MAORI NEEDS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 22, 27 January 1937, Page 17

MAORI NEEDS.

LAND AND FINANCE. IS THE PAKEHA INDIFFERENT? CALX FOR VIGOROUS ACTION.

(By J.c.y '

For year after yetor some of us have written about the urgent need of practical measures to place the Maori people in a position of economic security and independence. The suggestions put forth have generally been approved by those who understood the needs of the race, but the indifference, and sometimes active hostility, of politicians, officials and public have stood in the way of progress and justice. There is a vast amount of hypocrisy in the conventional pakeha attitude toward the Maori. Europeans are always ready to accept Maori hospitality and to' enjoy Maori entertainments, and the Maori is expected to contribute the New Zealand note of distinction when any national demonstration is planned, such as the reception of Royal visitors. The people have always been more than generous in their response to such requests from the pakeha. It is acknowledged that the Maori element supplies the most inspiring and peculiarly New Zealand source of literature and art in the Dominion. But this appreciation of the genius of the race is for the most part only on the surface. When it comes to actual help for a Maori cause the pakeha is found wanting.

When there has been a conflict between pakeha and Maori interests, Government officials have almost invariably opposed the Maori, and. this attitude is usually »

characteristic of the English population. The Native Department, ostensibly the guardian of Maori interests, was really the Maori's worst enemy for more than half a century. It was nothing more than a native land purchase office, and its. success guaged by the quantity of land it obtained from the tribal owners, at the cheapest possible rate, until there was no more land to sell.

The Position at Orakei. We need not go further than Orakei for an example of the prevailing hostility to the Maori's welfare. An effort is being made to squeeze the remnant of Ngati-Whatua out altogether from the fragment of their ancestral acres that is left to them. In one way and another the Maoris who befriended the white pioneers, and who protected them in Auckland's infancy, have been pauperised by the later generations, and not a hand is reached out to help them.

Here is one specific example of official determination, State and civic, to get the Maori out of the way, in tho intfiesta of a so-called molel suturb o: the city. How the Maori wao badgered, coaxed and cajoled to sell the freehold, regardless of the fact that it had originally been made inalienable as a tribal home, is a sorry and disreputable story. Auckland pakehas were quickly in possession of the money, and the Maori was out in the Chinaman's gardens. What can be done now is a matter for the Auckland civic authorities in cooperation with the Government. Let them try to look at Orakei with the eyes of the Maori, and . provide the people, with safeguards as to the future, with adequate land on the slopes surrounding the Okahu Bay village to make it again what it was once, a comfortable and sightly home of the little community.

That is one specific case in which the duty of the citizens of Auckland and the Government is clear. What I suggest can be carried out provided the pakeha is sincerely desirous of helping

the Maori,' whose generwiity and lack of commercial astuteness have been his undoing.

There is the general question of national policy with regard to Maori settlement and finance. The obligation of the Dominion Government to make good its debt to the Maori is heavy and cannot be evaded by any honest and humanitarian Government. The present Government, of course, is not to blame for any of the injustices that afflict the Maori. Cut it has had time now to view the situation and to gather some idea of the mischief wrought by previous Governments, whose efforts were directed towards the separation of the Maori from his land.

Liberal Measures Demanded. Now the two vital needs can be supplied. Land and money must be provided if the pakehas of the Dominion are not to stand convicted in history of unscrupulous exploitation of the Maori. The Maori race does not want favours, but recompense.

Some tribes, such as those of the East Coast, are well endowed with land. They escaped the enormous confiscation which stripped Waikato and Taranaki and the imprudent alienation of land in the King Country and the Rotorua district. Now Waikato and Taranaki are the urgent cases calling for redress.

I consider that Waikato and the landless people around Auckland should be the first care of the nation, and the money which is now being spent on such unnecessary works as the Milford Sound motor road could be devoted more justly and.profitably to restoring Maori farming rights.

It is futile to say that the country cannot afford to do justice to its first settlers while purely tourist roads are being carved through the unpeopled wilderness. New Zealand can well spare the money needed for 'the liberal settlement of the landless tribes. It should always be remembered that the Waikato people were forcibly robbed, by means of British cannon, rifle and bayonet, of their best '(irm lands, the homes of many hundreds of people, and the land which to-day should be the homes of thousands. Their best lands were taken, whole clans were completely bereft of their sources of livelihood. We read of the Highland clearances a century ago. The Waikato clearance was infinitely worse.

Good Land Needed. The robbery here cannot be atoned for by settling the. Maori on third-rate land covered with gorse and ragwort, a heartbreaking task for the farmer. The best of land, and improved land at that, is not too good for the Maori, remembering that it was on the first-class cleared and cultivated land that many of the military conquerors of Waikato were settled in the 'sixties. A repentant pakeha Government cannot for shame's sake give the Maori Teas than the best.

It is not necessary to buy land at the extravagant prices paid by the Government of nearly twenty years ago for farms for white returned soldiers. But land must be provided. In travelling about the country during the last few weeks I have seen good land indifferently farmed by pakehas, which would be more competently handled by some Maori families I know, given the needful finance and the expert assistance of State agricultural advisers. Loans to settlers and the many ways in which the State now helps white farmers should be extended just as freely to the Maori. That the Maori can be a good and I industrious and successful settler has been shown by the numerous farming settlements established in various parts of the Auckland province and on to East

Coast, chiefly through' the vigorous leadership of Sir Apirana Ngata. The expenditure on these experimental farming areas has more than justified itself. Yet the pakeha critics in and out of Parliament all but ruined the cause of Maori rehabilitation, and dealt the good work a blow, by the "dead set" made against Ngata, from which it has not yet recovered. The Maoris generally bitterly resent that interference with a great leader's efforts to restore the old-time self-support and self-reSpecting independence of the race.

The Leaders. Now there is not only a call for land and money, but for a policy which will give Maori leaders the control of the measures necessary for restoration of the people to the land. I should like to see Sir Apirana Ngata and Te Puea Herangi given a free hand, untrammelled by officialism, in the rescue of the Maori from his present hand-to-mouth methods of existence, in those districts still awaiting the reconstruction process. Te Puea herself is a woman in a hundred thousand. The administration of a generous State fund for the rehabilitation of Waikato would be 6afe in her hands. Her self-sacrificing work for her people, her splendid results already for small expenditure, attest her ability and her altruism. Waikato has had no such figure since the days of Wiremu Tamehana, that patriotic statesman who lived 50 years to oearly. As for Sir Apirana Ngata, who has suffered much in proud silence, he should be invested with the full powers of a Native Minister. What does it matter that he is not a Labour party man? The restoration of the Maori is not a party question. The great Sir Donald Maclean was Native Minister in eight successive Administrations; the frequent changes of Government in a few years did not affect his status or his policy. He was the one man in sight for his troubled period. Similarly. Ngata is the one man now in sight. From my close study of native affairs, and from my talks with Maoris, I feel convinced that a strong man who is not afraid to drive ahead regardless of petty obstacles is the great need of the day. No pakeha of to-day can fill the position. There are no more Donald Macleans. Ngata is the man for the times. And is it not time that the pakeha gave the Maori a fair opportunity of handling his own business in his own way, and suspend judgment pending results? The pakeha owes the Maori a very great deal; he can help in one way by paying liberal compensation, and in another by withholding the kind of criticism that is based on ignorance of the Maori point of view.