Cook Islanders in New Zealand

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Cook Islanders are part of the ethnic group we know in New Zealand as Pasifika Peoples. They make up second largest portion of Pacific Peoples that have settled on Aotearoa’s soil, there are almost two, and half times more of them in this country than what there are in the Cook Islands themselves. There is an interesting tale about their journey to New Zealand and how so many of them came to reside here. This story includes, who they are as people and what their culture is about, the key policies that brought them here, the hardships they have undertaken while making a home for themselves on foreign soil, the issues they have faced while doing this and how they have maintain their culture roots in a society so different from their own. Their story is not unique in the sense that they immigrated here as many people have done before them. However, it is unique in the sense that they that are not just Pacific Peoples as society so often stereotypes them as, they are Cook Islanders and they as a Pasifika Ethnic Group have their own exclusive story to tell and this is how it goes. Cook Islanders are part of a group that is referred to as ‘Pasifika Peoples’, the expression ‘Pasifikia Peoples’ can be used interchangeably with the idiom ‘Pacific Peoples’. They are both umbrella terms used to describe a range of Pacific Island Countries(appendix a) and People, who are distinctive from one another in regards to their culture, their language and their geographic locations(Health Research Council of New Zealand, p4, 2003). These terms in there broadest sense, describe all native people from the Island Nations in the South pacific and in its narrowest sense all, Pacific people in New Zealand excluding Maori (Anae,M., Coxon, E., Mara., Wendt-Samu, T. and Finau, C. p6, 2001). By putting all ‘Paskifkia People’ in one category individuals are lead to develop a Pan-pacific view

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