CULTUREGRAMS OVERVIEW OF NEW ZEALAND HISTORY The first discovery of the New Zealand Islands is attributed to Kupe, the Polynesian explorer. Maori migrations from Polynesian islands probably began before A.D. 900. These early Maori were warlike but highly skilled and organized. In 1642, Dutch explorer Abel Tasman sighted the islands and named them Staten Landt. He did not go ashore because of an unfriendly Maori reception, and the islands remained largely uncolonized until the 1800s. Dutch geographers changed the islands' name to Nieuw Zeeland-after the Dutch province of Zeeland-but the English, with the help of Captain James Cook's visit to the Maori in 1769, opened the door to European (chiefly British) settlement. Western contact led to a decline in the Maori population, owing to the introduction of disease and modern weapons in tribal warfare. LAND AND CLIMATE New Zealand covers 103,737 square miles (268, 680 square kilometers) and is about the same size as Colorado. The indigenous name for New Zealand is Aotearoa (land of the long white cloud). This mountainous island nation lies along the South Pacific about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) southeast of Australia. The two principal landforms are the North Island and the South Island. Stewart Island is south of the South Island, and the Chatham Islands are mostly uninhabited. The more populous North Island has fertile agricultural land, the largest man-made forest in the Southern Hemisphere, and a few isolated snow-capped volcanoes, hot springs, mud pools, and geysers in its thermal region. On the South Island, the Southern Alps provide magnificent scenery and snow, along with glaciers, lakes, and rivers. Southwest coastal fjords rival those of Norway. Coastal lowlands are used for agriculture. Both islands have many sandy beaches. The climate is temperate, with plenty of sunshine, and few extremes in the weather. In the winter, particularly in the south, high humidity makes it seem rather cold, even though average temperatures rarely go below 40 degrees. The seasons are opposite of those in the Northern Hemisphere. POPULATION New Zealand's population of 3.8 million is growing annually at 1 percent. The majority (80 percent) of New Zealanders are Pakeha (of European dissent), and about 13 percent are Maori. The Maori are Polynesian and live mainly on the North Island. Other Polynesians (Tongans, Samoans, Cook Islanders) comprise about five percent of the population. Most of these people migrated to New Zealand after 1946. There is also a small Fijian Indian minority. Immigration from Pacific islands continues, but is being eclipsed by immigration from Asia. Chinese and Indians now comprise 2 percent of the total population. RELIGION Most New Zealanders (81 percent) identify themselves as Christians, including Anglicans, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, and Methodists. However, only about 11 percent attend Church on a regular basis. Attendance is higher on religious holidays. About 1 percent of New Zealanders are Hindu or Buddhist. The Ratana and Ringatu Maori Christian Churches have large congregations. Most of the rest of the population either does not affiliate with a religion or has not specified a particular belief. LDS CHURCH IN NEW ZEALAND Missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints first came to New Zealand in 1854. After 1880, when missionaries began concentrating their proselyting efforts on the Maori people, the Church in New Zealand grew rapidly. Elder Matthew Cowley (1897-1953) of the Quorum of the Twelve did much for the Church in New Zealand as a missionary, mission president and supervising General Authority and is still remembered with fondness by church members in New Zealand. The New Zealand Temple and adjoining Church College of New Zealand were dedicated in 1958. In that same year, the first stake organized outside of North America was organized in Auckland, New Zealand. Today there are 25 stakes supporting nearly 90,000 members of the Church in New Zealand. SERIES INTRODUCTION TWELVE PART SERIES BEGINS This is the first in a twelve-part series on the history of the Church in New Zealand. The series will focus on the people who have labored and events that have transpired to establish and grow the Church in New Zealand. We would like to include user-submissions in the series. We are interested in your personal accounts of historical events, your missionary experiences, and your family history experiences, related to New Zealand. We hope to hear from members, returned missionaries, and others who have lived and labored in New Zealand. Please indicate by year when events submitted occurred. Submissions should be sent to gems@ldsworld.com. All submissions become the property of GEMS' sponsor and will be considered for inclusion, in whole or in part, in messages in the GEMS Worldwide Saints: New Zealand Series. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ CultureGrams, a division of MSTAR.NET sponsors GEMS Worldwide Saint messages. Material in this article was drawn from CultureGram's "New Zealand CultureGram". CultureGrams publishes concise, reliable cultural reports on more than 175 countries. For more information on CultureGrams visit http://www.culturegrams.com GEMS is grateful to R. Lanier Britsch for his support and contribution to this series. Brother Britsch's book "Unto the Islands of the Sea, A History of the Latter-day Saint in the Pacific" (Deseret Book, 1986) is a great resource on the Church in New Zealand and is available on Deseret Book's electronic reference library GospeLink 2001. Buy GospeLink online at http://deseretbook.com/ldsworld.tcl?sku=4028853 If you served a mission in New Zealand, you belong to the New Zealand Missionary Society. To receive society mailings, send your contact information to P.O. Box 12841, Ogden, UT 84414. For more information see http://www.mission.net/new-zealand/ ------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2001, Millennial Star Network - distributed on the Internet via the LDSWorld-Gems mailing list. Messages may be forwarded to individuals if this trailer is included, but may *not* be re-posted publicly or reprinted in any other form without explicit permission. LDSWorld-Gems webpage: http://www.ldsworld.com/gems/ To subscribe to Gems, send a message to listserv@lists.ldsworld.com with "subscribe ldsworld-gems" (without quotes) in the message body; or to leave the list, say "unsubscribe ldsworld-gems"Back to the main page.