Description

The Māori King movement, called the Kīngitanga in Māori, is a Māori movement that arose among some of the Māori iwi (tribes) of New Zealand in the central North Island in the 1850s, to establish a role similar in status to that of the monarchy of the United Kingdom as a way of halting the alienation of Māori land. The first Māori king, Pōtatau Te Wherowhero, was crowned in 1858. The monarchy is non-hereditary in principle, although every monarch since Pōtatau Te Wherowhero has been a child of the previous monarch. The eighth monarch is Nga wai hono i te po, who was elected and crowned in September 2024.