Moriori

The Moriori are an ethnic group of the Chatham Islands (Rekohu in the Moriori language), east of the New Zealand archipelago.

Although some say the Moriori were a Polynesian people who settled on the Chatham Islands via an independent migration from the equatorial Polynesian islands, many scholars now say Moriori were simply Maori from the lower South Island who migrated to the Chathams.

The Moriori were a pacifistic culture which ridgidly avoided warfare. After the Chathams were settled by Maori in 1835, they slaughered, cannibalised and enslaved the Moriori, who did not wish to fight. The notion that the Moriori were completely wiped-out by Maori is untrue. However, the last fully-blooded Moriori died in 1933. There are thousands of Moriori descendants alive today, and indeed, some of them have made claims through the Waitangi Tribunal.

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