Lecture 18-20

Plan:

1. Brief history of New Zealand

2. Government

According to Māori legend, Kupe, the great Polynesian navigator came to the South Pacific around 1200 years ago. His first sight was not of the land itself but of a long white cloud that hovered above it, and so he named it Aotearoa, which in Māori means the Land of the Long White Cloud. The country was later called New Zealand.

Today New Zealand is proud of its identity as a Pacific nation, based on a partnership between Pakeha, as New Zealanders of European origin are called, and Māori. At the heart of that partnership is the Treaty of Waitangi, an agreement that lives on as a national symbol for unity and understanding between cultures.

In fact, the main campus and the name Whitireia has been donated by the local tribe, Ngāti Toa. Whitireia means first light and is named after the local mountain that can be clearly seen from the campus.

POPULATION

By world standards, New Zealand is lightly populated at 4.25 million people. Eighty percent of the people are of European ancestry - mostly from Britain, but also from Holland, Germany, the former Yugoslavia, Greece and other nations. Many Chinese and Indians have also lived in New Zealand for generations. One in seven New Zealanders is Māori. New Zealand is an English-speaking nation and part of the British Commonwealth, therefore all New Zealanders speak English, but Māori is recognised as an official language and is becoming more widely spoken.

With fresh air, a clean environment, friendly people and everything from large metropolitan areas to small rural towns, international students find New Zealand a great place to live.

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