MAORI BOY WHO WENT TO CAMBRIDGE

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 336, 23 April 1928, Page 1

MAORI BOY WHO WENT TO CAMBRIDGE

TO REPORT ON MODEL PA PAORA CHAMBERLAIN’S CAREER Mr. Paora Chamberlain, engineer, of New Plymouth, the only Maori to enter Trinity College, Cambridge, is in Auckland to report on the proposed model pa on Mount Eden. There have only been two New Zealanders of Maori blood to enter Cambridge. Captain Moorhouse. who j hailed from the South Island and won ■ the V.C. for distinguished service in j the Royal Flying Corps, in the Great | War, was one. Paora Chamberlain I was the other. Paora’s people are the Tuhoes (TJrewera), though oh his mother’s side he is related to the. Waikato tribes. His hapu, prior to being adopted by M’. Chamberlain and taken to England, was the Wharahoe. DID NOT FORGET Naturally, there was much opposi tion on the part of the Urewera people when the pakeha, an Englishman of good family, expressed his desire to adopt Paora, aged nine, and give 1 m the benefit of a classical education at a world-famous seat of learning. The question was finally settled by 1 e Whenuanui, the great ariki of the Tuhoe. In his wisdom the chieftain, since dead, said: “It will be good for our people if this boy goes to England and is educated there —provided that he does not forget his people.” And Paora has not forgotten his Maori people, their pride in race, their songs, their lore, and last but not least their present-day difficulties. That is the reason of his presence in Auckland to-day. Paora Chamberlain soon found that he was not destined for the law. “It was Latin that settled me. French and German I took to as the proverbial duck to water. But Latin always mastered me!” Returning to New Zealand m Ul4. just before the war, he joined the Lands and Survey Department. Passchendaele saw him promoted on the field to a commission; he had enlisted as a private with the Maori Pioneer Battalion. When he returned to the Dominion after the war, Paora Chamberlain again joined up with the Lands and Survey Department. It was then that he really decided that engineering was his forte." MOUNT EDEN PA After experience with the Southland Electric-Power Board, he gained additional insight into hydro-electrical work with the Public Works Department. Nowadays the young Maori engineer is associated with the New Plymouth Borough Council in an engineering capacity. As for the Mount Eden project, Mr. Chamberlain says it is entirely a question of cost. Careful examination of the site was made yesterday, when he was accompanied by Mr. George Graham, Mr. L. G. Kelly, and Mr. Patrick Smyth, secretary, of Te Akarana Maori Association. One aspect particularly appeals to the English-educated Maori engineer "I want to see all the old Maori ideas retained in the pa,” he says. “De signs for carving, for instance, should be obtained from ancient examples it our museums. We do not want thf modern stuff. “Let the pa be really old-tim< Maori!”