TOLAGA BAY AND ITS DISTRICT HIGH SCHOOL A Survey of the Tolaga Bay Community (Part 2)

Te Ao Hou, December 1959, Page 25

TOLAGA BAY AND ITS DISTRICT HIGH SCHOOL A Survey of the Tolaga Bay Community (Part 2) by Dr. D. SINCLAIR The author, who belongs to the Ngaitahu tribe, is medical practitioner in Tolaga Bay; he represents the East Coast on the Hawke's Bay Education Board. In this article he gives a survey of the Tolaga Bay Maori community, and the way it has changed over the last century. The local school has had the deepest influence on the development of the people; he therefore discusses the function of the school and its achievements in much detail. In the first instalment of his article, which appeared last March, Dr Sinclair described the introduction of the Christian faith, and the selling of the land. He showed that the operations of the East Coast Commission and the establishment of Maori incorporations gave the Tolaga Bay Maoris new economic strength. In the part that follows here, he discusses the movement to the cities and the remaining opportunities of Maori youth in Tolaga Bay. education that is suitable to both future town dwellers and those who will stay on the Coast. The great bulk of the Maori population remained closely attached to the hereditary soil over the greater part of the first fifty years of European settlement. Many of the Tolaga Bay families migrated from the district when their land holdings became too small, to take up Executive of a Maori incorporation at work: Mr Pere Amaru, secretary of the Paremata-Iwinui Blocks, in his office at Hauiti marae. (Kandid Kamera Kraft). lands that they had inherited on different ancestral lines further ‘down the coast’. The great war gave many of the young men their first acquaintance with city life while in the military camps and their hard won skills and splendid battle careers brought them home imbued with a new confidence that was never to leave them. The depression years were weathered and the new prosperity of the pre-war period saw the birth of the policy of the Government encouraging young Maoris to enter the various walks of the Civil Service, to complete the Teachers Training College Courses and then enter the teachers profession in the various Maori schools. The several Maori secondary schools gained increased rolls and kept turning out well qualified young men and women who made their way to the professions, helped by generous scholarships. Then came the war; many battle honours were won by the 28th Maori Battalion. The important thing that came out of that war was the new respect that Maori and Pakeha gained for each other.