He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata. What is the most important thing in the world? It is people, it is people, it is people. The whakatauki was coined by Meri Ngaroto of Te Aupouri, in a period of inter-tribal warfare in the Far North, to stress the value of life and save tamariki, children. It is now New Zealand's most quoted proverb, deployed from government data policy to kindergarten walls.
Maori writers themselves dissent: people first became people above all, and the land, maunga, awa, moana, whenua, got demoted to resource. The counter-answer: the most important thing is whakapapa, connection itself, since people descend from and answer to the environment. The oldest protocols, kawa, rank Io, sky, earth, and the metaphysical long before humankind. The tradition contains its own rebuttal.
The claim: whakatauki are compressed negotiations, the people-people-people line is literally a war-stopping argument, and proverb form is what peace settlements look like after the scribes leave: portable, repeatable, deniable. Verdict: fits this example precisely and generalizes, proverbs are where a culture stores the arguments that once worked. The archive reads them as treaties in four beats. Quote carefully: someone once bled for the compression.
If the people-proverb was coined to stop a war, why does the land keep filing objections?