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The Maori People of Polynesia
The Cook Island Maori language, also called Māori Kūki 'Āirani or Rarotongan, is the official language of the Cook Islands. Most Maori Cook Islanders also call it Te reo Ipukarea, literally "the language of the Ancestral Homeland". Cook Islanders are also Citizens of New Zealand & have been since 1901.

New Zealand's Maori Language is closely related to Cook Islands Maori. If they were to speak to one another, they would understand each other.

New Zealand Migration from Rarotonga
The canoe (waka in Māori) traditions or stories describe the arrival in New Zealand of Māori ancestors from a place most often called Hawaiki. They also refer to the construction of canoes, conflicts before departure, voyaging at sea, landing, inland and coastal exploration, and the establishment of settlements in new regions.

Readers of published traditions need to be aware that such accounts are often influenced by the Great Fleet (or Grand Settlement) theory. According to this theory, the Polynesian explorer Kupe first discovered New Zealand from Tahiti in 925 AD, and was followed by another explorer, Toi, in 1150; after this, in 1350, a fleet of seven canoes sailed from Tahiti and Rarotonga, bringing the ancestors of Māori to New Zealand. In the 1960s and 1970s research by the historians David Simmons and Keith Sorrenson proved that this idea was largely false. Today, as a result of further research including radiocarbon dating, it is generally accepted that New Zealand was settled by people from East Polynesia, who set off in different canoes at different times, with the first canoes arriving some time in the 1200s.

The myth spreaders

The Great Fleet theory was the result of a collaboration between the 19th-century ethnologist S. Percy Smith and the Māori scholar Hoani Te Whatahoro Jury. Smith obtained details about places in Rarotonga and Tahiti during a visit in 1897, while Jury provided information about Māori canoes in New Zealand. Smith then ‘cut and pasted’ his material, combining several oral traditions into new ones. Their joint work was published in two books, in which Jury and Smith falsely attributed much of their information to two 19th-century tohunga, Moihi Te Mātorohanga and Nēpia Pōhūhū.

New Zealands Oral History - First Settlers
Canoe Te Paepae-ki-Rarotonga:

In Māori tradition, Te Paepae-ki-Rarotonga was one of the great ocean-going, voyaging canoes that was used in the migrations that settled New Zealand. Te Paepae-ki-Rarotonga was captained by Waitaha-ariki-kore and is said to have landed near Matatā.[1]

Waitaha-Ariki-Kore pulled down his house in Rarotonga and used it to build his waka "Te Paepae-o-Rarotonga". He was guided to Aotearoa by two taniwha and made first landfall at the Rurima Islands. He approached the islands at speed and on striking them caused them to break apart. At Rurima he sought water at the spring which bears his name. From Rurima he then crossed to the mainland landing at Te Awa o te Atua, near Matata, before proceeding past Otaramuturangi to Te Kohika. From here he travelled to the inland of the Bay of Plenty.

Ngatiawa expressly state that "Te Paepae-o-Rarotonga" arrived before the coming of "Matatua," and it is said to have been a very tapu craft; hence the place where it lay (The canoe is said to be lying, buried, at Tara-o-muturangi) was used as a burial-place. Waiataha-ariki-kore married Hineteariki of Hapuoneone who had her pa at Otamarakau and inland to Waitahanui. Their daughter was Hahuru the mother of Tuwharetoa i te Aupouri. According to Colone' Gudgeon the Rarotongan natives have a tradition concerning a canoe called "Te Paepae-o-Rarotonga."