AN ANNIVERSARY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 150, 26 June 1937, Page 17

AN ANNIVERSARY.

Passing of Maori Social Worker.

On June 25, 1935, there passed away at Kawakawa Hospital, Bay of Islands, a well-known Maori social worker, Mrs. Kewa Bennett, J.P, of Farnell, Auckland. Mrs. Rewa Bennett waa very well known as being the first Maori to be elected a justice of the peace, and she lei lured extensively on Maori topics in Auckland fox many years. She delivered two lectures before the anthropology section of the Auckland Museum, and she was a member of the National Council of Women fat Auckland, frequently speaking when Maori problems were before the council. It was partly through her untiring efforts that the council devoted much time to a consideration of the problem of the employment of Maori women and girls in the Chinese market gardens in Auckland and suburbs —a problem which, by the way, in default of the inauguration of constructive co-operative schemes for cultivation and gardening among o.ur Maori community, still remains with us. Mrs. Bennett held that much of the fertile land within the area of greater Auckland, now lying idle, might be used to relieve Maori employment problems.

The status of the Maori woman was Mrs. Bennett's most earnestly followed concern. To advance this she herself worked ceaselessly, doing much bard study to acquire knowledge of the European social system. It will be remembered that at a meeting of the Auckland Women's Forum four years ago, on the occasion of a "mock general election," she put forward a Maori women's platform, which suggested, strangely enough, many social measures which have since become law or are about to be, such as motherhood endowment.

Mrs. Bennett wa» very proud of her Maori ancestry and of her Ngapuhi birth, and worked to. try to alleviate the distress of many Maori communities of the North. She had faith in the ability of the Maori woman to lift the status and standard of living of the Ngapuhi communities, and the recent news of a Government grant of several hundred pounds for development of hygiene, education and native arts and crafts by the northern Maori women through the medium of the Women's. Institutes, would have gladdened her exceedingly.

All the women's movements to-day, Maori and pakeha, Test on the foundation of the work of the pioneers, and it is good to remember those who have passed on, handing the standard to the next generation.