|
Moriori are the indigenous people of the Chatham Islands (Rekohu in the Moriori language), east of the New Zealand archipelago.
Origin
Moriori are a Polynesian people. Although it was once speculated that they settled the Chatham Islands directly from the equatorial Polynesian islands, scholars now agree that they were Māori who migrated from the southern South Island of New Zealand. Evidence supporting this theory is found in the similarity of the Moriori language to the Māori dialect spoken by the Ngai Tahu tribe of the South Island, comparisons of Moriori and Māori genealogies ("whakapapa"), and prevailing wind patterns in the southern Pacific. The Chatham Islands thus became the last corner of the Pacific to be settled during the period of Polynesian discovery and colonization.
Adapting to harsh climate
The Chatham Islands environment is more cold and harsh than the one the original settlers had left behind, and barely capable of supporting a population. The Chathams being unsuitable for the cultivation of most crops, Moriori adopted a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
Fighting
Moriori embraced a pacifist culture which rigidly avoided warfare, substituting it with ritual fighting and conciliation.
1835 invasion from Taranaki
In 1835, Māori from the Taranaki region of the North Island of New Zealand chartered a ship and settled the Chathams. They went on to slaughter and cannibalise the Moriori enslaving the survivors. The pacifist Moriori refused to fight and were thus easily defeated by Māori, who regularly resolved conflict through aggression.
The notion that Moriori were completely wiped out by Māori is incorrect. Although Tommy Solomon, the last Moriori of unmixed ancestry, died in 1933, there are several thousand Moriori descendants alive today.
Revival of culture
Recent years have seen a revival of interest in Moriori culture and identity, and some Moriori descendants have made claims against the New Zealand government through the Waitangi Tribunal, a court empowered to compensate Māori people for land obtained by fraud or by force since 1840.
Bibliography
The following book provides the only comprehensive and systematic account of Moriori existence. Its publication dispelled longstanding misrepresentations and untruths about Moriori which had been circulating among the New Zealand population.
External links
| 
