ABSTRACT
New Zealand’s most recent indigenous population is Māori. The Māori name for New Zealand is Aotearoa which means the land of the long white cloud. Although there were previous marine expeditions by Abel Tasman and James Cook in and around the land now known as New Zealand (Aotearoa), it was not until after the establishment of the New South Wales penal colony in Australia around 1788 that the gradual interaction between Māori and Europeans, particularly those from Britain, increased steadily. The New South Wales colony gave Māori an opportunity to interact with an impermanent European presence mostly in the form of whalers, traders, and missionaries (King, 2003).
