OUR MAORI BROTHERS

Taranaki Daily News, 23 November 1929, Page 17 (Supplement)

OUR MAORI BROTHERS

ARE WE DOING OUR DUTY?

(By

“Kaita.”)

Are we doing our duty by our Maori brother? Are we alive to his value as a citizen and the unique part he can play in the life and development of the Dominion ?

These are questions which occur. to the thoughtful pakeha as he sees the Maori lolling about the towns on a ■warm day or exhibiting unwonted interest and energy at a football match or a race meeting.. And the answer cannot be in the affirmative. To the average pakeha the Maori is but a picturesque part of the landscape of native fern and shrub and tree, incapable of sustained application to work, and unable to take liis full part in the ordinary life of the community’. It will be readily acknowledged that the Maori lias the makings of a useful settler or citizen, but few are prepared to assist in raising him to a higher level. The result is that he is allowed to drift aimlessly along, and his descent to the billiard and bar room is Swift and certain. And the Maori. What of him? He is like a ship without a rudder. He does not know—and apparently does not care —whither he is drifting. He has little or nothing with which to steady himself. He has no ambition to improve himself; no great temporal or spiritual object to aim at. In the old days, he was under the influence of tapu and other sanctions that fortified custom, and his primitive religious system supported the mana of the chiefs and tohungas, round ■ which the ' communal system revolved. He was disciplined. Then came the missionary, who showed him that he was following false gods and doctrines, and gave him instead the True Word and the hope of the life to come. The missionary found in the Maori's highly spiritual nature a fruitful ground, and the Maori became an ardent Christian follower. But the serpents intruded in the forms of the gun, alcohol, money, clothes and traffic in land.

There followed the rush of white immigration and the establishment of its culture. The Maori could see that in it there was little room for him, and he lost Lope and was sick at -heart. “What’s the use?” he would ask. “We are a doomed people. We must go down before the pakeha.” He parted readily with his lands because the money brought him the things he most coveted. The removal of the incentive to labour and hard physical exercise, drinking excesses and the adoption of European clothing, all had their demoralising and degenerate ing effect.. These and infant mortality reduced the numbers of the race. This drift went on for years. Then the influence of education on the minds of the vounger generation emerged as a new factor in the life of the Maori. 'The young Maori movement gained impetus. The late Sir James Carroll, as Minister of Native Affairs, gave it his blessing and assistance. Dr. (now Sir Maui) Pomare, Dr. Buck and Apirana Ngata were the inspiring forces of the movement. A change in Maori legislation and administration were the first results, followed by the establishment of a Maori Health Department, the provision of further educational facilities and the righting of many of the old Maori injustices and grievances. These grievances were very real to the Maori of the early European settlement days. He disliked being treated as an inferior, as he frequently was by the pakeha of little discernment and understanding. Still less did he like the motives of both individuals and Government in the purchase of lands. To him the means employed -in acquiring the Waitara block that led to the armed outbreak in the earlier sixties, were unjust and contemptible in the extreme. Such people, though professing a higher culture and code of morals than the Maori, were to him unworthy of respect and confidence, and accordingly he refused to have further dealings with them, and nursed his. grievances and entert-hied feelings of animosity towards the pakeha to the very end. The Maori doctors have done good and noble work amongst their people, a 'fact which will be gratefully acknowledged when the history of the Maori during the past twenty years comes to be written by the future historian. Pomare, a Urenui boy, was the pioneer. For ten years, after he had graduated as an M.D., he travelled through and worked amongst the tribes of the North Island, preaching the gospel of sanitation and healthful living, healing the sick and fighting the baneful influence of tohunga-ism and conservatism. He was later assisted by another enthusiast in Dr. Buck, also a North, Taranaki boy, "who threw himself heart and soul into the work of saving and regenerating his people. In the Gisborne district was another inspiring torch-bearer in Apirana Ngata, whose unique organising ability was freely placed at the disposal of his fellows, with the result that to-day they are conducting businesses and running farms as successfully as the neighbouring pakehas. In Parliament both Po- j inure and Ngata have rendered valuable ■ aid to their race. I

In Thranaki, however, the Young Maori movement lias not grown as in other parts of New Zealand, such as the East Coast, Hawke’s Bay and the Wairarapa. The influence of Te Whiti and Tohu, of their passive resistance to the pakeha, and of their lack of confidence in the pakeha and all his works, is still in evidence. The younger Taranaki Maori, until recently, has not bothered to rid himself of the old trammels and take his place alongside his brown brother of the other coast. He has been handicapped by a lack of leadership and the apathy of his pakeha brother in regard to his condition and his future. Consequently he has sought the friendship of pakehas who have not always been the most desirable or z most helpful of companions. The Maori has it in him to be in modern days what his forefathers were in primitive days—fine, upright, resourceful and courageous —but he must be helped and given au ideal. And this help and. this ideal should come from the best of our pakeha men and women. It is a duty they owe no less to themselves than to their Maori brother.