Religious Sect Links Two Races, Maori, Pakeha

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 16, Issue 4, 4 October 1950, Page 7

Religious Sect Links Two Races, Maori, Pakeha

In the long crusade for understanding between the European and Maori peoples, the Te Kotahitanga Tautora Order in Taranaki is unique in that it acts as a bridge between the independent Maori Christian orders and almost all the Eui’Opean established churches by its practice of corporate intercommunion.

Members as a body visit each church in turn and in the last two years the order has conducted an after-church service of its own at which there is a large attendance from supporting churches.

More specifically, the Kotahitanga is an inter-church, religious educational, cultural and social and economic order to build brotherhood and understanding between the European and Maori peoples.

The founder of the order is a European, Mr A. B. Witten-Han-nah, research worker in Maori ethnology, who has spent many years among the Taranaki Maoris. Mr Witten-Hannah, now an elder along with his wife in several Maori orders, has always had an ambition to work in the Maori mission field. Associated as he has been with several European societies, he had in them experimented with Maori forms and ideas. He has always had faith in the Maori, whom he maintains retains a religious background to all his activities.

Based on the prinicple of Kojtahitanga or “oneness,” the order is opposed to these Maoi'i movements which have a racial policy of “Motuhake” or “Separatism.” Set firmly on spiritual premises, it is not connected in any way with politics, though Mr Witten-Hannah recalls that at different times in its 14 years of existence, it has been accused of being pro-Labour and pho-National.

Members of other Maori movements are individual members and the order maintains cordial relations with the Roman Catholic Church in the field of welfare work. The order co-operates with the government of the day, insofar as its spiritual principles are not infringed.

One of the leading activities of the order is the highly successful rehabilitation of delinquents who also attend lectures and take part in the movement’s co-operative enterprise. Though Kotahitanga has never had any Government funds and has in its 14 years made only four limited appeals to the public it has achieved much materially as well as spiritually. It has a youth hostel in New Plymouth, staffed by voluntary labour, European and Maori, it owns 450 acres of bush country 14 miles from the city and is there establishing a rural Christian community centre. A large lecture room where student officers attend regularly for 50 weeks a year and a library help to meet the cultural needs.

Sooner than Europeans realise, people of mixed European and Maori blood will comprise the majority of New Zealanders, believes Mr Witten-Hannah. These people cannot be properly integrated peresonalities unless they are true to both sides of their natures and for this reason a real New Zealand culture must be developed. In Mr opinion the pr;e-i sent sentimental interest shown in Maori culture is quite unrealistic and does more harm than good.

By no means the least interest*ing or significant aspect of Kotahitanga is its language study group. It is the only one in the Dominion engaged in rendering the Maori tongue of literary and technical Value, by the restoration of ancient “high-deep” words and the building of new ones for things and ideas unknown to the old-time Maori upon the genuine Maori roots and according to true Maori association of idea.

Too much pidgin English masquerades as Maori in the schools, Government publications and service books of churches, contends Mr Witten-Hannah.