Stereotyped Views Of Maori And Pakeha

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30093, 29 March 1963, Page 2

Stereotyped Views Of Maori And Pakeha

(New Zealand Press Association)

ROTORUA, March 28. Integration to him meant a walking together of the two races for the benefit of New Zealand, said Mr John Rangihau, a Maori Affairs welfare officer of Rotorua, in an address to the Catholic Women’s League Auckland Diocesan conference at Rotorua yesterday. Mr Rangihau said the European had much to offer the Maori, but the Maori also had much to offer the European. An old Maori had said to him that he hoped integration would not be like the shark and the kahawai. Both fish swam in the same water but sooner or later the shark gobbled up the kahawai. Mr Rangihau said each race must fully appreciate the other before integration could become fully realised. There had come about a situation where each race had a "stereotyped” view of the other. A pakeha view was that the Maori was lazy in his way of applying his physical energies, that the Maori had not the same outlook over his job, that "Maori time” was becoming an excuse for being late. The pakeha view was that the Maori took his gregariousness too far, to the extent of overcrowding, that the Maori was content with things as they were, and did not push to improve them. The Maori had slight concern for the truth, but with his sense of

humour could laugh in the faoa of adversity. “Those are the things we her., of the Maori, but what does the Maori think of the pakeha?” The Maori said the pakeha was a go-getter, willing to over-ride anything to get what he wanted, that he was not to be trusted fully, and was inclined to be cunning. He was methodical to the point of being finnicky, but all Maoris admitted that if he had a good pakeha mate that mate would stick with him through thick and thin. Till it was understood that those “stereotypes” were not true, little could be done.