CHANGING PATTERNS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 408, 18 April 1947, Page 10

CHANGING PATTERNS

Ky

SUNDOWNER

MAORI INFLUENCES

HAT was the pakeha pattern of life as it appeared to me in a stay of a few days. But there are more Maoris than pakehas between Gisborne and Opotiki, and I was told that Maoris own more than 60 per cent. of the land. I did not find out what proportion they occupy, but I was surprised to find that they do occupy, and

do farm, many thousands of acres. Some day they will farm all the land

they now own, though not, I should think, in the life of those now living, and it is impossible to be pakeha and nothing else if three out of five of the people you see every day are Maori, as it is impossible to remain an unchanged Maori if two out of five of your neighbours are pakeha, if your way of life is at least half pakeha, and if you are doing your best to learn shrewd pakeha ways of ordering the other half. Most of the pakeha farmers I met spoke or understood a little Maori. All the Maoris but the very young or very old spoke English. I thought the association of Maori and pakeha freer and more friendly on the East Coast than in North Auckland, and when I said so to Sir Apirana Ngata he told me that there had always been "good pakehas" on the Coast, men who respected Maori rights and cheerfully accepted Maori assistance in developing the country. How much of this was due to Sir Apirana himself I don’t know -I shall return to him in a paragraph or two; but I could not help feeling that thé Maori had already made the East Coast pakeha a little different from New Zealanders elsewhere, and that the change was good, > . he

SIR APIRANA NGATA

as — ‘THOUGH I had met Sir Apirana Ngata more than once before, I had never met him among his own people, in his own town and own home, and deep in one of his own plans for the future development of his own race.

Now that I have had that experience I believe more firmly than ever that he

is the most remarkable living New Zealander. I wish I could even paraphrase the things he said to me as I sat for two hours with him in his study while he went back a century and forward a century in the known and probable history of his people. But I trust neither my memory nor my understanding. I feel that I should have to jive a week with him, and then get him to write it all down, before I would be a safe interpreter of his two minds and two sets of emotions. For he is of course two men, his mind the meetingplace of two cultures. He thinks our thoughts, and uses our words, not merely as well as we do, but better than we do unless we are exceptionally gifted; and he simultaneously thinks Maori thoughts which rise in the middle of profound remarks in English like smoke from logs on the fire. He is then not a pakehe at all but the ancient brooding Maori. I know what his political opponents say, but I am not going to be

side-tracked by that. There were no politics in his conversation that morning, unless it is politics to téll a story with a moral-for his people as well as for mine-and politics to rub the moral in with occasional jokes. He can certainly put some malice into his jokes. In his welcome to the visitors from Samoa the night before he had indulged in some brilliant pleasantries which no pakeha with a sense of humour could fail to find amusing and none with a conscience could easily forget or laugh off. But he was all dignity and gravity the next morning. I can still a fortnight’ later feel some of the excitement it gave me just to sit and listen to him talking; never making a speech; never trying to impress me; never wandering off into irrelevancies; answering my questions simply as I asked him, but with the knowledge, the depth, the quiet and modest wisdom of a master. It is always an experience to talk. to a man who not merely knows what he is talking about but feels it too; but I was talking to the man who knew more about his subject than anyone else ever did, or now ever will, since the subject was the position of the Maori yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow, which no one else has studied for 50 years with a Maori mind and a first-class pakeha education, step by step through three generations, making mistakes and catching up with them, speculating boldly and then waiting patiently for the test of time. Instead of trying to report what he said I shall merely repeat what I said to him before I came away-that he should get it down before it fades. There .is a classic in him that he alone can bring out. But when I pushed that viewpoint he answered that the first job was to rescue the story of the Maori tribes. ‘ "A Maori can’t remain a Maori unless he knows what it is to be a Maori. If he loses the story of his own past he loses himself too." I felt the force of that argument, but suggested that others could recover the tribal stories and record them. No one else could tell his story, which would vanish -with him. "We have Peter Buck." "No, we have lost Peter Buck. In any case he has become a_ professor; academic, We are fortunate to have him (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) as well as you, even though he is now an American, but he is not a substitute for you." "He is younger." "A little younger, and a _ little straighter in the grain. But a tawa is one tree and a totara another." "T can’t write to order, and I can’t tell the story of the Maori without giving offence." "But I’m not suggesting that you should write to order-or to any orders but your own. I’m urging you to say what you know and feel and think standing in the No Man’s Land that your people are now crossing." "There is the time factor. I’ve always been busy, but find myself busier at 72 than I’ve ever been before." . "Yes, I apologise. I’ve no right to be talking to you like this. But tell me before I go how you feel in general about the future of your people. Not many can look as far back, and no one can look as far forward. Does the picture as a whole depress or cheer you?" "J am hopeful. Not happy but not down-hearted. I think the Maori is finding his place. He requires more time, but he is fitting gradually into the pattern. ‘He will not lose himself or disappear." (To be continued)