Māori are the indigenous people of New Zealand who inhabited the land long before British colonizers arrived. More than a thousand years ago, they came from mythical Polynesian Hawaii. In 1840, New Zealand's founding constitutional document, called the Treaty of Waitangi, was signed by Māori chiefs and representatives of the British crown. After that, the European population, especially the British, grew rapidly in relation to the Māori population and for more than a century their culture prevai