MAORI WELFARE

Dominion, Volume 38, Issue 23, 21 October 1944, Page 6

MAORI WELFARE

Great interest will be taken in the decisions of the large Maori conference which has been sitting in Wellington with regard to the peculiar needs of the race. It would be inadvisable to minimize the difficulties of the problems that must be faced. They are very involved, but it is certain that they cannot be solved without the wholehearted assistance of the people themselves. The land settlement plans devised by Sir Apirana Ngata years ago, with their combination of individual and communal interests, opened up fresh possibilities, and since then Maori farming has made no little progress. The areas developed and subdivided arc, in probably a majority of cases, increasingly productive, and certainly appear to be well farmed, but that is not the final test.

One of the church representatives who addressed the conference at the opening ceremony put his finger on what many people, including leading Maoris, consider the weak spot in the land settlement schemes. It was once stated plainly by the late Mr. Tai Mitchell, Rotorua, when discussing with interested parties the operations in that district. He said that the efforts had been directed to the development of the land, but that the development of those who did the work, and ran the farms, had been overlooked. The tendency was .to base conclusions on the volume of production or the area developed and fenced, the buildings erected and the stock maintained. Little, if anything, he added, had been done to develop the sense of responsibility in the individual Maori farmer. He had to work under official supervision to too great an extent, so that self-reliance could not grow. If that is the view of men long and deeply concerned regarding the future of the Maori people—and there seems to be little doubt that it is—then the matter must have the attention of the authorities. When he addressed the Public Service Association conference earlier in the week the Prime Minister said: “The State had transferred its functions from being supervisory, from being in some instances repressive, to being a constructive and helpful body assisting industrial activities in some form or other.” Here, in the matter of Maori settlement on the land, may be an opportunity for the full application of the change. The aim must be not only to break in the land, and extend farming operations, but also to afford those engaged in the work opportunity to develop their sense of personal responsibility, as well as individual initiative and enterprise.