MEETING MAORIS IN OTHER LANDS by Alan Armstrong it gives a new zealander a shock to walk through Papeete, capital of Tahiti, and hear Maoris talking fluent French. They are not Maoris of course, they are native Tahitians; but from their appearance one feels they would not be out of place in any town or city in this country. Strolling through Honolulu one encounters Maoris again, in this case talking with a marked American twang. Yet these are superficial differences between Pacific peoples, imposed by contact with the world of the white man. Such differences only serve to highlight the brotherhood which exists between the people of Polynesia and the marked affinities, cultural and physical, between the inhabitants of this vast area of small islands which includes New Zealand.

Polynesian Cultural Centre At Laie, opposite Honolulu on the island of Oahu (though not the largest of the Hawaiian Islands, this is the one to which most tourists go), the Mormon Church has completed an ambitious project known as the Polynesian Cultural Centre. It is a showplace where the heritage and customs of the Polynesia of yesterday and of today are presented in an authentic setting to the people who, six days a week, visit it in their hundreds, sometimes in their thousands. With jagged, cloud-wreathed mountain peaks as a natural backdrop, young Maoris from New Zealand, along with their first cousins from Samoa, Tonga, Tahiti and also Fiji, have come together to present ancient arts, crafts, dances and building techniques. During the summer tourist season (from July to September) the buildings in the village are peopled by islanders demonstrating and lecturing on various aspects of their culture. The Samoan exhibit features a council house, a community meeting-house (said to be the largest ever built) and a sleeping house. The Fijians have built a chief's house, a council building and a commoner's dwelling. The centrepiece of Tahiti's exhibit is a spectacular chief's house made in the shape of a perfect cone. There is also a Tahitian Queen's home, a community council house and a small fishing Joseph Tengaio, left, and Mrs Meitau Mackay polish up their technique with tips from Hollywood choreographer Jack Regas at Hawaii's Polynesian Cultural Centre. storehouse on stilts. Hawaii has a chief's house, a fisherman's home (on stilts near the artificial lake which is the centrepiece of the Cultural Centre) and other simple native homes. The Tongans have built a replica of Queen Salote's summer palace, and there are also other Tongan dwellings, with their gracefully curved roofs and rounded corners.

Miniature Maori Village To the wandering Kiwi however, main interest centres on the miniature Maori village, entered through a carved gateway flanked by a fence of sharpened stakes. The main meeting-house is as fine a structure as could be found anywhere in New Zealand. Of the other two Maori buildings, one serves as a museum for a representative collection of Maori artifacts, while the other is a smaller carved meeting-house in which films on New Zealand are shown. On the nearby lake is a carved Maori canoe. This last summer season, a group of young people from the Mormon Church of New Zealand were at Laie at their own expense, during the day working around the village and in the evening providing the grand finale at the Polynesian Concert staged nightly in the Cultural Centre's fine outdoor auditorium. Of the forty or so members of this group, about a third were formerly in the Te Arohanui Party which toured the United States with such success last year.