The Urban Maori

Te Ao Hou, August 1957, Page 10

The Urban Maori While much has been accomplished by the country during the present century in improving the living conditions of the Maori people, western civilisation has also brought them the problem of having to face an unknown social and economic future. The Maori youth is uncertain of his ability to adjust himself to the new social habits of modern times. He is uncertain of the reception he will receive in the new environment of the modern community in which he is being sought to enter. The Maoris realise that they have to conform to a way of life in the cities contrary to their upbringings. Because of economic reasons, many of them are now living in an environment so strange that most of them fail to understand its meaning. Knowing so little of the social habits of modern life, they have found it difficult to enter into the closely knit society of the European. This has

left a vacuum in their lives which can best be filled by the European helping to find the answer to this difficulty. While young people are still in the process of breaking away from long-standing habits of life in their rural home communities, it is important that they should have some focus of social activity in the place in which they work. That focus can well be given through a Maori community centre or club, one feature of which can be the cultivation of Maori arts and crafts. By the use of activities with which young men and women are already familiar, or in which they can find some pride, it is possible to bring together those who would otherwise be lonely and homesick. These activities can give them an active interest and a regular leisure occupation. The leaders of such a centre will also look on it as an opportunity to maintain some form of discipline over the outside activities of the members. I know of no better way of explaining in definite terms those ideals of conduct required to strengthen their resistance to the temptations which often surround them. It helps to bridge the social gap which is the main difficulty facing these people. Such clubs, of which Ngati Poneke in Wellington is a shining example will have a part to play for many years to come in placing the Maori in a modern community. A community centre in a large city provides a link with the past to these young people who often feel that they have lost their past in coming to a new environment to throw down fresh roots. A centre gives a new sense of community to those who now live in a place where there are no traditions, no strong kinship ties, and no established way of life. It brings to lonely young men and women new friendships and traditions which reach back to the past, and stretch forward to the new life they are beginning to develop for themselves. It organises activities for young people who have only pathetically dark and lonely streets to roam in before retiring to a dingy room to seek the sleep and rest needed for the next day's work. It will be a place where they can entertain their European friends; where they can meet with each other and play games with each other until all the social adjustments are successfully made by the majority of Maoris, when the need for separate Maori community centres will no longer exist. When this stage is reached. I am quietly confident that the powers of endurance and the high courage displayed by the Maori soldiers on Galiipoli and in Crete and North Africa will be equally as valuable to New Zealand and the British Commonwealth in the years of closer partnership that lie ahead. The future can be faced by them with hope if they as citizens of this fair country, along with their European friends resolve that people, goodwill and service will be their guiding principles. Such is the product of one hundred years of beneficent contact with the British rule.