Māori petition for Aotearoa to be official country name

The Māori party has launched a petition to change New Zealand’s official name to Aotearoa, the te reo Māori, indigenous language name for the country. “It’s well past time that te reo Māori was restored to its rightful place as the first and official language of this country,” Te Pāti Māori leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said in a statement launching the petition. “We are a Polynesian country – we are Aotearoa.”

The petition also calls on the government to “identify and officially restore the original te reo Māori names for all … places” over the next five years.