MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 November 1938, Page 10

MAORI MEMORIES

HE KANGA (A CURSE). (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.") When we review without personal' bias the manner in which we “acquired” this “Maori Heaven,” and converted its owners into poverty-strick-en mendicants through despair and liquor, we may only look upon their marvellous sacrifice on our behalf in the South African war and in 1914 with astonishment and admiration. After the cessation of the Maori wars in 1870, there seemed to be not a vestige of lhat natural resentment which follows even a political defeat among us. Uriwera and the King Country were never defeated by our armies, and the occupants held themselves aloof from us until 1904, when by special invitation the Governor responded to their hospitality. With this simple gesture of welcome and response, all estrangement ceased as by a magic wand. They still have their “Maori Parliament,” held at different places in turn, mainly to discuss their own domestic problems and to exercise their wonderful powers of oratory in which they make known personal and public grievances. Occasionally they indulge in bitter invective and retort, after which both sides laugh heartily and hongi (press noses), a greeting of greater ’ significance and sincerity than our custom of kissing or shaking hands. To the Maori nature, it is more blessed to forget (wareware) than to forgive (hohou te rongo). There still remains as a bitter grievance against successive Governments, our education authorities, and religious bodies, the fact that they and we are utterly indifferent to the cultivation and preservation of their ideally simple language as the only means of learning to know them or to realise their vital need of protection against the greatest curse of civilised life, at least for them—waipiro.