MAORIS AND THE FOREST.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 259, 2 November 1933, Page 6

MAORIS AND THE FOREST.

In reply to the Maori correspondents, let me make it quite clear that I should not have the least objection to buying the Urewera Forest. What I object to and have sought to have remedied for many, years is the idiotic way in which sums of money are paid to individual Maoris. Very many cases under my observation have proved that not only has the money done no good to the Maori, but it has done him great harm. Only a feW years ago, to quote one instance, I saw a motor car costing £300 rusting out in a paddock- The Maori had run it four or five months, and then let it go as no good. I then inquired what he had done with the £3000 he got for his land, and the Maoris replied that it was all gone—all spent on the same follies as the pakeha. The Maoris in the Urewera district say they want to cut the forest to make farms. Expert advice given on the matter says that besides the destruction of forest, which -would be a serious injury to the people of New Zealand, the land would not be suitable for farms. We propose that suitable areas of good land for farming should be given in exchange, equal in value, and of more value to the Maori for production. I am very sorry to see the Maoris wanting to follow in the steps of the pakeha. The Maori is by nature artistic, poetic, full of wonderful natural lore and medicinal knowledge. Let the Maoris guard and keep their ways, customs and knowledge—not imitate the pakeha, who spends all his days toiling for money, which, in the long run, does not bring him happiness. If all the money that has been paid to the Maoris had been put into a common fund and invested for him, the amount would have amounted to millions and the interest on it would have financed all the undertakings that the Maoris might have desired. RUBY E. WATSON.