MAORI MEETING HOUSE

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 24 July 1935, Page 9

MAORI MEETING HOUSE

MEMORIAL TO M FOMARE FIRST OF KIND FOR 100 YEARS CONSTRUCTION AT WAIT AHA.. Taranaki is to have a carved Alaori meeting liou^e —the first in the j>roviiice since the days of To Rauparaha, over 100 years ago. It is hoped to have the house erected and carved by Jane 27 next, which will be the sixth anniversary of the death of Sir Alaui Pomare. The house will be opened on the same, day that the memorial to Sir Alaui is unveiled on the marae of tho famous Manukorihi pa at AVaitara. That day will be a great one for all the Maoris of New Zealand. The date for the unveiling of the memorial was fixed first for Alarch 18, the day on which in 1860 the (Maori Wars began following the hustling by Maori women of the surveyors’ chains on the Te Taira block, claimed by one section to have been “purchased” by the Government, but which Wiremu Kingi, who was paramount chief, declared could not be sold beciause it was not private, but tribal land. The land where this passive resistance occurred and the land where the first shot was flrd when Governor Gore Brown’s proclamation was issued, are well within the view front the Manukorihi pa. That date, however, has been altered to .June -7.

The decision to build the Carved meeting house followed much discussion over several years. .The cost will be about £2OOO. About £IOOO will be provided by the Taranaki Alaori Trust Board (administering the £SOOO annual payment for compensation to descendants of Ala oris whose lands were wrongly confiscated following the war from March IS, 1860, onward), land it is thought that tlie Alaori Purposes Fund will subsidise that payment £ for £. Air T. Heberley, of the Dominion Museum, Wellington, a descendant of the Atiawa tribe, will assist,with appropriate designs for the carvers to follow.

The memorial to surmount the vault containing the ashes of Sir Alaui Pomare is being constructed.. The cost will be about £I7OO, and will be borne by tlie Taranaki Alaori Trust Board. '

The statue of Sir Alaui Pomare will be Oft high, standing on a pedestal and pillar 13ft high, so that the memorial will be 22ft over all. It will depict Sir Alaui with a scroll in one hand as he makes a speech. 'Though dressed in European clothes, he will be represented wearing the piu-piu of his people.