LEADERSHIP IN ACTION

Te Ao Hou, December 1959, Page 6

LEADERSHIP IN ACTION The young maori leaders conference, held in Auckland last September, made a beginning of a task that badly needs doing: namely to make a coherent plan for Maori development over the next generation. So far our efforts have tended to be piecemeal: various Government departments have planned their own particular areas, education or land or housing or—to some extent—crime prevention, but when it came to a more general plan, there was never very much progress. At the best, there were battles of words in various newspapers as to whether the Maori should be ‘assimilated’ or ‘integrated,’ whether there should be a ‘separate culture’ or ‘symbiosis’. Whatever the merits of these controversies, they certainly led to no accepted practical programme. Then what are the issues confronting the Maori? How can we see the problem as a whole? That, very briefly, was the problem of the young leaders' conference. Did the conference give the answer? I would say it did not quite, but it managed to lay some foundations for an answer. Very wisely, no time was wasted at the outset on general philosophical speculation; the organizers were well aware that such speculation could only be valuable if it came after—and not before—a study of the actual situation. The great value of the conference was that the 50 younger leaders and the 25 older leaders present were a good cross-section of Maori opinion, and furthermore a highly intelligent one. There was a mixture of the more educated and the less educated (there was perhaps too much education at the conference rather than The Young Maori Leaders' Conference 1959 was held at Auckland University from August 31 to September 4. Its plan was based on a similar conference held twenty years earlier where the discussions, especially on welfare and adult education, proved to be very fruitful indeed, as they helped to bring about important new moves by the Government. The latest conference was organized by the Auckland Regional Council of Adult Education. Conference president was Mr A. T. Carroll, the well-known Maori leader from Wairoa, and organizing secretary Mr Matiu Te Hau who is the Maori adult education tutor for Tokerau. A fuller report will follow in our next issue. too little). By and large, the opinions the conference reached were representative of the Maori of today. They represented Maori aspirations, and the picture the modern Maori had of himself. A good deal of time was spent on discussing land. Out of this discussion two main principles emerged: the Maori remains as attached to his land as ever, he fears being separated from it, but he is willing to accept devices to adapt Maori land ownership to present day conditions. The same pattern emerged out of the discussions on health, housing and leadership: some parts of the Maori tradition are held sacred while in some other matters there is often a quite strong desire for change: the reduction of deafness in children, the modernizing of Maori house design, the intensifying of agricultural education were some of the aspirations of the young leaders. One moment they were strongly conservative in defence of what they considered essential Maori values, the next moment they were ultramodern in their search for reforms. There was nothing inconsistent or wavering in this: on the contrary, their views were strong and definite on most issues, nor was there much disagreement on essentials. To give only one small example, the attitude to the tohunga is different now from what it was in 1908 when the ‘Tohunga Suppression Act’ was passed. At that time the young leaders were resolutely turned against the tohunga. At the present conference there was a balance: there was complete unanimity that people should use normal medical services; also that there should be more health education to reduce much unnecessary sickness. On the other hand, speakers insisted that there was a place for the honest tohunga who could remove mental distress and who might be successful where ordinary medicine fails. Nobody would condone the action of a tohunga who attempts to cure tuberculosis; everyone agreed that a sick person should at once go to a doctor to diagnose his complaint. Yet, conference recognized that somewhere, at least for the present generation, there might be a place for the tohunga. What goes for the tohunga, went also for other surviving features of Maori life. Unfortunately, conference was too brief to draw together the many ideas that were brought forward, and to offer a rounded design for Maori development. A second conference will be needed to achieve this. There is no doubt that over the last twenty years new attitudes have developed: there is a stronger belief today that Maori values have a place in the modern world; there is also a stronger desire to master European techniques and fully equal European standards. It is therefore interesting to see whether the ideas thrown

Conference poses in front of the university (Photo: Peter Blanc) up at the conference will later be crystallised and reduced to practical guiding principles. Twenty years ago the Maori race had Sir Apirana Ngata to do this kind of thinking; today it will need to be a collective effort of a number of leaders. It is impossible to do justice to the conference in the space of an article. We shall therefore devote most of our next issue to the conference discussions and the papers that were presented. We think this will be worth while especially because most of the vital Maori questions were studied, and there is no better way of getting a grasp of the Maori situation today than to read a selection of the best material produced. In addition to a full report on the meeting, we shall present three of the ‘data papers’—Dr Maaka's on health, Mr Te Hau's on incorporations, and Dr Winiata's on leadership. In addition we shall print reports of some of the actual discussions, as well as the two excellent evening lectures. To add to the value of this survey of Maori questions, we have also commissioned some special articles from delegates who made outstanding contributions to conference, thus introducing them more fully to our readers. E. G. S.