Māori religion encompasses the various religious beliefs and practices of the Māori, the Polynesian indigenous people of New Zealand.
Māori Christian church in Akaroa. Christianity was adopted by Māori across New Zealand during the 19th century.
Rātana church near Raetihi
Māori are the indigenous Polynesian people of mainland New Zealand. Māori originated with settlers from East Polynesia, who arrived in New Zealand in several waves of canoe voyages between roughly 1320 and 1350. Over several centuries in isolation, these settlers developed their own distinctive culture, whose language, mythology, crafts, and performing arts evolved independently from those of other eastern Polynesian cultures. Some early Māori moved to the Chatham Islands, where their descendants became New Zealand's other indigenous Polynesian ethnic group, the Moriori.
Māori performing a haka (2012)
Early Archaic period objects from the Wairau Bar archaeological site, on display at the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch
Model of a pā (hillfort) built on a headland. Pā proliferated as competition and warfare increased among a growing population.
The first European impression of Māori, at Murderers' Bay in Abel Tasman's travel journal (1642)
