page_title: New Zealanders
section_title: Pacific Islanders
hierarchical_section_title: New Zealanders / Ethnic origins / Pacific Islanders
caption_attribution_description: English: Dancers at the Cook Islands stage at Auckland's 2010 Pacifica festival.
context_page_description: New Zealanders, colloquially known as Kiwis, are people associated with New Zealand, sharing a common history, culture, and language. People of various ethnicities and national origins are citizens of New Zealand, governed by its nationality law.
  Originally composed solely of the indigenous Māori, the ethnic makeup of the population has been dominated since the 19th century by New Zealanders of European descent, mainly of Scottish, English, Welsh and Irish ancestry, with smaller percentages of other European ancestries such as Greek, Italian, German, Dutch, Scandinavian and South Slavic. Today, the ethnic makeup of the New Zealand population is undergoing a process of change, with new waves of immigration, higher birth rates and increasing interracial marriage resulting in the New Zealand population of Māori, Asian, Pacific Islander and multiracial descent growing at a higher rate than those of solely European descent, with such groups projected to make up a larger proportion of the population in the future. New Zealand has an estimated resident population of around 4,917,000. Over one million New Zealanders recorded in the 2013 New Zealand census were born overseas.
context_section_description: In the 1950s and 1960s, New Zealand encouraged migrants from the South Pacific. The country had a large demand for unskilled labour in the manufacturing sector. As long as this demand continued, migrants were encouraged by the government to come from the South Pacific, and many overstayed. However, when the boom times stopped, some blamed the migrants for the economic downturn affecting the country, and many of those people suffered dawn raids from 1974.
caption: Cook Islands dancers at Auckland's Pasifika Festival
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon PowerShot SD800 IS", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2010:03:13 11:45:11", "Image ExifOffset": "177", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/200", "EXIF FNumber": "28/5", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "0", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2010:03:13 11:45:11", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2010:03:13 11:45:11", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "5", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "245/32", "EXIF ApertureValue": "159/32", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "159/32", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "7347/500", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "711", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "651", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "40960/3", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "299929/22", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}