Maori Problems

Mr. W. Parker, Tutor in Adult Education, kept a large audience interested in this subject until they were almost forcibly ejected. The Maori population was forecast to be 155,000 in 1955, he said, and remarked that Major-General Sir Howard Kippenberger had expressed his alarm at the increase, and had feared that the Maori might soon outnumber the pakcha. In Mr. Parker's experience there was no possibility of that. Even the very old Maoris, even though members did not like the pakeha, had no intense hatred of him. At the Maori meetings the opinion expressed was that racial segregation was not desirable. He had the feeling that the Maoris felt that eventually they would merge with the pakeha. Mr. Parker himself felt that when with the passage of years the Maori approximated the cultural standards of the pakeha there would be one people, not pakeha, not Maori, but New Zealanders. He foresaw a life of only fifty years for the Maori tongue: the younger people are not learning their own tongue. With the dying away of the language there would be a dying away of Maori traditions, customs ami folklore. Already the Maori elders were very lonely people, with no young ones to whom to teach their wisdom and learning. The Maori was probably the most conservative people in the world. This explained the constant Maori adherence to the Labour Party which helped them during the depression. The National Party, however, had increased the number of houses available to Maoris Despite this, some pas were still no less than rural slums. There was constant urbanisation of the younger Maoris but the Maori was still predominantly a rural people. Mr. Parker concluded with this sentence: "Maori culture is irrevocably doomed; I cannot see it being preserved after another hundred years."