From Raupo Swamp and Native Wilds

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 64, 7 June 1927, Page 9

From Raupo Swamp and Native Wilds

A MAORI APPEAL MARCH ON CABINET (From Our Resident Reporter.) WELLINGTON, Friday. “We want to help you and want you to help us,” declared the Prime Minister, the Right Hon. J. G. Coates, today to a big gathering of Maoris who marched unceremoniously through Parliament Buildings to the Native Affairs Department and greeted Sir Maui Pomare, the Hon. J. A. Young, and Mr. Coates, as Native Minister. The visitors provided an unusual and picturesque spectacle as, singing m Maori and dressed in native mats, with the women swinging pois, they strutted through the drab corridors of the old library building to pay the respects of Taranaki natives. Their message to Mr. Coates was a prayer for the alleviation of the troubles facing the native race. They greeted the Prime Minister as “Father of the Orphan,” and “Parent of the People” to whom they had brought their troubles from the raupo swamps and the wilds. Mr. Coates made a fitting reply to the Maoris’ greetings. “The only way we can help one another,” he said, “is by accepting our responsibilities of citizenship and living so that our conduct will be satisfactory to ourselves, neighbours and to the country. He thought the Government understood the Maori mind. At any rate it tried to understand it, and he hoped that with the assistance of the Maori people they would be successful in leading the country along the path that would bring prosperity and success to the Maoris.