New Zealand’s Maori Party on 14th Seotember 2021 file a petition to officially change the country’s New Zealand name to “Aotearoa”, which means “land of the long white cloud” in the indigenous Te Reo Maori language.
The party also urge the Jacinda Ardern-led New Zealand government to restore the Maori names for all towns, cities and place names.
Petition States :
“It is well past time that Te Reo Maori was restore to its rightful place as the first and official language of this country. We are a Polynesian country we are Aotearoa,” the party which campaigns for indigenous rights said in its campaign. “Tangata Whenua (the indigenous people) are sick to death of our ancestral names being mangled, bastardised, and ignored. It’s the 21st Century, this must change,”.
The party said fluency in the native language fell from 90% in 1910 to 26% in 1950.
While Prime Minister Ardern is yet to remark publicly on the latest petition as she had in 2020 said it was a “positive thing” that the word Aotearoa is interchangeably use within the country.
She said an official name change was not something that we’ve explored.
New Zealand vs Aotearoa
The tribal population in New Zealand believes the name Aotearoa was first given by Kupe, an East Polynesian explorer who figures in Maori tales somewhere around 1200-1300 AD.
Ehen Kupe and his wife Kuramarotini, and crew were sailing to find out what lay beyond the horizon, they spot a large landmass shroud in white cloud in the distance.
It was then Kuramarotini shouted ‘”He ao! He ao! He Aotea! He Aotearoa (A cloud, a cloud! A white cloud! A long white cloud!)”.
In other versions of the story it is said it was Kupe’s daughter who spot the land, while some claims the land was name after the canoe Kupe was riding on.
The history behind the country’s present name goes back to the 1640s when Abel Tasman, a Dutch explorer with the Dutch East India Company (VOC), sighted the South Island.
The country then subsequently appears on Dutch maps as “Nieuw Zeeland”, name after the Dutch province of Zeeland.
A century later when English navigator Captain James Cook set foot on the Island and went on to draw detail and accurate maps of the country for the first time.
In Cook’s map, he mentions the country as “New Zeland”.
Conflict
While the term Aotearoa is often interchangeably use in New Zealand and also on some official documents, including the country’s passport, many in the country believe that Aotearoa was originally use to refer only to the North Island, rather than the whole country.
Some believe the name emerge only a few hundred years ago as Maori’s never had a name for these lands.
Criticising the name-change petition the New Zealand’s former deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters said that changing the country’s name and town and city names is “just dumb extremism”.
Historian Dr Rawiri Taonui also argues that the name finds a source in Maori oral histories and blame critics for being ignorant towards older Maori traditions.
“Taonui, who is an expert in Maori oral history cites 30 to 40 examples between 1846 and 1861.
Godfrey said that the origins of those oral histories, hands down generation to generation, are likely much older.
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