For island nations in remote areas, you'd pretty much have to go to the Pacific.

Now, of the many nations in the Pacific, almost all are speakers of Austronesian languages (although genetically there is some difference between, say, Polynesians and Austronesian-speaking Melanesians). The Austronesian family pretty much dominates the Pacific to this day.

The reason they could dominate such a vast area of ocean is because they were (and perhaps still remain) excellent seafarers. I'm a linguist myself, and historical linguistics actually works perfectly in most of Oceania, because the Austronesians were the first humans ever to get to the vast majority of these remote islands. By reconstructing the languages' history, we can see the way they branched off from a common ancestor, and also the way they interacted with each other. Oceania is home to many dialect chains, or dialect continua, where dialects share certain features with their neighbours, but less features with the neighbours of their neighbours, up to the point where if you go far enough along the chain, you can no longer communicate, even though any two neighbouring dialects are mutually intelligible. This is indicative of close ties between these island communities, so they would all know that there was a world beyond their island paradise at sea.

The Maori weren't that much into seafaring, afaik, but they never really united into a single country, so individual communities wouldn't think in terms of having conquered the world.

Edit: I'm afraid I'm away from home (and my computers) for the weekend, but here are some sources off the top of my head. They are linguistic in nature, but these guys also reference archaeological studies.

• Robert Blust. The Austronesian languages. (this book is freely available online, and has been revised several times)

• Malcolm Ross. (Can't remember article/book titles, but but he's the main authority on Oceanic hist ling)