Maori Culture

New Zealand’s national Māori language week – te wiki o te reo Māori - will get a major boost next week with the launch of Google Māori.

An attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the biggest ever haka will be made at New Zealand’s Te Matatini o Te Ra 2011 Kapa Haka Festival in Gisborne on Sunday (20.2.11).

A New Zealand homecoming that’s been 130 years in the making will see a famous wharenui or carved meeting house returned to its rightful place in one of the most significant Māori cultural happenings of modern times.

More than 50,000 people are expected to make a pilgrimage to Gisborne in February 2011 when New Zealand’s culture-rich Eastland plays host to Te Matatini – the biggest festival of Māori performing arts in the world.

A giant gourmet hangi, created by Kiwi celebrity chef Peter Gordon, will launch New Zealand’s 2009 celebrations for Matariki or Māori New Year.

Beach lovers can bid a final hurrah to summer with two challenging outdoor events, based entirely around the sand and surf of 90 Mile Beach, in New Zealand’s Far North.

New Zealand’s national museum, Te Papa in Wellington has notched up 15 million visitors since opening 10 years ago.

Traditional and contemporary Maori kai and ‘outside the square’ wildfood are the focus of Kai in the Bay, a new indigenous food festival set in the Hawke’s Bay region of the North Island.

Japanese tourists, who joined locals in a fun run through a remote New Zealand kauri forest, were helping to celebrate a burgeoning friendship between two different cultures.

Rugby World Cup visitors will leave New Zealand with two words – kia ora – firmly embedded in their vocabulary, if the Māori culture-rich region of Rotorua has its way.