Maoritanga by The Very Rev. J. G. Laughton The keynote to Maoritanga is the fact that the Maori race has distinct racial personality, and what we have come to term Maoritanga is the expression of that distinctive racial personality in language, poetry and art, customs and usage, rite and ceremony, work and play. Maoritanga, secondly, is the recognition of that distinctive racial personality and the accompanying pride of race, and the corresponding demand that the sacred rights of that racial personality shall be recognised and safeguarded. In the third place, Maoritanga is the action taken to secure provision and satisfaction for that racial personality. There is, of course, nothing singular in the nationalism of the Maori, which is the expression of this entity which we have come to call Maoritanga. Indeed, the intensification of the pressures on life of modern circumstances seems to have deepened this national spirit everywhere. It is certainly not confined, as is sometimes assumed, to the coloured people of the world. A visitor to Scotland or Wales today will find this spirit as active and vocal as we have it here today in the demand for the recognition and protection of our Maoritanga. Let us look at some of these components of the Maori heritage which are the substance of Maoritanga. First of all language. Language can never be a coincidence. Each race has developed an expression which in beauty and in adequacy to frame its thought processes is the expression of its own very being. The form of a language is one of the indications of the racial spirit which gave it birth, and the limitation or the adequacy of a language as a full vehicle of thought is an immediate indication of the racial capacity of the people whose utterance it is. The Maori language as it was before the advent of the white man was a very full and adequate expression of thought in the world in which it was situated. The Maori language is widely appreciated because of its beauty of expression, flowing so naturally as it does in similes and metaphors and figures of speech, but not only is it beautiful in thought pictures but it is beautiful in euphony. We were particularly impressed in our work on the revision of the Maori Bible with the fact that wherever a transliterated personal or place name had a harsh sound, Maori people had uniformly rejected that form and adopted one that was musical and pleasant to the ear. Literary appreciation is a widespread Maori endowment, and even older Maori people who have had very little European education have a keen sense of quality in the use of their own language. Literary taste in the keen appreciation of beautiful words is common to a high percentage of the Maori people. The Maori is famed as an orator. That accomplishment issues from the fact that the art of speech and the adequate mastery of speech is a recognised and valued attainment of the Maori people. An ancient literary practice which has we fear, fallen into disuse, was the game of finding how many synonyms could be stated for a given word. All these things denote the fact that language in its comprehensiveness and fullness and beauty is one of the treasured possessions of the Maori race and the cornerstone of Maoritanga. A decadent people are likely to have a decadent language. A people who are vital and full of progress are sure to esteem and develop the language which supplies the tool-kit of thought, which conveys what is their individual racial personality in the words and expressions which have been evolved to give utterance to their particular thought and aspiration as no other words can do. We are well aware of the fact that there are some things which we can say in Maori much more effectively than they can be said in English. These, of course, are Maori matters and require Maori language for their description. It has been well said that the language is the shrine of a people's soul, and however much need there may be, as is true of the present Maori situation, that a people should have a competent knowledge of another language, should they lose their own tongue they have lost the most sacred inward shrine of their being. Maoritanga is the realisation of these things and the valuing of the most sacred heritage of the Maori person and race, his language, and the Maori certainly has in his language a treasure of which he may well be proud.