All The Info

Taking myself to new heights and exploring the world of sustainability and conservation. I will document my travels as much as I can for friends and family to see what I am up too rather than contacting everyone. Feel free to click on the EcoQuest link below to see more about the program I am blessed to be apart of!

Background of New Zealand:

On February 6th, 1840 Te Tiriti o Waitangi [the Treaty of Waitangi] was signed between the British Crown and Māori. Following the signing, Europeans arrived in large numbers.  For well over a century, the Treaty was largely ignored by the pākeha (non-Māori) establishment. This era was marked by injustices and brutal land-wars in which Māori suffered significant losses of people, land and sovereignty. The steady stream of predominantly European arrivals included gold miners and timber merchants. Over time pastoral farming became the dominant land use and certainly many New Zealanders of European descent were relatively prosperous. Māori did not fare nearly so well in this emerging society. The Treaty of Waitangi Act was passed by Parliament in 1975, in response to the pressure on the government to honour the Treaty of Waitangi, to halt the continued losses of Māori land, to prevent the loss of Te Reo Māori (Māori language), to acknowledge Māori rights and to attempt to right the wrongdoings by the Crown since 1840.  A new era began, and there have been some changes in the political and social landscape of Aotearoa. Discussions on customary and traditional Māori knowledge and relationships with the whenua (land), awa (rivers) and moana (ocean) are becoming an increasingly powerful feature of our political discourse. However, discussions on Māori sovereignty, racial harmony, national identity and decolonisation remain hesitant / relatively undeveloped in the public sphere. 
Although more than 80% of New Zealanders live in urban environments, the New Zealand economy is driven principally by primary production (dairy, meat, wool) and other export industries such as tourism.  The current population of New Zealand exceeds 4.8 million. New Zealanders trace their ancestry to a variety of cultural backgrounds: 15% is Māori, the vast majority (74%) identifies as being of European extraction and the remainder includes Tagata Pasifika (7.5%), and people from Asian descent (12%).