MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 March 1939, Page 9

MAORI MEMORIES

RAFFERTY RULE. (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”) In the management of the Maoris Sir George Grey had many difficulties to face. The rule of the British Queen and the Maori King had nothing in common. Even their language differed as widely as their habits, laws, and religious beliefs. Laws on both sides were so many and varied that attempts to enforce them were seldom made. The only remedy for lawlessness among the Maoris was one in which obedience could be enforced, and education applied until moral law supplanted force.

With us obedience was taught in the home and. the school. The Maori child was subject to neither such influence. The Government was merely a relief depot for idlers. If the Maoris failed to get what they asked from one source of supply, they ascended the scale from personal charity, organised relief, local bodies, government officers, up to the Governor. This was the result of their old time communist custom of sharing alike, wherein all sense of self reliance was lost.

The Maori officials from the constables and overseers to the acting magistrates were left to their own resources without tuition, experience, or control. However well disposed they could not but fail. A Maori policeman Ahipenei (firebrand) when told that his uniform meant obedience, stripped off his coat, trousers, and hat, threw them in the street, and walked off in his shirt. The Government Gazette stated that he had “resigned his office in the Police Force of the ColonyT