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In the last 150 years, the Maori way of life has changed almost completely because of the arrival of white explorers and then white settlers in Aotearoa. They called the country New Zealand and they saw that it had magnificent forests full of valuable timber, land which would be easy to farm and seas teeming with fish and other life. In the early nineteenth century more and more people from Europe and America travelled to New Zealand, many tried to buy land from the Maori. The Maori called these white people Pakeha, or strangers, and at first they were keen to learn from them about Western inventions.
The Maori wanted to know about the Pakeha's farming methods and other skills, and they welcomed Pakeha traders. The Pakeha population got bigger, and in 1840 the British queen, Victoria, suggestet to the Maori that Aotearoa should become a British colony. Maori chiefs were told that if they signed a treaty with the queen they would always be able to keep their lands, forests and fisheries. No one would take the Maori's lands away from them. Neither the British government nor the Maori knew how many settlers would soon be coming to Aotearoa (sent there by an organisation called New Zealand Company). So the Maori agreed to sign the Treaty of Waitangi. They thought it would be good to have the protection of the British queen, as their country was attracting many lawless adventurers to its coasts - traders, sailors hunting whales and seals, and runaway convicts from the prison colonies in Australia. As long as they could live according to their customs they did not mind having some Pakeha among them, especially useful traders and missionaries who brought with them new skills in crop-growing and in reading and writing.
Since the first Pakeha settlers arrived the Maori have had to change their way of life drastically. Aotearoa was a land of forests, but the Pakeha cut the lowland forests down. They covered much of the country with European-style farms. They even introduced birds like blackbirds, thrushes and goldfinches, and animals such as rabbits and hedgehogs, to make New Zealand seem more like a European country and less like old Aotearoa. The beautiful Aotearoa has gone, replaced by a landscape that the Pakeha created to remind them of where they came from.
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