“A Ship—Drifting”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 444, 28 August 1928, Page 13

“A Ship — Drifting”

Sir Apirana Ngata on the Maori Race

PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY Likening the Maori race to a ship, broken away from its old moorings and adrift, Sir Apirana Ngata, M.P., made an eloquent plea to the pakeha for more understanding and sympathy last evening, when he addressed the Auckland Institute on “Where Does the Maori Come In?” “You\ were born pakehas and you are he said, “but Aye were born Maoris and we are trying our best to be something else. You tell us we have to be Europeans, and we are trying to approach the problem. ■We are no longer amazed at the inventions of your civilisation; they are rjust things to do. The glamour is behind us; we have come to the point when we have access to all the elements for selection.” Introduced as one of the real New Zealanders, Sir Apirana commented that although the Europeans were guests a century ago, they now made their original hosts sit up and take notice. The position to-day was that the Maori had been brought to a certain point and then left, and he was faced with the problem of fitting himself in the scheme of life. “Now he is the guest and you have supplanted him in his own land,” said the speaker. FEW FULL-BLOODED Quoting from statistics, the speaker showed, that there had been a steady increase in native population since 1901 to last year’s total of 64.234. He urged the recording of the process of dilution of the Maori blood so that investigators of the future would not make wrong conclusions on a few fragments of fact. In one place lie had found names like Hodges, Hawkins and O’Keefe in great numbers in native land court files, and in another 20 years he estimated that there would be no Maori names at all.

An estimate made by Mr. PittRivers that in two generations there

would not be a pure-blooded native in the country had caused the speaker to wonder, and he had been surprised to find that in his own neighbourhood, in five miles, he found it extremely difficult to name 50 pure-blooded Maoris.

Talking of the distribution of population, Sir Apirana said that one of the noticeable features had been the steady advance of the Maoris to the cities. In Auckland there were now from 600 to 800 natives, whereas 30 years ago the natives were confined to a few in Orakei and Takapuna. Three hundred were living in Wellington, few of these having any association with land rights there. It was not ownership of land which was bringing them in, and the reasons needed to bo carefully studied. It might be a simple possibility that the pictures were the cause, but, of course, that would be deemed an unscientific explanation.

It was considered that native lands provided for an average of 50 acres a head for the Maoris, but much of this was unsuitable for settlement, reducing the Opotiki portion by 50 per cent., leaving the Urewera natives with an average of not 25 acres, and the Auckland tribes, with a still lower average.

“The legend that the Maori is a bloated landlord or that he used to be, is all wrong,” said Sir Apirana. “Some of u§ have only a few perches, a few rows of kumeras, a head. The idea of Maori landlordism is one only bolstered up, principally by Auckland papers.”

As might be expected with a race which had a short time ago practised cannibalism, polygamy, and the taking of goods from each other, the Maori made more breaches of the Crimes Act than the pakeha. “It has been suggested that if we can learn the art of concealment, as practised in business, there will be a good deal of hope for "a better record,” he said. “We are looking for our own leaders, and if by fluke we find one in the generation, the experiment will have been weli worth while. You have been here for 150 years, and you should know that the last man a Maori learns from is the pakeha.” FARMING EXTENSION The example of a Maori doing well at some industry was one which spread, said the speaker. The Williams family, which understood Maori psychology, had taught Sir Apirana and others farming, and the idea had spread from the East Coast ail over the island. There was now a concerted and organised move to utilise the, land in a better way. The Maori youth, it was hoped, would be instilled with a new hope and a fresh outlook in life. “We cannot cut ourselves away from our influences, but they will ivear away,” he said. The pakeha Had come to New Zealand, and because he was a good chap, he had been trying to square his conscience. The Maori now wanted leave to approach his problem in his own way. The problem of the Maori was worse now than it was 100 years ago, and ns. had not reached the point when special treatment could not be withdrawn. “In other times we were the statesmen, the generals, and the artists, the architects and the builders, the cultivators and the foresters of the country,” he concluded. “We had to step out because you came. We have to make the best of it, and grinning and derision hurt because we know we are where we are because of you. If you laugh, you laugh at what you have made of us.”