Methodist Synod Member Attacks Maori Delinquency

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28986, 29 August 1959, Page 14

Methodist Synod Member Attacks Maori Delinquency

(New zeuiuna Press Association)

DUNEDIN, August 28.

Racial discrimination was growing in New Zealand largely as a

result of the actions of the Maori people, Mr A. W. Thomson, of Balclutha, told the OtagoSouthland Methodist Synod. He was speaking to the Dominion Church’s Maori Mission report.

“Government and church workers join in soft soaping the Maoris, who should, instead, be challenged to recover some of their former greatness,” Mr Thomson said. “Scarcely a day goes but we read in the newspapers of some new outrage committed by one of our Maori people. “When I went to school 1 was taught, and there was then every reason to believe it was true, that the Maoris were one of the finest races in the world. But they have slipped since those days and are still slipping.

“I am greatly disappointed that their former pride has not caused some of their leaders to challenge them to better things. “We must try to get them to do something themselves towards restoring the equality that used to exist between Maori and pakeha,’’ he said. “A report on these lines would be far more helpful than such as this we have before us, which tries to make us believe that everything is all right.” The Rev. L. Shapcott thought the main cause of delinquency among the Maori young people was an inability to cope with the transition from rural life in their own community to the pakeha existence of the cities.

“It is the change-over from their way of sharing everything into the competitive European environment where it is ‘every man for himself that is causing most of their difficulties,” Mr Shapcott said. The report was adopted.