Waitaha is an early historical Māori iwi (tribe or nation). Inhabitants of the South Island of New Zealand, they were largely absorbed via marriage and conquest first by the Kāti Mamoe and then Ngāi Tahu from the 16th century onward.
Today those of Waitaha descent are represented by the Ngāi Tahu iwi.[1]
Another iwi known as Waitaha are said to have lived in antiquity in the Horowhenua area of the lower North Island.
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In 1995 a book by Barry Brailsford, Song of Waitaha: The Histories of a Nation, claimed that the ancestors of the "Nation of Waitaha" were the first remembered inhabitants of New Zealand, three groups of people of different races, two of light complexion and one of dark complexion, who had arrived in New Zealand from an unspecified location in the Pacific, 67 generations before the book was written. The book was written at the request of the Waitaha people and was a recording of their oral legends and stories, including the aboriginal people they met on arrival in New Zealand, and their eventual downfall after invasion by North Island Maori. The subject matter in this book has been very controversial and the subject of massive political and tribal debate in New Zealand. Many deny that Waitaha ever existed.
Although a series of further books, web sites and events have been based around these claims, they have been widely disputed and dismissed by conventional scholars. Historian Michael King noted: "There was not a skerrick of evidence – linguistic, artifactual, genetic; no datable carbon or pollen remains, nothing – that the story had any basis in fact. Which would make Waitaha the first people on earth to live in a country for several millennia and leave no trace of their occupation."[2] This broad statement runs counter to the oral history of those who claim descent from Waitaha, but represents clearly the established political position on the subject of archaic Maori tribes who are said to predate the main migration of Maori from Hawaiiki, normally dated around 1000 years ago.
A number of organisations have "Waitaha" as part of their title, often as a synonym for Canterbury or in a generic "ancient links to the land" sense, rather than either claiming actual tribal descent, or links to the philosophies of Brailsford. These include: