Caution Urged In Maori Integration

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30126, 9 May 1963, Page 16

Caution Urged In Maori Integration

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, May 8.

A New Zealander who made a public address on the economic and political situation was bound to say the racial problem in New Zealand was not a problem in the sense that racial problems existed in other countries, said the Maori policy committee report adopted by the Labour Party conference in Wellington today.

“He would say, if he was in a country where a racial problem exists, that New Zealand had solved its racial problem before it became one and that social harmony has been attained,” said the report. At the present rate of increase, the Maori population in the year 2000, of an estimated 703,000, would be 14| per cent, of the total population. This would compare with 6.65 per cent in 1959.

The Maori people were moving to urban areas and the pressing problem now was to deal with the mass urbanisation of two peoples with distinct differences in education, outlook and culture which unfortunately was not closely related to prepakeha Maori culture, it said. Maoris, because of the time element in the process of integration, were at varying stages both socially and economically in their acceptance and absorption of pakeha or modern society. At -Waitangi. Governor Hobson said: “We are one people," an expression used again by the Minister of Maori Affairs, Mr Corbett and Mr Hanan. “But both Mr Corbett and Mr Hanan modified their views because they came up against the hard, solid fact hat urbanisation or not there .s a large body of Maori opinion which will retain for

many generations a philosophy peculiar to Maoris." This should not be interpreted to mean a resentment against integrating the economic outlook and life of the Maori people. It was the drive to accelerate the integration into a modern way of living and thinking that must be tempered with caution and understanding, the report said.

“So many differing opinions have been expressed, and sincerely, by members of Parliament, Cabinet Ministers, churchmen, Government officials, the press, distinguished visitors and even Maoris, but so few are completely in agreement that it is plain to those who want to see it that the road to racial harmony is strewn with many obstacles and pitfalls for that reason alone,” said the report.