WESTERN MAORI

New Zealand Herald, Volume 81, Issue 25085, 26 December 1944, Page 4

WESTERN MAORI

TWO INDEPENDENTS SPLIT IN RATANA CAMP (0.C.) NEW PLYMOUTH. Monday Two Independent candidates for the vacant Western Maori seat in the House of Representatives have already an= nounced themselves. They are Mr Kapou Erueti, an airman returned from overseas, who will stand as an Independent Labour candidate, and Mr Pai te Hurunui Jones, of Hawela, who states that he has the support of the Maori King and his family for support as an Independent. Who the candidates for the two main political parties will lie has yet to be decided. There are 14 Labour Party nominees, including Mr Matiu Ratana, younger brother of Mr Tokouru Ratana. whose death created the present vacancy. Mr Erueti, who lives at Kai-Iwi, has started his campaigning. He spoke in North Taranaki recently. A significant fact about Mr Erueti's entry into the contest, it is stated, is that it is a direct challenge to the Ratana movement, which because of its religious as well as its political influence, is a force in Maori affairs. Mr Erueti has the backing of the Maramatanga Christian Society, an incorporated body with headquarters at Kai-Iwi. The leader and founder of that society is Mrs Ngapiki Hakaraia, wife of a Methodist minister. It is for this reason, and because of the fact that she ami many of her followers were connected with the Ratana movement that religious issues are iikelv to colour the political atmosphere of the contest. After the death of the founder of the Ratana movement Mrs Hakaraia discovered that she had faith healing powers and some time later she and others broke away from what might b'e termed the more conservative element of the Ratana movement to form the Maramatangjj society. Strength was added to this organisation when Opipirf Moerua, at first a chief disciple of Ratana the elder, seceded from the original movement and joined Mrs Hakaraia.

Until its present essay into the political arena the Maramatanea society is stated to have held aloof from politics. It is understood it claims some thousands of followers in the Western Maori electorate.