TE AO HOU THE NEW WORLD

Te Ao Hou, Summer 1953, Page 1

TE AO HOU THE NEW WORLD published for the maori purposes fund board by the maori affairs department No. 3 SUMMER 1953 This issue lies under the shadow of Princess Te Puea's death. It is the fate of a quarterly magazine that it is always long behind events. We have described the unequalled tangihanga in her honour. Few people can of recent years have spoken so strongly to the imagination of Maori and Pakeha alike as Princess Te Puea. As further homage to her memory we have printed Mr Pei Jones' story of her famous ancestress Mahinarangi, after whom the Ngaruawahia meeting-house was named. The strenuousness of the trip Mahinarangi had to make to join her husband in the Waikato is beyond our experience. This weariness and this continuous smell of the bush belong to the past. Yet, such memories, and the stories and songs in which they are contained, should never pass from our minds. They are a treasure of the Maori people, and they contain much that the Pakeha has lost. Nobody could have been at the great tangi for Princess Te Puea without seeing the remarkable wealth still preserved in Maori culture. In publishing well-written histories and legends and old songs, Te Ao Hou can help to keep this past alive. Does this mean escaping from the present? We do not think so. All peoples use history as a mirror to see who they really are, and draw strength from that. This is the way in which people like Princess Te Puea used to look at the past.