The Māori King movement, called the in Māori, is a Māori movement that arose among some of the Māori (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.
The Māori monarch operates in a non-constitutional capacity outside the New Zealand government, without explicit legal or judicial power. Reigning monarchs retain the position of paramount chief of several , and wield some power over these, especially within Tainui. The influence of the Māori monarch is widespread in Māoridom despite the movement not being adhered to by several major iwi, notably Tūhoe, Ngāti Porou, and the largest of all, Ngāpuhi. The headquarters for the King movement is Tūrangawaewae Marae in the town of Ngāruawāhia.
The movement arose among a group of central North Island iwi in the 1850s as a means of attaining Māori unity to halt the alienation of land at a time of rapid population growth by European colonists.
History
Background
thumb|175px|The flag hoisted at [[Ngāruawāhia on the proclamation of Pōtatau Te Wherowhero as Māori King, drawn in 1863]]From the early 1850s, North Island Māori came under increasing pressure to satisfy the demand of European settler farmers for arable land. While Māori cultivated small areas, relying on extensive forests for berry, birds and roots, settlers expanded their production capacity by burning forest and fern and planting grass seed in the ashes. Some influential chiefs including Te Rauparaha opposed land sales in the 1840s (culminating in the 1843 Wairau Affray), and the view became more widespread in the following decade, when the Pākehā (European) population grew to outnumber Māori and the colonial government's Native Land Purchase Department adopted unscrupulous methods to take ownership, which included offers to chiefs or small groups of owners. Deals with individual Māori or groups that did not represent majority interests also dragged Māori into disputes with one another. As the white frontier encroached further on their land, many became concerned that their land, and race, would soon be overrun.
Around 1853 Māori revived the ancient tribal runanga or chiefly war councils where land issues were raised and in May 1854 a large meeting—attracting as many as 2000 Māori leaders—was held at Manawapou in south Taranaki where speakers urged concerted opposition to selling land. in February 1857, a few weeks after a key intertribal meeting in Taupō, Wiremu Tamihana, a chief of the Ngāti Hauā iwi in eastern Waikato, circulated a proposal to appoint as king the elderly and high-ranking Waikato chief Te Wherowhero, and a major meeting to deal with it was organised to be held at Rangiriri in April.