Books

The Making of a Maori A Case Study of A Changing Community by Dr James E. Ritchie A. H. & A. W. Reed, 21/6 reviewed by Eric Schwimmer Many years ago, psychologists were interested mainly in people who were mentally sick; today, many of them have turned to the study of stresses and conflicts in communities. Their great contribution has been to show us how people really feel in these communities. If administrators, teachers and social workers had a better understanding of this, they would be better at coping with the stresses and conflicts they meet with. Dr Ritchie is a psychologist who has, over quite a number of years, studied the Maori from a viewpoint such as this. Before he started doing research, he taught in a Maori school; for a long period, he was a very regular member of the Ngati Poneke Club, proficient enough at Maori action songs to be acceptable as a member of the club's team, if I remember rightly. In 1953 he began to be interested in a community called Rakau, which he visited over four university summer vacations, making up about a full year altogether. He formed part of a team of psychologists who together compiled very full data, based on psychological tests as well as observation, on childhood at Rakau. The question they tried to answer was this: if you are brought up in Rakau, what kind of personality are you likely to develop? Four books were written on this; together, they give us more reliable data on the Maori personality than were ever available before. Studies Whole Community In this new book, Dr Ritchie no longer confines himself chiefly to children and to psychological tests, but studies the community as a whole, making full use of a great many interviews he has had with the adults of the community. Many of them told him the story of their own lives; he noted down precisely all the events he observed in the community at the moment they occurred. Out of all this, a very full picture emerges. It is a different picture from what the layman would have written; also a different picture from the one Elsdon Best would have given, were he still alive. It is a social psychologist's picture. For that reason we find plenty of stresses, frustrations, disappointments, inner tensions, conflicts, plenty of references to people's burden of shame, resentment and so forth. But this should not be regarded as a criticism of Rakau. If Dr Ritchie had got going on the suburb of Wellington where he lives at the moment, I am sure it would have borne a close resemblance to a madhouse, and would have been far more depressing than Rakau. So there is no reason to be offended. Since the book came out, I have often consulted it when there was a Maori question I did not quite understand; on all these occasions I found it a great help, even if I did not, in the end, always completely agree with Dr Ritchie. He is best on those subjects that have always been the special preserve of the psychologist—attitudes to work in chapter 6, education in chapter 9, child-rearing in chapter 10, the roles of men and women in chapter 12. An excellent discussion is the one in chapter 15 telling of the conflict Maoris feel between the Maori and European side of their nature; whatever they do, either the elders or the Pakehas criticise or shame them. Analysis of Familiar Situations In these chapters we find many of the situations familiar to us all, most carefully analysed as to the motives of all the people involved. There is, for instance, the young Maori of Rakau who did his forestry exams and became a leading hand, but the older Rakau Maoris would not work for him. Why wouldn't they? Why did the young man end up by being a drifter? All this is most carefully explained. Again, we are told how the Rakau people admire the men who have no boss, who are independent contractors and don't have regular jobs. They admire these men even though their annual earnings are less than if they worked for an employer. Why is this? Dr Ritchie tells us most convincingly. One of the reasons why the local school is not fully efficient is that insufficient contact exists between teachers and community. One would think therefore that local-born teachers would be welcome in that community. But they are not: a local girl who taught at the school was teased so much because she behaved differently from the other girls in the community that she had to leave again. Dr Ritchie lays bare the basic reasons behind this incident