Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Vol 35 no. 10. 24 May 1972

No Brown Pakeha

No Brown Pakeha

Although there is common core of industrial society shared by Maori and Pakeha, we must not be deluded into thinking that the Maori has been assimilated, that he has become a brown Pakeha. On the contrary within this general framework the Maori has succeeded in maintaining his own social and cultural institutions. Maori voluntary associations such as family clubs, (for bereavement purposes), marae societies, Maori welfare committees, Maori Women's Welfare Leagues, Maori culture clubs and Maori sports clubs all testify to the existence of what I have chosen to call the minor system of Maori social organisation within the framework of the major system of New Zealand society. Primarily, the minor system exists to give expression and continuity to Maori identity, values, goals and cultural aspirations. In a suburb such as Otara for example there were in 1970 twenty known Maori associations of the kind enumerated above. Kinship ties, overlapping membership, intermarriage and the common bond of neighbourhood and minority group status all helped to develop a sense of community and Pan-Maori identity across the former tribal divisions. This kind of minor system of social organisation has been duplicated in other urban areas, for example the Western Districts of Auckland, Orakei and Porirua. These are the areas where there are concentrations of Maori population the areas that Pakehas fear as the ghettos of New Zealand society.