Maori Hawaiki Ancestral Homeland Myth

In Maori mythology in New Zealand, there is a story of a land called Hawaiki that their ancestors came from, and some have speculated this could be Hawaii, a journey of about 4,600 miles. Traditional Maori belief treats Hawaiki as both an ancestral homeland and a spiritual place connected to origins, migration, and the afterlife. Scholars now generally use the name Hawaiki to refer more broadly to a mythical or remembered homeland shared across many Polynesian cultures, rather than a specific modern island.

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