BROWN INTO WHITE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 73, 15 November 1940, Page 13

BROWN INTO WHITE

THE MAORI PEOPLE TO-DAY. A General Survey edited by I. L. G. Sutherland. Issued under the auspices of the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs and the New Zealand Council for Educational Research. Whitcombe and Tombs, Ltd. 15/-. HE first thing to be said about this book is that it is a nightmare for reviewers. To begin with it is important-and important books must be read, It is a New Zealand book, and loyalty should begin at home, It is not one book but nine, and each must therefore be read separately. It contains 450 pages, admirably printed but close packed and impossible to skim. It looks like a traverse of familiar ground till you start to read, and much of it is familiar ground; but however well you know your way about in it you will find things there that you have not seen before. Finally the book costs 15/-, and no reviewer can be casual with a book that represents a day’s wages. Of the nine authors two, Dr, Peter H. Buck (Te Rangi Hiroa) and Sir Apirana Ngata, are thems¢ives Maoris, and for that reason alone they are the most important. Dr. Buck has perhaps said most of what he now says in other ways and in other places. His material is perhaps beaten a little thin. For him the expression is perhaps a little undistinguished. But to the extent to which this whole volume is an attempt to reveal the Maori to the Pakeha a page by Dr. Buck is worth two pages by any non-Maori. The case is a little different with Sir Apirana Ngata, who writes about Maori land ‘settlement, tribal organisation, Maori arts and crafts, and religious in‘fluences (assisted in the last case by the Editor), The very least that can be said about these sections is that no one else living could have made them so significant. It is doubtful if New Zealand has ever had a whiter Maori than Sir Apirana or a browner Pakeha, and there is certainly no one living to-day who so completely blends the two cultures. In this respect Sir Apirana is one of the most remarkable men living anywhere in the world, and it is entirely right that his contributions to this study should overshadow those of any other contributor. , The contributions of the Pakeha authors are however extremely interesting. You may not, for example, agree with some of the opinions expressed by Mr. Harold Miller in his survey of the relations between Maori and Pakeha during their first 50 years of contact, but you will. feel that he has written a vigorous and vivacious historical essay. You may think that Professor Belshaw takes too white a view of the Maori’s ecoflomic. situation, Economic. independence will not in itself preserve the Maori as a Maori, and although Professor Belshaw emphasizes the other "more. difficult and intangible" factors in the problem, he looks forward to the day when the Maori will be effi-

cient by white standards, live as we live, and ultimately have the same measure of values. This is a dismal prospect, but Dr. Belshaw makes such a good job of his case that it is easy to forget what he is driving at. The best practical contribution to the volume is Dr. Turbott’s survey of health and social welfare. Dr. Turbott knows precisely what he wants to say-how far the Maori has deteriorated physically but how definitely the tide is now turning-and he presents his case so clearly that there can be no excuse in future for ignorance of the facts. It is not a pleasant picture, but it is by no means an unrelieved story of degeneracy. Nor is it wholly a Maori story. The dental story of the Maori, for instance, is simply a less disgraceful version of the dental story of the Pakeha. Mr. Ball contributes an excellent account of the work done in Maori schools, and has some sensible things to say about the problems of these schools in the future, but it is doubtful if this section should have been called Maori "education." It would be almost as accurate to call it the story of Maori un-education-at least until a few years ago. The story of the South Island Maoris by Mr. Roger Duff is the story of aracial remnant, but that, as he points out, is its significance. The South Island Maori was paralysed by the "two sudden successive shocks of defeat and decimation at the hands of Te Rauparaha and the mass settlement of Europeans." But he was not annihilated. Nor is it likely now that he will disappear although he is only 3,000 among half a million. He has lost (but not surrendered) his land and seems well on the way to losing what remains of his blood; but he survives, and will survive, culturally, For as Dr. Ernest Beaglehole points out in his section on the Polynesian Maori, culture is "not a static thing." The culture that the Polynesian brought to New Zealand gained something and lost

something on the way. Maori culture in general is still gaining and still. losing; but while Dr. Beaglehole is right in emphasising the Polynesian background, it is the European foreground that now chiefly concerns us. It must be said generally that the book (like this review) is too long. The Editor’s task was difficult, but he should have been bolder with his pruning knife; as he perhaps would have been if he had not felt compelled to be highly contentious in his own contributions. On the other hand, no future worker in the field will be able to neglect this volume, while the general unspecialised student will require nothing else.