MAORIS WILL CELEBRATE 600 YEARS IN N.Z.

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 15, Issue 25, 24 April 1950, Page 5

MAORIS WILL CELEBRATE 600 YEARS IN N.Z.

Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, October 7 to 11, this year, will be important dates for the Maori people, as they have been chosen for the sixth centennial celebrations in connection with the arrival of the canoes from Hawaiki. believed to have occurred in the year 1350. The Waikato and Maniapoto people are taking up the celebration plans most enthusiastically, and several meetings have been held to further the project. The main celebrations will take place at Turangawaewae Pa, Ngaruawahia, and they will be dovetailed with the anniversary of King Koroki’s coronation. The date chosen for that anniversary is Sunday, October 8. Ngaruawahia As Venue

That there will be a very large gathering at Ngaruawahia is assured as already messages have reached Princess Te Puea from tribes all over the Waikato and Maniapoto country intimating a desire to attend and take part in the celebrations, which have been referred to by Sir Apirana Ngata as “the biggest occasion in Maori history.” Ngaruawahia was chosen for the celebrations because it is the most central and convenient place. The two canoes, Aotea and Takitimu, which are named after famous members of the “first fleet” of 1350, are located on the river there—and were in use at the regatta recently. Th choice of early October for the celebrations will have only one objection—there will be no pohutukawa in bloom. Maori tradition relates that the voyagers from Hawaiki were immediately impressed with the brilliant red flowers of what many people call the Christmas tree.

The programme will include an all-Maori athletic meeting intended as a replica of the Empire Games, and designed to stimulate athletic prowess among the Maori people. The athletics section of the celebrations will be organised by the Ngaruawahia Maori Adult Education Committee, and special and appropriate trophies will be prepared —most of them made by the school of Maori carving at Turangawaewae.

The same, committee is preparing a huge map of the south-west Pacific, showing the course of the canoes from mythical Hawaiki and dispersal along the coast of “Aotearoa.” Coronation Ceremonies Sunday, October 8, will be devoted almost entirely to the coronation ceremonies and celebrations, but Monday will witness a contination of the ceremonials connected with the centenary.

Contingents of Maoris will assemble from all over New Zealand, as far south as Otago Peninsula and as far north as Te Hapua. Especially will there be large representations from the Waikato and Maniapoto tribes, as they have been most particularly associated with the Tainui canoe, which landed its occupants at Kawhia and other points along the western coast.