MAORI MONEY

Hokitika Guardian, 26 July 1927, Page 1

MAORI MONEY

OPULENCE AT ORAKEI. lire;i'] sum squandered. AUCKLAND, July 22. A few miles from Auckland one may see an heiress picking potatoes foiva living, h’urs and silks have been discarded for a coarse petticoat and Mouse. Once she used to order a taxi, or several taxis if her friends wanted to come to town. To-day she rides on a lorry that delivers the potatoes. Two years ago the population of Okaliu, a Maori village in the pretty little Hay of Orakei, drew £BO,OOO from the Govenrment as the price of the tribal heritage. To-day there isn’t a " herene ” left, not even a "liikaponi.” “ All gone,” said one Maori this morning. “ Yes,” he went on with a smile, “the pakeha too clever for the Maori to keep his money. Pakeha got it all.” Where had it gone? “ Oh, motor-car. motor-hoat, racecourse, waipiro, billiards, pool and tilings like that.” Happy ? “ Oh, Yes. The Maori is just: the same now as before he got all the money. Never mind, lie never worry.” Orakei "kainga.” or village, is charmingly situated hut is painfully drab. The time-worn cottages, or shacks, are scattered about on the flat. The lonely whare runanga, or tribal meeting house, stands on the village square with closed doors. The queer little church, with its lithographed portraits of holy peopi'e round the bare walls, its table for an altar, with a birthday cake in a glass ease, is surrounded with grass-grown graves and several strange-looking monuments.

Kvorything l):ully wants a coat of paint. The only sign of anything like work is at the end of the village where a group (plus some watchers for company) is digging out the family kumara pit and bagging the contents. Orakci is not a busy spot, yet in two years a population of something, under a hundred has gone through a cool C'Bo,ooo with a thoroughness that could not have been improved upon by the most desperate spendthrift. “ It’s a shame.” said a pakeha, ‘‘hut

wlmt can you expect Y '1 he money should never have been handed to the .Maoris. It should have been kept in some sort of trust and only the income given to them.” While the money lasted the Orakcites played their part well. They had several motor-cars and also motorboats. Xow there isn’t so much as a tvre in the village nor a dinghy in the haw

Another very popular place for getting rfd of money was the racecourse, and it is estimated that quite a large percentage of the CM). IH) 11 found its way through the “machine.” Milliards and pool are rather slow ways of getting rid of thousands, but they played their part. Gifts of motor-cars to the .Mauri " King ” on the hanks til the Waikato also came out of the payment for the land, and one of the young women beneficiaries was particularly good at making presents to her friends. Xow slie is picking potatoes, “with not a bean to bless herself.” YVliat will become of the Orakei people is rather indefinite. Having sold their tribal inheritance they own only an acre or so down at the Bay and evil I have to get out sooner or later. Unlimited money and too close a contact with the clever pakelni has not improved the people, and people who know the Maori and his ways agree that the best thing that could happen for them would he to remove them, especially in view of the turning of Orakei into a model suburb. Penniless and landless, the Maoris have been given the option of choosing their future dwelling place, hut the Government say they must move from Orakei. They have been given a certain period to choose some split to which they will be moved, lock, stock and barrel, and if they do not come to some decision the Government will take on itself the task of picking a suitable place to which the people can remove. In the meantime, Orakei must surely hold the record as the only village in Xew Zealand where the entire population has dropped from pockets of money to potato picking in two short years.