MAORI RACE

Opotiki News, Volume VI, Issue 426, 21 December 1943, Page 3

MAORI RACE

HIGH RATE OF INCREASE There was. an urgent need for a constructive interest iii the Maori race, whose rate of increase at present was three times that of the white people within the Dominion, •stated the Rev: G. I. Laurenson, Auckland, superinendent of the Methodist Maori Mission, at the Hamilton Rotary Club. Between 1926 and 1936, he said, the white people had increased 10.69 per cent, in comparison with .the Maoris’ increase for the same period of 29.3 per cent.

The Maori people to-day were predominantly young people, and to-day there were more Maori people under 15 years of age than all the Maoris in the Dominion 30 years ago. With so many young people the rate of increase would naturally be greater in the future. They were displaying a greater pride of race and there was a greater tendency to marry among themselves rather than to intermarry with Europeans. One of the cries of the young Maori to-day was to have equality of opportunity.