THE MAORI ART OF MOKO

Te Ao Hou, June 1963, Page 30

The drawing above is by Theo Schoon THE MAORI ART OF MOKO by Margaret Orbell The art of moko—or tattoo, to use the pakeha word—has almost disappeared. It is two or three generations now since men wore its proud marks on their faces, and there are few women left now—probably, none of them are under fifty—who have a moko. As the moko becomes rarer, and as the faces on which it is worn become older, it grows all the time more remote from modern life. These

days, most of the old ladies with a moko live in the parts of the country where Maoris have kept most to the old ways: in Ngaruawahia and in the Ureweras, for instance. There are still many more of these old ladies than most pakehas would imagine, but the moko is not nearly as common as it was a few years ago, and nowadays most people probably associate it with wrinkled, peaceful old faces and a quiet, serene, old-fashioned way of life. The only time now when we see the moko on young faces is at Maori concerts where the performers have drawn it on their faces with greasepaint. These marks are almost always clumsy smears which look nothing at all like the old patterns, and serve only to make handsome faces ugly.