MAORI PHILOSOPHY

Hokitika Guardian, 13 August 1929, Page 5

MAORI PHILOSOPHY

The Maori is a great philosopher, and frequently adds humour to his philosophising. In a country district a few score miles from Auckland some natives had built a wliaro amongst some beautiful native bush, and had taken rather a big contract of gorse grubbing which was not paying them wlcll. At the week-end some pakehas who went to see how they were getting on found that they had foregone their Saturday halfholiday in an endeavour to . make enough money to buy kai. “I lie white man bring the gorse to New Zealand, and now ho get the Maori to try and take out tlio roots,” was the way one of tlio hardest-working Maoris put it. “The white fellow he at tlio football match to-day because lie earn 14s a day on relief work. They say to the Maori: ‘Go into the country and work on the land—that is tlio place for you.’ Then when wo have grubbed the gorse, the white man comes along with his horses and ploughs where wo have cleared, and then says; ‘Look what we, can produce from the land j’ All that was produced till tlio Maori cleared it was gorse.” A Maori woman who was helping at the work gave tlio pakehas a parting shot by saying, that the Maori was still the. slave of the pakolia, and that she would not he able to buy a new dress to parade Queen Street in when the job was over, as she was earning too little.