The Pakeha Should Help.

This canoe-building project deserves practical encouragement from the Waikatos’ white fellow-countrymen, for such efforts as these to restore the ancient arts and crafts and athletic contests all add to the attraction of the country. The work is of particular interest in view of the coming centenary celebrations. Auckland citizens especially are concerned, for Maori gatherings and canoe parades and races are set down on the proposed scheme of Waitemata festivities in 1940.

Te Puea, in writing to me outlining her excellent plan of canoe-making, says that the cutting-out and carving will take a long time, necessarily, and that money is urgently required to keep the workmen in food. I think this is a cause in which the Auckland Citizens’ Centenary-celebrations Committee can reasonably be expected to supplement in a practical manner whatever assistance is given by the Government. It will be a noble and thrilling spectacle, that canoe flotilla of seven—sacred number, and a number with mystic meaning associations for Waikato—sweeping down the great river, with forty or fifty paddles apiece flashing and dipping, as in the ancient days. Not so very ancient either, as I have shown. But the really skilful canoe designers and artisans are few, and it is well that that fine woman Te Puea —whose model village and carved house have been constructed to help in the re-birth of Maori industry—should have been inspired to revive canoeing also. All these things call for the sympathy of New Zealanders, for they help to give the people new heart. Arts and crafts, poetry and tradition are the very soul of the race.