Saving the Maoris.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 36, 4 September 1902, Page 18

Saving the Maoris.

The most interesting part of the second annual report, which has just been issued by the Health Department, is that in which Dr. Pomare, health offioer to the Maoris, describes the work he has done in the attempt to lead his fellow-oountrymen to a more careful observance of the elementary laws of health. The doctor is himself a living proof that the Maoris are susceptible of a high degree of culture, and he has entered upon his task of carrying the evangel of health to the Maoris with contagious zeal. That he thoroughly appreciates the difficulties whioh lie in his way is evident : — ' The deeply-rooted superstitions of ages, the strongholds of tohungaism, the binding laws of tapu,.the habits and praotioes of centuries, the mistrust of the pakeba, these were the Ooliaths in the way of sanitary progress among the Maoris. For what did all this mean ? It meant the dissolution of time-honored oustomß, the tearing down of i ancestral habits and teachings, the alteration of Maori thought and idea ; iv fact, a complete ohange to their socialistic, oommunlitio, and private life. . . . But the ohange must come ;it will oome ; it has come. The Maori will yet bloom with the fairest of the Anglo-Saxon ; and why not f ' The Maori violates the laws of health with oheerf ul ignorance. He allows pigs, dogs, and poultry to roam unchecked about the pat. He never thinks of drainageHe may build a house after the European fashion, but he lovea to pass the evening in the Rant a, or kitohen, which ia a detached building, if it may be called such, at the rear. The door is low There U a fire in the middle of the earthen floor. The place is filled with acrid smoke, the beds are on the humid ground. Every one, male and female, smokes. Some of che inmates have deep coughs, ■ome are asthmatic, Borne on the verge of tuberculosis — some have it, and Borne will have it. The food is rotten corn, rotten potatoes, and putrid shark. European olothing is worn without knowing how it should be worn. Bad homes, neglect of hygiene, smoking. bad olothing, irregular meals, bad nourishment, exposure, manual labor, too early marriages, and other cases not specified, are assigned by Dr. Pomare as the cause of the large amount of sterility among Maori women. The doctor notes with jubilation that the Maori 1 medicine man,' or tohunga, is almost extinct, and he advocates the vie of the lock-up to complete hiß extirpation. The general belie is that the Maoris are addicted to intemperance, but Dr. Pomare asserts confidently that drunkenness is at low tide with them. Th c physical bane of the Maori is phthisis and skin diseases, and as thes 6 ante from causes now reoognisable by the natives themselves, Dr, Pomare's sanguine prophecies may be fulfilled. It was evidently a oapital idea to send an eduoated Maori on such an errand. A pakeha would have been received with distrust. A man of their own race is believed, and the Maori oounoils have taken up the work with •uoh earnestness as to lead to the hope that the trne method of saving the Maoris from extinotion has been found at last.