ANGLICAN NATIVE SCHOOLS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 July 1938, Page 2

ANGLICAN NATIVE SCHOOLS

WAIRARAPA’S CLAIM IN JEOPARDY. (To the Editor.) Sir, —It is a sufficiently long period of time since the Hikurangi Native College building (Dorset Estate) near Clareville, was destroyed by fire, for the opinion to be safely ventured that the intervening policy of “masterly inactivity,” regarding its substitution for local Native educational needs, has now become submerged in the less appealing amalgamation scheme of removing its future location across the Tararua Ranges, on its West Coast side. Those latter-day trustees responsible for the carrying out of the original intention of the Kaikokirikiri Trust have recently had their number augmented, and it will be interesting to note their attitude towards supporting Wairarapa Native interests in the direction of rebuilding Hikurangi College/on its last site, now that the stock is being sold thereon; and thereby augmenting Wairarapa’s just fame for secondary schools of high importance to the expanding educational requirements of a district exceptionally well placed as regards endowments of this, and one and another kind.

The noble work of early Wairarapa Maori missionary enterprise so valiantly performed by the late and still memorably-revered Anglican divine (the Rev. William Ronaldspn) and his later-coming Presbyterian minister friend (the Rev. John Ross), founder of the College for Maori girls, at Turakina, since transferred to Marton, could have no more fitting local memorial than the rebuilding here in the Wairarapa, of an up-to-date college for its local young Natives —more especially having regard to the _ elevation of one of their elder kinsmen (the Rev. A. F. Bennett) to the Bishopric of Aoteoroa, and his recent presence at the Rev. Samuel Marsden memorial tablet unveiling ceremony at Windsor (N.S.W.) accompanied by two Native chaplains and a fine Maori Choir—all amply justifying the growing opinion that the time of missionary founders was not spent in vain as might (at seeing local indifference to Native education from an ecclesiastical standpoint) be supposed. As future clergymen, M.P’s., doctors and lawyers to their own race, as time goes by, the need of such will, long arise.—l am, etc., N.J.B. Masterton, July 19.