Rainbow Warrior

Matauri-Bay - Mataa-Uri-Hill

‘Māori’ is the name of the indigenous Polynesian people who settled in New Zealand centuries before the arrival of Europeans. They refer to themselves as “tangata whenua” – people of the land. They arrived in New Zealand during the thirteenth century; today they make up about 15 percent of the population of the island state. Their language, “te reo Māori”, is an official language in New Zealand. Here we see Hohepa Epiha, one of the chiefs of the Māori tribe, known as Ngati Kura, in the Matauri Bay region.