Maoritanga PART II By The Very Rev. J. G. LAUGHTON This is the conclusion of Mr Laughton's essay on the surviving elements of Maori culture, often referred to as Maoritanga. The elements he referred to in the last issue of Te Ao Hou were language, art, social structure and religion. The views expressed in this article regarding Maori land are Mr Laughton's own and in some instances are contrary to considered Government policy which is supported by many Maori leaders. It should be stated that power does exist at present for Maori groups to form incorporations, thus maintaining a common ownership and yet allowing the land to be made fully productive in accordance with the national interest. The fifth and last element of Maoritanga that we would dwell upon is the soil. The soil is the true basis of all life, but the landed heritage of the Maori people of New Zealand is the vested inheritance of the race from the ancestral discovery and occupation of the land, and without European interference the Maori communal title of land is not merely the source of subsistence, but it is the corpus of his tribal and communal life. As long as a Maori has even an infinitesimal share in the tribal lands, his tribal rights are secure. He may go forth, as many are forced to do, to the adventure of competitive individualistic life in the Pakeha city; but so long as he has even an undefined interest in the tribal land he has always home and the shelter of the tribe to go to. That bit of land—it may be only a quarter of an acre in area—is a greater insurance policy to the Maori than a cover of thousands of pounds is to the Pakeha. He can fare him forth with a light heart, for there is always the tribe to go back to, and the assurance that no one would dare to refuse him a hospice and welcome within the tribal domain, for are his rights not written in his share in the community title of the tribal lands? There are some today who feel that the wiping out of this slender interest in the tribal lands would be a salutory thing, in that it would burn the bridges of many Maoris and compel them to be Pakehas. The preservation of communal being is the very genius of Maoritanga, and the material corpus of community life is the communal ownership of the basis of life, the tribal land. That is why the Maori revels as he does in the Maori Land Court, because it is the sanctuary and protector of the writ of his community life which is inscribed on his tribal landed heritage; and because his outlook is communal the criterion is not the size of his share but the fact of his interest. It is for this reason that some of us feel that the only right solution to the problem of the fragmentary title to much Maori land is to restore all such uneconomic individual shares to the original Maori communal title, to be farmed for the benefit of the tribe and not for any individual, and to retain for all the members of the tribe their ‘turangaweawae’—their community right within the tribe. If the cohesive tribal titles to Maori lands are destroyed, the inmost citadel of Maoritanga, the community life of the Maori people, will be beseiged and eventually broken up. Nothing can, for the Maori, take the place of his inheritance in the land trodden by his forefathers and handed down as the tribal domain from generation to generation over hundreds of years. That is home to him and the family circle is the whole of the tribe. Expunge his little title in that land and whatever you may do for him you have made him a homeless wanderer from the tribal life which is his being. Let him feel that he has no longer any right in the tribal lands and he will never again be other than an alien, haunted with the fear that those who have become the owners may ask: ‘He aha to take i konei?’ (‘What right have you here?’) Finally, it is fitting that we should say a word regarding the preservation of Maoritanga, which is none other than the life of the Maori. And, of course, the first means of preserving Maoritanga is to realise what it contains, and how utterly essential it is to the Maori, being the very roots and life-blood of his being. When we know what our heritage is and how priceless it is, then surely we are the more moved