Brownie Puriri's World Tour

Te Ao Hou, September 1962, Page 7

Brownie Puriri's World Tour Mr Brownie Puriri Mr N. P. K. (‘Brownie’) Puriri, the Assistant Controller of Maori Welfare in the Maori Affairs Department and editor of the Maori text in Te Ao Hou, has just come back from a world tour which included visits to Fiji, Hawaii, U.S.A., Canada, London, Hong Kong and Australia. He was one of ten New Zealand delegates invited by Prince Phillip to attend his second Commonwealth Study Conference held in Canada this May. After the Conference he went on to Europe, and then flew across Asia to Hong Kong. Brownie went first to Fiji, where he was a guest of the Fiji Credit Union. He was very impressed with the way in which Credit Unions helped their members to have money and at the same time to improve their living standards. ‘Life is hard in Fiji’, he said, ‘but they are making the most of every opportunity.’ Fijian gatherings are just like Maori huis, their language is like Maori, and Fijian hospitality is as warm as Maori hospitality. ‘When I visit Fijian villages they all said, rather jokingly, that Fijians and Maoris are the one people—that Maoris must have left Fiji because of the heat. They appreciated my version of this, that Fijians had to be dropped off there during the migrations because they got too sea-sick, and couldn't make it as far as New Zealand.’