MAORIS NEED TO BE PROTECTED FROM DRINK.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18182, 15 June 1927, Page 13

MAORIS NEED TO BE PROTECTED FROM DRINK.

CABARETS AND BOXING RINGS ASSAILED BY CHURCH MISSIONARY. “ V/© need men who will go into the pas and help tho Maori people. We need young men. to stand by them and protect them from .drink, and these cabaret people and boxing rings that are ever about them, these influences of our modern civilisation.” “Wliat is the future of the Maori people?” asked Sister Jessie, who made the above remarks, at the Presbyterian Conference which opened in Christchurch in connection with mission work yesterday. Sister Jessie, who is engaged in Maori mission work in the Dominion, said that the last census had revealed a Maori population in New Zealand of 54,000. Many of these were half-castes. “We have Maoris with blue eyes,” she declared. “Soon we will have Maoris with pink cheeks. There is no doubt that, as the old Maori passes away, the new Maori will be absorbed by our own race. We must give them the same opportunities as we give our own people.” Human beings were three-fold in their nature, it had been said—interior, exterior and bacteria. If the Maoris were not developed in their three-fold nature a crippled race would be the result. It was the aim of tho Government to educate the Maoris and help them to rise. It was doing valiant work to-day. It had opened native schools throughout the North Island. It was subsidising church schools. It was giving bursaries to secondary school students. It was sending Maoris to the universities. To preserve Maori life was the great aim, and to help Maori women to rear their children. Clinics were being instituted in the back-blocks with a view to this end. One Maori woman she knew had had a family of twelve children. She reared one only. There was but a single reason for this—the Maori woman’s ignorance. She must be helped. There were to-day thirty-seven workers and thirteen stations in the North Island. It was dangerous to give the Maori education and not Christianity. He must have both. Education by itself was a dangerous weapon to place in his hands.