"WORK IT!"

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10203, 3 April 1911, Page 4

"WORK IT!"

"You have asked me what you are "to, do with your land. I say to you, "Work it! 5 ' This is how the act-ing-Prime Minister is reported to have answered a request made to him by the Native", at Papawal. Work it! Why,," the whole trend of Native legislation in the past has been in the direction of discouraging work on the part .of the aboriginals. The term "work" does not appear in the Native vocabulary. Nobody could have viewed the hundreds of fat, iiabby, indolent-looking men at the Papawai gathering without feeling sorry for a race which is being decimated by disease produced by ennui. All the fine fighting qualities; the stamina and the physique are being crushed out of the Natives by the spoon-feeding they are receiving at the hands of the State. The only possible way of preserving them from extinction is to lift them beyond themselves—to place them on the same plane as the Europeansi and to make them feel that they have civic and hygienic responsibilities as well as ail the rights and privileges of the European. Those who claim special treatment for the Natives are men who are chiefly con" cerned in the exploitation of their estate as well as their susceptibilities.