Maori-Pakeha Mixed Marriages by John Harré Recently I spent some months in Auckland finding out all I could about mixed marriages between Maoris and Pakehas. My original scheme had been to examine the state of race relations in New Zealand, but this I quickly saw was far too wide a project. I chose mixed marriage because I felt that this would be the best ‘test case’ of race relations; I chose Auckland as a field for my study because I felt that it was in the cities and particularly in Auckland that these problems increasingly are going to be worked out in the future.

Three Questions I was able to find out a little from registration records—for example that the rate of intermarriage in Auckland was increasing rapidly—but what really interested me were the answers to three questions. (1) What opportunity is there for the sort of friendships which are likely to lead to marriage, to be made between Maoris and Pakehas? (2) What is the reaction of other people (particularly parents) to the decision of young people to marry one of the other race? (3) What special problems are faced by mixed couples and their children?

Most Meetings In Public Places In answer to the first of these questions I found that there were many opportunities in the city for young people to come together, but there were two factors which made this less effective than it might have been. The first was that in most cases these meetings were in public places—dance halls, cinemas, and so on —while most of the married couples I talked with had met through introductions by friends and family. The second was that there was a section fo the Pakeha community which had little contact with Maoris at all. These were mostly people in the better sorts of jobs living in high-priced housing areas where few Maoris could afford to live. Of course these people did see and hear of Maoris but in most cases when they saw them it was as road menders, and usually when they heard of them it was to do with court cases in the paper. They therefore, very understandably, had a rather unbalanced idea of what Maoris are really like and were not usually prepared to make the effort to remedy this. Of course there were exceptions. There were many mixed couples who did get to know each other and who started dating. In nearly all cases this was accepted by their friends, but in many (both Maori and Pakeha) their parents were not entirely happy about the arrangement. In a lot of cases parental objections did not start until the dating became steady (it was then that parents began to think of marriage as a possibility), but in nearly every case once the marriage had taken place the parents on both sides accepted the situation and usually grew fond of their Pakeha or Maori son- or daughter-in-law.

What Special Problems? What special problems were faced by these people who made mixed marriages? Well, a few faced continuing problems with their parents and ‘in-laws’ but most found no great difficulty in adapting to the situation. In some cases where the Maori had already adopted a Pakeha way of life, or the Pakeha knew Maori ways and accepted them, there were important changes to be made by either the husband or the wife. It was sometimes a matter of food tastes or language or it might be the more deeply imbedded attitudes to life which still separate many Maoris from many Pakehas. In most cases I found that the couple were well aware of the problems they faced and took a sensible and well balanced approach to them.

A Joint Project Finally I would like to relate what I have said to the general position of the Maori in contemporary New Zealand. The Maori contribution to New Zealand life will not be the retention of a specific culture by a small group who identify closely with this (although this will probably always exist—and there's certainly nothing wrong with it), but an overlay