Iwi

In New Zealand society, iwi (Māori pronunciation: [ˈiwi]) form the largest social units in Māori culture. The word iwi means "'peoples' or 'nations', and is often translated as "tribe", or confederation of tribes.

Most Māori in pre-European times gave their primary allegiance to relatively small groups such as hapū ("sub-tribe") and whānau ("family").

Naming

In Māori, as well as in many other Polynesian languages, iwi literally means "bone". Māori may refer to returning home after travelling or living elsewhere as "going back to the bones" — literally to the burial-areas of the ancestors. Māori author Keri Hulme's novel, The Bone People (1985), has a title linked directly to the dual meaning of bone and "tribal people". (It won the Booker Prize.)

Many names of iwi begin with Ngāti or with Ngāi (from ngā āti and ngā ai, both meaning roughly "the offspring of"). Ngāti has become a productive morpheme in New Zealand English to refer to groups of people: examples are Ngāti Pākehā (Pākehā as a group), Ngāti Poneke (Māori who have migrated into the Wellington region), and Ngāti Rānana (Māori living in London). Ngāti Tūmatauenga, "Tribe of Tūmatauenga" (the god of war), is the official Māori-language name of the New Zealand Army.