Our series on Remote Islands takes us to the Chatham Islands, a group that lies about 400 nautical miles (700km) from the North Island of New Zealand.
The Chatham Islands have been a dependency of New Zealand since 1842. Unlike the other remote islands of New Zealand (Kermadec, Bounty, Campbell, Antipodes and Auckland), the Chathams are home to a small population of about 800 residents, almost exclusively of polynesian origin. They are known as Rēkohu in Moriori and Wharekauri in Maori.
The settlement of the Chatham Islands took place in two different waves. The first settlers were Maori from the New Zealand archipelago who arrived in the 1500s. They were known as Moriori, and while disputes among Maori tribes were often resolved by bloodshed, the Moriori established a small but very peaceful society, without any contact with the outside world for three centuries.
In 1835, while the British had taken possession of New Zealand and revealed the existence of the Chatham Islands to local Maori tribes, one Maori chief convinced a group of 900 people from two tribes to resettle onto the Chatham Islands, and proceeded in borrowing a British ship and starting a new farming community on the Chathams. Things quickly became tense between the Moriori and the new settlers and the more aggressive Maori soon killed the vast majority of the Moriori and enslaved the survivors. As of 2022, the population is still composed mostly of Maori and Moriori people, both of whom hold a recognized indigenous status by the government of New Zealand.
The Chatham Islands
