Maoris ‘do not want to be brown pakehas’

Press, 9 March 1984, Page 2

Maoris ‘do not want to be brown pakehas’

PA Wellington Attempts to repress the Maori cultural and protest movement, to deny it expression, or to ignore it, had failed so far and would continue to do so, said the chairman of the New Zealand planning council, Mr lan Douglas, yesterday. Mr Douglas told Wellington accountants that Maoris did not want to be “brown pakehas.” “They want to live in the full and practical realisation of their own racial and cultural identity, and they want that identity accorded the community recognition and respect that is its due,” he said.

“Among the wide-ranging political debates of recent weeks has been some advocacy that the Maori Affairs Department should be abolished; Its retention is seen, in accordance with this pakeha viewpoint, as a form of discrimination that de-

tracts from the equality that we nominally espouse, and the equity that we seek to deliver,” said Mr Douglas.

“The argument also embraces other policy instruments with a specifically Maori orientation. “I believe it to be a false argument,” he said.

“It would be discrimination if we tried to order our institutions and our affairs in such a way that Maori cultural aspirations were ignored.

“Such an approach would be inconsistent with the proper recognition of diversity that a free society should allow and, indeed, encourage.” Mr Douglas said that it was a misconception of equity to see it as being required to deliver “a bland conformity with imposed norms, norms which will inevitably express the majority culture.”