95. New Zealand: How a Remote Island Became a Modern State

And New Zealand was still unpopulated. Obviously it had animals, right, but no people. That timing shapes everything about this country. Its history is short, but extraordinarily dense. and the story of what happened in those roughly seven hundred years, the arrival of the Maori, the collision with European colonizers, the wars over land, the remarkable social experiments

And the ongoing work of building something honest out of it is one I really want to share with you. So today we're doing a brief history.

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Hi, welcome back. I'm so glad you're here. I am very excited to talk about New Zealand today. I will admit up front that New Zealand has always felt a little mythical to me between the Lord of the Rings and the All Blacks and the stories of people who move there and say they never want to leave. It is a place that has carried a kind of legendary quality from a distance for me. But the more I dug into the research for this episode, the more I found a very nuanced, complicated, beautiful history.

And I find New Zealand to be more honest about its past than a lot of countries I've studied. New Zealand really doesn't pretend its colonial history was clean, it's actively wrestling with it. And I found that to be very interesting. I also want to say up front that this episode is a primer, an overview. It's just a jumping off point for further learning. There's no way that I could give a fully comprehensive history of New Zealand in one episode. That's impossible.

So please learn from other sources. I'll be sharing more of those on Patreon if you'd like to join at patreon.com slash wiserworld podcast. I give ad-free episodes and extra resources to help deepen your knowledge and it supports the podcast. and keeps the lights on. I also do my very best with pronunciation. I looked up every word unfamiliar to me, but I know I'll make mistakes. So I don't speak Terreo Maori.

I really don't have a New Zealand accent, even if I tried. So bear with me. I do my best. All right, let's get into New Zealand and we always start with the location and geography. So let's do it.

New Zealand is located in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, about twelve thousand kilometers or twelve hundred miles southeast of Australia. It's very remote. Wellington, the capital, is one of the most isolated capital cities on Earth. The country sits right on the Pacific Ring of Fire, making New Zealand one of the most geologically active places in the world with earthquakes, geothermal activity, volcanoes. The country is made up of two main islands, the North Island and the South Island.

Plus a scattering of smaller islands. Together they're roughly the size of the United Kingdom or the state of Colorado in the United States. But despite that relative compact size, the landscape is staggering. The North Island is volcanic and lush. It's where most people live, about three quarters of the country's population of roughly 5.3 million.

live in the North Island. Auckland, the largest city, is on the North Island, as is the capital. Lake Taupa, the enormous lake in the center of the North Island, sits inside a super volcanic crater. The thermal region around Rotorua has Geysers and bubbling mud pools and a serious sulfur smell, so the landscape of the North Island feels really alive.

The South Island is wilder and more dramatic. The Southern Alps run its entire length like a spine, with peaks reaching over thirty seven hundred meters. Milford Sound, which is actually a fjord, technically, is one of the most breathtaking places on earth. The glaciers, the beach forests, the coastlines, the South Island is where the Lord of the Rings was filmed.

So I don't think I need to say more than that. It looks like Middle Earth because it looks like nowhere else on Earth. At the end of this episode, a friend of mine who lives in New Le New Zealand will talk more about the flora and fauna. So I'll leave that to her because she does a great job.

The economy of New Zealand is built on a few pillars. Agriculture is enormous. New Zealand is one of the world's largest exporters of dairy products. Sheep meat, beef, and wool. The country has roughly five times as many sheep as people, which I think is a pretty delightful fact. Wine has also become a major export.

And tourism is pretty significant. New Zealand's reputation for its natural beauty draws millions of visitors a year, and the film industry has become surprisingly important, partly thanks to Peter Jackson and the Middle-earth films. which essentially created an entire international tourism category. So New Zealand's currency is the New Zealand dollar and it's an expensive country to visit, partly because of its remoteness.

And partly because it has a high standard of living. The country ranks consistently well on quality of life, safety, and social equality measures. New Zealand has three official languages.

Terrail Maori is a Polynesian language related to Hawaiian and Tahitian. For much of the 20th century, it was actively suppressed. Children were sometimes punished for speaking it at school, and there was a deliberate policy of assimilation pushed.

on Maori families to adopt English and abandon their language. We'll talk more about this in the history section. But by the mid twentieth century, the language was in serious danger of dying, And the revival that began in the 70s and 80s through immersion schools and language nests for preschoolers, Maori language radio and television.

Genuinely, this created one of the most incredible language revitalization stories in the world. And Terreo became the an official language in 1987, and the number of speakers and learners has grown significantly since. N New Zealand English is a distinct dialect, somewhere between British and Australian English with its own vocabulary and vowel sounds and rhythms. It's very unique to New Zealand.

People from New Zealand often call themselves kiwis after a small nocturnal bird that can't fly. And again, we'll talk more about that at the very end. But it is one of New Zealand's national symbols. New Zealand is a largely secular country if we're looking at religion. Christianity remains the most commonly identified religion, a variety of denominations exists, but a significant and growing portion of the population, close to half, identifies as having no religion.

Traditional Maori spiritual beliefs exist alongside and sometimes blended with Christian practice. There are concepts like mana, which means prestige and authority, tapu, which is sacredness and restriction, and a deep relationship with the natural world that are still very important and prevalent. There are also other minority religions as well, but there is no state religion and religious freedom is protected.

New Zealand food is the food of a place that has a lot of natural ingredients available. I think that's the best way to sum it up. It's also been shaped by both its indigenous Maori heritage. And its British colonial history with increasing Pacific and Asian influences. So let's talk about some of the most famous food and drinks.

The hangi is the traditional Maori method of cooking food in an earth oven. We talk about this in the Patreon post if you want to check that out. Digging a pit, heating stones. Slow cooking meat and vegetables wrapped in leaves. The result is a tender, smoky, deeply flavored food. Lamb. New Zealand lamb is some of the finest in the world and it's on menus everywhere. Grass-fed, free range, often cooked simply because it doesn't need much else.

And that's very, very popular. Green-lipped mussels, these are enormous mussels, unique to New Zealand. They're usually steamed with white wine and garlic. Again, a very specific food experience if you're going to New Zealand. There's also flat white. New Zealand and Australia claim the invention of the flat white.

the espresso drink that is now on every coffee menu in the world. It's a shot of espresso with steamed, microfoamed milk in a small cup. Coffee culture at New Zealand is serious and excellent. You will not suffer for a good coffee in New Zealand. And lastly there's Feijoa or sometimes pronounced Feijoa, and that is a small green fruit that is almost unknown outside of New Zealand and some parts of South America. It's very beloved there.

Sweet, aromatic, it's slightly floral, and Kiwis talk about Feijoa season the way that people in my part of the country or maybe in the southern part of the United States talk about peach season. It's a really big deal in New Zealand.

Alright, a few cultural values that I think are worth talking about. The first is the Maori concept of mana. This is central to understanding how respect and authority work in Maori culture and by extension in New Zealand broadly. Mana is something like prestige, authority, spiritual power combined together. It can be inherited, earned, and also damaged.

So acting with integrity, honoring your obligations, treating people with dignity, these are ways of maintaining and building mana. Disrespecting someone, especially publicly, that damages mana. The concept is embedded in how many New Zealanders, Maori and non-Maori, think about how to move through the world. I think it's beautiful. Another cultural thing to know is the haka.

This is a Maori posture dance involving rhythmic movements, chanting, very strong facial expressions. It has many forms and many purposes. You can welcome, challenge, celebrate, mourn with the haka. and it has become known internationally through the All Blacks, which is New Zealand's national rugby team. They perform it before matches and it has been performed in this context since nineteen oh five. So seeing the All Blacks perform the Hakka is a really

cool thing to see. And it's absolutely not just theater. The Hakka's very meaningful. And New Zealanders, whether they are of Maori descent or they are Pakeha, which is the Maori term for New Zealanders of European descent, They treat it very respectfully. Rugby is the national religion, more or less. The all blacks are widely regarded as one of the most successful national sports teams in history, with a winning percentage that consistently ranks among the highest in international sports.

And the entire country rearranges itself around major tests. Rugby is deeply tied to New Zealand identity and these ideas of toughness and teamwork and egalitarianism, which I'm gonna talk about in a second, they play out well beyond outside outside of rugby as well. Another thing I really enjoyed learning about was the number eight wire mentality. So this is a phrase that comes up constantly in New Zealand culture from what I can tell. It refers to

To the type of wire that is commonly used on farms, which became famous for being useful in fixing almost anything. So over time, it turned into a symbol of Kiwi ingenuity and resourcefulness. kind of the idea that you make do with what you have and you solve problems yourself and you don't wait for someone else to step in. And today it remains a really important part of New Zealand's national identity and self image. And that's the number eight wire mentality.

Last thing I want to talk about is egalitarianism. This is genuinely valued in New Zealand. New Zealanders are not big on hierarchy or pretension. There's a cultural expectation that everyone is more or less the same, that you don't put on airs, that you treat the prime minister the way that you treat your neighbor. And this is sometimes called the tall poppy syndrome, which is a tendency to cut down those who seem to think that they're better than everyone else.

It's I think a charming cultural value occasionally can be frustrating for people who want to be celebrated for their achievements, but I think that's a really interesting egalitarian way to live.

Okay, we could talk about so many more things, but let's get into the history because this is really interesting history, and I loved learning about it. So again, this is one of the shorter national histories in the world, but it's very packed. I don't cover everything, but I do cover the major points as I see them. So I'm gonna go chronologically. So of course we're going to start out with the Maori. New Zealand is called Aotearoa in Maori.

usually translated into the land of the long white cloud. And like I said when introducing this episode, one of the most remarkable things about New Zealand is that it was the last major landmass on Earth to be settled by humans.

Permanent settlement began sometime between twelve fifty and three hundred AD when people from East Polynesia arrived in ocean going waka, which are basically special canoes. And the evidence for this comes from several directions archaeologists have found that Early settlements and artifacts from the period, DNA evidence points to the same time frame, but so do studies of the plants and animals that the first settlers brought with them, and all of it tells a pretty consistent story

But I think it's worth appreciating that those voyages actually involved so much. The people who reached New Zealand don't appear to be castaways who got lucky. Instead, they were highly skilled navigators crossing thousands. of miles, kilometers of open ocean, reading the stars, the winds, the currents, the waves, with a level of expertise that really impresses me and impresses researchers today who study this for a living.

Much of like what we talked about in the Hawaii episode also applies to New Zealand. What they found was unlike anything else in Polynesia, New Zealand was larger, cooler, and filled with unfamiliar wildlife. Among the strangest was the Moa, which was a giant flightless bird that could stand nearly three meters tall. Over the generations that followed, the descendants of those first settlers developed the distinct culture that we now know as Mauris.

Maori society was organized around Iwi or tribes and Hapu or sub tribes. And at the center of life was genealogy. Knowing your ancestry wasn't just a matter of family history. It helped determine who you were, where you belonged, what rights you held, what responsibil responsibilities you carried.

being able to trace and recite your lineage connected you to your people, your land, your ancestors, and knowledge was highly valued, carefully preserved. Specialists known as Tahunga, served as priests, healers, navigators, historians, craftspeople, different forms of expertise carried real prestige, and important knowledge was passed down with great care.

Two ideas really shape Maori life, Tapu and Mana. We talked about mana a bit already. The Tapu, which is In in the English word, the closest thing to the English word is taboo, and that refers to sacredness and restriction and spiritual significance. And while mana is harder to translate neatly, again, that's the ideas of of authority and prestige and influence, spiritual power, these concepts together really helped organize relationships between people and communities and the natural world.

And the Maori relationship with land was also very different from the one that most Europeans would later bring with them. Land was not owned in the same way. It was held collectively and carried deep spiritual meaning. Still does. The relationship between people and land was not transactional. The land was not simply where your ancestors lived. The land itself was an ancestor, is an ancestor.

Maori society was also capable of organized warfare. Conflict between tribes was really common, but it was governed by its own rules and expectations. And central to this was the concept of Utu which often translates to revenge, though maybe reciprocity or restoration of balance might be closer to the original meaning. But basically the idea is that if a wrong was done,

Some response was expected. And obligations had to be met and relationships had to be set right. So when Europeans eventually arrived in New Zealand, They did not encounter a scattered or a primitive people. They encountered a sophisticated society with its own traditions and laws and political structures and warriors who were fully capable of defending themselves.

And the first European known to have reached New Zealand was the Dutch explorer April Tasman, and he arrived in December of sixteen forty two. The encounter did not go especially well for him. He never actually set foot on land, because when one of his small boats attempted to pass between his ships, it was attacked by Maori Waka and four of his crew were killed. Tasman actually named the location Murderer's Bay, which is

That name has since, I think, quite reasonably been changed. But he decided that this was perhaps not the place to linger. And so he sailed away, and for more than a century, there was no further contact between Europeans and Maori. That changed in 1769 when the English navigator James Cook arrived. Yep, that is the same Captain Cook that we talked about in the Hawaii episode.

So Cook came ashore at Poverty Bay and spent months sailing around the islands, carefully charting the coastline, and the maps that he made were remarkably accurate. He also left detailed descriptions of Maori society, and like many Europeans of his era, Cook had his own assumptions and prejudices, but his journals often show a level of curiosity and respect that was not all too common among European explorers. Cook returned twice more after that word began to spread.

First came the sailors, and then came the whalers, and then came the traders, then the missionaries. European ships became a more familiar sight along the coast, and the relationship between Maori and newcomers grew increasingly complex. It's important not to imagine the Maori as passive observers in this story. They were active participants from the beginning, trading, negotiating, adapting, making strategic decisions about how to engage with these newcomers.

One of the most consequential things that they adopted was the musket. And the arrival of firearms really transformed all these existing rivalries between Ewe. During what became known as the Musket Wars. where there was intertribal conflicts that stretched from the eighteen tens until the eighteen forties, muskets dramatically altered the balance of power and tens of thousands of Maori died, many communities were displaced.

At the same time, European diseases were spreading through the population and like indigenous peoples in many parts of the world, the Maori had little immunity to these illnesses, and the demographic consequences were very very severe. So by the time the British government formally turned its attention to New Zealand, Maori society had already been profoundly impacted. Not necessarily by direct conquest exactly, but by decades of trade, warfare, migration, and disease.

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try to establish its own claim in New Zealand. And the British government decided it was time to take care of all that. And so on February sixth, eighteen forty, at Waitongi in the Bay of Islands, representatives of the British Crown met with Maori Chief

to sign what would become New Zealand's founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi. About forty chiefs signed the first day. Over the following months, copies were carried throughout the country, and by September, roughly five hundred and forty chiefs had added their names. Today, almost everyone agrees that this treaty really sits at the center of New Zealand's national story. What people disagree about is what it actually said, because there wasn't just one treaty.

There were two versions, one in English and one in Maori, and while they were clearly intended to be translations of each other, they did not say exactly the same thing. In the English version, Maori chiefs ceded sovereignty to the crown. In the Maori version, they ceded Kawanatonga, which is a word that usually translates as governorship. So that may sound like a small difference, but it is the difference between handing over ultimate authority and

and just allowing someone to administer a government. The differences don't stop there. The Maori text guaranteed Maori full authority and chieftainship over their lands, And over taunga, which is a word that includes not only physical property, but also cultural treasures and language and traditions. And the English version promised something a lot more narrow, basically the undisturbed possession of property. So those are not quite the same promises. There is obviously a lot to this.

But here's the crucial detail. Almost all of the chiefs signed the Maori language version. So many historians believe that a large number of those chiefs understood the agreement as a form of shared governance. The British would govern settlers, maintain order, and facilitate trade, while the Maori would retain authority over their own communities and lands.

The British Crown, however, increasingly treated the treaty as a transfer of sovereignty, that gap between what many Maori believed they were agreeing to and what the colonial government believed it had acquired. Really sits at the heart of New Zealand's history. It is difficult to understand the next 180 years without understanding this disagreement.

British sovereignty was formally proclaimed in May of eighteen forty, and New Zealand was seen as a British colony around the world. Within a few years, colonial officials were under intense pressure to acquire more land for settlers. Land purchases accelerated. Much of that land was then resold at a profit. And naturally, Maori dissatisfaction began to grow. The disagreement over the Treaty of Waitangi did not remain a disagreement on paper for very long.

Throughout the mid-19th century, tensions over land, authority, and sovereignty continued to grow. Maorian British officials increasingly found themselves operating from very different understandings of what had been agreed to. And eventually those tensions are going to turn into open conflict. That is what we now call the New Zealand Wars, sometimes called the Land Wars, sometimes called the Maori Wars. They were a series of conflicts fought between 1845 and 1872, largely over land.

And who ultimately controlled it? The first fighting broke out in the Bay of Islands in 1845, but the most significant campaigns came much later in the 1860s. In the middle of this fighting, Britain had granted the colony responsible self-government under the New Zealand Constitution Act of 1852. What this means in practice is pretty important. New Zealand's settlers, could now elect their own parliament and make most domestic decisions themselves.

including laws about land, taxation, infrastructure, internal security. Britain still controlled foreign affairs and they had ultimate imperial authority, but the emerging colonial government in Wellington had real power on the ground. But here's the thing.

that government was dominated by colonial settlers whose political interests increasingly centered on land acquisition and expansion. So when tensions over land and sovereignty escalated into open conflict, it was not simply like Britain versus Maori, It was also a locally governed settler state operating with its own parliament and military resources, pursuing its own agenda. even while still under the umbrella of the British Empire.

Another way I could put this is that this was a settler, self-governing colony still under the British Crown, expanding its authority over land, which was in direct conflict with the Maori. One of the movements that came during the New Zealand Wars of 1845 to 1872 was the Maori King movement. This was active resistance to more land sales.

and they wanted to create a unified Maori political authority capable of standing alongside the colonial government. In many ways it was like an attempt to answer a difficult question. If the British have a king, why should the Maori? So over these twenty seven years, the British Empire committed thousands of troops. and some of the fighting was fierce. Both sides adapted, innovated, fought hard. The Maori defensive fortifications, known as the PA, provided

or proved to be so effective that they surprised very experienced British military commanders. By the time the war ended, roughly 900 Europeans had died and about two to three thousand Maori had been killed. The numbers are not perfectly documented. But it was in the hundreds for the Europeans and the thousands for the Maori. But even that does not really answer the question of who won, because the outcome was not decided purely on the battlefield.

In military terms, neither side really achieved total victory in a way that either might have hoped, you know, when this all started. But in political terms, the crown emerged with a decisive advantage. It retained control of the state, the court. and the military system and over time it was able to impose its its authority across most of the country. But the most lasting consequences came afterward.

The colonial government confiscated vast areas of Maori land, millions of acres, as punishment for what it described as rebellion. So these confiscations left many communities dispossessed of the land that had sustained them for generations. And obviously the economic and social consequences were profound. They continue to echo into the present day, and we'll talk more about that as the history goes on.

The next chapter of New Zealand's history takes us in a very different direction though. One of the things that stands out about New Zealand is how often it found itself experimenting with ideas that much of the rest of the world would adopt only decades later. And on September nineteenth, eighteen ninety-three, New Zealand became the first self governing country in the world to grant women the right to vote in parliamentary elections.

The victory did not happen by accident. It happened after years of organizing and campaigning and petitioning, led most famously by Kate Shepherd. And in eighteen ninety three, supporters delivered a petition containing nearly nearly thirty-two thousand signatures And when it was unrolled across the floor of Parliament, it stretched an extraordinary distance and it made it very, very clear that a huge portion of the country wanted change.

So when the electoral act became law, women wasted no time in exercising their new right. And in the first election, in which they could vote, roughly 65% of eligible women cast a ballot. I think it's important to note that this is very early for most parts of the world. This was 1893. Women in Britain and the United States would not gain the right to vote nationally until after World War One.

So New Zealand did it while Queen Victoria was still on the throne. Today, Kate Shepherd's face appears on the New Zealand ten dollar note. She's very famous there. New Zealand's willingness to try new social policies did not just stop with suffrage. In eighteen ninety eight, it passed the passed the Old Age Pensions Act.

becoming the first country in the British world to provide government funded pensions for elderly citizens. Now this is really interesting to me. The payments were modest, but the idea was pretty revolutionary that growing old and poor should not automatically mean destitution. And that law became one of the foundation stones of what would eventually grow into a pretty ambitious welfare state. And we'll talk more about that in a second.

In nineteen oh seven, New Zealand officially became the Dominion of New Zealand. In practical terms, not much changed overnight. New Zealand was already running most of its affairs, but the change reflected kind of a growing sense that the country was becoming something more than just a colony. It remained part of the British Empire and loyal to the Crown. But it was increasingly seeing itself as a distinct nation with its own identity and interests.

When World War I broke out in nineteen fourteen, New Zealand entered almost immediately as part of the British Empire, and New Zealand troops served alongside Australians in a combined force known as the Anzacs, A N Z A C, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. So on april twenty fifth, nineteen fifteen, Anzac soldiers landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula in what is now Turkey.

And the plan was pretty ambitious. They wanted to force a passage through the Dardanelles, capture Constantinople, and basically knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war. It did not go according to plan. The troops landed on very difficult terrain, They faced Ottoman defenders who were very determined and what followed was eight months of brutal fighting on very steep ridges, narrow gullies.

Progress was measured in yards, a lot of people died. And by the time the Allies evacuated in January of nineteen sixteen, the campaign had failed. More than twenty seven hundred New Zealanders had been killed. And Gallipoli became one of the most important moments in New Zealand's national story.

Now you might be thinking, well, that seems odd. Like, why would a failed military campaign become a source of national identity? But it marked one of the first times that New Zealanders saw themselves as something distinct. From Britain, at least for many New Zealanders. The campaign became associated with qualities that many New Zealanders admired: courage, endurance, loyalty, and understated toughness, and the Anzac soldier became a symbol

of who the country believed itself to be. More than a century later, that legacy still remains very powerful. Every year on April twenty fifth, ANZAC Day, services are held at dawn across the country and thousands of people gather in memorial parks and Uh some New Zealanders even make the journey to Galipoli itself. So it rain it remains a very solemn day in New Zealand.

And Gallipoli was only part of the story. Over the course of the war, New Zealand r lost roughly 18,000 people in total, one of the highest per capita death rates among the Allied nations. In a country with a very small population, you know, everyone felt that loss. So after World War I, New Zealand returned.

Shaped by that loss. And like many countries, the 1920s were a mix of recovery and uneven prosperity. Agriculture, especially wool meat, and dairy. remained the backbone of the economy, so New Zealand was tightly tied to global commodity prices and to the British market. Then came the Great Depression in the early nineteen thirties that hit hard

Export prices collapsed, unemployment rose sharply, hardship really spread, not just in rural areas, but also in the cities. And the state response to this period became very politically defining. Relief work program. rationing of support, and eventually a major shift toward more active government involvement in the economy. Out of that crisis came one of the most important political transformations in New Zealand history.

In 1935, the Labor Party came to power under Michael Joseph Savage, and over the next few years it built what would become the foundation of the modern welfare state. The Social Security Act of nineteen thirty-eight expanded state responsibility dramatically. The legislation expanded pensions, it created new benefits for families, the unemployed, people with disabilities, and established a state medical service.

Essentially establishing the idea that the government had a duty to provide a basic social safety net. By the late 1930s, New Zealand looked very different from pre-World War I New Zealand. It was still tied to Britain economically and emotionally. It was still more rural, more export driven. But now it had a much stronger state presence in everyday life. So hopefully you're seeing here that New Zealand had changed a lot in the last few decades and made a big shift.

And politically it was becoming a lot more confident. When World War two began in nineteen thirty nine, New Zealand once again joined with Britain. New Zealanders fought in North Africa, Greece, Italy, throughout the Pacific, And they gave a lot, especially compared to its size. At home they rationed, there was wartime production, the absence of so many men really reshaped everyday life.

And New Zealand was already acting with a high degree of autonomy in practice, you know, was making its own domestic decisions, but it was still not fully sovereign until 1947, after World War II. They adopted the Statute of Westminster Adoption Act. And this is a piece of British legislation that granted full legislative independence to the Dominions that chose to adopt it.

New Zealand was actually one of the last to do this after Canada and Australia. Once it was adopted, the British Parliament could no longer legislate for New Zealand. In legal terms, that basically means that New Zealand was now fully sovereign. And today New Zealand is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy. If you want to know more about these terms, you can listen to episode twenty-six. I talk a lot about what these terms mean.

But basically it means that King Charles III is technically the head of state, but his role is almost entirely ceremonial. Day-to-day governing is carried out by elected officials led by the New Zealand Prime Minister and Parliament. Think of it kind of as the British Empire is a family business that gradually broke apart into independent companies.

And some of those companies decided to keep the same ceremonial chairperson because it provided continuity, even though each company is essentially independent and runs its own affairs. So Australia and Canada are also examples of this. There are thirteen other countries as well. And today New Zealand also uses a voting system called mixed member proportional representation or MMP. Voters cast one vote for a local representative and another for a political party.

So this means that coalition governments are very common. Smaller parties often have meaningful influence, and compared to many countries, New Zealand's political system tends to reward compromise and negotiation more than like a winner takes all politics. Okay. That was just a little aside on government. Let's go back to the time after World War Two.

So the decades after the war were, by comparison to the years before, pretty prosperous. New Zealand continued expanding the welfare state, home ownership grew, living standards rose through much of the nineteen fifties and sixties, but not everyone experienced that prosperity in the same way. New Zealand went through rapid urbanization during this time, and large numbers of Maori moved from rural tribal lands into cities like Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch.

They were looking for work, typically in factories, construction, public services. On paper, this looked like economic opportunity. But in practice it came with a lot of dislocation, and one of the clearest pressures was housing. Maori families moved to cities to be often ended up in overcrowded, low quality housing or on the edges of urban areas. State housing existed, but allocation and access were on very uneven.

And there was an informal discrimination that shaped where people could live. Overcrowding became a real issue, multiple generations living in very small homes, often without adequate infrastructure. At the same time, Maori were disproportionately affected by poverty and low income employment.

They were more likely to be in manual labor jobs, less likely to move into more middle class professions because of either education gaps or because of structural barriers that really, you know, had accumulated over generations. In schools, Maori children were often actively discouraged for speaking Te Reo Maori. And the assumption in much of the education system was that assimilation into English speaking Pakina, that's again European New Zealander culture, was the path to success.

And as a result, many children grew up disconnected from their native language, in some cases from elders who still spoke it fluently. From what I can see in my studies, there was a strong cultural expectation that Maori should fit in by adopting Pakina. Language, dress, social customs, family strong. This does not mean that Maori culture disappeared. Not at all. It persisted strongly in communities and networks, but it really existed in tension with the dominant national culture at the time.

And so these disparities contributed to a real growing sense among Maori leaders that the promises of the Treaty of Waitangi were not being honored in practice. And by the late nineteen sixties, early nineteen seventies, a generation of younger urban Maori, many of them university educated and politically active. began to frame these patterns not as individual hardship, but as systematic issues rooted in history and land loss and unfulfilled treaty obligations.

So beginning in the nineteen seventies, New Zealand entered a period that's often described as the Maori Renaissance. This new generation of Maori leaders and activists, scholars, community organizers began pushing for something that, you know, in hindsight, seems pretty straightforward, but they were asking that the promises made in the Treaty of Waitonggi actually be honored.

So they demanded recognition of treaty rights, protection of their language, redress for land that had been confiscated during and after the New Zealand Wars. These were not new grievances. In many cases, they'd been raised for generations.

What changed was that the country was finally beginning to listen more and one of the most important developments came in nineteen seventy five with the creation of the Waitongi Tribunal, which is a body established to investigate claims that the Crown had violated in the treaty.

At first, it could only consider contemporary issues, but in nineteen eighty-five, its authority was extended all the way back to eighteen forty, which allowed historical grievances to be formally examined for the first time. Since then, more than 2,000 claims have been lodged. Many Iwi have negotiated major settlements with the government, including financial compensation, formal apologies, in some cases return of land and other assets.

The cultural revival was also significant. In nineteen eighty seven, Terrail Maori became an official language of New Zealand. Maori language preschools were established. Maori immersion schools followed. Maori television began broadcasting again. Over time, Terreo became much more visible. Today it's very common to hear greetings in Terreo and official official names are often in Terreo.

All of these changes happened as a result of decades of deliberate effort. Now you might be wondering, how did the Pakeha New Zealanders experience this Maori Renaissance? I was thinking that. So what I learned is that every person's story is gonna be different, right? But the initial feelings for many

was feeling unsettled or even threatened. For a lot of people, the national story they'd grown up with was pretty simple that New Zealand was peaceful. It was egalitarian. It was a British country that had moved past its colonial conflict. And so the Renaissance challenged that narrative directly. Suddenly this history was being reopened, land confiscations, broken treaty promises, the New Zealand doors were being relitigated in public.

So the early reaction often looked like, Why is this coming up now? Like aren't we all equal already? There was also discomfort with the idea that the Treaty of Waitangi had ongoing legal and political force rather than just being a political historical document. And as activism intensified, some pakeha reacted with a m in a more openly hostile way. Critics framed the movement as radical or unfair, and there were concerns about separatism or preferential treatment.

Here's an example of this. So in nineteen seventy seven, the government announced plans to develop Bastion Point. into high income housing. Bastion Point was a prime piece of coastal land overlooking Auckland. The land was part of the remaining ancestral territory of a particular tribe, which had been gradually reduced

over more than a century through land sales, compulsory acquisition, and public works takings. So for this tribe, this wasn't just another planning decision. It felt like the final step in a long process of loss. especially because earlier attempts to reclaim the land through courts and petitions and commissions had all failed. So in January of nineteen seventy seven, supporters set up an occupation on the site Bastion Point.

It was not like a symbolic protest. People actually lived there. They built makeshift housing. They built they grew food. They maintained a continuous presence on the land for over a year. The occupation lasted 506 days. So during this time, it became a national focal point for Maori protests. It drew it support from other activists, churches, unions, civil rights groups. It became increasingly

It made Maori land loss and treaty grievances impossible to ignore at a national level, and it helped accelerate the shift toward formal processes of redress. Over time, that process produced something pretty unusual. a state that was actively rewriting parts of its own historical and legal record in response to those findings, which was often accompanied by financial settlements, land returns, formal apologies.

And in time, many Pakeha institutions, the courts, universities, government agencies, began to change and to incorporate Terreo, to begin acknowledging treaty obligations. and integrating Maori perspectives into policy. Today, from what I can tell, feelings about this are pretty mixed. Many New Zealanders broadly support treaty settlements. Maori language revival, cultural recognition. At the same time, there is ongoing debate about what treaty partnership means in practice.

especially around law, education, political representation. So over the last few decades, a growing number of Pakeha New Zealanders have come to see the treaty not as a finished historical agreement, but as an ongoing constitutional relationship.

Do all like it? No. Is it a nuanced topic? Yes. And if you'd like to learn more about it, please do. But I find it really interesting. Basically what I want you to walk away with is this idea that questions about land and representation and language and the meaning of this treaty Are active parts of New Zealand's national conversation today. That would be the basic idea I want you to walk away with.

Another defining moment in New Zealand history began in the mid-1980s with a question about nuclear weapons. At the same time, New Zealand was part of ANZIS, which is a security alliance with Australia and the United States. But growing numbers of New Zealanders were uncomfortable with nuclear weapons and nuclear testing in the Pacific. So when the government announced that nuclear powered and nuclear armed ships

would no longer be allowed into New Zealand waters, it ran into a pretty immediate problem. The United States had a policy of neither confirming nor denying whether a particular ship carried nuclear weapons. And New Zealand was like, then your ships can't come. Basically, that's what New Zealand said to the United States. The United States responded by suspending its security obligations to New Zealand under ANSIS, effectively freezing the country out of the alliance.

For a small country that, you know, largely relied on these larger allies for security, this is a significant risk. But the policy was enormously popular for New Zealanders. They saw it as a statement that their country could make its own decisions, even when it irritated much larger, powerful nations.

In 1987, Parliament made the policy permanent through the Nuclear Free Zone Disarmament and Arms Control Act. What started as this anti-nuclear movement became a really defining part of New Zealand's identity. In the late 1980s and 1990s, economically New Zealand was also going through one of the fastest liberalization programs in the developed world. Subsidies were removed.

Industries deregulated, the welfare state reshaped, it made the economy more flexible, but it also created rising inequality, job losses in some regions, long-term changes to rural communities. By the nineteen nineties you had this unusual combination of a smaller, more open economy, a stronger treaty process emerging in parallel to the Maori Renaissance. and a national identity increasingly split between market reform and historical repair.

Those two tracks don't always sit comfortably together. And a lot of modern New Zealand politics comes from that tension. By the 2000s, New Zealand was increasingly confident on the world stage. Treaty settlements were getting more and more common, Maori culture was becoming more visible, tourism was becoming a much more economic driver.

And the country really leaned in to an image of environmental stewardship and political stability and cultural distinctiveness. And by the 2010s, New Zealand really had developed an international reputation as stable, prosperous, relatively harmonious. And that's one reason why people really love New Zealand and a lot of New Zealanders speak very positively about it.

You know, if you strip away the history for a moment, modern New Zealand is a pretty extraordinary country at the edge of the world. Most people live in cities now. Auckland is by far the largest. And it's kind of a spread out coastal hub where a lot of jobs cluster in services, tech, logistics, finance, construction. Wellington is smaller, more political, government, media, public sector work. Christ Church is still rebuilding in its own way after the two thousand eleven earthquake.

a stronger base in engineering, manufacturing, agriculture related industries. And then there's tons of smaller towns where the economy looks a lot more familiar, like farming, tourism, fishing, forestry. Services that support all of that. Agriculture still matters more than a lot of outsiders expect. Dairy farming is huge.

And this means that life outside of the cities still revolves around land and weather and seasons in a very direct way. People know how to drive a tractor, they know how to take care of animals. Things like that. Nature is very important in New Zealand. People typically like to hike, they call it tramping, go to the beach, travel across New Zealand.

Now I don't wanna give the impression that everything is perfect in New Zealand or everything's easy. That's not the case. This is a complicated place, right? Housing affordability has become a major issue. The cost of living is high. There are political debates there. Some we've covered and many that we have not. But New Zealand often ranks high on measures of quality of life.

And it's definitely working on how its future should be shaped. So I wanted to learn a little bit more about it from people who live in New Zealand. So I have two people sharing voice memos on this episode. The first is Lana Jensen McCloy. She has fabulous thoughts. She'll go first. And the second is my friend Courtney McNaught. I met her here in Northern California where I live and then she moved to New Zealand and now has lived there for quite some time. And so

She is an American living in New Zealand, and I enjoyed hearing her perspective as well. Both have wonderful things to share. I'll lead to them. We'll start off with Lana.

In terms of our culture, we have a rich and beautiful indigenous culture in New Zealand, where Maori language and beliefs are merged, with what is a hugely diverse population with significant British colonial, Pacifica and Asian influences. What I love most about our Māori culture is Wayata or Mori song. Every New Zealander or Kiwi as we call ourselves learns Wayata at school.

So if you are visiting New Zealand, maybe ask someone you get to know to share a Wii song with you. Kiwis are pretty obliging as a culture and are generally pretty relaxed. So I'm sure most people, if asked, would at least try to share something with you, even if it sounds a bit rough. Might make for a few laughs anyway. In terms of the people in New Zealand, what I love the most is how friendly people are, especially in the south where I'm

While it takes a couple of plane rides to get here, you'll a hundred percent be rewarded and will be able to find the experience you're looking for. Just remember to protect our beautiful and fragile environment and if you can visit the small cities and towns along your journey as that is where you'll also find gold within the people and places.

The other thing people from around the world should know about New Zealand is that the meringue-based dessert called a pavilova is 100% a kiwi-based dessert. Our good friends in Australia have for many years claimed it as their own. It's not true. It's a New Zealand based dessert and very, very popular. Um and you should try it if you visit New Zealand.

But the New Zealand government and people have done a much better job than Americans at integrating um like native language and culture into everyday life. There's a really strong Maori music and dance program here. It's called Kapahaka. It's in schools from like primary through high school. As far as I know, like almost every school in New Zealand has programs like this.

Um and what is really unique about it is that everyone is strongly encouraged to participate, not just like people with actual Maori ancestry, but like anyone that lives here. And there are a lot of people who have, you know, migrated here from all kinds of countries. Um Americans I would say is like actually a really a minority as far as people who migrate here. Um so everyone is invited to participate, which is amazing, and most kids do because it's

done during regular instruction time in school. It's not like an extra thing that you have to add on. In my experience, schools also really emphasize Tereo, which is the Maori language. And any government affiliated buildings like libraries, hospitals, schools, et cetera, they um they almost always have printed signs or notices written in terreo and English, and usually the terreo words are first and even emphasized in English as secondary.

Um, most schools actually recite a Maori prayer in Tereo called a karakiya at the beginning of school or some at some point in the school day, sometimes it's like before a meal.

I just never imagined how much like cultural education my kids would get by being here, just being in school and not doing like anything extra to get it. It's just very incorporated, which is awesome.

um and just really different from America, which is all I have to compare it to. Um okay. Secondly I think everyone has probably seen photos of New Zealand's spectacular natural beauty, which is just amazing, or you've at least seen Lord of the Rings, that you would get a lot of that um amazing scenery, which on the South Island especially I think is just

New Zealand is only supposed to have two native species of land mammals, um, which is like two tiny species of bat. That's it. But um the Maori introduced rats, which was really a problem for birds'cause they eat bird eggs. Um dogs as well that could eat um, you know, and hunt bigger birds, but it was really the rats that caused most of the problems. Um the Maori were e responsible for the extinction of the Moa, a bird I had never heard of until I moved here, surprisingly

To myself, as being kind of a biology major and someone who's interested in these things, I had never heard of Moa, which are the tallest birds to ever live. Um New Zealand, since it didn't have any mammals, any like native land mammals besides those two bats, these birds just grew you know, like this kind of this

thing where if there's no other animals to fill that niche, then the the birds like grew super large to fill this niche of like kind of like grazing, you know, herbivore, like you know, herds of cattle or whatever. It was like, no, it was these giant birds instead.

Um w there there's just an amazing history there. They they they completely lost their wings, um, and they were a huge food source for early Maori and they hunted them extensively all throughout the North Island until they were gone there and then in the South Island as well. Um and there was also the largest eagle species to ever exist in New Zealand that preyed on these birds, so those obviously disappeared as well um when the moas disappeared, the host eagle.

So anyway, there's just this really interesting um history about these introduced pests, which the Europeans, um, of course made a lot worse when they came and brought stoats, weasels, um And other, you know, pests of that type. Also rabbits and just like, you know, everything you can think of. Um, that has just really oh, and possums. Possums is um possibly even the worst one'cause possums don't only eat bird eggs, they destroy foliage as well.

in certain trees. Um, so that causes huge problems. And a a really large amount of resources are used here in New Zealand on predator control um by trapping, hunting, um, and dropping huge amounts of um poisonous bait. Throughout, like especially in like really dense bush or mountainous regions here, they drop these poisonous baits um to try to control pest populations.

Which is really the only way they can do it because it's so such like dense in backcountry that's impossible to get to for trapping. So anyway, that's a really big um issue here. You can read about it if more if you're interested. Um like I said, I could talk about it for a long time, but I will not Spend that any more time on that.

Um, there there's just um an incredible amount of fauna that have survived that are really unique and intriguing, um, including the world's only alpine parrot, the Kia. It's also like one of the smartest animals uh in the world. Um the heaviest and only ground dwelling parrot, the cockapo.

um, which there were only like a few dozen left at one point. There's so many animals that have been thought to be extinct here, um, that they have rediscovered, which is those are really cool stories of survival. for those animals and the and the humans that try to like increase their population sizes. There's so many stories about that. Um we have a lot of glowworms here that are really cool. Kiwis, obviously, which you've heard of, that almost completely lost their wings.

And have many like mammalian characteristics. Um the list goes on. But yeah, a lot of interesting things to look into if you're into that kind of stuff. Um okay, number three, Kiwis Kiwi people have a really big emphasis on buying second hand, repairing what they have, like kind of recycle, reduce, reuse mentality is like really strong here, at least where I am. There are secondhand shops everywhere. People like just

live and die by them. They have their favorite secondhand shops. Um I had a friend once tell me that she was really proud of the fact that everything she was wearing, including like her underwear, pants, shorts, everything, like was all secondhand. Um Which is really great. And also a lot of um cafes that use like real plates, mugs, cups. Um and takeaway containers are often compostable. Not always and they're not.

anywhere close to, you know, perfect in this regard, but I just see a big difference compared to other places in um the emphasis on like less consumerism really in general. Um Especially compared to like the Bay Area where I have been living. So Anyway, I really appreciate and um relate to their want to be less consumeristic. Um number four, something uh this is just something that I wish people knew about New Zealand. Um

Everyone who comes here really wants to see a Kiwi, which I totally relate to and I felt the same way. And I was really surprised when I started hearing that most people who live here the majority of people I've ever met that live that were, you know, born and raised here have never seen a Kiwi in the wild. Um, and it's because they're really hard to find. They live in really dense bush, they are nocturnal, almost strictly nocturnal.

And so it's just so hard to find them because they're living in they're they're also rare these days because um of the introduced pest problem. So anyway, if you want to see if you really want to see a Kiwi in the Wild and you're coming here, your best chance is to go to Stewart Island. which is, um, a little island off the very bottom of the south coast, um a few hours south of where we live, and then you have to take a boat or a plane to this island and, um

There's much there's better pest control on this island and um the Kiwis live in family groups there, which is a little different, and they sometimes come out during the day and there's just like a higher population density of them there. So that's

That's where we have seen them in the wild and it's a really good place if you want to do that. Otherwise, most large cities also have something called a kiwi house, like at maybe a little zoo or s um, you know, nature reserve where they might have a a nocturnal kiwi house. Um that they make dark during the day so that you can go in there and see the Kiwis running around and that's also a really good way to see them and super fun. So

Anyway, okay, this is getting long, but thank you for listening. Um as you can tell I love New Zealand and I can't wait to listen to Ali's episode about it. Bye!

And I hope you'll take some time to learn more about it on your own time because again, this is just a basic primer. If you'd like to learn more from me, I have a full Patreon post on New Zealand that you can purchase a la carte. Or you can subscribe to Patreon at patreon.com slash wiserworld podcast and you get f ad-free episodes, resource posts, more input on the podcast and what countries I cover.

You can also follow us on Instagram and YouTube. Sign up for my free weekly email newsletter at wiserworld.com. But the easiest thing that you can do to support the podcast is click the plus button on the app that you're listening to this episode on that subscribes you to the podcast and then you know when new episodes drop and it helps people to find the podcast. So I really appreciate when people subscribe. It's free, it's easy and it helps us to grow.

So loved learning about New Zealand. I'll be back next week with more on the world. And in the meantime, let's go make the world a little wiser.

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