claim that Europeans went to New Zealand and became the Pākehā, they support the claim that a common ancestor of Europeans and Pākehā did so." —VeryRarelyStable 02:31, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps you should focus on sources and policies instead of such fallacious reasoning. Traumnovelle (talk) 02:36, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
(Two users aren't a consensus on a page edited by dozens.) —VeryRarelyStable 02:24, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
You can't assume that users who haven't commented on the issue in question support the content. Traumnovelle (talk) 02:28, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
However, since it's come up, let's call for some responses. @Daveosaurus: @Gawaon: @Panamitsu: @PatricKiwi: @Gadfium: input is requested. —VeryRarelyStable 02:28, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Its actually 3 users [3] Traumnovelle (talk) 02:30, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Could you point out which exactly is the statement in question or which two alternative versions of it are under discussion? I haven't followed this dispute closely. Gawaon (talk) 02:58, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
The prose in question is 'Some early Māori moved to the Chatham Islands, where their descendants became New Zealand's other indigenous Polynesian ethnic group, the Moriori.' and the locus of the dispute is whether this claim is supported by the given sources or not. Traumnovelle (talk) 03:14, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Since I was asked for my opinion...
If no reliable sources say that Moriori descended from "Māori", then we should not say this in Wikipedia. However, we want to make it clear that the Moriori are (primarily) descended from the people who came from the New Zealand 'mainland', and not directly from other parts of Polynesia. We can get around this by noting that the term "Māori" was not used until quite recently - i.e., the arrival of Europeans (people who were not 'normal' or 'ordinary'). Therefore, we can accurately say something like: "The Moriori are descended from Polynesians from the New Zealand 'mainland' (the people now known as "Māori")". PatricKiwi (talk) 13:28, 8 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
If not "cultural distinctiveness as compared to East Polynesia", what is your suggestion for the semantic boundary of the word "Māori"? Should we remove the early history section from the article because it's about people who weren't Māori yet? —VeryRarelyStable 02:17, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
From East Polynesia, some of their descendants migrated north to Hawaii, others to Easter Island, and still others south-west to New Zealand; and from New Zealand, sometime between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries A.D., to the Chathams. (M. King)' This is clear - the sentence subject is 'their (ie moriori) descedents' went from east polynesia to nz and from there to the chathams. You have chosen to change 'their descendents' to 'maori' between the moriori descendents arriving in nz and leaving nz. You have also chosen to add the word mainland to join the two seperate places mentioned in the source, ie nz and the chathams, into one place, ie nz. From that original research you have added the unsupported opinion that nz has two indiginious ethnic groups. IMO this is a good example of how seemingly minor unimportant alteration to what sources say can lead to information in wikipedia that is misleading or simply wrong. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 04:40, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I've had a look and find 5 RSes that speak on this matter. Here's the key text of them, in order of publication from oldest to newest (citations are abbreviated).
  • King, Michael. Moriori: A People Rediscovered. "The ancestors of the Moriori were the same people as the ancestors of the New Zealand Maori: East Polynesians ..."
  • Clark, Ross (1994). Moriori and Māori: The Linguistic Evidence. "All this is consistent with the commonly held view that the ancestors of the Moriori and the Maori were the same people, who lived in New Zealand for some time after its original settlement, and that some centuries ago a group of these people discovered the Chatham Islands, settled there and became the ancestors of the Moriori."
  • King, Michael. The Penguin History of NZ. "... a group of New Zealand Polynesians transferred themselves by canoe ..."
  • Denise Davis and Māui Solomon in Te Ara. "... they share the same Polynesian ancestry as Māori people."
  • Brett, Andre (2020). 'I'm not even making that up': Myths about Moriori and denials of indigeneity in New Zealand. "The standard view of historians and archaeologists is that Moriori are descended from or closely related to the same East Polynesians who became Maori in New Zealand."
None of them say that Moriori are descended from 'Māori' (or 'Maori'). VeryRarelyStable is applying logic and saying that those NZ Polynesians must have been Māori. Maybe – but all these sources avoid making that deduction. Nurg (talk) 10:50, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's interesting how our article Moriori handles this: "Moriori are Polynesians who came from the New Zealand mainland around 1500 AD, which was close to the time of the shift from the archaic to the classic period of Polynesian Māori culture on the mainland. Oral tradition records migration to the Chathams in the 16th century. The settlers' culture diverged from mainland Māori, and they developed a distinct Moriori language, mythology, artistic expression and way of life."
So the first half-sentence says that they are Polynesians (which is of course correct, if vague); the second half says that by that time the Māori culture on the mainland (NZ) shifted from archaic to classic – implying clearly enough that there was Māori culture on NZ and the ancestors of the Moriori belonged to it. The following sentences confirms this, pointing out that the Chatham settler's "culture diverged from mainland Māori" (their point of origin – emphasis added) over time. Now I know of course that Wikipedia is not a RS, but I think nobody seriously disputes these facts. By 1500, the Māori had been on NZ for about 250 years, so of course they had started to develop their own culture and society, the Māori culture. What else could it have been?
Our Māori history says, in agreement with what's said above: "Early Māori history is often divided into two periods: the Archaic period (c. 1300 – c. 1500) and the Classic period (c. 1500 – c. 1769)." If the Moriori did not descend from the Māori, that article would have to be totally rewritten, asserting that to speak of Māori becomes possible only during the Classic period (not even at its beginning, at that would leave the matter in doubt). Now I'm not an expert in the relevant literature, but I have never heard of anyone making such a claim, which sounds highly implausible to me. Gawaon (talk) 11:56, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I think one reason for use of polynesian over maori is the lack of firm evidence, specifically written evidence. All we have is archaeological, some linguistic, detail and possibly DNA. The rest, especially oral accounts, is weaker evidence that some people will treat with due care and skepticism. Therefore, trying to say with any certainty what actually happened is difficult if not impossible, with a lot of reliance on educated guess work. This is a simple fact that is often played down, especially by those trying to create a history of pre-1800 NZ. That does not counter the undoubted advances in dating methods made in recent years. People love certainty and when certainty does not exist they often try to invent it. An assumption being made here is that these pre-1500 people were maori, because they lived in the archaic maori period. That term is simply a label used for convenience and has no bearing whatsoever on what those pre-1500 people were like. We can dismiss as nonsense this notion that these polynesians were transformed into a different ethnic group the moment they landed. Even if we did have firm evidence as to what they were like and how and they changed after they arrived, saying when the switch happened is a matter of opinion. At what point, for example, does a Korean immigrant now, or his offspring, become more New Zealand than Korean? There is no answer. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 22:32, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I mean, my mother became a New Zealander when she arrived here, but she has never stopped being Scottish. A lot of problems about describing ethnicity dissolve away when you stop treating it as an exclusive category. You can have more than one.
As to the specific word Māori, that is a cognate of other Polynesian demonyms including Moriori, Māoli, and Māohi. All come from the same Polynesian root meaning "ordinary" or "common". All were adopted by their respective Polynesian speakers to distinguish themselves from Europeans when that need arose. Since there were no Europeans in New Zealand before 1642, the people there would not have had occasion to describe themselves in such a way; but since the cognate word was co-opted multiple times for that exact purpose in different parts of the Pacific, it's reasonable to suppose that if the people of Archaic New Zealand had encountered Europeans, they would have used (the ancestral form of) the word Māori to describe themselves.
But even in referring to "evidence" of that kind or any other, we misconstrue the situation. The following facts are not in dispute, given the sources already adduced:
  1. Polynesian people settled in the main New Zealand archipelago around 1350; they were the first people to do so.
  2. Their culture and language changed as they settled in to the new environment and had only sparse contact with other Polynesians.
  3. By 1500 their descendants' material culture was already distinct from that of tropical East Polynesia.
  4. Around 1500 some of those descendants settled in the Chatham Islands.
  5. Whether or not other Polynesian people had a part in settling the Chatham Islands, the group from mainland New Zealand were culturally and linguistically dominant.
  6. Both cultures and languages continued to change over the following centuries; by 1800 they were distinct from each other as well as from the ancestral culture.
  7. In the 19th century the mainland descendants used the word "Māori" to distinguish themselves from the European newcomers, while the Chatham Islanders called themselves "Moriori".
  8. Both those demonyms were subsequently adopted into English.
What is in dispute here is the following:
  1. When discussing the Polynesian people who lived in New Zealand before Europeans arrived, at what point should we start referring to them as "Māori"?
  2. Just because these people were the first settlers in either place, does that mean we should refer to them as "indigenous"?
Neither of these is a question of fact at all; they are questions of terminology, that is of word usage. As such they are not amenable to being corrected by "evidence" as the first eight statements are. No possible "evidence" about the facts can dictate to us what terminology we should use. The questions we need to be asking are: What terminology is known to our readers when they first come to the page? What is the least misleading way to succinctly communicate facts 1–8? What is consistent with the language we use elsewhere?
—VeryRarelyStable 01:23, 7 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
What we do is summarise what RSS's say, succinctly and accurately. That is very often not done in WP articles. It takes time to read and understand what the source is saying and time in deciding how important it is so as to judge what weighting it should receive in a reasonably short wiki article. Often, we should not just take a one-liner out of context. That was my very first point that started this discussion - the sentence used was not what the source was saying. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 01:52, 7 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
It isn't an issue of terminology. The claim given in the article is different from the provided sources and from other sources provided by Nurg. The article as it currently stands contradicts the given sources. Traumnovelle (talk) 01:53, 7 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
The difference is solely in whether they call the pre-1500 inhabitants of New Zealand "Māori" or "ancestors of Māori". That is a matter of terminology.
If I am wrong on this point, then there must be some objective test whereby one discovers whether a person is or was "Māori", of that subset of people whose late 14th-century ancestors lived in New Zealand. Both sides of this present debate have asserted that there exists no such test. Therefore, there can be no "evidence" that settles the question, and this is solely a matter of the usage of words.
I can report – for what it's worth – that the standard practice in archaeology in 2020, as demonstrated by Professor Ian Barber (who is cited repeatedly in this article) in his undergraduate classes, was to refer to both the Archaic and Classic populations as "Māori", as we do in the current form of this article.
—VeryRarelyStable 03:16, 7 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it's preferable to give explicit sources for this terminology, of course, but the idea "these Polynesians living in NZ for 250 years were not yet Maori, but 150 years later, that had finally happened" seems highly implausible. One can argue about how long it took for a distinct Maori culture to develop, but anything longer than "2-3 generations" seems odd. Gawaon (talk) 03:28, 7 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
The objective test is what the sources say, and as demonstrated multiple times they do not support the text in the article. Traumnovelle (talk) 03:45, 7 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not so sure of that. It seems many sources agree that the people who lived around 1500 in NZ were Maori, and many sources agree that some of the people who lived around 1500 in NZ became the ancestors of the Moriori. So is it WP:SYNTH to draw the logical conclusion from these two well-sourced facts or it is just plain logic? Personally I think a logically inevitable conclusion does not yet fall under (forbidden) SYNTH, but I understand that the point can be argued. (A related case: If source 1 says "The 1940s started in 1940 and ended in 1949" and source 2 says "X happened in 1947", is is OK to conclude that "X happened in the 1940s" or is it illegal SYNTH because that specific year was not explicitly mentioned in source 1?)
Leaving this question of SYNTH or not aside, I remember having repeatedly read that the Moriori are descended from the Maori and would think that RS saying this are not actually that hard to find. But I'm no expert in this specific subject matter and have to leave the literature research to others for the time being. Gawaon (talk) 04:21, 7 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
But we don't rely on a source to say '1947 is in the 1940s', because its a basic fact and just part of standard English. This is far beyond a basic fact and does require a source to confirm it. Traumnovelle (talk) 04:50, 7 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Well, my point was whether we are allowed to use plain logical deduction or whether that already falls under SYNTH. Another example could be: if we have sourced information (a) "X was born in Toulouse in 1922" und (b) "Toulouse has belonged to France since before World War I", could we write that "X was born in France" or is that already illegal SYNTH? Gawaon (talk) 06:25, 7 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
What the sources say is a matter of their terminological conventions. These are not necessarily the same as Wikipedia's terminological conventions. Word usage is not an objective test. Nor should Wikipedia follow the terminology of sources written for a higher level of expertise than Wikipedia's own target audience; the point of an encyclopaedia is to present facts to a broader audience, in more familiar language. Furthermore, older sources may be out of date; "Archaic Māori" is the current convention.
May I ask: when a source from 1985 (say) talks about "the 16th-century ancestors of the Māori" rather than "the 16th-century Māori", what distinction in meaning does this nuance in word usage convey to you as reader?
—VeryRarelyStable 04:24, 7 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
What source are you quoting here? Traumnovelle (talk) 04:51, 7 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I'm being hypothetical, because I'm asking you a question about the meaning of words and your reading comprehension. When a past source talks about "the ancestors of the Māori" (meaning people living in New Zealand rather than tropical Polynesia) instead of calling them "Māori", what distinction in meaning does this distinction of wording convey to you? —VeryRarelyStable 21:32, 7 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Now here I have to agree that if the sources talk about "the ancestors of the Māori", we can't turn that into "the Māori". My grandmother was not I. Gawaon (talk) 02:32, 8 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
And you think ethnicity is as clear-cut as individuality? My grandmother was not I either, but I am a Scottish New Zealander because my grandmother was Scottish. —VeryRarelyStable 22:10, 8 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
But if you are a Scottish New Zealander, does that inevitable mean that your grandmother was a Scottish New Zealander too? (To restore the exact parallel to the wording in question.) Gawaon (talk) 02:43, 9 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
A related question is whether the Moriori should be in the lead at all? The article is not about them, after all, so a mention in the first paragraph of the lead strikes me as unexpected and unwarranted. Currently they have one sentence in the body (plus a short mention) and another one in the lead. As the lead is meant to summarize the most important points of the body, I think we should just remove them from there – unless their coverage in the body is considerably extended. Gawaon (talk) 03:35, 7 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

No, Moriori should not be in the lead but that is off topic so we can focus on the topic being discussed. As mentioned, 'Archaic maori' describes a period, not the people, as far as I know. People in Dublin live in the British Isles but are not British, they're Irish. That simple fact is lost on many Irish people who think it labels them as British. To keep the peace, and not for terminological correctness, the name of the British Lions was changed to the clumsy British and Irish Lions. The simple fact is we do not know what the people in NZ were like in 1500 and probably never will. The very limited evidence we do have can give only an indication of what they were like. There is no set time period for how long an immigrant community takes to change into a new community. Also, how do we know that during the great voyage from east polynesia some canoes did not veer off course and land at the chathams, and were then met 200 years later by people from mainland NZ who took over and absorbed the small barely surviving community already there? We don't know because there is no evidence. Saying Moriori were from the same polynesian stock as maori is correct, and saying maori settled on the chathams around 1500 is correct (scientific evidence), but where does it say anywhere that the chathams were uninhabited at the time? Some firm evidence we do have is that maori went to the chatchams in ?1835 and slaughtered the inhabitants, so why can we not conclude the same did not happen in 1500? We have evidence that maori did do that sort of massacre of other communities. IMO, you are assuming too many things and not looking properly at what quality sources are saying and perhaps listening too to many lower quality sources such as TVNZ, Stuff or Wikipedia. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 06:30, 7 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Researching what might have happened on the Chathams once the Archaic Maori (or however they are usually called – but that label seems widespread and appropriate enough) arrived there is now really not our task. We should focus on what the RS say and leave the research to others. Gawaon (talk) 11:52, 7 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Well, we know there wasn't a slaughter of earlier inhabitants on the Chathams in 1500 because that would have created a large amount of corpses which would then show up in the archaeological record as a large amount of skeletons, which the Chathams do not have. There will be sources on that at the Moriori and Chatham Islands articles. I realize that not everyone has had the privilege of sitting in on Professor Ian Barber's New Zealand Archaeology course at Otago University, but this is not something that is in doubt.
"There is no set time period for how long an immigrant community takes to change into a new community" because even phrasing it like this in the first place fundamentally misrepresents the situation. Cultural difference is not a matter of there being different kinds of people, and hence cultural change is not about people changing from one kind of people into another. Each person is a unique individual and most individuals belong to more than one community.
—VeryRarelyStable 21:41, 7 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
"There is no set time period for how long an immigrant community takes to change into a new community" Idon't think you understand what this sentence means, or that meaning's relevance here. You also don't seem to understand some basic concepts and principles ingrained into wikipedia. No skeletons found, there was therefore no killing of existing inhabitants, is what you are saying. See wp:synth. Also see the Sounds murder article especially the defence position that no body=not guilty, a long established legal view. How do you know the bodies weren't dumped at sea, bones ground down and burnt, eaten, not found yet, or something else? Yet again, you are putting your own personal unsubstantiated opinion into this discussion. I don't care what prof Barker said in a lecture, it's irrelevant to this article - get RSS's. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 22:53, 7 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
To repeat myself: there will be – no, there are – sources at Moriori and Chatham Islands. The latter quotes this from one Kerry R. Howe:
Scholarship over the past 40 years has radically revised the model offered a century earlier by Smith: the Moriori as a pre-Polynesian people have gone (the term Moriori is now a technical term referring to those ancestral Māori who settled the Chatham Islands).[1]
So we have at least one source referring to the ancestors of the Moriori as Māori.
I'm pretty sure WP:SYNTH doesn't mean we have to entertain scenarios advanced with zero evidence on the basis of "how do you know it didn't happen?"
—VeryRarelyStable 00:47, 8 January 2026 (UTC) —VeryRarelyStable 00:47, 8 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, let's look at this source of yours. 1/ the author is saying what others think, not what the author is thinking. The sentence in this article is stating a fact which means we need a source confirming the author himself confirms it is a fact, not an author confirming what other people think. This source is not talking about the sentence in question - it is talking about the earlier idea that moriori were a pre-maori/polynesian-settlement people, ie pre 1300. 3/ The 'pre-ancestral maori' are the east polynesians, that could refer to people in nz before 1500 or people from somewhere in east polynesia who had never been to nz - it does not make any assertion that moriori on the chathams came from nz or that they were maori. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 02:10, 8 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
"the term Moriori is now a technical term referring to those ancestral Māori who settled the Chatham Islands" seems to be clearly enough a statement of what the author regards as current consensus view (an important hint for us, especially in the absence of sources contradicting this) and their own viewpoint (since they seem to be in agreement with what they regard as consensus view, otherwise they had voiced their opposition). Gawaon (talk) 02:37, 8 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
The absence of sources confirming ABC does not means we can add ABC because we think if there were sources they would confirm ABC. It certainly does not mean we can add a source that makes an indirect mention of the sentence in question but does not actually confirm it - which is what too often happens, as here, and leads to incorrect statements in articles. The term is not referring to ancestral maori, it's referring to pre-ancestral moari. That means the people who were not yet ancestral maori. That means two steps before people who could be called maori. That could mean east polynesians who had not reached nz, or east polynesians very soon after arriving who had not shown any signs yet of becoming a new, maori, race. In context of the source quoted the author is talking about the earlier supposed people (pre-ancestral maori) who were moriori who lived in nz when maori arrived, an idea now debunked. So, the source has nothing to do with how or from where the moriori people on the chathams actually got there, its talking about who those people might have been. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 03:22, 8 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
There's always a certain risk of misinterpreting sentences taken out of context, sure enough. However, I have now checked the full book, and it still confirms what an intuitive reading of it suggests: this is the view presupposed by the author as "now" consensus view. To rephrase it: a group of ancestral Māori settled the Chatham Islands and became known as Moriori. He mentions this just in passing and accepts it as general knowledge, so sources that explicitly discuss the origin of the Moriori would be even better to support this claim, I grant you that. But even so, this source clearly supports the claim, and it is an RS. Gawaon (talk) 03:42, 8 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
That could mean east polynesians who had not reached nz, or east polynesians very soon after arriving who had not shown any signs yet of becoming a new, maori, race.
And here is the central misapprehension. "Race", at least if conceived as would be required for this sentence to make sense, does not exist. This topic has already swollen to monster size, so I suggest – not for the first time, if I recall correctly – that you go and do some careful reading and following of sources at Race (human categorization), rather than us having to rehash it here. The word "Māori" refers to a culture – which is itself a complicated and fuzzy-edged concept, but at least refers to something that exists.
—VeryRarelyStable 03:54, 9 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
The sources that contradict it are the ones given by Nurg, including 2 that postdate the source. Traumnovelle (talk) 03:26, 8 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The term Howe used is "ancestral Māori". On the face of it, that term is ambiguous. It could mean 'early Māori', which is the interpretation that VeryRarelyStable is taking. Or it could mean the ancestors of the Māori, per part of the OED definition, "Of a thing, concept, etc.: that precedes or gives rise to the ... development of something; serving as a forerunner ... [etc.]

Let's look at what Howe said a few years later in Te Ara. "... scientists proved that Chatham Island Moriori, like Māori, were descendants of the original Polynesian settlers of New Zealand."[4]. "Polynesians were the first settlers in New Zealand.... Some time after 1300 ... a number of these people sailed ... to the Chatham Islands. .... In the 1830s some Māori arrived at the Chatham Islands .... This was the first time these two peoples, who shared the same Polynesian ancestry, had met in three centuries."[5] So, when he said "ancestral Māori", I think he meant the forerunner of Māori.

Another source is arguably also ambiguous. Philippa Mein Smith (2012), A Concise History of New Zealand, said "While Maori developed into fiercely competitive groups with a warrior class and culture, a splinter group – Moriori – found its way from the South Island to the Chatham Islands some time before 1500." That could be taken to mean that the splinter group were themselves Māori. However, her next sentence starts "This youngest group of East Polynesians ...".

Richards, Rhys (2019). Moriori: Origins, Lifestyles and Language. "the changes from Eastern Polynesians to Tch Hiti to Moriori .... The Tch Hiti people from East Polynesian [sic] probably arrived at the Chatham Islands only four or five centuries ago ... this first group of the East Polynesian settlers, Tch Hiti, while en route from East Polynesia, had visited New Zealand at least briefly. ... these East Polynesian groups developed and merged (hokopite) to become Moriori."

Anderson, Atholl (2014). Tangata Whenua: An Illustrated History. Including this for the sake of comprehensiveness, as it's not a lot of help. "South Polynesian colonists .... A group of the early migrants, probably after reaching NZ, also found and settled the Chatham Islands, where they remained as a permanent population of Moriori."

So, what do Professor Ian Barber's articles say.

  • Ian Barber, Justin Maxwell (2011). "A collaborative archaeological research and conservation project for Moriori carved trees (rakau momori), Rekohu (Chatham Island)". "It is believed that early Polynesian settlers introduced kopi trees to the Chatham Islands."
  • Barber (2012). "Archaeological art debates and Polynesian images in place." "... on the ... Chatham Islands, the founding Polynesian Moriori people"
  • Barber & Maxwell (2012). "Evaluating new radiocarbon dates from midden deposits near Moriori tree carvings, Rekohu (Chatham Island)." "The Polynesian Moriori of the ... Chatham Islands are associated with a novel carving expression .... researchers now believe that early Polynesian voyagers transferred New Zealand karaka as a fruiting food source to the cool Chatham Islands ...."
  • Barber, Maxwell, Petchey (2016). "A radiocarbon investigation of Moriori forest use on Rēkohu (Chatham Island), southwestern Polynesia." "Permanent Polynesian populations were established across New Zealand .... We investigate this theme for the indigenous Polynesian (Moriori) settlement of the ... Chatham Islands."

The articles don't say they were not Māori, but choose to call them Polynesian rather than "Māori". Nurg (talk) 04:29, 8 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

How about we change "a group of Māori migrated east to the Chatham Islands" to "a group of ancestral/Archaic Māori migrated east to the Chatham Islands" then? That would stick closely to what the sources say, avoiding the ambiguity of whether these ancestral/Archaic Māori were already Māori without adjective. Whether "ancestral" or "Archaic" is chosen should depend on what's more frequent in the sources. Gawaon (talk) 05:31, 8 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Why not just say Polynesian like the sources do? Traumnovelle (talk) 07:51, 8 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Yes Nurg, sorry I mis-quoted pre-ancesral/Maori so that part should not be there, but the rest stands as does the conclusion. Gawaon, again, 'ancestral maori' could mean the polynesians sunbathing on a Tahitian beach, or those same polynesians 100 years after reaching NZ. It has a broader meaning than 'archaic maori' which means people who had, at least in part, begun to be maori, in other words they were already in NZ. Alternatively, the word archaic in archaic maori could be describing the archaic period - 1300-1500 - which still refers to those polynesians after they arrived in NZ. Thanks to Nurg for that excellent summary of sources. IMO, they all lean towards calling these people polynesian because that is broader and safer than the more specific word maori, ie intentionally non-committal. And to finish, why not do what Traumnovella says - use Polynesian like the sources do. This lengthy discussion has happened because the word Maori was changed to Polynesian, contrary to the source, and some people weren't happy when it was pointed out and corrected back to Polynesian as the source says. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 08:58, 8 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
What was changed to what? I just checked the version from one month ago, and "Some early Māori" (lead) or "a group of Māori" (body) were described as the ancestors of the Moriori already then. My understanding is that it's you who wants to change to well-established long-term consensus. Which if of course your right if what we say disagrees from the sources, but I don't get the impression that such a disagreement has been convincingly established. And Polynesian is an extremely broad term, covering everybody in the larger region, so that they were Polynesian does not at all rule out that they were Archaic Māori or whatever. Gawaon (talk) 09:40, 8 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I can remember roughly what was changed to what; it was a few years ago.
Back then the lede sentence read Māori are the indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand.
Since New Zealand includes the Chatham Islands, and the indigenous Polynesian people of the Chathams are Moriori, I changed this to Māori are the indigenous Polynesian people of mainland New Zealand.
Someone changed it back. I changed it again. Someone else changed it back again. This happened several times. So I put in something like (from memory):
Māori are the indigenous people of mainland New Zealand, one of New Zealand's two indigenous Polynesian peoples (the other being Moriori).
There was argument over that; it was widely felt to be awkwardly worded and overly complicated, and I agreed. Someone else put the first sentence back to Māori are the indigenous Polynesian people of mainland New Zealand, and at the end of the paragraph added the sentence
The descendants of some early Māori migrated to the Chathams and became the Moriori.
From which I changed it to its current form.
—VeryRarelyStable 23:55, 8 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for clearing that up! Gawaon (talk) 02:36, 9 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Because "Polynesian" could mean people from anywhere in Polynesia; it doesn't convey the information that these particular Polynesians came from mainland New Zealand. —VeryRarelyStable 22:11, 8 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Why don't we just follow the sources and state that the Moriori are descended from East Polynesians who briefly settled in New Zealand? Traumnovelle (talk) 22:26, 8 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Because it's less succinct and communicates no information not already conveyed by the existing sentence. —VeryRarelyStable 23:45, 8 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
We're talking about a period of roughly 250 years, does that really count as "briefly" for you? 250 years ago, the US hadn't even been founded yet. Gawaon (talk) 02:39, 9 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Briefly is the wording one of the sources use. Traumnovelle (talk) 02:46, 9 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
We follow RS, but we don't follow any single one of them blindly. If one sources uses "briefly" and others point out that it was, in fact, about 250 years, we may use our own reasoning to conclude that copying the word "briefly" while omitting the actual time span would be UNDUE and misleading in this context. Gawaon (talk) 03:05, 9 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Which sources specifically state that the ancestors of the Moriori were present on mainland New Zealand for around 250 years? Traumnovelle (talk) 03:06, 9 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
No idea, I'm not an expert in the literature on this topic. For me, it's an application of WP:CALC. Gawaon (talk) 03:15, 9 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think WP:CALC should apply here, because its entirely possible that the Moriori were from a later migration for example. Richards (2019) seems to suggest such a thing, at least based on the snippet provided by Nurg. Traumnovelle (talk) 03:19, 9 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately it seems I'm unable to get access to Richards so I can't check what exactly he says. But "this first group of the East Polynesian settlers, Tch Hiti, while en route from East Polynesia, had visited New Zealand at least briefly" seems to me like the retelling of a myth rather than a summary of the state of research. From Moriori#Origin, it seems the Moriori's ancestors arrived from mainland NZ in a single canoe or a group of canoes, likely because their canoe(s) had accidentally been blown off course. There is, as far as I know, no evidence they had before lived in "splendid isolation" separated from the rest of the inhabitants of NZ, even less that they were just "passing through" from elsewhere. They were simply a part of the people who by then had been living on mainland NZ for about 250 years (now we call them Maori) and they got separated from the others, quite possibly by accident, which lead to them founding their own culture, now known as Moriori. If their ancestors had in fact come from somewhere else, just "passing through" mainland NZ for a few days, months, or years, I'm sure we would have RS saying so – but I don't know of such RS, and I kinda doubt Richards makes a convincing case for it either. Gawaon (talk) 06:31, 9 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I meant someone had changed Polynesia that was in the source (the better word to use) to Maori as they transferred information to the article. Sorry if that was not clear. My general comment is that detail added to WP often does not properly represent what the source says, this being such an example of that.
Micheal King (2003) in his History of NZ (illustrated version pp 45-50) spends a few pages on this topic. These quotations make it clear the people who went to the Chathams are better described as Polynesian than Maori. "The first New Zealanders were East Polynesian immigrants...Their descendants were the New Zealand Maori encountered and described by Europeans..." "Some time in the fourteenth or fifteenth centuriy, possibly after no more than a century's occupation of the mainland, a group of New Zealand Polynesians transferred themselves to this cluster of isolated low-lying islands..." Roger 8 Roger (talk) 02:03, 10 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  • I do not see a consensus to keep the current text amongst the discussion. Traumnovelle (talk) 19:44, 23 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    @Traumnovelle: In light of your edit today, can you please link us to the Wikipedia policy that says information should be removed entirely if consensus is not reached on wording? —VeryRarelyStable 07:57, 3 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    There is no consensus that the article should state that 'some Maori migrated to the Chatham Islands and became the Moriori', just because there might be consensus that for a different statement (one stating Polynesians not Maori) is not a reason to include the disputed content. Traumnovelle (talk) 08:01, 3 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    But the text in question has been in the article for a long time and "some editors don't like it" is not a sufficient reason for removal. Let's discuss how to improve the wording and a complete removal could be one possible outcome of such a discussion, but it's not the default outcome or something that can be done even in the absence of consensus. And so far the discussion has largely been about how to improve the wording (and whether it needs improvement), not about its removal (which would imply it's either unsourced or irrelevant for this article). Gawaon (talk) 08:36, 3 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    The wording is misleading as shown above by what sources largely state and the longer it is kept the more people that will see it and the more likely other sources will copy the information from Wikipedia. It should be removed until an agreed upon wording/sentence can be added. Traumnovelle (talk) 20:08, 3 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    Which wording would you suggest then? From as I read the discussion, it's only about whether to replace "group of Māori" with something else (e.g. "group of early New Zealanders" or "group of New Zealand Polynesians"), while the facts are otherwise undisputed? (We know they did it, only we aren't sure how to call them.) Gawaon (talk) 20:33, 3 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    We should follow the sources, so Polynesian. Traumnovelle (talk) 20:37, 3 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    But "Around the year 1500, a group of Polynesians migrated east to the Chatham Islands and developed into a people known as the Moriori" would seem incomprehensible or meaningless without the essential details that they migrated from mainland NZ, belonging to the early culture developing there that's described elsewhere in the same section. So how would you tie this to the rest of the section to make this connection clear? Gawaon (talk) 20:53, 3 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    You could say 'Polynesians that came from mainland New Zealand', but again do sources actually make this connection between the Maori people and the Moriori? If not, it isn't due/relevant. Traumnovelle (talk) 21:02, 3 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    We're talking about the "Early history" section here. What happened in the 15th century in mainland NZ clearly relevant for the History section of this article, and it talks about the people who lived there then, who were the ancestors of the Maori, the Moriori, or both. How could it not be relevant? Gawaon (talk) 21:09, 3 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    Whether it is relevant or not should be determined by the sources, and do sources about the Maori people and early history mention the Moriori migrating to the Chatham Islands or not? Traumnovelle (talk) 21:11, 3 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    The sources say that a group of Polynesian people settled in the main archipelago of New Zealand around 1350, and a group of their descendants settled in the Chatham Islands around 1500. When Europeans began to interact with these people in the 19th century, the descendants of the ones who had settled the Chatham Islands called themselves "Moriori", while the descendants of the ones who stayed in the main archipelago called themselves "Māori", both of which names were eventually adopted by the Europeans. There was significant cultural changes both before and after the Chathams migration.
    The sources are cautious about applying the word "Māori" to the people who lived here in 1500, since to some it might convey a false impression that there was no cultural change between those people and the Māori culture that existed immediately prior to colonization. They do not ever assert that these people "were not Māori", because that would convey to many people the far more serious falsehood that the Māori were a different group of people who came from somewhere else later on.
    If you want to restrict the subject of this article to people who, in their own lifetimes, used the word "Māori" as an ethnic identifier for themselves, that means getting rid of all information about people who lived here before the 19th century, because people didn't use that word in that way until they had Europeans around to distinguish themselves from. I'm hoping you'll agree with me that that would be overkill.
    If you're thinking of "Māori" and "Polynesian" as words that describe some objectively observable quality of particular people, other than their family history, and looking for the point at which that could be said to have changed, you will find no such point because that's not how it works. If you think that the sources, by using the word "Polynesian" instead of "Māori", are telling you that that objectively observable quality hadn't changed yet, you are wrong.
    —VeryRarelyStable 23:43, 3 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    'the sources are actually supporting my view despite stating otherwise and you are wrong' Traumnovelle (talk) 00:48, 4 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    Which source states that the New Zealand-based ancestors of the Moriori were not Māori? And what do you think is the substantive distinction between "Māori" and "New Zealand Polynesians"? —VeryRarelyStable 03:05, 4 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    Regarding the sources, "first New Zealanders", "East Polynesian immigrants" and "New Zealand Polynesians" are among the wordings cited by Roger 8 Roger, and "Archaic Māori" is a wording cited by VeryRarelyStable. Only "Polynesian" without any further qualification doesn't seem to be a very popular choice, I suppose precisely because it's such a vague term that it means very little. Gawaon (talk) 20:55, 3 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    For clarity, I'm talking about the text in the body; once that's resolved we can figure out what to do about the sentence in the lead. Gawaon (talk) 20:36, 3 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    There is no disputed content. There is only disputed wording. —VeryRarelyStable 09:36, 3 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Howe, Kerry R. (2008) [1st ed. 2003]. The Quest for Origins: Who First Discovered and Settled New Zealand and the Pacific Islands? (Rev. ed.). Auckland: Penguin Books. p. 182. ISBN 9780143008453.

Inclusion?

Because today the entire paragraph was removed, and the corresponding sentence in the lede, we have a distinct albeit related issue we apparently need to come to an explicit consensus on. Separately from whether we refer to the people involved as "Māori" or "Polynesians", is the New Zealand origin of the early Moriori worth a mention on this page? Should we keep or remove this information?

  • I say Keep. It is relevant information for this page, just as it is relevant to mention Scotland in the Ireland article or Carthage in the Phoenicia article. —VeryRarelyStable 07:54, 3 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't see why it would be due/relevant to include that Polynesians became the Moriroi. The two sources given in the lead are about Moriori and not Maori. Traumnovelle (talk) 08:03, 3 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep at least in the body. Not sure whether it's sufficiently relevant for the lead, but I think it's essentially undisputed that some of the early inhabitants of mainland NZ moved on to the Chathams and became the Moriori. Regardless of whether they are called Māori, Archaic Māori or something else, the fact as such is not in dispute as far as I can tell, and it's clearly relevant for this article, as those who remained became the Māori of today. Omitting it smacks of censorship, and Wikipedia is not (or should not be) censored. Gawaon (talk) 08:23, 3 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per VeryRarelyStable's comprehensive explanation further up this page. Daveosaurus (talk) 00:29, 4 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  • The Moriori story is only relevant to Maori if there was some sort of connection, which there wasn't until the 1830s. I mean not just between the people but between anything created by the exodus and the people left on the mainland, such as a well known folk story. The connection has been created in recent times. Mass exodus of UK citizens post WW2 out to the colonies was relevant to the people left behind because it created a labour shortage, lead to immigration from other parts of the Empire to fil the gap, that caused other problems, and because Harold Wilson in one of his speeches asked those who'd left to come back. No connection like that happened with those who'd left the NZ mainland. If such a connection does exist it should be found in RSSs, which it isn't. Added to that is the problem that those who left were not fully Maori, so even if there is a connection we then have to find another connection between Polynesian and Maori. And, there is the problem of evidence, or lack thereof, which created a lot of guesswork. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 02:12, 4 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    "those who were left were not fully Māori" What are you talking about?
    It would be hard to define what was the impact on Ireland of the Dál Riata kingdom expanding into Britain and forming Scotland, or what was the impact on the Phoenician city-states of the foundation of Carthage. Nevertheless, those are significant facts in Irish and Phoenician history respectively.
    —VeryRarelyStable 03:25, 4 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Please read my post again: your comparison is flawed. The Irish and Scottish parts were connected, they knew of each other, intermingled, there is contemporary written evidence of a connection etc, making them two parts of one entity. That was not the case with the Maori and Moriori who had no connection - not until Europeans made each aware of the other, and some Maori chose to go over and help themselves. Again, how did Moriori affect Maori in any way before Europeans arrived? Without such a connection it's questionable if we should mention Moriori in this article about Maori. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 06:53, 4 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
None of that has any bearing on why I think it's significant to mention those events. If Ireland and Scotland had lost contact in the Middle Ages, it would still be a notable fact about Ireland that the Scots came from there.
A better comparison might be with Yeniseian languages. It is a significant fact about this Central Siberian language family, significant enough to mention in the lede of the article, that it is related to a North American Na-Dene languages, despite the fact that there have been millennia without direct contact between the two language groups.
I'm still asking what you mean by "those who were left were not fully Māori".
—VeryRarelyStable 07:07, 4 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
The Maori and Moriori had the same ancestors until around the year 1500, when their ways separated. How is that not a strong connection? Gawaon (talk) 08:05, 4 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Changing from being East Polynesian to Maori doesn't happen overnight, it will taken generations. How long exactly is impossible to know. It's also not known exactly when the move over to the Chathams took place. It's quite possible the gap between arriving in NZ and leaving for the Chathams was only 100 years which in my book means a full switch from Polynesian to Maori had not happened. That is what I mean by not fully Maori. In modern times I've heard it said, and seen myself, that immigrants to a new country don't fully assimilate into the new country till the fourth generation, and that is where they are surrounded by people and culture of the new country. Polynesians arriving in NZ would have had none of that and their only cultural knowledge to live their lives around would have been the Polynesian ways and customs they brought with them. But, we don't know, all this is educated guess work - their is very little evidence to work with. Till 1500? The Moriori and Maori still have the same ancestors and always will have. What is it about their common ancestry that has in any way affected Maori? Roger 8 Roger (talk) 09:51, 4 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Why do we need it to "affect Māori"? It's notable because it happened, not for its "effect". I've made that point already.
I'm noting a thread of misapprehension running through your answer:
  • Changing from being East Polynesian to Maori doesn't happen overnight, it will taken [sic] generations.
  • which in my book means a full switch from Polynesian to Maori had not happened.
  • immigrants to a new country don't fully assimilate into the new country till the fourth generation...
I'm going to say this as clearly as I can. This "change" you refer to, this "switch from Polynesian to Māori", is something that does not happen at all.
The underlying assumption appears to be that humans come in different "kinds", as if we were cars and were mass-produced in distinct makes and models. That is not what ethnicity is and it is not how cultural difference works. Cultures do not change from one kind of humans to another kind of humans either suddenly or gradually, because there aren't different kinds of humans for them to change between.
This is at least the third time I'm referring you to Race (human categorization) if you want to pursue that concept further.
Your reference to "assimilation" in four generations should clue you in to the fact that something is amiss with your conception of the situation. There was no prior culture for the Polynesians to "assimilate" to in mainland New Zealand in 1350, nor was there one in the Chathams in 1500. If cultural change is a matter of "assimilating" to the people surrounding you and thus becoming the same kind of human they are, then there can have been no cultural change in either mainland New Zealand or the Chathams.
Culture exists because we learn how to live in the world from other humans (and because "the world" that we have to live in, consists in large part of those humans). Cultural variation exists because we're all individuals and can come up with our own ideas and innovate; we learn from each other but we don't imitate each other mindlessly. Culture is constantly changing, little by little, every time someone comes up with a new idea.
If we want to talk about that change and that variation, we have to use words, and so we have to draw artificial boundaries across it. But the idea of culture or ethnicity as something with natural boundaries that can be found is not merely out of step with the facts, it is conceptually incoherent.
—VeryRarelyStable 11:11, 4 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with VeryRarelyStable here, and additionally: We are talking about a single sentence and about two peoples who are arguably and undeniably the closest relatives of each other. How is that no relevant, or "too much"? To me this feels like to want to omit, in a history of the British people, that some of them went off to found what's now the United States and Canada. So I ask again: why hide this entirely uncontroversial and undisputed fact? It's not like we're talking about several pages here which could be UNDUE – a single sentence is clearly not too much. (Nor would several be.) Gawaon (talk) 11:22, 4 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. It seems that the scope of the article (and the Māori history article) covers, at the least, the Polynesian inhabitants of mainland NZ from the time that they arrived in NZ. We don't have a separate article about early NZ Polynesians before they became the Māori and the Moriori. Given the scope, it seems valid to mention that a group of New Zealand Polynesians migrated from mainland New Zealand to the Chatham Islands, where they became the Moriori. Nurg (talk) 10:42, 5 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Pronunciation tags

user:VeryRarelyStable Today's edit - What do you mean by not neutral? How can a pronunciation be anything other than the way someone pronounces the word? Neutrality does not exist. A pronunciation tag should only be used when there is genuine doubt about such things as stress points and silent letters. You are talking about people's accents, not pronunciation. I don't think there should be any pronunciation tags there because the word is in common use throughout the English speaking world and a person seeing it for the first time would have little trouble pronouncing it correctly. The Maori pronunciation is little different from the English pronunciation, not enough to justify a pronunciation tag. Some English placenames based on Maori words would, however, need a pronunciation tag but not the word "Maori". Am I missing something? Roger 8 Roger (talk) 08:11, 22 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I have heard Americans on YouTube mispronounce it /mɛj'ɔri/.
As any New Zealander is aware, the pronunciation of Māori words when using them in English is one front in the ongoing political debate over the place of Māori language and culture in contemporary New Zealand society. It's hard to find secondary sources for this, or I'd have already introduced it to the Māori language article, but there are primary sources in great abundance. That one side of that debate's position is "this isn't important enough to be worth bothering with" does not render it neutral.
—VeryRarelyStable 08:35, 22 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say that pronunciations don't have to be "neutral" (what would that even mean in this context? people speak as they speak), but they should be sourced to reliable dictionaries in case there's any doubt that they are actually and commonly used. Gawaon (talk) 09:29, 22 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say "neutral" would be prioritising descriptivism over prescriptivism, ie we should use the most common pronunciation rather than one that is used by the minority of people. As the English pronunciation used by most NZ speakers (speaking anecdotally) has become the non-anglicised one in the past few decades (the "politically correct" one), I'd say that it would make sense for us to use that pronunciation and not the "old" one, as most people don't seem to use it anymore. I never hear the "old" pronunciation on TV anymore. ―Panamitsu (talk) 22:51, 22 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Do you mean in NZ or everywhere in the English-speaking world? wikt:Maori has [ˈmɑːɔɾi] for NZ, but /ˈmaʊɹi/ as general (rest of the world?) pronunciation. If such a contrast between "inside NZ" and "outside NZ" is indeed common, we should likely list both in a note, with a short explanation. Gawaon (talk) 09:36, 23 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Good point, I hadn't thought about outside of NZ. ―Panamitsu (talk) 22:19, 23 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Both /ˈmaʊri/ and /ˈmæʉri/ are supported by the Oxford English Dictionary, with the former being UK/American English and the latter being NZ English. We should follow the sources and they support the inclusion of /ˈmaʊri/ and /ˈmæʉri/.
Although the IPA and pronounciation should be in the footnote, not outside it. Traumnovelle (talk) 19:49, 23 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
If we mention the other pronunciations we need to discuss the political discourse around their use; otherwise we are presenting them as neutral and universally accepted, and in so doing taking one side in the debate, which would put us in breach of WP:NPOV. That's a discussion that I feel could be included at the appropriate place in Māori language if we can find a suitable reliable secondary source (as I have said, there exist primary sources in abundance), but I think it's too much for the lede sentence of this article.
—VeryRarelyStable 00:52, 24 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Only showing one pronounciation (implying the others are incorrect/invalid) seems more like an NPOV issue than not providing context around the pronounciations, which is out of scope for the lead and probably this article in general. Traumnovelle (talk) 01:24, 24 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with VRS that this has a political dimension, but note it is part a much wider and ongoing discussion over many years. However, in this case I'm not sure that fact is relevant. Certain people will use the Maori pronunciation for whatever reason, but it isn't particularly different from a non-Maori pronunciation. I expect an English speaker from the American South or the back streets of Glasgow would pronounce it even more differently. If it is used, the safest option is to insert the two variations noted in the OED. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 01:52, 24 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, common pronunciations should be covered, but there's no need to get involved into any discussions about which is "better" or "preferred". Gawaon (talk) 09:36, 24 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I have re-added the pronounciations with a citation to the OED. Traumnovelle (talk) 21:06, 24 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
OK, first of all, what edition of the OED is this? It's a subscription-only version, so it's difficult to check. I have never heard a New Zealander pronounce it /ˈmɐʉɹiː/, and that first vowel isn't even in the English IPA page that it's linked to. It sounds like an attempt at the utterly distinct word mauri, which means something in the semantic neighbourhood of "life-force" or "essence" and is usually heard, in otherwise English-speaking contexts, in the ceremonial phrase tīhei mauri ora.
/ˈmæʊɹiː/ (or /'mɛʊɹɪi/ if we're transcribing NZE diphthongs accurately) is how we used to pronounce it in the 1980s, but I only hear it these days in the mouths of people at least ten years older than me. That's why I have to ask, how up-to-date is this edition?
In contemporary NZE (by my observation) the pronunciation is determined by education and politics. Highly educated people, and moderately educated people who are sympathetic to pro-Māori politics, use the endogenous Māori pronunciation: /ˈmaːɔɾi/. Less educated people who are sympathetic to Māori politics tend to say /'mɔʊɾi/ or /'mɔʊdi/. People who are not sympathetic to Māori politics generally say /'maːɹɪi/, to which when speaking of the Māori people they usually add an English plural suffix and make it /'maːɹɪiz/. This is frequently qualified by uncomplimentary adjectives; certainly, when the uncomplimentary adjectives come first, you can be pretty confident that /'maːɹɪiz/ is the pronunciation you'll hear, unless they substitute in an offensive slur.
—VeryRarelyStable 00:56, 25 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Its the online edition and the entry was revised in 2023. The OED gives ˈmʌːori as the IPA not ˈmɐʉɹiː for the other pronounciation, I will replace the IPA with the one given by the OED. I'm not familiar with IPA myself and cannot read it. Traumnovelle (talk) 02:33, 25 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I'll have to know what dialect of English you speak in order to explain properly what these IPA transcriptions say, because vowel quality is the main differentiator of the different accents of English, and so (for example) something like "mow-ree" conveys a very different pronunciation to a New Zealander, an American, and a Scot. But to a NZE speaker, the transcriptions cited here are approximately
  • /ˈmæʊɹiː/, /'mɛʊɹɪi/ = "mow-ree" (mow to rhyme with now); this is the elderly Pākehā pronunciation
  • /ˈmɐʉɹiː/ = "moe-ree"; this might, with charity, be transcribing how a Scottish speaker might attempt the above, although a Scot wouldn't use the [ɹ] form of /r/
  • /'mɔʊɾi/, /'mɔʊdi/ : this is when people pronounce it to sound like "mouldy". The OED's /ˈmʌːori/ may be another attempt at something like that, but again I've never heard such a thing.
  • /'maːɹɪi/, /'maːɹɪiz/ = "mah-ree", "mah-reez"; this is the hostile pronunciation
  • /ˈmaːɔɾi/ : this is how the word is pronounced in te reo Māori, and it is the official pronunciation used (including when speaking English) by our public broadcasters; see e.g. Humphrey, Hewitt (2 August 2015). "Te Reo Māori - why we say it like that". Retrieved 25 January 2026.
—VeryRarelyStable 07:44, 25 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Traumnovelle has already fixed the pronunciations given in the article which had apparently contained an error before. So I think we are done here? Gawaon (talk) 08:38, 25 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
The NZE pronunciations are (to my observation as a native NZE speaker) still incorrect and, to the degree that they're correct, outdated. I can't double-check the OED citation because the version cited is subscription-only. —VeryRarelyStable 09:08, 25 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
The OED includes spoken recordings and both match what I hear in day-to-day life. Wikipedia Library has access to Oxford Reference, which may provide access to the entry. Traumnovelle (talk) 09:11, 25 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Here's what OED has. Their "transcriptions use the symbols of the [IPA], following set transcription models for" each variety of English. For British English, but not NZE, they also provide a Simple Text Respell (STR). Their audio files are stored on AWS and I think you'll be able to listen.
  • British English /ˈmaʊri/ MOW-ree, with their pronunciation key giving 'a' as in 'trap', 'bath', and ʊ as in 'foot'. The key for the STR gives 'ow' as in 'mouth'. BE audio
  • NZE /ˈmʌːori/ (their "close representation of the Māori pronunciation"), with the key giving 'ʌː' as in 'start', 'palm', 'bath'. NZE Māori audio
  • NZE /ˈmæʉri/ (their "anglicization"), with æʉ as in 'mouth'. NZE anglicization
Apparently they consider their BE and their NZE anglicization to be pronounced the same, with the 'māo' pronounced as 'mou' as in 'mouth'. I note that the audio in the article is not NZ Māori – it is Cook Islands or Rarotongan Māori (there are four recordings of different Cook Islands text by the same speaker on Commons). Nurg (talk) 10:17, 26 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the third one is recognisable as the way older Pākehā say it. The second one... in a spirit of charity, I'd have to say I guess they were doing their best... but no, even Pākehā speakers attempting the Māori pronunciation get closer to it than that. And they don't have the "mouldy" or "mah-ree" variants, both of which are more common (these days, in my hearing, among people my age and younger) than their "NZE anglicization". —VeryRarelyStable 11:03, 26 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
The New Zealand Oxford Dictionary (2005) gives two pronunciations, /ˈma:ɔri/ and /ˈmaʊri:/. According to the preface, the first is "an approximation to true or correct Maori pronunciation", and "minimally Anglicised pronunciations of Maori words ... can be regarded as a marker of current standard NZE ...". It also notes that "pronunciations representing a greater departure from authentic Maori ... are nevertheless frequently heard in NZE, the degree of Anglicisation varying", and the second pronunciation is "a more English pronunciation". Nurg (talk) 00:47, 27 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
So we could use this dictionary as source for the two NZ pronunciations it gives and the OED as source for the single UK pronunciation it gives. Gawaon (talk) 08:39, 27 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I think a 2023 entry is more likely to be accurate than a 2005 entry, although linguistics isn't my specialty. Both dictionaries are providing two pronounciations: an Anglicised form and a form that attempts to emulate how it is said in Maori, just that the 2005 dictionary has a description/note about it, which we could include too. Traumnovelle (talk) 20:15, 27 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Antarctica

There's a paragraph at the end of the History section that amounts to fringe theory and I think should be removed or shortened. I raise it here first only because of all the sources, that really are all repeats of one story. The same story was dealt with in the History of Antarctica article where it was wrongly positioned. If there are no objections I or someone can deal with it soon. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 06:15, 25 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed most of it but left the source describing the pseudo-history nature of the story. It supposedly happened well before Polynesian settlement in NZ anyway so has little connection with Maori. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 20:49, 25 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
allikas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:M%C4%81ori_people