4 ideas
The resident Moriori, descendants of earlier East Polynesian settlers, met in council and chose to keep Nunuku's law, a long-held code renouncing killing, rather than fight. The invaders killed hundreds, enslaved the survivors, and the Moriori population collapsed within a generation, making the episode a stark case of a pacifist society meeting an armed one.
The East Polynesians who reached New Zealand around the thirteenth century did not arrive as Māori. Māori culture formed in New Zealand as the settlers adjusted to a large, cold, temperate land. They moved from an early phase built on moa and seal hunting to a later 'classic' phase of kūmara gardening, fortified pā, tribal competition and warfare, once the big game was hunted out and population pressure grew.
The Treaty of Waitangi (1840) exists as an English text and a Māori text that do not say the same thing. In the English text, chiefs cede 'sovereignty' to the Crown. The Māori text most chiefs signed cedes only 'kāwanatanga' (governorship) and guarantees them 'tino rangatiratanga' (full chieftainship) over their lands and treasures, so each side could believe it had agreed to something different.
King argued that New Zealanders of European descent are no longer transplanted Britons. Over generations they have developed a distinct culture rooted in New Zealand and belonging nowhere else. On this view the nation is best understood as two indigenous peoples, Māori and Pākehā, whose relationship is the central story, rather than one native people and one settler presence.