Pre-School Groups Established

Te Ao Hou, September 1967, Page 21

Pre-School Groups Established Sunday night we left the camp and travelled in pairs to the Aborigine Stations where we were to help establish pre-school groups. Pearl Allen and Hine Campbell stayed at Box Ridge where the TV team remained to film the start of an A.F.E.C. As there was no meeting place, the group's first task was to clear an area of scrub and weeds. The young TV men used axe and spade along with the aborigines. Hana Tukukino and Hiria Parata travelled further to Tabulum while Mana Rangi and I continued on to Woodenbong, arriving after 11 p.m. in a very heavy frost. Next morning we visited the station and saw the conditions under which our new friends existed. The Woodenbong Aboriginal Station is a tract of land administered by the Aboriginal Welfare Board for the Aborigine to live on, but which he does own. The men work away wherever they can find jobs, for the land does not support them. The Station is controlled by a manager, appointed by the Board. He is responsible for the Aborigines' welfare. Because of the Australian policy of assimilation (to shift the Aborigine away from the settlements and scatter him throughout the community) nothing has been done to the houses in Woodenbong. These houses are wooden; small, unpainted and unlined, with a wood stove and no electricity, no water laid on—one cold tap outside, in some cases no glass in the Windows, very little furniture and no home comforts. But this was their land, their dead were buried on the hill and they did not want to leave. We spent the morning visiting with those who had not been at the weekend, and at a well-attended meeting that afternoon the Woodenbong Aborigine Family Education Centre was born. When it was suggested that The Tabulum expert at mud-play. The children were at a high level at this activity.

officers be elected, the feeling of the meeting was that they would prefer to work as a group and allow the natural leader to emerge as needed. This was an advanced theory of emergent leadership from a supposedly inferior group. That evening was also an historic event. Our hostess, Mrs Crane, invited both Aborigines and the local Europeans to an informal party to meet the Maoris—the first time that both groups had mixed socially. The Headmaster of Woodenbong Central School and most of his staff were present and all expressed interest in the project and promised help. This help materialised the next morning in the form of paper, paint, brushes and books.