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Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 64, 13 February 1936, Page 6

The Maoris at Orangimea, Ngutuwera a.nd Moumahaki are in pitiful plight through flood devastation in their pas, according to Dr. Elizabeth Gunn, medical officer of schools in the Wanganui Education Board’s district, who has returned to Wanganui after an inspection of up-river areas. At Orangimea. the only means of getting supplies to the Maoris is by aeroplane or canoe. All except two homes have been destroyed at Nguruwera. In these eight Maori families are living. There is also a serious clothing and food shortage. The floods have washed away the clothing of children at Moumahaki, who are not now able to attend school. A fine example of the Maori art of tukutuku (lacing or pleating) is at present to be seen in the Maori section of the Dominion Museum, Wellington, where eight native maidens from Otaki are engaged m fashioning a number of decorative panels for the Maori meeting-house for the new National Art Gallery and Dominion Museum on the Mount Cook site. The panels are to be placed in between the carved figures in the meeting-house which, when completed, will be the finest in the Dominion. The Maori women have been engaged in their task for the past three weeks and are expected to complete it in another five. They come from the Ngati-Raukawa tribe, Otaki, and are experts in the art.