Māori and Field Hockey from 1900: More Than a Game?

Abstract

Field hockey, introduced to New Zealand in the late nineteeth century, quickly became popular among North Island Māori communities, especially with women. While Māori did not seek to separate themselves from mainstream society, they nevertheless sought to create parallel sporting (and other cultural) institutions through which their culture, tribal connections, and ethnic identity might remain intact and flourish, a phenomenon that exists to this day. Analysis of Māori hockey from the 1900s to the present serves to draw attention to the sport’s highpoint of the inter-war period, and its resurgence in the 1990s with the establishment of a national Māori hockey association and tournaments. Because more Māori women played hockey than men, the women’s game features more prominently in the paper. The researchers use periodicals of the time for much of their key historical primary data, including Māori-language newspapers, with some interviews for the more contemporary developments, arguing that for Māori, hockey has never been merely a game played purely for physical enjoyment, but an opportunity to experience it as Māori, in a Māori cultural space.