MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 November 1939, Page 2

MAORI MEMORIES

DISDAIN (Whakakino). (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”) Bitterly reflecting upon the attitude of the white face to the brown skin, a splendid specimen of a young Maorieducated at the Turakina Maori Girls' College, pointing to a crowded Marae (village lawn) where 500 young and old were at play—said: "Why do you speak of 'drunken Maoris' when you refer to the victims of your own making? Why do you not despise and outlaw your own people who undo these poor neglected Maoris, and whose drunken habit was due primarily to their being robbed of their land and their prestige by you? Will one Pakeha in every ten of you take into his personal care and interest one of these unfortunate victims, forget the colour bar. and when employed by you give him or her some relief from the loneliness which drives our people back to the Pa. We are outcasts to you. Even those in whom your own blood is mingled you demean as "half" castes. I Your churches invited us to join their| service, but when one of us sits in ai pew you look away and shift to the end. I call at a rest house, a cafe, or a lodging, but having a tattoo on my lip. the sign of my descent from good! ancestry, am not wanted. “Even when we proudly followed your good oxamide of loyalty and appointed King! Tawhiao, whose chief mission in life was peace, you stood aloof, said we were disloyal, and that there could not be two kings. Our alternatives to such indignities were war or despair. We have been through both.”