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with a greenstone tiki would lead his people back to happiness. The elders are impressed, but the young fellows seem a bit doubtful, but they do not show it too much. I talk about the land of Israel where the hook-nosed people have returned after two thousand years, where they have made the desert blossom and have established a homeland for hundreds of thousands of their people. I suggest that the people of the Ureweras should do the same, that communal settlements should be started here and there, where home industries should thrive, the women could weave cloth from the wool and also make flax mats, kits and wooden souvenirs, where the menfolk would tend cattle and sheep and pigs and grow vegetables. The crowd murmurs ‘Ae’ and ‘Ka tika tau’, ‘You are right’, and before we know what is happening the elders have decided to go through with the plan … That was the beginning of a new era for the ‘Children of the Mist’ which they established in the heartland of the Maori people with the assistance of the Government. They spoke Maori as their ancestors had done, they retained their traditions and yet learned English and the Pakeha way of life for they were loyal New Zealanders. The other tribes, seeing the example of the Tuhoe people, said to themselves ‘What they can do, so can we’. It is from that time that dates the spiritual rebirth of the Maori people. Pakeha students went to the Urewera Country to learn the language of their adopted country, and then the great day arrived when Maori was taught in the schools throughout all New Zealand, instead of being put after French and other languages. Newspapers wrote of the re-settlement of the Urewera Country. Even the people in Israel heard of these doings and invited Heemi Thaka, no longer Jim MacLaren but the adopted son of the Tuhoe people, over to their country to study the ideas on the communal farms in their country. Heemi returned with some people to advise him, and married a daughter of Ruatahuna. I suppose this is what the Pakeha used to call ‘Back to the Mat’ he mused, but I prefer to think of it as grasping out for the knowledge and the good things of the Pakeha, but at the same time holding fast to the traditions and culture of the Maori people, so that in time every New Zealander whether Maori or Pakeha or a bit of both will have the best of both worlds. One big Maori celebration for the Queen could be fitted in during the Royal Visit next February, the Minister of Maori Affairs, Mr Hanan, told the newly-formed New Zealand Council of Tribal Executives at its inaugural meeting in Wellington. He suggested the council give thought to the national occasion the Maori people would arrange for the Queen.

Miss Iri Rangi Rankin Kaikohe Girl's Work with Eskimos A globe-trotting nurse, whose career has ranged from welfare work among the Eskimos of the Arctic Circle to pen-pushing for Lloyds of London, has finally settled down—as a Maori welfare worker. She is Kaikohe's Miss Iri Rangi Rankin, who has recently taken up an appointment as welfare officer with the Maori Affairs Department at Thames. Trained as a nurse at Waikato and Rotorua hospitals, Miss Rankin was supervising sister at Wellington Public Hospital when she left New Zealand in 1955 to further her experience in Canada. She worked as a nurse with a government-run hospital outpost at Moose Factory, an island in James Bay, 1000 miles north of Toronto. ‘I'd always heard that Indians and Maoris were a similar people, but I could not find any racial similarities at all,’ she said. ‘We seem to be two quite different races.’

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