INJUSTICE TO THE MAORIS.

Maori Record : a journal devoted to the advancement of the Maori people, Volume I, Issue 4, 1 October 1905, Page 4

INJUSTICE TO THE MAORIS.

(To the Editor.) Sir,ln forwarding my mite I beg to add hearty good wishes for the success of The Maori Record. The newspaper is evidently under efficient management, as the carefully thought-out and well-written contents of the three numbers now to hand satisfactorily demonstrate. There is no doubt such a newspaper is much required, as the average Pakeha is lamentably ignorant of the great injustice done the Maori in the matter of dealing with his lands by successive Governments ever since the first inception of government' under Governor Hobson. But will the average Pakeha read the Maori Record ? I fear not. He does not want infor-

mation; he wants the remainder of the Maori lands, and will not be too scrupulo ~s nor honest as to the manner of his getting them. “Might is Right” is their motto. Much pernicious trash, more or less inaccurate, is being published on the native lands question, all with the object of exciting the white population to force the present Government to open up the native lands for white settlement. A contemporary gives the information that “Mangonui is the most northern portion of New Zealand. It has an area of 597,760 acres, and a population of 2274. The area of native lands is not given, but they are of great extent (?), and completely surround the Parengarenga Harbour, and stretch from coast to coast, occupying all the middle party of the county,” and so on. As a matter of fact, the natives own very little land about Parengarenga, and the small quantity they have the Government' have a survey lien upon of £I4OO. The natives have recently petitioned the Native Minister to permit them to pay this off, one block at a time, but his only reply is to hand their land over to the Maori Council, who have practically leased the land to the local gum merchants and storekeepers, to whom the Maori owners have to pay £2 5s 6d for license to dig gum out of their own lands. A great acreage of the land around Parengarenga belongs to the Crown, and 30,000 acres to an absentee landlord, by name Sinclair. Further, south, Houhora to Waipapakauri, there are 62,000 acres of Crown land reserved for colonial gum-diggers, and absolutely nothing else than gum could he got out of this stretch of Godforsaken country of swamp and sand-dune. Further, there are no forests between Ahipara and the North Cape, a distance of more than one hundred miles. So much for accuracy! No! You are trying to cultivate people who do not want to know the truth. In contemporary literature there is no effort being made to point- out the obligations incumbent on the superior race, who have abused their boasted civilisation by obtaining the natives’ lands by means more or less reprehensible; no effort to educate the native to cultivate his own land. No! [Might is Right, and the moral law of the Christian is dead, as they wish to believe is the Treaty of Waitangi. All considerations, such as the responsibilities of the governing race, or the beatitudes of Christianity, are obsolete considerations as against this doctrine of Might is Right. You are speaking the Government fair, no doubt, in the hope they may now be inclined to do justice to the long-suffering native? Is it not -a rotten reed you lean upon? The question the Government is considering is how to get possession of the native lands without reducing some 40,000 of our own brown brothers to pauperism, and so becoming a burden on the State; and a pretty tough question they will find this. There is only one way to approach such a question, and that is by the moral law. and the path of justice. As a matter of fact, those who are well acquainted with the native lands north of Auckland are of opinion there is no greater acreage than is, and will be, required for the support of an increasing native population. Dairy farming and * the cultivation of root crops, north of Auckland, is a dream of arm-

chair students. In the future the north of Auckland will produce store cattle for fattening further south, sheep, fruit, and wine on the surface, and minerals underneath. All these, except fruit and wine, are within the present capacity of the Maori to cultivate. Taihoa is a good word. Who knows but, after all, the present Government has done the native some service in tying up his lands in a knot of apparently inextricable confusion Could you not suggest to the land-hungry people that there is a very large acreage of unprofitable land lying idle in the bands of the Pakeha? Much of the land with which the Maori endowed the various churches (especially the Church of England) for religious and educational purposes, is lying idle ; much of the land (also freehold, as is the Maori land) in possession of descendants of the early missionaries and Government officials is lying idle; and much of the land which is taken up from day to day is lying idle, waiting Government to open up the country with rail and roadways. Lastly, much of the land still lying idle is Crown lands. Turn ye, then, my masters, from coveting Naboth’s vineyard! Invest your money and muscle in cultivating some of this idle land. The early settlers, good men and true, took the country in the rough, and carved their homesteads out of the wilderness, but their degenerate sons prefer the fat mud-flats of the Maori, because they are already cleared of forest and require little cultivation. Taihoa! Mr Premier. And you, my native friends, hold on to the titles of such lands as are still left you. The air is full of the word individualisation. It is a long word, and is taking a long time to illustrate its meaning. Perhaps the best way to illustrate its meaning would be to give the Maoris of each hapu a limited time within which they must understand their lands must be subdivided and titles proved. Three old Maoris and one well-informed Pakeha should suffice to prove the titles in six months. Then the Nat’ve Land Court having approved and stamped the title deeds, there should be no after-appeal permitted. This being done, the Maoris might well be left to themselves for a period of three years without any further legislation, unless it might be to permit owners of large acreages of land to lease a. portion to provide funds to enable them to cultivate and stock the remainder. The better way still would perhaps be for the Government to make small advances, care being taken, by the appointment of trustworthy and reliable Government inspecting and advising officers that such advances are put into the land to the best advantage. Your idea of publishing a list of your subscribers may be a good one. If so, then you could go one better, and publish the names of the Maori ladies to whom, with yourself, we are indebted for the pleasure of reading the Maori Record. No doubt it has been, carefully considered whether or not it would be advisable to print some, if not all, in Maori, alongside the Pakeha language. Our Maori friends are also in need of instruction and information, as is evident from the contents of the letter which the Maori members of the House of Representatives have re-

cently published, and which one of your contemporaries has characterised as- grotesque (?) So wide are the poles of understanding of this question in the minds of Pakeha and Maori. Oh !my brown brother! You ought to have put the Pakeha into your kopa Maori in 1840. instead of putting your trust in him. Missionary and diplomat alike, both would have tasted well as “long pig.” C. A. YOUNG. Auckland, September 5, 1905. [We regret that serious illness compels us to postpone comment on useful suggestions in this letter. —Ed.]