School for Maori Truants

Mana (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 10, 10 November 1977, Page 5

School for Maori Truants

Auckland officials are showing interest in progress at the Alternative School for Maori truants at Mt Victoria, Wellington. Mr Bill Maung, administrator of the Te Kaha Trust, together with Liz Marsden and Tiata Witehira, members of Ngatamatoa Tuarua, established the school in September. Mr Maung felt that the most important part of the whole operation was groups like Ngatamatoa and the Black Power Gang, involving themselves in the truancy problem.

Although it has just opened, a programme of various activities has been planned to meet with the pupils interests. Mr Mario Epiha from the Maori Writers and Artists Society, who is one of the school’s “teachers” specialises in flax weaving, but he has also taken the children on diving excursions for mussels. Other course emerging are Maori oratory and language — and the martial arts.

Mr Lee Smith, lecturer in Maori Language at Victoria University has started classes one day a week. He feels the school is a positive thing “because it is Maori people organising Maori things.” He hoped that the Te Kaha Trust “boys” — graduates of other alternative schools founded by Mr Maung — would be able to influence the young people who came along. The latest report was that the roll was 10 — all girls under 15.

Mr Witi Ihimaera

novelist of Rongowhakaata tribe, and member of the Q.E.11 Arts Council, who is presently living in Wellington, had this to say, “they are our kids and we should be worried about them. We are considering ways of operating the alternative school next year.” Police Commander Superintendent Peter Mairs, the new Secretary of Maori Affairs Kara Puketapu, and prominent Maori elders including Mrs W. Harris from Island Bay have expressed their support for the school. The Education Department says the school has no legal standing and that pupils attending it would be regarded as truants and treated accordingly. Mr Maung says “The school’s aim is to produce people capable of taking their rightful place in a society, through individual development, rather than by “force-feeding.”