WHAT ONE MAN DID

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 48, 26 February 1937, Page 7

WHAT ONE MAN DID

GREY OWL'S MISSION

AN APPEAL TO THE MAORI

What can one man do to win a losing

cause? • One man can do a very great

deal. What one man can do for wild life and forests, one ■ man could do for New Zealand forests. But the problem is to find the man. The one man who has done so much to point out the evil of deforestation in Canada, and to plead for the beaver and for all wild creatures, is Grey Owl. Ttjgjt is not a fancy name. It is his legat name. He is the son of a Scottish father and an Apaclle Indian mother of New Mexico, U.S.A. He became Grey Owl, Canadian backswoodsman. From the Back o' Beyond, with no aid whatever save an eloquent pen, he crashed his way into the world of books, and he and his beavers entered filmland. He not only made Canada listen to the cry of wild life. He has made the world listen. From his Indian mother he inherits an'aboriginal instinctive knowledge of living Nature. Such an. instinctive sympathy with the life of the wild is found in the New Zealand Maori. Is there no Maori or half-caste who loves New Zealand well enough to do for

his native forests and birds what Grey Owl the half-breed has done for Canada? Cannot some writer of the educated Maori race catch the wild charm of New Zealand as Grey Owl has caught the charm and rhythm of the Canadian backwoods? Can the Maoris produce anthropologists and doctors and politicians but no distinctively New Zealand writer of ths Grey OwJ pattern?, ■ Having the cause of birds and busn very much at heart, and having a publication ("Forest and Bird") which is dedicated to the cause, the Forest and Bird Protection. Society opens the pages of its last issue to a plea for a Maori Grey Owl: "Maoris and half-castes have accomplished many things in science and in government. They have proved more brilliant than Red Indians. But where is' the Maori or half-caste to compare as' a nature-writer with Grey Owl? New Zealand needs such a Maori to stand up for the common heritage of both races, bush and birds. Writing with 'Native insf .ct as well as with pakeha skill, a Maori Grey Owl • could become a power in the land. "Where is he? We need him.' In his general books, Grey Owl reproaches Canada for wasting her forest estate. "Relatively to size, New Zea-land-has been as wasteful. In Grey Owl's pages things crop up constantly that remind us New Zealanders of home. The wonderful system of waterways and portages and canoe travel once had a' companion system in New Zealand, but here the canoe has been replaced by the road. -And that is progress. But has not the pakeha penetration of the country brought many curses, such as deforestation, unknown to the land

before the white man came?" Grey Owl's description of Canadian fire-fighting remind Australians and New Zealanders of many disastrous fires in their own lands. "Mining communities and timber communities have been burned out, in Canada as in Australia and New Zealand; but when Golden City, Canada, burned, the loss of life ran into three figures, rivalling the Napier earthquake. T happened to be in the district,' writes Grey ;.Owl, 'and at a distance of twenty miles I distinctly heard the roar of the flames, little knowing the holocaust that was taking place. The smoke was such that it was impossible to see a quarter of a mile on- the lakes, and all travelling had:to be suspended except by those familiar with the country. A shortage of canoes compelled hundreds of people to enter the lake by which tlie town was situated, where they

extended in a living chain, holding hands to support ■ each other, dipping their bodies from time to time under the surface to wet the clothes. Many of these were, suffocated by smoke; those near the shore were badly scorched, and some were drowned.'"

New Zealand audiences have already

seen moving pictures of Grey Owl and his - beavers. Is there not an equal field for depicting, by pen and pencil and camera, the birds and forests of New Zealand? The requisites are a love'of-Nature, an almost aboriginal sympathy with wild things, and some skill as • writer and camera expert—a skill which can be sharpened by devotion, to the subject. If an American half-caste can rivet world attention on the threatened destruction of the Canadian forests, cannot-a New Zealander emulate him,, put this country equally upon the map, and dissipate the lethargy of its-inhabitants?