Māori Trivia
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58 free Māori trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Māori are the tangata whenua of Aotearoa New Zealand, and this quiz covers the whole story: the canoe voyages from Polynesia, the gods and heroes of the oral tradition, the Treaty of Waitangi, the King Movement and the land march, and the living culture of marae, haka, tā moko, kai and te reo Māori. Easy questions ask what a hongi is, which star cluster Matariki names and what Ka Mate is; harder ones dig into who composed that haka, which god pushed apart the sky and the earth, when te reo became an official language and how many chiefs signed the Treaty. It suits anyone planning a trip to New Zealand, students of Pacific history, rugby fans who want to know what the All Blacks are actually shouting, and quiz nights looking for a round beyond the usual capitals and flags. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on Māori people, language, mythology, the Treaty of Waitangi and the individual customs and figures involved, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 58 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Māori are descended from settlers who voyaged by canoe from which part of the Pacific?
East Polynesia
East Polynesia launched the last great Pacific voyages: ocean-going canoes reached New Zealand roughly 700 years ago, and the settlers, isolated for centuries, developed a culture all their own.
Q 02In the Māori language, what does the word "māori" itself mean?
Normal or ordinary
Normal or ordinary: in legend the word set mortals apart from gods and spirits, and it became a people's name only after Europeans arrived, to tell the locals from the newcomers.
Q 03What is the traditional Māori greeting in which two people press their noses together?
Hongi
Hongi shares the breath of life, recalling the story of the first woman, who was shaped from clay and came alive when a god breathed into her nostrils; on the East Coast, people press noses twice.
Q 04What is a hāngī?
Cooking food in a pit oven with hot rocks
Cooking food in a pit oven with hot rocks takes hours: meat and vegetables are layered over the heated stones, covered with leaves or wet cloth, then buried under soil to trap the steam.
Q 05Which war leader is credited with composing "Ka Mate", the haka made famous by the All Blacks?
Te Rauparaha
Te Rauparaha hid from his pursuers in a food-storage pit while the local chief's wife stood over its mouth to shield him; the haka celebrates his escape from death.
Q 06What did the Crown's 2009 agreement over the haka Ka Mate give Ngāti Toa?
Authorship credit
Authorship credit was the heart of it: the Crown agreed to record the tribe's authorship but offered neither royalties nor a veto; the tribe's aim was to stop misuse, such as a 2006 Fiat advert in which Italian women performed the haka.
Q 07The 1840 Treaty of Waitangi was signed between Māori chiefs and which monarch's representatives?
Victoria
Victoria never saw it signed: William Hobson signed on her behalf at Waitangi, and copies then toured the country, gathering about 500 more signatures.
Q 08Norman Kirk's government briefly renamed Waitangi Day as what when it became a nationwide holiday in 1974?
New Zealand Day
New Zealand Day was Kirk's bid for a broader sense of nationhood; Robert Muldoon disliked the name, and his government restored Waitangi Day in 1976.
Q 09Which chief, first to sign the Treaty of Waitangi, later had the British flagpole at Kororāreka cut down?
Hōne Heke
Hōne Heke signed first in 1840 hoping for prosperity; four years later, disillusioned with British control, he ordered the flagpole felled, and its fourth fall in March 1845 began the Northern War.
Q 10Which word, coined from 'governor', did the Treaty of Waitangi's Māori text use where the English text said 'sovereignty'?
Kāwanatanga
Kāwanatanga came from kāwana, a rendering of 'governor' that Māori knew from the Bible and from New South Wales; it suggested government rather than sovereignty, which is why the two texts are argued over.
Q 11Which missionary translated the Treaty of Waitangi from English into Māori?
Henry Williams
Henry Williams and his son Edward translated the draft in a single evening on 4 February 1840, and he read the Māori text aloud to the chiefs at Waitangi the next day.
Q 12Te reo Māori became an official language by law in 1987; which language waited until 2026?
English
English had been official only by custom until Parliament passed the English Language Act in 2026, 39 years after te reo Māori and 20 after New Zealand Sign Language.
Q 13The Kōhanga Reo movement, begun in 1982, revived te reo Māori by doing what?
Immersing preschoolers in the language
Q 21Which god of storms and winds was angered by the separation of his parents and attacked his brothers?
Tāwhirimātea
Tāwhirimātea sent storms against the brothers who had parted his parents; in one tradition he tore out his own eyes and flung them into the sky, where they became Matariki.
Q 22Matariki, the Māori New Year celebration, is named for which star cluster?
The Pleiades
The Pleiades' return to the dawn sky opens the Māori year; the name is usually explained as short for Ngā Mata o te Ariki, 'the eyes of the god', though an older reading was 'little eyes'.
Q 23Matariki, a public holiday since 2022, marks the Māori New Year in which season?
Winter
Immersing preschoolers in the language gave the movement its name, 'language nest'; its success led on to kura kaupapa Māori, schools that teach in te reo.
Q 14What did a 1972 petition of over 30,000 signatures ask Parliament for?
Māori taught in schools
Māori taught in schools was the demand; the day it was delivered, 14 September, became Māori Language Day and by 1975 had grown into Māori Language Week.
Q 15Te reo Māori's closest relatives are Tahitian and the language of which Pacific island group?
The Cook Islands
The Cook Islands' language is even called Cook Islands Māori; with Tahitian and the Tuamotu languages it shares te reo's Tahitic branch, while Samoan sits on a more distant limb of the family.
Q 16What is the most popular translation of Aotearoa, the Māori name now used for New Zealand?
Land of the long white cloud
Land of the long white cloud is the commonest translation; the name first meant only the North Island, and William Pember Reeves borrowed it for the title of his 1898 history of the whole country.
Q 17In Māori tradition, Māui hauled up the North Island using a hook made from what?
His grandmother's jawbone
His grandmother's jawbone made the hook in the best-known telling; his brothers refused him bait, so he punched his own nose and smeared the hook with blood.
Q 18Māui's final trick, which cost him his life, involved which goddess?
Hine-nui-te-pō
Hine-nui-te-pō, goddess of death, killed him as he tried to pass through her sleeping body to win immortality; in the classic telling a fantail's laugh woke her.
Q 19Why, in Māori legend, did Māui set out to snare the sun?
It crossed the sky too fast
It crossed the sky too fast, leaving the days too short for work, so Māui and his brothers roped it at dawn and beat it until it crept along slowly.
Q 20In the Māori creation story, which god forced apart the sky father and earth mother?
Tāne, god of forests and birds
Tāne, god of forests and birds, succeeded where his brothers failed by bracing against the earth and pushing the sky up with his legs; some tribal versions have him use a post instead.
Winter: the star cluster returns to the dawn sky in late June or early July, and because the date follows the Māori lunar calendar, the holiday falls on a different Friday each year.
Q 24In the best-known Māori tradition, who was the first person to discover New Zealand?
Kupe
Kupe, in the best-known telling, chased a rival's giant octopus across the Pacific and killed it in Cook Strait; other tribal traditions name different first arrivals.
Q 25What is Hawaiki in Māori tradition?
The homeland the ancestral canoes sailed from
The homeland the ancestral canoes sailed from is also, in tradition, where spirits return after death, so Hawaiki stands for both the origin of life and its end.
Q 26Which descendants of early Māori settlers became the pacifist indigenous people of the Chatham Islands?
The Moriori
The Moriori kept Nunuku's law, a centuries-old ban on killing, even when two Taranaki tribes invaded in the 1830s, and most were killed or enslaved as a result.
Q 27Which large flightless bird was a mainstay of the early Māori diet before it was hunted to extinction?
Moa
Moa had been hunted only by the giant Haast's eagle before people arrived; hunters wiped them out within a few centuries, and the eagle, robbed of its prey, died out with them.
Q 28Who was the first European explorer to reach New Zealand, in 1642?
Abel Tasman
Abel Tasman anchored in what is now Golden Bay, where a canoe attacked one of his boats and four of his crew were killed; he named the place Murderers Bay and sailed away.
Q 29What is the Māori term for New Zealanders of European descent?
Pākehā
Pākehā is of uncertain origin; one common suggestion links it to pakepakehā, pale-skinned beings of legend whom the newcomers were thought to resemble.
Q 30Which crop introduced by Europeans let Māori war parties of the Musket Wars travel further and fight for longer?
Potatoes
Potatoes gave more food per hectare than traditional crops and could be tended by women and slaves, freeing warriors; surpluses were carried on campaign or traded for more muskets.