Interested in the Maori People

Te Ao Hou, March 1965, Page 53

Interested in the Maori People Like all students, the boys liked to talk. They were interested in all we could tell them of New Zealand generally, and of ourselves in particular. Until 1945 the Indonesian experience of contact with Europeans was that of master (European) and servant (Indonesian). The students here asked me how we, the Maori, fared under ‘colonialism’. I've tried to be as honest as I know how, and have said that while some of us have certain grievances against our European countrymen, yet on the whole we have no pressing reasons for wanting to see them depart. Hope I'm right! Bandung is sometimes called the ‘Paris of Indonesia’. The girls are graceful and very chic, especially the Indonesian-Chinese, who usually have the means to indulge their clothes-sense. All the students usually wear Western-

style dress, but on formal occasions they do wear their national costumes, the sarong and kebaja. In the villages the women wear sarong and kebaja all the time.