MAORI AND PAKEHA

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 104, 4 May 1936, Page 3

MAORI AND PAKEHA

RACIAL IDENTITY.

VIRTUES UNCHANGED.

"WHAT OF THE FUTURE ?

"In the Antipodes New Zealand is, sometimes colloquially called Maoiiland. There is something to be said for a* name which signifies so agreeably a title of occupation already centuries old when a Dutch navigator first touched 011 those distant shores," states "The Times" in a leading article under the date of February 2S. "The war canoes of the bravest and most enterprising of the Polynesian tribes were pusning ' southward to Aotearoa, the 'Long White Cloud of Maori legend, as early as the Middle Ages, in the wake, as plausible tradition says, of the trans-Pacific migration of the long-tailed cuckoo and the godwit.

"When Tasma 11 skirted the northwestern coasts in 1042, thinking that he had come upon a projection of Ptolemy s Great Southern Continent, the Maoris had reached in- the North Island, in isolated security, the apex of Polynesian culture.

"Captain Cook saw them a century and a quarter later. He described them as 'Indians,' and had occasion to respect their pugnacity. Later observers more fortunate in their encounters, found much to admire in the Maoris' customs, their tribal organisation and their intelligence, courage and physique.

"It seemed that in this land, with its mountains, its swift-flowing rivers and its fertility, there had been discovered that race of 'noble savages' so beloved at one time by political idealists. Yet the story of the white man's eventual settlement in Maoriland was to differ little from what, has been so often and so lamentably enacted elsewhere.

■ "The descendants of the great Polynesian chieftains, though they have lost none ot' their racial pride, have seen their people dwindle to one-fourth of the former numbers. Their ancient titles to the land, guaranteed by treaty with Queen Victoria, were bartered away for nothing. In its dispersion of the old communal life the civilisation of the pakeha went to the verge of destroying Maori racial identity for ever.

'Something of how this came about was recounted in the paper read yesterday before the Royal Society of Arte by Lord Bledisloe, who took a special interest in the Maoris during his term as Governor-General. The disintegration of the Maori tribal system, as Lord Bledisloe pointed out, was in many ways inevitable in the stress of the development of a new country.

"Early attempts to rectify the harm done lacked imagination of how important the old communal existence of the Maori was for this survival. It is only in the last few years that an approach has been made to a just and workable native land policy. Enough has now been done in this way to show that agricultural settlement, properly managed, oilers the race the hope once more of a self-confident and self-reliant future. But the critical time is not yet past.

"The Maori will bo saved from decadence only if side by side with the European civilisation, which he is too intelligent not to assimilate, he is encouraged to remain true to his own basic traditions and ideals. That task lies largely in the fields of ethnology and psychology. It is one sepremely worth achieving. The Maori population, now about 70,000, is once again on the increase. No one could see it without regret destined permanently to casual dependence on the white man's farms and villages, or existing as a show for travellers.

"The primitive virtues of the race are unchanged from the clays when the war canocs struck rut fearlessly from the coves and estuaries to challenge the ships of the pakelia; and to-day many of its members take their place •as citizens of New Zealand on terms of complete equality.

"Among these the names of Sir Maui Pomare, Sir Apirana Ngata and Dr. Peter Buck are conspicuous. On such men has descended in modern form the mana of the old tribal chiefs. Their leadership, and that of others like them, saved the race from the complete extinction that threatened it at the beginning of the present century. And now the great promise for the continued regeneration of the Maori people from within lies in the ideal of Maori national unity, as distinct from separate tribal organisation, which they have fostered.

"It may be that in cultivation and the pursuit of their own crafts the race will find in the future no less contentment than they did in the past from tribal fighting and the practice of a fierce and gloomy leligion. It is symbolic that, where their forefathers wielded the war club or grew the sweet potato, some present-day Maoris display an equal prowess on the Rugby football field and produce butter for the markets of London."