NATIVE LAND PROBLEMS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9152, 27 July 1908, Page 4

NATIVE LAND PROBLEMS.

"Keep your lands and work their," said Sir Robert Stout, Native La'id Commissioner, to the Maoris of this district, a keynote he sounded many times during the short sitting of the Commission at Masterton'Coupling this injunction with the prophecy that unless the Maoris set-to and toiled and tilled, and lived more Spartan lives, they would soon be extinct, the Commissioner made out a good case for his advice. It is a matter open to question, however, whether the Maori has yet acquired that knowledge of agriculture which would enable him to compete success fully with his pnkeha brother, and further if the large areas leased by Maoris in this district could be farmed adequately to the district's necessity when so many white people are afiected with the land hunger—people who would willingly turn every inch of sod were they giv»>n the opportunity. No one would question the wisdom of the Commissioners advice if it applied to an area reasonably sufficient foe all Native purposes, but it is a question which would need looking into as to whether the Native population of this district could do justice to the land held by it in fee when the existing leases expire. If the standard of agriculture were made as high as it will need to be with our increasing urban population possibly the land would be better settled by whites under leaseholds, while the Native owners could devote themselves to arts more suited to their natures. It is recognised that an even standard of cultivation is not a strong feature of Native methods, some making excellent farmers, and others failing utterly. That this is so was exemplified at the recent Commission, where so-called "improvements" on Native lands were shown to be the erection of a chain or two of fencing or the planting of a few roods of potatoes. Right up against the Commissioner's advice to the Maoris to keep their lands is the increasing cry for closer settlement by white people, and a c-y which must be heeded. In and out of Parliament the complaint has been perennial that Native land and waste land are synonymous terms, and that settlement is retarded. The equitable treatment of the Native race regarding its land in the face of the sweepin? demand for close settlement furnishes a problem or series of problems which call for deep consideration.