Moriori: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

The Moriori are the indigenous ethnic-group of the Chatham Islands (Rekohu in the Moriori language), east of the New Zealand archipelago.

Origin

Although some say the Moriori were a Polynesian people who settled on the Chatham Islands via an independent migration from the equatorial Polynesian islands, many scholars now say Moriori were simply Maori from the southern South Island who migrated to the Chathams. Evidence supporting this theory is found in:

• the similarity of the Moriori language to the Maori dialect spoken by the Ngai Tahu tribe of the South Island;
• a comparison of the genealogies of the two peoples.

In the Chathams, the Moriori would have found the environment colder and harsher than the one they had left behind, an environment that barely supported them. Unsuited to the cultivation of most crops, the harsh conditions forced the Moriori to live as hunter-gatherers.

The Moriori embraced a pacifist culture, which rigidly avoided warfare. Ritual fights and conciliation substituted for warfare.

In 1835, Maori 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, who did not wish to fight, enslaving the survivors. The notion that the Moriori were completely wiped out by Maori is fortunately untrue. Although Tommy Solomon, the last Moriori of unmixed ancestry, died in 1933, there are several thousand Moriori descendants alive today.

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 Maori people for land obtained by fraud or by force since 1840.