New Zealand Fun Facts

 

New Zealand has over 9,300 miles of coastline around its two islands, which are vastly different from one another. There are only about 5 million people here and there are large spaces in between towns. About one-third of the population lives in rural lands. 

Auckland's population is 1.7 million, which includes the North Shore and the airport. Most of the country's Pacific Islanders have immigrated here. 

The country is relatively crime-free except for youth who commit "ram raids" where they smash windows and grab items in stores. The purpose of this activity is to publish it on TikTok and other social media and get as many clicks as possible in order to become popular.

The most popular sport is rugby and there is a national men's and a national women's team. Cricket is another popular sport and New Zealand is one of the top teams behind England, India, and Australia. Badminton and fast-pitch softball are also popular, the latter learned from American soldiers and sailors stationed here during World War II. Sports plays a huge role in Kiwi culture.

 

There is no tax on lotto or casino winnings. Professional gamblers, however, are not allowed to participate.

Winters are mild not usually going below 50 degrees F. There is no snow except in the extreme south and in the mountains.  

Arrival of the Māori

According to the people of Ngāpuhi (tribe of the Far North), the first explorer to reach New Zealand was the intrepid ancestor, Kupe. It was around 1000 C.E. and the islands had never been inhabited by humans. Kupe used the stars and ocean currents as his navigational guides to cross the Pacific from his ancestral Polynesian homeland of Hawaiki to land at Hokianga Harbor in Northland. More people followed him between1000 and 1250 C.E. and landed in various parts of New Zealand. They hunted moa (a flightless bird about 12 feet high), which led to the birds' extinction by 1450, and destroyed much of the mataī and tōtara forest. 

Today, Māori are part of an iwi (tribes), a group of people who claim descendancy from a common ancestor in a certain region or area in New Zealand.

Arrival of the Europeans

The first European to sight New Zealand was Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1642. He was looking for a great Southern continent that was believed to be rich in minerals. As he searched for this continent, he discovered a ‘large high-lying land’ off the West Coast of the South Island. Tasman annexed the country for Holland under the name of ‘Staten Landt’ (later changed to ‘New Zealand’ by Dutch mapmakers). His first contact with Māori was at the top of the South Island now known as Golden Bay. Two waka (canoes) full of Māori men sighted Tasman’s boat and Tasman sent out several men in a small boat. They got into a skirmish and four of Tasman’s men were killed. Tasman never set foot on New Zealand and instead moved on to Batavia (now Jakarta) in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia).

Captain James Cook, a British naval officer, explore, and cartographer was sent to search for the great southern continent, too. He arrived in New Zealand in 1769 and successfully circumnavigated and mapped the country. He led two more expeditions to NZ before he was killed by indigenous tribes in Hawaii in 1779.

Captain Cook (1728-79) was famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean and to New Zealand and Australia in particular. In these voyages Cook sailed thousands of miles across largely uncharted areas of the globe and mapped the lands in greater detail on a scale not previously charted by Western explorers. While there is controversy over Cook's role at the forefront of British colonialism and the violence associated with his contacts with indigenous peoples, he left a legacy of scientific and geographical knowledge that influenced his successors well into the 20th century, and numerous memorials worldwide have been dedicated to him.

 

 The Treaty of Waitangi -- New Zealand’s founding document

Prior to 1840, whalers, sealers, and missionaries came to New Zealand. These settlers had considerable contact with Māori, especially in coastal areas. They traded natural resources such as flax and timber from Māori in exchange for clothing, guns and other products. They also lived together. The Māori population significantly declined because of European diseases and from European guns that were used in inter-tribal warfare. 

As more immigrants settled permanently in New Zealand, they weren’t always fair in their dealings with Māori over land. A number of Māori chiefs sought protection from William IV, the King of England, and recognition of their special trade and missionary contacts with Britain. They also wanted to stop the lawlessness of the British people in their country.

The British Government decided to negotiate a formal agreement with Māori chiefs to become a British Colony. The Treaty of Waitangi was signed on February 6, 1840 by over 500 Māori Chiefs. However, many of the rights guaranteed to Māori were ignored. To help rectify these abuses, the Waitangi Tribunal was set up in 1975. It has subsequently ruled on several claims brought by Māori iwi (tribes) and has granted compensation as well. While disagreements over the treaty terms continue to this day, it is still considered New Zealand’s founding document.

 

Jacinda Ardern

Jacinda Ardern served as New Zealand's 40th prime minister, the third woman in NZ history, at age 37. She was leader of the Labour Party from 2017 to 2023. She was a member of Parliament from 2008 to 2017, and for Mount Albert from 2017 to 2023. She gave birth to her daughter, Mauve, on June 21, 2018, and regularly took her to Parliament meetings. Ardern faced many challenges from the country's housing crisis, child poverty, and social inequality. In March 2019, in the aftermath of the Christchurch mosque shootings, her rapid reaction of introducing strict gun laws won her wide recognition. Durng the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, she won worldwide praise as one of the few Western nations to successfully contain the virus. She resigned as prime minister on January 25, 2023.

Terrorism

On March 15, 2019, a far-right white supremacist attacked two Muslim mosques in Christchurch and killed a total of 51 people and wounded another 40. He considered himself a "green terrorist", which means he believed that there were too many people on this Earth and its population should be reduced for the good of all. Prior to the attack he published his extreme opinions on FaceBook in an online manifesto and then live-streamed his first hit. Both the video and manifesto were subsequently banned in New Zealand and Australia.

Until this day, New Zealand was considered the second most peaceful nation in the world by the Global Peace Index. The last mass shooting occurred in 1997 when seven people were shot and killed and in 1990 with five people killed. While New Zealand has rarely been associated with far-right extremism, experts have suggested it has been growing. Australia has also seen an increase in xenophobia, racism, and Islamophobia

The government response after the shootings was to lock down the airport and declare the shooter a high-level terror alert as he was on his way to a third mosque. The gunman, 28-year-old Brenton Harrison Tarrant from Grafton, New South Wales, Australia, was arrested after his vehicle was rammed by a police unit as he was driving to a third mosque. On March 26, 2020, he pleaded guilty to the murders and in engaging in a terrorist act. In August he was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole – the first such sentence in New Zealand. There is no death penalty neither in Australia nor in New Zealand.

Australia felt ashamed that one of its citizens committed this terrorist act. It was later revealed that Harrison Tarrant was a member of a gun club and that he had bought his weapon legally. 

The attack was linked to a global increase in white supremacy and alt-right extremism since about 2015. Politicians and world leaders condemned it, and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described it as "one of New Zealand's darkest days". The NZ government established a royal commission into its security agencies, which submitted its report to the government on November 26, 2020. The details were made public on December 7.

 

Christchurch and the Ring of Fire

Christchurch, the largest city on the South Island, and the second largest in New Zealand after Auckland. Its population of 370,000 is located on the east coast of the South Island. It was established in 1856 and named after Christ Church in Oxford, England. It is a planned city in a grid pattern centered on Cathedral Square.

 

The city suffered a series of earthquakes between September 2010 and January 2012, with the most destructive ones occurring on Saturday, September 4, 2010, a magnitude 7.1 with no direct fatalities, and another on February 22, 2011, a 6.3 magnitude where 185 people were killed and thousands of buildings were severely damaged. By late 2013, 1,500 buildings in the city had been demolished, which led to many rebuilding projects.

 

Christchurch is affected by "The Ring of Fire" a belt of active volcanoes and tectonic plate boundaries that lines the Pacific Ocean. The Ring of Fire, which extends 25,000 miles and includes 452 volcanoes, is shaped like a horseshoe. It stretches from the southern tip of South America, up and along the coast of North America, across the Bering Strait and down through Japan and then south to New Zealand. 

 

Resources

https://www.newzealand.com/int/feature/arrival-of-maori/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aoraki_/_Mount_Cook

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cook 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchurch_mosque_shootings

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchurch

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacinda_Ardern