PAKEHA AND MAORI

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 204, 17 November 1927, Page 10

PAKEHA AND MAORI

THE absurdity of the statements made regarding the Maoris by a recent visitor to New Zealand would call for no comment were it not for the fact that the critic is a well-known exlegislator, and that his views have been given wide publicity in the Australian Press arid are likely to mislead the Australian people. Mr. J. A. Thomson, a former member of the Legislative Council of Western Australia, has informed newspaper interviewers that the Maoris have been “pandered to” so much that they have been spoiled—“due chiefly to the desires of various Governments to secure their votes”—and are becoming arrogant and conceited. This is inaccurate enough; but when Mr. Thomson avers that “it is quite a common thing to see young Maori men swaggering beside quite refined-looking white girls, and young Europeans, mostly of the bank-clerk type, taking out Maori girls,” he outrages truth. The very terms of Mr. Thomson’s criticism indicate that he has no conception of the relationship existing between Pakeha and Maori, for he compares the Maori to the blacks of Africa, with whom there is no comparison. The Maori race is distinguished for its traditions of valour and chivalry, for its arts, for its high intelligence and for its progressive culture and its assimilation of European civilisation; and the names of its members who have distinguished themselves in politics and in science are too well known to need repetition. In no sense is the Maori a coloured alien,” as interpreted in the policy of a White Austraha Though there is no intimate association between Pakeha and Maori as peoples even remotely approaching that so falselv pictured by Mr. Thomson, the educated Maori claims, and is accorded, equality with the white New Zealander, and with every justification. The relationship is such as cannot he understood by visitors who journey through the country in a few days and who erroneously form an estimate of the Maori by what thev have seen of the natives of other countries. It is a relationship which only those who live in New Zealand can -understand or appreciate.