Portuguese New Zealanders
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| (Portuguese 650 New Zealanders Roughly 0.02% of New Zealand's population) |
|
| Languages | |
|
New Zealand English · Portuguese Portuguese Creole |
|
| Religion | |
| Roman Catholicism · Protestantism | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
|
Portuguese · Portuguese Australian · Portuguese Canadian · Portuguese Brazilian · Portuguese American |
Portuguese New Zealanders are either Portuguese who migrated to New Zealand, or New Zealanders of Portuguese descent. According to the latest 2006 New Zealand census, 195 residents of the country declared Portugal to be the place of their birth, and it is estimated that Portuguese migrants and their descendants number approximately 650, down from 900 in 2006, and 1000 in 1996. On the 22nd of April 2010, Portuguese New Zealanders were recognised by the Office of Ethnic Affairs as an official community of New Zealand, having tied the 70th ribbon to Parliament’s mooring stone on the Parliament House Galleria. The Portuguese Embassy in Canberra, Australia is accredited to New Zealand, while there are two honorary Portuguese consulates in New Zealand, one in Wellington and the other in Auckland, both of which operate through the Portuguese Consulate-General in Sydney.
As well as having been recognised as an official community, the Portuguese in New Zealand hold several annual meetings and celebrations such as Portugal Day, and are organised through a friendship association.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries there were more Portuguese than Spaniards in New Zealand. This was probably a reflection in part of the close commercial links between Portugal and England. Portuguese were recorded amongst New Zealand's early colonists, one Ngāti Kahungunu family has a Portuguese whaler in its whakapapa (genealogical chart), Auckland singer Bill Worsfold claims to be the descendant of this whaler, and wrote a ballad about his tough life and arrival in New Zealand. Other arrivals included António Rodrigues who migrated from the island of Madeira with his wife in the 19th Century and eventually settled in Akaroa where he built the "Madeira Pub Hotel", which is still in activity. Another early settler was Francisco Rodrigues Figueira, also from Madeira who owned a prison labour gum-digger's camp in west Auckland in the late 19th century. Known as "Don Buck", Figueira was a colourful and violent character and he is remembered in such west Auckland placenames as Don Buck Road, Don Buck Primary School, and Don Buck Corner Reserve. In the mid-20th century, Portuguese migration to New Zealand nearly stagnated with only 12 Portugal-born migrants being registered in the 1951 census, but the Portuguese diaspora gained a new momentum in the 1960s, and later after the Carnation Revolution when the number of Portuguese migrants to New Zealand rose even further.
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Wikipedia