THE ECONOMIC MAORI

Hokitika Guardian, 19 June 1930, Page 2

THE ECONOMIC MAORI

(Auckland Star). We have taken from Professor Con'dli/fe’s recently published and valuable work, “New Zealand in the Making,”. a chapter on “The EconomicStatus of the -Maor..” as suggesting a topic well worthy of public discuss.on. Professor Cmulliffe displays throughout. this hook great smypathy for the .Maori and a very thorough comprehension of his needs and his merits. Hut the special importance of Professor Condliil'e's analysis of the Maori problem lies iii the stress that he has thrown upon the economic circumstances of Maori life in the past and their hearing upon its future. I.n pre-Kuropean days the life of the Maori, as Professor Conilliffe sees it, was by no means “a continual round ol tribal wars and cannibal feasts governed by complicated ritualistic tapus.” Indeed, it may fairly be said that “the worst of these features of savage life occurred after, and not before, contact with the different and more variable ethics of civilisation.” Contrary to the opinion generally held, “the normal run of life was far too dependent upon systematic and laborious cultivation with primitive implements for anything like continuous indulgence in tne luxury of lighting.” For these reasons Professor Contu ffe regards the life of the primitive Maori as “a highly disciplined ex.ateme,” and on this tiew be bases his conviction that under favourable conditions the Maori could mow be trained and educated and organised to play an efficient and important part in the civilised economicsystem, There is no doubt that in the earlier [days of settlement the natives played an extremely important part in the i development of the young colony; and 1 even to-day they support a certain | amount or industrial resjioiiaihility. [ “Milch of the real drudgery involved ■in ‘carving homes out or the wilderj ness’ has been the work of Maori hands. The pioneer work of bush-fall-I ing, l scrub clearing, and fencing still draws heavily on Maori labour. Roadmaking, sheep shearing, coal mining, gum-digging, even -railway construction,, have iii certain areas depended a great deal upon the Maoris. In any occupation of manual dexterity, particularly if it can be performed by team work involving some measure of communal co-operation, the Maori worker, is second .to none”; and Professor Con’dliffo hero seizes the' opportunity to praise “the speed a,n.d skill .with which the Pioneer Battalion, composed wholly of Maoris, built roads and dug ttenches” in the Great "War. But it is as landholder and cultivator of the soil that the Maori is to play his most appropriate part in the development of the Dominion. The surviving Maoris—about 65.0C0 in all —still possess nearly 4,500,000 acres of land, and though much of it is of poor quality, or located in mountains and heavily forested districts, it. provides ample scope for the evolution of the native race along the lines of a sound and productive economic system, For there is much in the historic past of the Maori and in. his inherited rate qualities that can help him now. “The spirit of the old usages prevails,” Sir ■ Apirana Ngata has said—“leadership, co-opeiration, communal discipline”— and he appeals to his people to consider what they may hope to effect for themselves and their children with all the advantages and facilities of modern civilisation to aid them—“if only the spirit of the intrepid Polynesian navigators, of the patient, orderly and disciplined agriculturists, of the expert nature-taught fowlers and fishermen, of the ingenious boat builders, carvers and artists, were revived in their descendants.”

It is in this spirit that the leaders in the “Maori Renaissance” of to-day are approaching the problems of social and economic and national life. Having surmounted the initial difficulty of adjusting the conceptions of communal ownership, familiar to the Maori with the rights of private property, Sir Apirana Ngata and his coadjutors have worked out a system of co-opera-tive farming and dairying which has already proved itself financially profitable, and which has enabled the Maoris to display “the discipline and organising ability necessary for commercial success.” Such experiments in “economic Communism” as have already succeeded among the East Coast tribes point the way to a more hopeful future when the Maori, aided by the accessories of civilisation, but depending chiefly on his own inherent capacity, may not only defy the forces making for his extinction, but may raise himself to a high and permanent level of social and economic prosperity.