Teaching of Maori Language In New Zealand Schools by F. G. B. Keen The pre-European Maori of New Zealand would have thought of himself as a person in a group and this group identity as being associated with an area of land, a fixed and permanent locality relationship. Thus ‘identity’ to the Maori was not a matter of name, appearance, personality or wealth, but a matter of land. This fundamental ‘first relationship’ of Maori culture was tightly woven into every aspect of social and economic organisation. At public gatherings there were two groups of people, the ‘manuhiri’ — visitors, and the ‘tangata whenua’, literally, the ‘people of the land’, or local folk. At a Maori gathering of any significance today, these are still the common terms of reference, though subtly changed in meaning.

Alienation from Land The coming of the European alienated the Maori from his land at increasing speed, culminating in the wars of the 1860s. By the end of this confused conflict in which Europeans fought on one side while Maoris fought on both, the Maori people had been effectively separated from all but a few scattered and relatively inhospitable tracts of land. The most obvious loss has been the economic one, which should not be dismissed as unimportant, as it prevented the Maori from continuing the development of suitable areas (in terms of 19th Century farm technology) for European type farming, an activity which he had begun to carry out on a large scale before the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840. Serious as this economic impoverishment was when it occurred, a more subtle but in the long term more serious loss for the Maori people has been that of individual and group identity which was taken away with the land. It is quite reasonable (at any rate to the European) to contend that the contact with European culture has brought many compensations to the Maori for the loss of his land. Many opportunities apparently exist which his own culture could not provide; greater awareness of the outside world, a marked increase in the volume of material goods, personal independence, relatively greater security; these four would no doubt be high on any list compiled by a European.

Need for an Identity Readily available and frequently quoted statistics indicate very strongly, however, that the majority of Maori people are unable to take advantage of these opportunities. It is axiomatic that as human beings we cannot grasp that with which we cannot identify, and during the 20th Century the Maori has made clearly recognisable and (for the majority) unavailing struggles for an identity in New Zealand. There seem to be three discernable elements in this struggle. The first is the individual one, in which unusually gifted, or influential Maoris have sought achievement in the European world — as doctors, priests, political careerists, entertainers. For obvious reasons this solution is open to only a very small minority, and it is of no great significance to the Maori people as a whole. Another expression of the struggle has been the military one. In this country's 20th Century wars, there has been not so much a bond of common purpose between Maori and European, as an attempt to find a group identity in the Maori Battalion. This, one can only hope, offers no answer for the future, and in any case is of only transient value. For the great majority (until the last decade over 80%) of Maoris the solution has been to cling to the few remaining ‘refuge’ areas of Maori land, a ‘harking back’ or reversion to traditional identity. This effectively isolates them from the advantage of European society, while at the same time they are prevented, for a great variety of