Anti-Maori Feeling Strongly Condemned

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 317, 30 March 1928, Page 7

Anti-Maori Feeling Strongly Condemned

ARE WE PATRIOTIC? DORA WILCOX TALKS PLAINLY Are New Zealanders patriotic? Dora Wilcox, one of our most distinguished poets and writers, who left Auckland by the Marama to-day on her return to Sydney, accompanied by Mr. William Moore, her husband, says that in one respect we certainly are not patriotic. WILCOX made particular reference to certain reported instances of colour-prejudice as far as Maoris were concerned. “I am amazed to hear of it, and say as a New Zealander born, that I am thoroughly ashamed of any New Zealander who raises the cry of white versus brown," she said. “To begin with, it is un-Christian. It is un-British. It is all that is unfair. It is extremely foolish, too, for in disparaging the Maori race we are disregarding the most precious possession in the country." The Maori represented the finest native people in the world, a people, too, of everlasting and absorbing interest to the ethnologist and anthropologist. The Maoris even came of our own Aryan stock. “We have taken the land of the Maori. In many instances we have even deprived them of the means of livelihood, for the Maori of old was nothing if not a man of the land. The Maoris on their part have given us freely of all their treasures. Their legends and poetry, for instance, are a constant source of inspiration to our writers, and will be even a greater stimulus as the years go by." Miss Wilcox said she could quite understand European prejudice against the “dirty Maori," just as she could follow Maori discrimination against the “dirty pakeha." “Unfortunately there are dirty people in both races," she said, “but that, of course, applies to any people. “But when it comes to refusing respectable, well-educated Maori girls accommodation for no other reason than their skin is brown and they are Maori by birth, I certainly think it is time that New Zealanders strongly protested." True racial development, said Dora Wilcox, was not an expression of feeling by the true New Zealander, who appreciated the Maori for his real worth and value to the country, and was proud to share the privileges of citizenship with him. “I know I might well be accused of using a hackneyed expression when I say that the Maori has fought on more than one occasion beside the New Zealander. We were not too proud to let him do that; neither were we too proud to let him share in the honour and glory that followed the recent war.

“ . . . As a New Zealander I would emphatically refuse to stay at any accommodation house, whether at Rotorua or anywhere else, that refuses board and lodging to a Maori.”