INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP AMONGST PĀKEHA AND MĀORI IN NEW ZEALAND

Polynesian settlers arrived in Aotearoa (in te reo, or Māori language, “Land of the Long White Cloud”) about the 10th century. Aotearoa was visited briefly by the Dutch navigator Abel Tasman in 1642. However, it was not until 1769 that the British naval captain James Cook and his crew became the first Europeans to explore New Zealand’s coastline thoroughly. The word Māori meant “usual or ordinary” as opposed to the “different” European settlers. Before the arrival of Europeans, Māori, or indigenous Polynesian inhabitants of New Zealand, had no name for themselves as a nation, only a number of tribal names. The original meaning of Pākeha, the settlers, was a person from England. With time, Pākeha became the word to describe fair-skinned people born in New Zealand. We use the word Pākeha here in the sense of the New Zealand census as a European New Zealander.