TRADITION AND WOMEN

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 786, 5 October 1929, Page 13

TRADITION AND WOMEN

SPEECHES PROBLEM AT MAORI LECTURE PRESENT DAY RIGHTS Women and their rights troubled the Maoris before Europeans brought the worries and the notions of civilisation to New Zealand. And here, in Auckland, in 1929, the Akarana Maori Association is trying to reconcile the principles of tradition th the practices of the present day. •The question before the association is whether women should be speakers at a special evening, illustrative of Maori history, proposed to be held on October 30 before the anthropological and Maori section of the Auckland Institute and Museum. Tradition says that women should not speak at public assemblies; civilisation says that they may. So far, civilisation is winning in the preparations for the evening, for several women members of the association have been included as speakers in the tentative programme.

Heads of Maori households had undoubted power in pre-European days. Stern measures could be taken if a woman dared to speak in public debate. Speeches on the marae of apa were bound by strict etiquette. The marae was as exclusively masculine as occasional European clubrooms. POIS AND HAKAS

The important periods of Maori history are to be outlined in the association’s programme. It will be a novel and original undertaking. While the speakers detail the customs of the natives, hakas and poi dancing will be introduced, according to the period under review. Perhaps a hymn will be sung in Maori at the mention of the arrival in Aotearoa of the Rev. Samuel Marsden, the first bearer of Christianity. Mr. Patrick Smyth, secretary to the association, will be the opening speaker. lie will speak on the theory of Polynesian history; there will be opinions on the travels of the Polynesian race from India, through Malaya, into the Pacific. The traditional Hawaikis and Tawhitis—homes of the Maori race—will be mentioned. Mrs. Mary Bennett will lecture on the Tahitian voyager, Kupe ; who discovered New Zealand in the loth century. Mrs. Maewa Ivaihau’s subject will be the pre-Maori inhabitants of New Zealand—the Western Pacifican Mouriuri people. Toi te Hautahi or Toi Kairakau, the Tahitian who settled in the Bay of Plenty in the 12th century, will be the subject explained by Mr. Te Paa. Mr. Smyth will deal with the great migration of the Maoris to Ne*v Zealand, in 1350, and the visits of Abel Jansen Tasman and Captain James Cook will be dealt with by Miss Kiri Eruini and Miss IToro. Mr. D. Kaa will talk on the advent of Christianity, and, after a lecture on the Treaty of Waitangi, Mr. Smyth will speak on the influences of white civilisation among the Maoris from the days of Hobson’s administration. There will probably be references, valuable because they will be the viewpoint of the natives, to the modern" Maori mental outlook.