THE WORK I HOPE TO DO WHEN I LEAVE SCHOOL

Te Ao Hou, March 1964, Page 47

THE WORK I HOPE TO DO WHEN I LEAVE SCHOOL by Ngahuia Gordon aged 14 Western Heights High School Rotorua ‘To be, or not to be? That is the question.’ Since childhood I have wondered casually about life after school. Not life after the home-bell rings, but life after it dings through your mind for the very last time. A ballerina; a poet. A teacher; an author. Those are but a few of my dream-occupations. However, I have discovered a brand-new interest in life—in the field of the Maori, my own race. It lies, this new interest of mine, in the field of anthropology. How does it appeal to me? Well, that is indeed a simple question. I hate to say this, but to me our culture appears to be dying. Of course, gone are the days when tapu reigned, when makutu was dreaded more than anything else, and when the Gods of the Forest, Land and Sea walked on our bush-clad hills. With them, must our literary culture—the art of te whai-korero—diminish also? Must the legends, histories and genealogies disappear into the murky mists of the forgotten and the unimportant? No, no, no! It must not! IT WILL NOT! I do not intend to drag back into our midst Tane-Mahuta, Tangaroa, or the others. I only want to be capable of saying to all my children, and my children's children, and my children's children's children, that they are the descendants of a proud and handsome race—the Maori. It is for the good of my own people that I am pursuing this ambition. At least, that is what I believe. For who wants their great-grandchildren to approach an ancient whare runanga in a few decades' times and say to each other, ‘My, what a picturesque building. I wonder who built and designed such an unusual hall?’ Nobody! No self-respecting Maori would like that, I feel sure. So to prevent anything like that happening the vital knowledge must be recorded, and that is what I call anthropology, the arresting of a disappearing culture. Because I delight in writing, I feel pretty sure that this is the job for me. Because I love the old people, who are literally fountains of beautiful, sacred knowledge, I feel very well suited. Nevertheless, the ability to write and to have in the heart tender feelings for the old are not the only qualifications necessary for this post. Years of intense study, plus an exceptional gift of speech, would also be compulsory. One must be well versed in the Maori tongue, both in archaic Maori and in modern Maori as we know it today. A university degree, to my knowledge, would be essential, and indeed well worth having. Also essential is the ability, for the European, to live among the Moari as a Maori, and to accept their customs as his own. To me, that is easy—but regarding it from a Pakeha point of view, I think it would be extremely difficult. I would give anything to have this task—to be quite honest I have started gathering the knowledge already. As I live in a famous Maori pa, it is my life, and one can write one's life easily. If I succeed in my pursuit of this interesting and very novel career, I hope that I will not only do myself considerable good, but amongst my people I will be preserving that which is difficult to preserve—the sacred knowledge that only a Maori can understand. I will be preserving the food of the brain, the histories of the past and present Maori, for the coming generation, in the dawn of a new era; for the race which will be neither European nor Maori—a race which will be classed as ‘the New Zealanders’.