SIR MAUI POMARE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 769, 15 April 1954, Page 12

SIR MAUI POMARE

MAN OF TWO WORLDS, by J. F.*Cody; A. H. and A, W. Reed, 15/-,

(Reviewed by

David

Hall

HE old-style Maori leader, eminent by lineage or skill in affairs, had a straightforward task, whether he accepted or resisted the European settlers. He was firmly rooted in a strong tradition. The next generation, born into the disillusionment that followed war and confiscation, had to make up a new tradition for itself and impose. it, first on Maori, then on Pakeha. The contrast. between Te Whiti and Pomare in Taranaki is the measure of this difference. For all his spiritual potency Te Whiti remained the leader of a resistance movement which could not succeed. Pomare led an acceptance movement, which might lack roman*ticism (noble losers are always romantic), but which meant new life in a real world. But Te Whiti and his like made an involuntary contgbution: the Maori people owed it to its old leaders that it was still a people with an inherent pride of race which made regeneration possible. The career of a man like Pomare was itself built on the

strength of this ancestral pride, and was a manifestation of it. Maui Pomare seemed all his life to have been filled with an attractive optimism, This biography gives an impression of a man of strong will and

stronger loyalty, pliant and skilful in negotiation, much of whose success was due to a personality at once robust and refreshing. He showed his strength of character at an early stage in going to America and working his way through college (doing anything from lecturing on Maori life to washing dishes), coming home with a degree in medicine and a firm determination to raise the health standards of his people. Once he entered Parliament he showed qualities which justified his almost immediate admission to Cabinet. He put relations with the Cook Islanders on a new footing. Later as Minister of Health he reorganised the mental hospitals system. More important than any concrete achievements was his passing on to the Maori people his own gift of self-con-fidence and faith in a viable future. One sometimes regrets a little that this book has: not a fuller background of scholarship, but it is designedly popular. It gives a clear idea of Sir Maui Pomare’s contribution to racial partnership and provides us with a needed portrait of a man who was all his life an unselfish servant not only of the Maori but of New Zealand as a whole.