Story: East Coast region
The proportion of Māori in the population of the East Coast has fluctuated considerably, and has also varied between the more developed and populous Poverty Bay (including Gisborne) and the less populous and more isolated East Cape, centered on Ruatōria.
In 1926, after 50 years of substantial Pākehā settlement, Poverty Bay was only 10% Māori (2,440 of 25,365). The much smaller population of the East Cape in that year was 64.5% Māori (4,165 of 6,454).
The Māori proportion grew to over 40% in the region as a whole and to over 80% on the East Cape, by the 1990s. The dip in the Māori proportion of the East Cape population in the 1970s was probably the result of a greater rate of Māori than Pākehā migrating outslde the region – the male Māori population in particular fell in the 1970s.
Note that in 1986 census the method of measuring ethnic identity changed, with multiple identity allowed. Thus in the region as a whole in 2006, while 47.3% of the population identified as Māori, 66% identified as European or ‘New Zealander’.
Source: Statistics New Zealand
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Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand
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