POWER IN THEIR HANDS

Te Ao Hou, March 1961, Page 6

POWER IN THEIR HANDS by A. S. FRY Reprinted from the New Zealand Listener of 21 October 1960 Maori linesman at work, Rotorua. (N.P.S. Photo) NEXT TO THE NAMES of the reigning sovereign and the current Prime Minister, the most revered pakeha terms in the modern Maori vocabulary are probably Vickers, Caterpillar, Euclid and International. No sooner had the Honourable Robert Semple ushered in New Zealand's bulldozer age than young Maori men began leaping at the chance to manipulate all that exhilarating power. At the controls of a growing regiment of heavy machines they have been pushing their country around ever since. The most conservative estimate is that half of all earth-moving machinery in the North Island is nowadays driven by Maoris. Many overseers choose Maoris for the work in preference to pakehas, regarding them as more skilful, and a demonstration driver for the Ameican firm of Caterpillar—no mean operator himself—is reported to have called them the best in the world. By adopting in such numbers a job calling for mechanical aptitudes, the machine operators have done much to destroy the popular image of the Maori as an agricultural man. Indeed, in a way he could not have foreseen, they are affirming what John Gorst, in The Maori King, considered the Maori attitude to land in pre-European times: “The land was little valued by them as soil; they cared only for what we should call territorial dominion, and it was for this, and not for mere soil, which could not at the time be exchanged for money, that they fought in early days.” A man slicing into a hill, with 300 horsepower at his command, might well enjoy an illusion of territorial dominion. A more prosaic explanation was advanced by an Englishman overseeing an earth-moving job: “They may have thought, ‘Oh well, the pakeha's botched up our country, we'll finish it!’” Outside his prefabricated office the machines were inexorably resolving pastoral hills and gullies into a gently undulating suburbia. During a break enforced by rain, some of the Maori drivers explained how they came to the job. “I've been driving machines for 15 years,” said one. “I was bulldozing fire-breaks at Taupo for a while, but it got a bit tame and I started looking for a faster machine. Down here I got me on to one that was faster, but it couldn't pull a hen off its nest. A Maori, once he gets it in his head that he wants to learn a thing, he'll go to it. He's cheeky about it. If you say to a Maori, ‘Don't do that’ or ‘Don't go there,’ when your back's turned that's just what he'll do. I got on to a job that way once—with a foot on the off-side and then a 300-feet sheer drop. I don't mind telling you I was frightened. A pakeha wouldn't have done that. “With Maoris, the bigger the machine the more interest they show in it, and they're quick to pick it up. A chap may be only a labourer, but

a Maori's very inquisitive, very nosey, and he comes round and looks at my machine. He says, ‘I'd like to drive; will you teach me?’ There's something in him that's urging him to get on to that machine. There may be a lot more work on the bigger machine, but it makes him one step higher than the smaller one. “Another thing is the maintenance. It doesn't matter how dirty a machine is, the Maori just wallows in grease and mud. He's got commonsense, too. You read in the papers about a lot of accidents. Me, I think it's that person's own fault. If you've got a flash car you'd think twice about driving it into salt water. It's the same with a bulldozer or a tractor; you can go anywhere with it, but you've got to use your head. You wouldn't go up a hill after a downpour.” Another driver gave his first reason for taking up the work as money. “At one time it was better than in other jobs, though it's not now. But it's an outside job, which is definitely better, and after a while you can't seem to get away from it. You get that urge—you must get back to that dirty old machine. The Maori is better with his hands, I think; it's been handed down to him from earlier generations.” In the relaxed, masculine world of a works project, where amenities like teapots and telephones take on the appearance of posies in a wrestler's hand, relations between the races seem unconstrained. A burly pakeha took time off from his mileage returns to consider his colleagues. “I wouldn't go so far as to say the Maori is better,” he said, “but he certainly prefers the machines to other kinds of work. A Maori with a pick and shovel and a Maori with a bulldozer are just two extremes. They're very adaptable and a lesson or two will teach them. When they see these things in action they're so keen on wanting to work them. There seems to be a natural inclination to want to get the better of the machines. With one or two you have to be constantly on their hammer to do their maintenance, but the majority are quite good at that too.” Another observed that the noise and trying conditions on earth-moving jobs seemed to affect the Maoris less. “They'll take a lot more without complaint,” he said. “They seem more placid, less highly strung. Europeans have a longer association with mechanical things, but it doesn't seem to matter; the Maori is at least as good with George Mohi, a winch-man at the Hauhungaroa Timber Co. (N.P.S. Photo)

them and possibly better. Educational qualifications don't come into this job, of course. yet most of them are capable of much better things.” On the question of noise the Maori drivers would hardly agree. “You find a time comes, even on a Euclid, when you get deaf,” said one. “Your nerves go on you, and you have to give it up for a while.” Others only noticed noise from machines not their own. “It's all right if you're getting power for your noise,” one man summed it up, “but noise is no good if there's no power.” An older Maori, deskbound in Parliament Building, told us he had heard discussion of the Maori's prowess with heavy machines and had made a point of watching them in action. “By coincidence,” he said, “I was able to see two people working two power schovels, one Maori and the other pakeha. The pakeha's machine was jerking and shuddering, as if trying to bite off too much at once. The Maori had his swinging like a poi. It looked to me as if there was a sense of rhythm which allowed him to do a better job. Of course in the past there was always the taiaha—the hand-to-hand fighting of the Maori—in which a man had to have tremendous co-ordination of eye and brain and hands and feet. Some of the same abilities might be called for in driving a bulldozer or a scoop.” A love of speed, which may have something to do with the Maori's higher (3 to 1) ratio of accidents with motor vehicles, carries over into the everyday toil of moving earth. No machine is exactly supersonic, but one or two are capable of more than the usual two speeds, Dead Slow and Stop, and these are in greater demand. One pakeha driver complained with a grin that when a Maori came and asked to “have a go” at his machine it was impossible to get him off it. “I have to take over the Maori's machine for the rest of the day.” Working for long periods away from home seems not to concern the Maori driver. Indeed, one of his few jibes at his pakeha workmate is that he does not stick to the job. “A lot of them don't have time to become any good,” one of them put it. “They don't stay long enough.” For the Maori, of course, long absences from home have some roots in tradition. Before the pakeha's coming war parties were frequently away for several months, and in more recent times the Maori shearing gang has become a national institution. Apart from the presence of quantities of massive machinery, the main pre-requisites for happiness on the job are—as with any other worker—good tucker and good mates. Given these the Maori machine operator will commute considerable distances to work. One we spoke to rises about five each morning and travels 50 miles to be on time for his seven o'clock start. Pakeha opinions on the Maori predilection for machinery range from near-libel to vast admiration. “They love power,” said one. “Big machines, big private cars, never little ones. It makes them feel superior.” Another thought the whole matter was explained by a single fact: “The Maori prefers sitting down to walking on his own two feet.” A third, who had been long engaged in earth-moving work, thought the skilled driving involved came naturally: “He is the faster and the better operator. I've had both Maoris and pakehas on jobs and I'd back the Maori every time to get the work done quicker. His disposition is more jovial too; he'll joke whether conditions are bad or good. “On nearly all construction jobs you'll find a big percentage of Maoris. Most are operating Machines, and if they're not, the first thing they ask is if they can have the next operator's job. They'll even drop in wages to go on to a machine. I remember men leaving a co-operative contract where they were getting nine shillings an hour to go as operators at six and elevenpence. That's a big reduction in pay. And the job can be dangerous if a driver isn't good. If a man missed a gear on some of these hills you could pick up what was left of him in a sack.” On one block where the percentage of Maoris was highest, we found eight men finishing lunch in the shelter hut. For the seven Maoris the meal had been a communal affair from a pot of pork; for the lone pakeha a matter of sandwiches and buns. Outside, their machines were neatly parked in the yellow mire created by the morning's rain. Our inquiry elicited a number of thoughtful responses, softly interjected between the barrage of jokes and legpulls at our own and each other's expense. “It's interesting work—anything's better than the banjo” “The banjo?” “A shovel. Some people call it a Mexican sideloader.” “The Maori's more sensitive to machinery; he's got the touch. Or maybe he's more mechanically-minded.” “It's outdoor work—we like to get a tan.” “There's a lot of independence—and only one boss. Too many bosses on a lot of other jobs.” “The white man jibs at work on heights. It's all a matter of nerve—you've got to have nerves. and you've got to be sober.” All the men stressed that the job was safe enough if a man kept his mind on it. Both they and many of the pakehas agreed that a Maori was more single-minded; until the work was done it was only the work that mattered. One pakeha thought the performance of men of his own race was adversely affected by their preoccupation with the future; the Maori's biggest enemy was boredom. The Maori drivers seemed to bear out the theory, stressing that their work with machines presented continuous change and challenge. It was, in a word, interesting. Not like the banjo. It was not long, of course, before the troll which sits on many a Maori shoulder showed his

ugly face: “We probably do this job because nobody else would want to.” Even in work where his pre-eminence is recognised, the Maori retains a suspicion that he is less equal than others. One guess at the origin of this attitude is as good as another—possibly it dates back to his military defeat at pakeha hands—but it persists in too many individuals not to affect their morale as a group. A cure might be found in time, with the increasing political and economic influence which is bound to come for the Maori people. It may be the answer which one of the drivers gave in summing up his reasons for riding the big machines—“Power—that's the important thing—power in your hands.”