‘Wait till Ruaumoko hits them, then they'll know all about it, eh?’ said Aroha, hitching up her piupiu. ‘You don't worry about her boy, she can't even keep her piupiu on properly,’ said Josie. ‘Must be on to that good-looking toa in the front row,’ giggled Ra. He grinned, knowing that the girls were only trying to keep his mind off worrying about the second half of the concert. They had helped and inwardly he thanked them for it. ‘O.K. boys and girls, smokes out, on stage. Good luck, boy.’ There was Jacko again and the curtain was up. Four action songs, two chants, and this was it. ‘Shyyyyy eh!!’ he heard the idiomatic sound breathed from where he stood at the front of the stage. ‘He's going to lead the haka!!’ ‘Ko te iwi Maori e ngunguru nei!!’ Dramatically he let the phrase start low and build to a terrifying peak just as old Te Tatau had taught him. ‘AU—AU—AUE! HA, HI!’ came the solid roar of qualification from the forearm-punching front line of men to his right. Quickly the rhythm took control of his vocal articulation and physical actions. Automatically his tongue rippled and his eyes rolled in defiant pukana. Unconscious of the rising current of sound from the hall, he brought the haka to its thrilling climax and leaping high into the air he landed out in the darkened building amid pandemonium. ‘Champion!’ ‘Beauty!’ ‘Fabulous!’ ‘Incredible!’ He vaguely heard the storm of praise that followed. The rest of the evening passed blankly for him, with only two comments standing vividly in his mind. ‘E kare, I think maybe we'll get the tribal committee to get that club started, eh? By crikey, that lazy Meta wants to go too!’ ‘Certainly Joselyn, you can join the school Maori club if Miss Whaanga says it's alright for a white girl to join. It should be after tonight.’ Two Maori projects are included in the latest list of grants from Golden Kiwi lottery profits. St Joseph's Maori Girls' College, Green-meadows, has been granted £1,500 toward a filtration plant for its swimming baths, and Raukawa Tribal Executive, Palmerston North, has been granted £7,861 toward the cost of the Maori Battalion War Memorial. Mr Ted Sheffield, the husband of the late Mrs Colleen M. Sheffield, has given us permission to publish this poem which was written by her shortly before her death in the tragic accident on Brynderwyn Hill last February.

Victory Friend, Lord, I now beseech of you— If you should wish to end That which is between us, To turn away your thoughts, Your face from me: Do not choose the unmanly way Of vengeful ones, The slow extinguishing of life In my shamed body, writhing, bound, The heated stones pressed in My every orifice. No! Rather grant to me The death given By chief to chief At close of just combat. The temple thrust From the far-famed weapon Of your just ancestor, A death swift, clean, and due to me by right! This honour I would ask And take your blow in resignation, Proud to know, … Through woman, … That release, … Was given so, … By man, … To man, … Of old.