Maori Cultural Research

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Maori Cultural Research ANT101: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology As part of the New Zealand culture, The Maoris are of the Eastern Polynesian people. The East Polynesian ancestors of the Maori were hunters, fishers, and gardeners who quickly had to adjust not only their cultural but agricultural ways to best suit the climate of their new home after arriving in New Zealand, where they discovered the land to be cold and untamed in comparison to the tropical island of Polynesia where they had moved from. They form a distinctive part of New Zealand culture. The largest of the kin groups in the Maori society were the tribes or iwi, were independent political units that occupied isolated territories. An iwi was a large, bilateral descent group that encompassed with its members, all of which were descendents in which their heritage traced through both male and female links, of the tribe’s founder by whose name most tribes were known. The Maori were structured into a minimum of fifty iwi and were made up of a number of sections known as hapu. Each hapu owned an isolated territory and consisted of all those bilaterally descended from a founding ancestor. Most of the members of hapu lived in one or two communities with along with in-marrying spouses and slaves. Since they were defined bilaterally, a person was often a member of and could belong to more than one hapu. “A household became officially joined with a particular hapu by indicating a genealogical link conferring membership and by participating fully in the group’s daily life. Descent was reckoned bilaterally, with a patrilateral importance, especially in chiefly families.” (Every Culture. n.d.). What we know of the primitive religion of Aryans and Polynesians point to the foundation that the religious sentiment may be traced to the natural regard of the

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