THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH

Te Ao Hou, June 1959, Page 17

THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH by ROI TE PUNGA District Probation Officer, Auckland Auckland city has the largest Maori population of any city in New Zealand. This is understandable since Auckland is geographically situated in the centre with large concentrations of Maori population in Northland and to the south, in Waikato and Rotorua-Bay of Plenty areas. Furthermore, there has been a drift to this city because of lack of employment opportunities in rural districts for young Maoris in local villages and towns, and there is of course the attraction of the city with its numerous diversions of various types. The change from living in a Maori village where life is leisurely, and to a degree semi-communal, to living in the city is considerable and calls for rapid re-adjustment to vastly different circumstances. Some young Maoris do not succeed in making this re-adjustment and eventually appear before the Court for various offences against the law. Research is being done now by Government Departments who are interested in finding a solution to the problems involved, but such research is a long term project and the findings may not be available for some time. This being the case all that I can do is to express opinions based on cases with which I am familiar. Maori offenders can be broadly placed into three groups based on the types of background from which they come. First, there are those who have been brought up in Maori villages and who have had little contact with the pakeha way of life. These young people are bi-lingual with Maori as their mother tongue and English as a secondary language. Many of them when speaking English think in Maori and this can give an impression to a casual observer that they are slow-thinking. The tempo of life in a Maori village is more leisurely than in a city. To a Maori youth from this environment work is a means of getting money for his simple daily needs and the need “to keep up with the Jones” is foreign to him. His whole attitude to money is different from that of a pakeha and he is more inclined to let tomorrow take care of itself. Work in rural districts, particularly in the winter months, is restricted and so he migrates to Auckland. Probably he has some relatives here, but they are living in overcrowded houses and have no room for him and so he finds board where he probably shares a room with several others in the poorer parts of the city.

Various church organisations provide good hostels for young Maoris, but laudable as their efforts are they can take only a small proportion of those who need good accommodation. So we find our lad fending for himself in the city. He soon discovers that where at home he could only go to the pictures once a week in the city he can go to several shows in a day and some lads do just that. The pakehas he meets and associates with in the city are often a poor example of the pakeha way of life, but for him their standards are the normal standards of pakehas. He starts frequenting hotels and drunken parties and is soon on the downward path. Because work is comparatively plentiful he works for a few days and then takes a few days off to spend his wages. When he has spent his money he looks for another job. In time he becomes work shy and eventually comes before the Court perhaps for car conversion after a drunken party or for petty theft. The pattern of behaviour outlined above is typical of many cases that come before the Court. May I emphasize here that there are also many more cases where young Maoris arrive in Auckland and settle down satisfactorily and are good citizens. Furthermore, the pattern of behaviour outlined above could apply equally to some pakeha youths who come before the Court. The second group are those Maori youths who come from country districts where they have had more contact with pakehas and know more of pakeha standards or who have lived and worked in other larger towns before coming to Auckland. These youths are more aware of their responsibilities as citizens, but have been unable to adapt quickly enough to the faster tempo of life in the city in some cases. The third group of Maori offenders are those who have either lived in Auckland for several years or who have had sufficient experience of the pakeha way of life that they can be regarded as being thoroughly conversant with life in the city. It should be added that cutting across these different cultural backgrounds there are the individual personality and character traits which are as diverse in Maoris as they are in pakehas. The main difference between Maori and Pakeha offenders seems to be that cultural factors assume more importance in the case of Maori offenders.