Women listening. PHOTOGRAPHY BY STANHOPE ANDREWS LEAGUE WAS FIRST TO USE CARVED HOUSE AT WAITANGI The Maori Women's Welfare League broke with tradition and wrote a new page in Waitangi's history on Saturday, February 4, when their conference opened in Kupe, the great carved meeting house. Seen by thousands of visitors including the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh in 1953, since its opening in 1940. Kupe has never before been used as a conference hall. Flooded out of their meeting place in the Waitangi Maori hall on the south bank of the river, the Tai Tokerau Maori Women's Welfare League conference moved through the torrential rain to the carved house and settled down to business uplifted by the sense of a great occasion.