MAORIS' NEED

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 114, 15 May 1940, Page 11

MAORIS' NEED

PRIDE OF RACE

PAKEHA'S DUTY

A strong plea that the pakeha, and in particular the teacher, should make efforts to restore to the Maori people their pride of race, thus enabling them to take their rightful place in the community, was made last night by Miss E. M. Kinross, principal of-Tura-kina Maori Girls' College. The lecture was arranged by the New Zealand Women Teachers' Association as part of its annual conference, and other speakers were- Mrs: H. D. Bennett and Miss M. Larnbie, Director of the Nursing Division. Mrs. Peter Fraser, wife of the Prime Minister, presided.

Miss Kinross referred to the complete upheaval the last hundred years had brought in the life of the Maori people, who were leaving behind their old ways of living and endeavouring to take hold of the new European ways. If the Maori was to take his rightful place, in the land, he needed all the help that the pakeha could Jive him, and that called for an understanding of. his problems. One was the restoration of the Maori's pride of race, which could be done in several ways. The use of Maori language could "be encouraged, Maori arts and crafts could be encouraged, and old customs, at any rate the best of them, could be kept alive. Maori lore and history, too, might.be taught.

Mrs. Bennett said* that the Maori was passing through a transition stage, painful because his background was in danger of being lost. The • surest way to combat inferiority complex in the .Maori was to teach New Zealand history properly and instead of giving him wrong impressions * about the causes, of the Maori, wars was to restore his pride of race by telling .him something of the prowess of the Polynesians as navigators.'

The future of the Maori race, said Miss Lambie, lay with the women. Cooperation between the Health and Education Departments had done a vast amount of good. Education on broad lines might' solve the problem of the Maori people,, but the knowledge of principles of good health was useless without the desire to put them into effect Any help from. teachers would be greatly appreciated.