WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Centuries before the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman and Britain’s Captain James Cook arrived in what became New Zealand, there was Kupe, a 10th-century navigator from Tahiti.

The first Polynesian to reach the then-uninhabited island, Kupe and his wife, Kuramarotini, are said by Maori to have given New Zealand its Maori moniker, Aotearoa, or “land of the long white cloud.”

A long time later — this past February — a group of sailors recreated Kupe’s journey, steering the double-hulled canoes known as waka hourua in New Zealand’s indigenous Maori language. The waka, whose crews included a group of teenagers from Maori language schools, were billed as the main attraction in the opening night of the New Zealand Festival, a three-week arts and culture event that began last month and runs through March 18.