New Zealand’s foreign minister berates Mexico-born MP for use of nation’s Maori name

The speaker of New Zealand’s parliament has told lawmakers he will not consider further complaints about the use of the country’s Maori name, Aotearoa, in parliament after Foreign Minister Winston Peters sought to have it banned.

“Aotearoa is regularly used as a name of New Zealand,” Speaker Gerry Brownlee said in a ruling on Tuesday. “It appears on our passports and it appears on our currency.”

The conflict over a word increasingly prominent in New Zealand life arose last month when Peters objected to another lawmaker’s use of the term. It reflects the way enthusiasm for the indigenous language among New Zealanders of all ethnicities has at times prompted a backlash – including about what the country should be called. It was also the latest salvo in the so-called “culture war”-style friction between two political parties.

Ricardo Menendez March, from the left-leaning Green Party, used the name Aotearoa during a question to a government minister. The composite word means “land of the long white cloud” in te reo Maori, the Maori language.

Peters – who is deputy prime minister, foreign minister and leader of the populist party New Zealand First – objected in a point of order.