MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 November 1939, Page 9

MAORI MEMORIES

STILL A PROBLEM. (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”) Wi Repa continued that memorable talk, holding his audience of Maori and Pakeha students and teachers at the High School spellbound for two hours. “I must reserve my judgment as to the historic accuracy of the manner of crossing the Red Sea; but our ancestors succeeded in crossing the Great Ocean of Kiwa because they were the greatest navigators known to ancient history, a knowledge, it is true, conferred on them by the Great Atu/i through long generations of studying the laws of Nature, and not by idols of stone or wood, or of the imagination.” “Let me ask you, what is the outlook of my people upon this New World, depending lor its very existence upon such conditions as these —buildings, speed, cars, steamers, flying, electric light, machines, telephones, television, universities, health schemes, chemistry and wealth?'’ "From an intensive study and actual worship of the powers and the beauties of Nature, we were directed by the well-intentioned missionaries to divert our ancesstral beliefs, and accept their allegories of which to this very day we fail to understand the true meaning, hidden as it is from us by a mass of 'theologies,' a word of which we fail to understand the meaning." Marumaru, a victim of tuberculosis, lying upon his death-bed in Manawatu, related to me this memory of Wi Repa's eloquence. It was given verbatim as only a Maori's memory could, in the hoarse whisper of a sick man live minutes each day. Within a week he left, perfectly content, for the Maori future, “Te Reinga."