LAND FOR MAORIS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 227, 25 September 1929, Page 6

LAND FOR MAORIS.

Your correspondent "CM." opportunely draws attention to this very important problem affecting the future welfare of our Maori people. He points out that as the amount of employment available for the several hundreds of Maoris is terminated owing to the completion of the area to be afforested there will arise a serious unemployed question in regard to these people in the near future. This "also applies to our native people in other avenues of life and the question should now be faced ■ before it becomes too late to avoid muchunnecessary Maori misery and social disorganisation which will have its sure reflex effect on this country generally. It may be a surprise to the average European who may not be particularly interested in Maori affairs to learn that many thousands of Maoris are already landless. Many, others are on the verge 1 of being so and. others as numerous are surely destined so to be unless our policy of acquiring native land for settlement by Europeans is forthwith stopped and a policy of conservation of Maori land ownership substituted. Of the comparatively small area of suitable-! quality for farms still in native ownership every acre is required by its owners. Suitable subdivision, finance, agricultural and pastoral instruction, are all efforts that the Native Department can now profitably devote its attention to. Hitherto it has functioned mainly as a relentless machine whose sole ■> aspiration would, appear to be the alienation : of Maori land. That activity should now cease ■■ and.the Department's policy be. changed to: wards how to preserve the sadly diminished ~ Maori estate and how to satisfactorily settle ' the Maoris on it. In fact to provide for landless Maori people, it is imperative that areas be re-acquifed from the Crown, which has culpably over-bought without regard to Maori wants. As to large areas of lands unsuitable for any form of Maori settlement, but suitable , for afforestation, it would be a wise and provit dent measure if the Maori owners thereof were financed to utilise the land for this purpose, GEO. GRAHAM.