#te ika-māui

[trollputin]

[crabussy]

man winter in aotearoa is wild I'm wearing 1 layer and I have my doors flung wide open because it was too hot inside. stepped outside and was like fuck dude. I could go swimming in the sea

[tupere]

29/06/23 | Tekau-mā-rua Hotu / te tahi o Pipiri

Kōura teo -> kauhuri -> HE HAPŪ TE KŌURA

<- ( He hauora ia!!! I hoki mai ia ki te wai )

[bakasara]

Some pictures of my trip to AoNZ I never got around to posting!

Between me, @domlerrys and @postmodernmulticoloredcloak we came home with hundreds of them, but these are from a few of my favorite moments.

There's the time we got to meet up with @almaasi (and their amazing mom!) at Te Papa:

And if you want a peek of the majestic Rongomaraeroa on the top floor of the museum, you'll have to click on it to make it bigger but there's this one we took from one of the chairs:

Te Rongomaraeroa really is as impressive as it looks in its pictures and being in this felt pretty special in itself!

We got to meet up with Elmie a second time at their house and let me tell you, the crazy Wellington wind did NOT want us to be snapping pictures. Here's my favorite "failed" one (feat. Elmie's sheep):

I was not prepared for how fucking strong the wind is in Wellington lmao. The pic above is a good example of an average day, and there was this one day where it got so strong close to the shore, we struggled to walk in a straight line and genuinely held on to each other at one point. It is S T R O N G.

Speaking of the waterfront, this café called Karaka quickly became our favorite; it's the only bilingual English/reo Māori bar in Wellington and it's really welcoming, other than having some of the most delicious food we ate. My mouth still waters thinking about their hangi plate.

Right in front of the café is this beautiful statue of Kupe (the dude at the top) and Kūrāmarotini or Hine-te-aparangi depending on who's telling the story (the woman, Kupe's wife), seeing Te Ika-a-Māui/NZ's North Island for the first time:

There's various traditional stories about the discovery of Aotearoa; this is supposed to be the moment Hine-te-aparangi points at the land and exclaims "He ao! He ao! He ao tea roa!" ("A cloud, a cloud, a long white cloud!"), which is how the land comes to be named in one of the versions. I loved walking past this statue, especially 'cause of how cool and powerful the woman is made to look.

And next to Karaka Café is Te Wharewaka o Pōneke, a Te Ātiawa-owned org who does cultural tours and cultural preservation work. This one is from the waka tour (pics courtesy of them):

I couldn't be on the boat because of a fresh tattoo, so I didn't book along with my sibling and our friend and simply walked with them to the waterfront to watch them go. But the guys from Te Wharewaka were incredibly generous and invited me inside to join everything, from the traditional greetings and introductions to learning the basics of how to row the waka to the goodbyes later on, only skipping the actual rowing where I'd get wet.

We liked the experience so much, we ended up doing another tour with them, and then we kinda made friends after passing them by so many times on our way to the café. Also, I don't know what it is with every single kiwi we met being incredibly nice, but these four people were shining examples of it and meeting them was genuinely one of the highlights of our trip. Anyway, pictures were taken on our last day there!

(We ran home to grab our hoodies once said pics were suggested, and I can't stress enough that these guys went the trouble of taking out their mantles for this – which they do wear for rowing during the tours, but were still carefully stowed away wrapped in cloth.)

[creature-of-the-week]

North Island brown kiwi from Te Ika-a-Māui (North Island), Aotearoa (New Zealand)

[relatablemarine]

Okay, okay. I know this isn't a marine animal but I recently read about this little beauty and decided that you all should be informed as well. As it turns out the 'normal looking guy who is secretly kind of a freak' trope is not exclusive to the human species. This unassuming 11cm gastropod has a hidden talent, it is possibly the only freshwater snail known to science with the ability to produce bioluminescence. Like most 'limpets', the luminescent limpet (Latia) absolutely love scraping organic matter and algae off rocks. This amazing specimen however, can generate a glowing slime as a defense mechanism when disturbed. They are also real homebodies, only being found in stony stream systems of the north island (Te Ika-a-Māui) of the country of New Zealand. In between these marvelous critters and the native glow worm (Arachnocampa luminosa) you would be forgiven for imagining the NZ wilderness as some kind of green-tinted nighttime rave. These sensitive little souls however are currently at risk due to declining water quality New Zealand rivers.

Photo: Shaun lee

[ayin-me-yesh]

If you're looking for ways to help with the aftermaths of Cyclone Gabrielle, several towns in Matakāoa / the East Cape of Te Ika-a-Māui / the North Island of Aotearoa / New Zealand have been cut off from power and communications and could use donations. It is possible to donate from overseas.

Tina Ngata has posted more information about this effort on Twitter.

Here's a summary of the cyclone's damaging impacts in the area.

[nasze-zd]

Aotearoa

znaczy "ziemia pod wielką białą chmur��" i jest to dzisiejsze rodzime określenie Nowej Zelandii w języku Maori.

Dlaczego dzisiejsze? Otóż przed przybyciem Europejczyków Maorysi nie postrzegali Nowej Zelandii jako kraju w obecnej formie i nie traktowali Wyspy Północnej i Południowej jako całości; mieli odrębne nazwy na obydwie. Północną nazywano właśnie Aotearoa, Południową — Te Waipounamu. Nazwa Wyspy Południowej nie zmieniła się do dziś, Północna jest zwana obecnie Te Ika-a-Māui, a Aotearoa zaczęła być utożsamiana z całym krajem.

Prawidłowe wymówienie tego śpiewnego słowa jest dla nas prawie niemożliwe, ale na pocieszenie dodam, że dla anglojęzycznych też. Bardzo słabym przybliżeniem niech będzie "a-o-ti-ro-a", ale tylko Maorysi potrafią ładnie połączyć tylnogardłowe "a" przechodzące w "o" z wibrującym "r" nietypowym dla angielskiego, ale nieco krótszym niż słowiańskie.

Gdzieś pod koniec XX wieku nazwa Aotearoa zaczęła być popularyzowana na fali wskrzeszania zainteresowania kulturą pierwotnych mieszkańców, jak też walki Maorysów o uznanie ich języka za urzędowy, co nastąpiło w roku 1987. Były nawet petycje, by nazwa maoryska została dołączona do oficjalnej nazwy kraju ("Aotearoa New Zealand"), ale nigdy nie zabrnęły one zbyt daleko.

Stosowanie nazwy Aotearoa przez białych jest obecnie swego rodzaju manifestacją inkluzywnych poglądów i promaoryskich postaw. Bardzo często występuje w oficjalnych komunikatach, zwłaszcza w telewizji, korporacjach lub wypowiedziach polityków lewicowo-centrowych. Użycie jej przez osobę dystansującą się od dziedzictwa pierwotnych mieszkańców kraju jest nieprawdopodobne. Nigdy też nie słyszałem, by używała tej nazwy nowa imigracja, czyli ludzie, którzy się tu nie urodzili — na moje wyczucie byłoby to sztuczne.

Co więc z samym znaczeniem dosłownym, "lądu wielkiej białej chmury"? Pochodzi ona z mitów maoryskich; któremuś z ich praprzodków drogę do nowej ojczyzny miała wskazać właśnie taka chmura. Jak czytelnicy wiedzą zapewne, gdyż sklepałem chyba dostatecznie paluchy pisząc o pogodowych fenomenach, rozległe ławice stratokumulusów oraz masywne fenowe wały altokumulusów występują tu nader często. Możliwe tym samym, że stanowiły jakąś wskazówkę dla dawnych żeglarzy. Odkładając więc na bok kontekst polityczny, Aotearoa określa Nową Zelandię pięknie i trafnie.

[planefood]

i dont have anything specific to say but!!!!! your robots are sooo soo cool and i love hearing more about them, and id love to know more about the world around them!!!! whats the deal with their setting?

Oh wonderful I was just thinking about this and was considering of making my own separate text post but didn't quite know where to put my thoughts. I'm glad you like my characters :) This is another lengthy answer bare with me I hope you don't mind. SO I don't know if I've actually outright stated this in a more obvious way but all my characters (currently) live in in modern day Auckland, the largest city in my country. It just made sense from a population point of view since about half of our entire population is in that city that that's where most of the robots would be.

and a handy map of the North Island, Te Ika-a-Māui for you before we continue

Tandy lived in the South Waikato for a while before moving to Auckland. Lithium comes from Hamilton, Jay and Phillip both come from Wellington. Cathy comes from around the rural Taupo area. The rest of the (nz) robots are local Aucklanders. I won't go too in depth about city differences and stuff because I only think like... 5 of my followers are from here as well. I know people are definitely more interested in the more 'sci fi' elements of robots living alongside humans, which I'll get to in time, but Aotearoa being the setting for the story is actually pretty important, at the very least in a sentimental level for me and will greatly influence a lot of the writing as we go forward. I want to focus more on that element for this ask sorry if that's not what you were looking for. A little more about me, a huge reason why I put such strong emphasis on my characters living here when I notice other local artists my age don't really tend to do that, is I spent my formative years living in Tokyo, Japan before moving to Aotearoa in like 2008. You can imagine moving from somewhere with 13 odd million people living in it to a city with like a 40,000 population speaking a language I wasn't familiar with was a massive change for anyone let alone a young disabled kid. Originally I was pretty resentful of living here, people at school generally treated me poorly just for being autistic alone only adding with all the cultural and language differences that came from being overseas. If I had simply stayed in Japan in my mind everything would've turned out fine. Now as an adult I do still think about what I would've turned out like if I did stay in Japan, but I still wouldn't trade growing up here for anything. As I get older a lot of cultural influence from Japan slips out of my grasp, I stopped speaking Japanese having nobody else my age who spoke it to talk to and when more things started getting imported overseas to here when I thought I could maybe get that part of myself back it even just a little, it was picked and altered for a more western palette and that's for a country as influential as Japan. I don't want that happening again for the country I live in now. As the internet becomes more commonplace and more NZ artists take the stage they're really starting to appeal to an American audience. It makes sense, it's the majority of your audience. I'm essentially screaming into a void with us making up less than 1% of the world population. I want my art and stories to appeal to a wider audience as well but I don't want to tone down any aspects I feel are important. I'm starting to get sick of writing all my ocs in the states when it's so alien to me just cause it's seen as a blank slate. My story is about robots, yes but it's also about the experience of what it's like to grow up and live here. I want people to really view and experience it like I do whether they've lived here or not, which is super difficult. I have a perspective a lot of people don't and I really want to use that to my advantage. I want to talk about more in depth and more niche aspects of it on here, but I also want to avoid boring anyone or alienating people?

[drhoz]

The Great ACT-NSW-NZ Trip, 2023-2024 -Te Upoko-o-te-Ika-a-Māui

The Head of Māui's Fish - specifically, the area around New Zealand's capital city, Wellington, deriving from the legend of the fishing up of the island by the demi-god Māui. The harbour is the mouth - an area of reddish-purple rock facing onto Cook Strait was the bait Māui used.

Wellington's placement makes it one of the windiest cities in the world, and the narrow strait and howling gales makes for complicated tides and a shocking number of shipwrecks. The geology makes for some fun times too - the Haowhenua (Māori for 'land swallower') earthquake around 1460 AD raised the harbour area by 6 meters, turning some islands into the Miramar Peninsula. The 1855 Wairarapa earthquake moved a 150km stretch of the Wairarapa fault 20m along and 8m up. in some respects this was convinient timing, since the city had been desperately short of flat land at the time, and now part of the harbour wasn't harbour anymore. It's now the central business district of the city.

Every public building in New Zealand we went into had a warning plaque that the building was earthquake prone - one of the museums in wellington had that, BUT also suggested, if the quake was a particularly big one, you might want to head to the top floor rather than out into the street. Because Wellington is also tsunami prone. The 1855 quake produced one that reached 11m above sealevel.

The hills are also festooned with delightfully eccentric architecture, and more than a few funicular lifts so people can actually get to their homes from street level. One person had a funicular installed because their dog was getting elderly and struggled with the stairs.

Most of the species I saw were along the shoreline - at the harbour and ferry terminal in the city, out around the edges of the Miramar Peninsula, and out on Cook Strait at Pariwhero/Red Rocks.

The geology at Pariwhero is quite interesting - much of the basement rock in New Zealand is greywacke, a dark sandstone derived from turbidite deposits acculmulated at the edge of the Australian tectonic plate. At Pariwhero there are also deposits of argillite, a finer-grained rock quite useful for stone tools. And basalt - but the volcanic rocks are 50 million years older than the greywacke and argillite surrounding them. That's because the basalt was originally a set of seamounts - underwater volcanoes - scraped off the Pacific Plate as it subducts under what would one day be New Zealand, buried 10-15km deep, and pushed back to the surface again as more and more stuff gets piled up on the accretionary wedge and the entire area gets folded over double and concertinaed. Most of the colour in the local rocks is the result of iron leaching out of the basalt over tens of millions of years, and the argillite was deposited in the lee of the seamounts.

[de-i-ji]

aotearoa/new zealand is currently under a national state of emergency, only a third in our history.* cyclone gabrielle has devastated the north and east of te ika-a-māui/north island, barely weeks after flash flooding hit northland and auckland.

no confirmed deaths but the damage is unfathomable.

EDIT: sadly there are now 5 deaths associated with gabrielle. entire communities have been completely isolated with no communications in or out. numerous places have dwindling water supplies.

EDIT: the death toll is now 7

*the other were the christchurch earthquakes and covid which gives a glimpse at the scale of what we are facing

[crabussy]

are you a moth enjoyer?

YES. very much so I love those freaky beasts

as a kiwi I'm biased but one of my favourites has to be the pūriri moth!! they're endemic to Te Ika-a-Māui, Aotearoa, and they're gorgeous and the greenest things ever

the larvae live for roughly 6 years before metamorphosing, and spend most of their time burrowing in trees such as the pūriri tree. I got to see a mature pūriri tree when I visited the bird sanctuary island tiritiri matangi in december and it had so many pockmarks from pūriri moth grubs!! super cool to see [: love these beasts

[tupere]

27/04/23 | Waru Tamatea-aio / te tekau-mā-rua o Haratua

[yodaveganwas-blog]

Te Ika-a-Māui.

[lydiardbell]

For anyone wondering how one founding population became two groups - a famine around 1500 BCE prompted one group to leave Te Waipounamu (South Island) and travel 873 km to Rēkohu*. The ensuing 200-300 years of isolation from one another led to Māori and Moriori developing different cultures and languages. Part of the British argument for Moriori being an earlier population is that they thought their art and architecture were more "primitive".

* if you Google "closest distance between Chathams and NZ" you'll get something like 500km - that's measured from a cape on Te Ika-a-Māui. Archaeological evidence (tools , jewelry, types of stone in both of these, etc) shows that the group that became the Moriori did not leave from that point, but rather somewhere on Te Waipounamu.

Not adding this onto the post that keeps crossing my dash because it's not really relevant to that discussion, but: anytime the phrase 'nobody was living there' comes up as a form of justification for something or other, it is worth keeping in mind that in literally the last ten thousand years or so the only major areas of the world to have been settled by humans for the first time are Greenland, Iceland, Aotearoa New Zealand, and Madagascar. (We shall not count Antarctica on the grounds that nobody lives there permanently or is ever likely to.) Everywhere else has been inhabited by humans for tens of thousands of years. Even when Homo sapiens left Africa our ancestors were encountering (checks notes) our other ancestors, Neanderthals and Denisovans, not to mention other human species now extinct.

The myth of the unpopulated frontier, open for expansion, is just that: a myth, and one that generally serves a specific purpose in terms of justifying settler-colonialism. The question the phrase 'nobody was living there' demands is - who are you calling 'nobody'?

[john-william-12]

A Comprehensive Guide to New Zealand ETA

New Zealand is a land of rich Maori culture, stunning natural beauty and a plethora of outdoor adventures. This country is located in Southwestern Pacific Ocean and consists of two landmasses - South Island (Te Waipounamu) and North Island (Te Ika-a-Māui). In recent years, NZ has become a good destination for tourism, work or business purposes. If you are planning to visit New Zealand, you must have Eta for New Zealand. Also, if you hold an eta from an eligible country, you do need to apply for an e visa for New Zealand. In this article, we will explore NZeta, required documents, application process, etc information that helps you to apply NZETA successfully. 

What is New Zealand Eta? 

To prevent unauthorized entries and efficiency of immigration process, New Zealand has launched a new system “New Zealand Eta” in 2019. This system allows citizens from visa-waiver countries, cruise ship passengers, and transit people to travel to NZ without applying a traditional visa. It allows you to stay up to 6 months within a 12 month period, you can enter multiple times and ETA is valid for 2 years for Travelers. 

When you are applying eta for New Zealand, you have to pay International Visitor Conservation and Tourism Levy (IVL) fees that help fund the protection of the environment and infrastructure. 

Update: Now, Health Screening is required before entering the country and you have to answer health related questions. Also, IVL fees are increased, so before applying eta, you should need to check the latest fee structure. 

What are the eligible countries for eTA New Zealand? 

NZ eTA is required for those citizens who are coming from visa-waiver countries, transit travelers and cruise passengers. As of 2025, 190 countries under visa waiver program, check the below mentioned list of some visa-waiver countries or Territories for New Zealand: 

Andorra

Argentina

Austria

Bahrain

Belgium

Brazil

Brunei

Bulgaria

Canada

Chile

Croatia

Cyprus

Czech Republic

Denmark

Estonia

Finland

France

Germany

Greece

Hungary

Iceland

Kuwait

Latvia

Liechtenstein

Lithuania

Luxembourg

Spain and many more.

New Zealand eTA required documents

Before applying for eta, you need to know what documents are required while applying for NZETA. 

A valid travel document or passport from a visa waiver country with 6 months validity.

Travelers must hold NZ eta.

Travelers must have a Health or Character certificate.

Purpose of visit, details of funds and travel tickets.

A valid email address to receive eta.

Master or Credit/Debit Card to pay the processing fee.

How to apply for New Zealand eta? 

The process of applying to eta NZ is very easy and straightforward. You can apply online for tourism, business or transit. You do not need to visit any office or apply for a traditional visa. New Zealand eTA Application process are below mentioned: 

For applying eta, you need to fill the application form online and enter the basic required details such as passport number, name, dob, etc.

You will be asked the questions related to Health and Character

After that, you need to upload the required documents.

Review your application and pay the processing fees visa Credit or Debit Card, Mastercard. Along with your processing fees, you need to pay IVL fees.

Once all details are verified, your eta is sent to your valid email.

Note: Eta processing time takes usually 72 hours, to avoid any delay, you should apply your eta in advance that helps you in a successful journey without problem. If you are already staying in NZ and want to stay longer then you have to apply for a visa or if you have a valid NZ visa then you do not need NZETA. 

How to check eTA NZ status? 

If you want to check if your eta is approved or in processing, then you can easily check it. When you applied for eta, a Reference number will be sent in your email. 

Go to the website. Enter the NZ eTA Reference number.

After that enter your passport number and select your nationality.

Now, you can see your eta is approved or pending.

Is it possible to extend New Zealand eTA?

No, New Zealand can not eTA for travelers. ETA is valid for up to 2 years for Travelers and 5 years for Crew members. If you have NZ eta then you are allowed for multiple entries, stay up to 3 to 6 months. If you want to stay longer in New Zealand for tourism, then you can choose other options such as New Zealand Visitor Visa which allows you to stay up to 6 months (multiple entry) or 9 months (single entry). Through a Visitor Visa, you can study up to 3 months, visit family or friends and spend your holidays in New Zealand. 

Conclusion

NZ eTA is an essential travel document for travelers who are coming from visa-waiver countries, transit people and cruise passengers. Through eta, you can explore stunning landscapes, stay up to 6 months and visit family or friends in New Zealand. For visa-waiver country citizens, they do need to apply for an e visa or other kind of traditional visa, they can enter the country with the help of eTA. While applying for NZ eta, make sure to check required documents, processing and IVL fees and apply in advance to avoid any issue.