MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 December 1939, Page 8

MAORI MEMORIES

HEKENGA (DOWNFALL). (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”) In an endeavour to reach the real cause of the present day apathy of the Maori people, one may gain many points of interest as a listener to the questions of a Pakeha, and the answers of a thoughtful old Maori veteran who has, like ourselves, fallen into despair concerning a solution. The white man thinks and acts for the future generations, the Maori only of the past and for today. Said the Pakeha: “Idleness, drink, and intermarriage are the three causes of your peoples’ downfall. ’Tis true we imposed the first two upon you. You alone are responsible for the main source of your mental and physical degeneracy by heredity. Wives are almost as closely related as sisters of their husbands. This custom, you say, was due to the sacred duty of holding the land against enemy tribes. You can overcome the first two by industry and abstinence, and tiie third by complying with our own sacred law regarding marriage.” The Maori listened intently, then with a quiet dignity replied impressively: "First restore to every Maori family ten acres of every hundred you robbed from us in our utter innocence —then we will .work. Second, wipe out your own and our National curse which is steadily ruining your own people and ours of this generation, and sterilising the future of both. The children of drunkards and drinkers, and Nature’s law wisely makes them childless. Third, revise your religion and that which you are teaching our children in regard to heredity. Your God made only one man and one woman. and the children of these two peopled the whole earth.”