MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 February 1939, Page 9

MAORI MEMORIES

TAMIHANA'S LOGIC. (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”) Continuing his negotiation with the Native Lands Department for a settlement of the Waitara dispute. Wiremu Tamihana. "The Peacemaker” between the tribes, now sought to reconcile the two races. The white officers did not realise his loyalty to both parties in the dispute, because then, as now, not one in thousands understood the other’s language, laws or motives. Despite Tamihana's desire to refer the disputed lands to our Law Courts, the military attack continued with renewed vigour. He returned from Waitara a broken-hearted victim, mainly due to our want of understanding. He went there as a peacemaker friendly to the English, and was forced into the position of an enemy, though he had never fired a shot. In our eyes his chief crime was that Of being a "King Maker.” In reply to lengthy official proclamations, mainly in academic English, because our own interpreters utterly failed to translate their meaning into Maori, Tamihana very aptly quoted the Bible in favour of . each nation being ruled by its own King, and against submission to any foreign power. “The Good Book distinctly rules that each and all native born of their own own ruler —the Queen of England, the Kings of France, Germany, Russia, are eac hand all native born of their own country, even Pomare of Tahiti. "Then why are we rebuked and persecuted by you and told that we must unite under a Queen of your breeding whom we have never seen? As well ask a man to marry a foreign lady whom he had never met, whose words he would not understand.”