WAITANGI 1967

Te Ao Hou, June 1967, Page 14

WAITANGI 1967 This year's celebrations on Waitangi Day, 6 February, were most impressive—from the sun setting behind the Treaty House, the 21-gun salute, manoeuvres by the Band of the Royal New Zealand Navy and the Navy guard, the welcoming challenge and powhiri from the Hokowhitu a Tu group, and the floodlit ships standing in the Bay of Islands. For the first time women drummers paraded for the Naval Sunset Ceremony. With this ceremony, his last as Governor-General, Sir Bernard Fergusson and his ‘wife were beginning, ‘with heavy hearts’, eight months of farewells up and down New Zealand. Mr H. Te Heuheu, paramount Tuwharetoa chief, thanked Sir Bernard for his deep interest in the Maori people, and for his sound advice and guidance. He spoke of the high regard and esteem his people had for the Governor. ‘You will not be forgotten,’ he said. ‘You will be held on high.’ On behalf of the Government, Mr D. McIntyre, Minister of Lands, said that the Treaty of Waitangi was the most significant document in our history, and was the basis of New Zealand's sound development. He likened the Treaty's concept of ‘one people’ to marriage—‘easy to get into, but hard to make work’. It was up to all New Zealanders to ensure that understanding reached in 1840 were improved upon and principles of justice and equality were retained. Sir Bernard, looking frankly at the situation, said, ‘You and I know that the process of becoming one nation is still not complete, not even after all these years, not even after all that we have shared together in peace and war. ‘We can put forward various reasons for this, but not one would account for it in full. Yet it seems to me, having thought about it hard and long, that one principal cause is our failure to exploit the opportunities which we have for getting to know each other socially, and our failure to create such opportunities where they are not readily obvious. ‘Maori and Pakeha mingle happily at work. They share in the high spirits of the wool-shed and the muster, the pub and the race track, the ranges and the rugby field, the freezing works and the forestry. But do they go home to tea with each other? Do their families get to know each other? ‘In the country places, I know they do. But in these days, when more and more Maori are seeking their livelihood in the cities and towns, is the equivalent of these country friendships springing up in that new environment? ‘It is a big upheaval for Maori individuals, and still more for Maori families, to move from places like the old kainga round this Bay of Islands, and to settle in Kawakawa or Dargaville, or Whangarei, or Auckland, or Wellington—or, indeed, far down in the South Island, where I have met many people whose roots are in Tai Tokerau. They feel as strange as I did when I first went to school in England from my remote valley in Scotland; and not surprisingly they tend to stick together, and fail to mix—except, as I say, at work. ‘I confess that I do not quite know how we get around this. I quite agree that a Maori can't go up to a Pakeha or a Pakeha to a Maori in an Auckland street, and say, “The Governor-General says we ought to have each other to tea. Come to tea!” ‘But I do feel in my bones that perhaps we could do a bit more than we have been doing in this sort of direction. ‘What I was saying just now applies to Islanders too. We have no right whatever to think of them as teina—younger brothers. They are inheritors with us of the glories and the privileges and the responsibilities of the South Pacific. ‘I have visited all the inhabited islands which are under New Zealand's protection, and others such as Samoa and Tonga, many of whose people come to earn their living here. ‘I have been almost overwhelmed by their friendly hospitality, their deep religious sense, their love for our Queen, even in those islands that do not owe her allegiance, and by their affection for New Zealand. ‘So I have been grieved to hear that in some quarters in this country they have felt that they were neither wanted nor welcome. ‘There is an acute awareness here of our obligations to the less fortunate peoples of

South-east Asia, whom we are trying to help, and feed, and protect; but don't let us forget our nearer neighbours in the Pacific.’ Sir Bernard concluded his address, as he began, in Maori, thanking the people for their kindness and the warmth of their welcome. In the New Zealand Herald next day, an editorial writer agreed that, ‘… The races work together, play together, drink together and fight for common causes together, but their home lives are generally distinct and separate. The one may fear that any overtures on his part would be rebuffed as condescension; the other that initiatives by him would be rejected as presumption. ‘The social barrier between the races is not one of colour, but one of differing traditional behaviour patterns … ‘… Sir Bernard Fergusson says the two races cannot approach each other on the street and say. “The Governor-General says we ought to have each other to tea. Come to tea.” ‘Perhaps His Excellency underrates his own influence; perhaps we have ignored for too long the direct, the simple, and the obvious approach.’ Perhaps we have!