Some information about New Zealand culture

Around the 14th century voyegers from polynesia(Maoris) arrived at the islands of New Zealand, over the following centuries their settlements expanded and their culture started to grow and change from it´s original roots. The Maori people started to build villages and seperated into difrent tribes, hunting and fishing, trading , farming, doing art, building wepons and always keeping a detailed oral history alive. Then about 200 years ago Britain came along and desided they wanted to change some of that stuff. They brought their religion and technology, and was also nice enough to share the english language, this ofcourse had a dramatic effect on the Maori people. In 1840 the Maori people signed a treaty to try to get along with the brittish people but pretty soon(1845) it ended in war. The war didn´t go to well for the Maori who ended up losing both land and identity. During the century that followed the Maori slowly but surely ended up an minority group. Luckily, the Maori culture has been able to regain some of its influence during the recent decades.

The European New Zealanders kept strong cultural ties to England until the fall of the English Empire witch started the fading of the once strong ties. Instead the European New Zealanders turned to their own pioneering history to forge a new cultural identity influenced by their rural lifestyle and New Zealand uniqe but spectacular envirement.

In more recent years New Zealand has had it´s cultural horizon broddened by globalization and imigration fron The Pacific Islands, East Asia and South Asia. Europeans and Maori still remains the two largest ethnicities, but Auckland with it´s many polyniesian inhabitants is now the largest Polynisian city in the world.

Nowadays many New Zealand inhabitans prefer to refer to themselves as New Zealanders or Kiwis to minimise ethnic divisions.

The Maori people probably arrived in south-western poltnesia in several waves, starting sometime before 1300. Maori myths tells the story of a long voyage from their mythical homeland Hawaiki, from wich they left in large ocean-going canoes. Maori like to call themselfs "tangata whenua" wich means people of the land, thus marking the importance of a lifestyle connected to land and sea.

Pakeha culture(New Zealand European culture) is based mainly on the culture the brittish settlers brought with them in the ninteenth century. Even though this is the case the both cultures has distinct differences that has increased during time. Some of the distinct diffrerences are eligatarianism, anti-intellectualism and an idea that people can do anything as long as they just put their minds to it. The anti-intellectualism derives from the fact that New Zealanders don´t regard intellectual activity, particulary if it´s theoretical, very highly. This is linked to the New Zealanders idea of kiwi ingenuity, wich says that it´s better to solve a problem by trying as you go rather than aplying a theory. This theory was appearant in the early and mid twentieth century when the first Labour and other governments altough trying to achive traditionally socialist goals didn´t base them on any coherent theory. A break in this tradition came when Labour in the 80s made a series of reforms based on free market idiology. This in some poeple reinforced their distrust in intellectual theory as many people thought reforms increased poverty and inequality in New Zealand. Despite their believe in anti-intellectualism New Zealand has resonably high participation in tertiary education and has produced some internationally renowned scholars and scientists , altough it probably should be mentioned that many of these spent most of their professional lifes in Britain. For years this was common owing to the New Zealanders attitude and the low population wich made it hard to support major research.

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