CHINESE MARKET GARDENS

Hokitika Guardian, 20 June 1931, Page 7

CHINESE MARKET GARDENS

MAORI WOMEN. OBJECTION TO HALF-CASTE RACE. AUCKLAND, June 15. “The Maoris have tasted the fruits of the pakeha civilisation, and they leel that they cannot go hack to their villages,” said Mr J. Rukutai, chairman of the Akarana Maori Association, when asked to comment on the reported destitution amongst Maori women and girls. “Every effort is now being made, under the scheme of the Native Minister, to induce the Maoris to go back to the land, but 1 am afraid that only a very small proportion of our people will respond.”

Mr Rukutai said the Government had appointed a special committee close on two years ago to investigate the conditions under which Maoris were employed by Asiatics in market gardens. As a result, special regulations were framed on the lines of the committee’s report, which recommended :—Strict control of living conditions in market gardens; prohibition of the employment of Maori females under twenty-one years of age in gardens controlled by Asiatics; provision of a minimun wage for all time workers, and suitable control over piecework agreements. “The bejtter class o? Chinese does not want to see a continuation of present conditions. The enforcement of the regulations would have seen a number of the Maoris back at their villages, growing potatoes, for they are not all landless,” said Mr Rukutai. “At least 90 per cent of the Maoris that are in Auckland are from the country. We know the position., is .grave, and we do not desire to see the growth of a mongrel race—half Maori and half Asiatic. I don’t know why the Chinese arc allowed into the country. The intermingling of the Maori race with the pakeha is not so had, hut the introduction of Asiatic hloocl leaves an unpleasant taste. T have nothing to say against the Asiatic personally. He is a very fine man in his own country.”

Woman Decoy Used. Another Maori authority stated that the conditions were bad at the Chinese gardens. He expressed great concern as to the -future of some of the women. Investigations had been made concerning a Maori woman who had been used as a decoy to go into the villages and lure young girls to the city to work in the Chinese cultivations. “We traced her activities and were able to stop her, but not before she had done, some harm.” He quoted another case of a "Maori woman who made a habit of bragging that she was the wife of a Chinese and that she had a Chinese grandchild. “What can you do in a case like that?” he added.

The special committee that reported to the House of Representatives during the 1929 session found that in fifty Chinese gardens inspected in the Auckland district seven female and four male Maoris were employed, .while at Pukekohe the number in the busy season reached fifty. The committee declared that at Pukekohe the accommodation provided i’or the Maoris was disgraceful. Overcrowding was prevalent and sanitary accommodation was most primative. The general health of the Maoris was good, but living conditions had a degrading effect. The general standard nowadays set by Maoris was much higher than the standard of their Hindu and Chinese employers.

Forty-five Hallf-caste Children. The committee had great difficulty in ascertaining definite tacts regarding Maori women living with Chinese, and expressed regret that the Commissioner of Police refused to allow his officers to provide information in their possession. The Akarana Maori Association produced figures showing that fortyfive half-caste children had been born to twenty-seven Maori girls by Chinese 'in three years, and that seventeen other girls had returned to their homes in trouble. There were evidences of such associations at Otaki, and what was called “a distinct drift” at Wanganui and Foxton. The committee stated that a more permanent solution of the difficulties could he provided by the education of the Maori with an agricuftural bias, the speeding \fip of the consolidation of Maori land interests, the setting aside of areas for farmlets, the revival of Maori arts and crafts and arrangements for marketing the output and a domestic training for Maori girls.