A MAORI FAREWELL:

...More than the wave I feared its menacing shadow, the potential to crush and bury the weak...

...explains it, a Maori's calm is his greatest possession, and aroha, his greatest gift...

...Symbolism was not enough for a hard core of the marchers, who despite a ceremonious welcome in Wellington from leaders of both major parties, decided to camp on the steps of Parliament until action on the protest was taken...

...Visitors from Washington should have felt right at home...

...See how they ride the waves to this shore...

...As Witi Ihimaera, the gifted young writer who has the distinction of writing the first Maori novel to be published, Abigail McCarthy, a regular columnist in these pages, has been in New Zealand at the invitation of the New Zealand government as a short-term writer in residence...

...Something warm and beautiful in the old Maori life is inevitably passing...

...consciousness had been raised...

...A sickness was all around and I was made, sick, by wage demands and strikes and power stances...

...They are the Maori, Tama...

...See...

...Whina Cooper, Dame of the British Empire...

...Cooper called them a "disgrace to their race"-but they had support...

...Outside the James Cook (for the Captain) Hotel demonstrators in masks and jeans chanted in protest against the visiting Malaysian Prime Minister, and-a few streets away-Maori land marchers pitched tents on the grounds of the Parliament building...

...But in the end most objectors agreed with the Wellington Dominion: The Maori land march...

...A whole new protest style has blown up on the New Zealand scene," wrote a parliamentary reporter...

...Before the Maori land march began there was much discussion among the Maori themselves as to whether it was in accord with Maoritanga, with the Maori way or culture...

...The tribal marae (meeting-place) is still an important living institution and behavior on the marae is still fairly strictly governed by tribal practice...

...The New Zealanders are a people of consensus and the...

...Your heart is also their heart...

...Still, young Maori intellectuals who sympathized with the aims of the radicals were disturbed by the un-Maori use of black berets and the adoption of terms like "honky" and "Uncle Tom...

...But it is not clear who originated the extremist rhetoric...

...In a later year, confused, I asked father:-E pa, what is a Maori...

...The hereditary tribal leaders still generally have the respect of their people although their actual power is limited...

...They prefer as much as 85 percent before taking action, insists one legislator...

...Despite the assertions of politicians for over 100 years, we are not one people and a young Maori feels completely out of place in a European environment," writes the Polynesian Advisory Committee...

...one understands the sad cry of the prescient writer-"Haere ra, my father, farewell...

...a break with the past, in dissenting from the leadership of the elders, had been achieved...

...they were never a completely subjugated people...

...And yet the ground rules seem different, the atmosphere unfamiliar...

...David Ruru, the leader of the tent encampment, was reported to have lived for the past two years on an American Indian reservation and to have learned from the experience that "loss of land was loss of pride and dignity...

...Yesterday I was just another mechanic, today I am a Maori," said one Auckland man...

...The government pamphlet Understanding Polynesians sums up the present situation: "Most of the present-day tribes trace their ancestry from important people who migrated to New Zealand in one or other of the traditional canoes...

...The government and the opposition seem sincere about justice and reparation...

...Links with recent 'holdouts' on American Indian reservations are apparent, and support has already been received from aboriginal groups in Australia...

...Urban maraes are a feature of life on the North Island, especially in Auckland, New Zealand's largest city...

...Across the great ocean of Kiwa they come: From Hawaiki nui, Hawaiki roa, Hawaiki pamamae...

...Look how they come...

...Intermarriage is common once again, and most old New Zealand families have Maori relatives...

...These militants seemed to divide the marchers-an angry Mrs...

...Continued on page 639) Abigail McCarthy (Cont...

...achieved a rare dignity in the month it has wended its way down the length of the North Island . . . (they had begun with 200 and ended with 7000 in Wellington)-the march stands as a symbolic affirmation that for Maoris the land is essential for the continuation of their social and cultural identity...

...Maoris now hold high government positions, are being felt in the arts, explained by their own sociologists and anthropologists, encouraged to recover their traditions and customs...

...Even the most uprooted Maori dissident-and there are Maori radicals, complete with black berets-is aware of Maoritanga, the strength of Maori ways...

...riding waves exhilarated, uncovered surprising resources in body and spirit...

...And there, Tama, there comes the Takitimu...

...From Tangi, by Witi Ihimaera Maoris are more secure in their sense of origin and identity than any American minority...

...Maori society to a great extent disintegrated as the Maoris became outnumbered by European settlers, but many aspects of tribal life are still strong amongst the present-day Maori...

...Leaders and planners of the land march were aware of the objections: that it was not truly led by the elders (although its nominal and vocal leader was the venerable 83-year-old Mrs...

...from a story by Margaret Sutherland, New Zealand writer Anyone who doubts that "the movement," that Hydra-headed force for reform and change, is alive and well, should have been in Wellington, New Zealand, on October 15th...

...He said to me with fierce pride: -Takitimu, Tainui, Te Arawa, Mataatua, Kurahaupo, Tokomaru, Aotea...

...Yet it wasn't the wave I feared...

...We heard of an ill-conceived police task force deployed especially, it seemed to Maoris and Pacific Islanders, against them...

...Their continuity is clear...

...Maori candidates are standing for parliament in both major parties...

...And the Maori way seems to have affected the national culture: Maoris make no decision until there is complete agreement and New Zealanders as a whole are uncomfortable with slim majorities...

...Yet a foreign observer gets a very strong sense that New Zealanders, pakeha and Maori, are much farther along the way to one people than they know themselves...

...The issue had been dramatized...

...There is confrontation, yes-but the sense of volatility, hostility, incipient violence which charges a demonstration in the United States seems missing...

...I followed his gaze and the floats indeed became the seven legendary canoes which brought the Maori to Aotearoa (New Zealand, land of the long white cloud...

...True, they are at a crucial point in their interracial development, but they are a peaceable and civilized people...

...But whether the change is to come by Maori adjusting to the pakeha culture, as one Maori candidate insists, or whether by the natural amalgamation of the two peoples, as a pakeha intellectual believes, change is on its way and irreversible...

...His dignity comes from his sense of ancestry and his identity with the earth: Dad knelt beside me and whispered a dream to me-Look, Tama...

...that it was not done in consultation with the tribes along the way, who were expected both to join in and to provide the traditional Maori hospitality, and that it was not done with aroha, love...

...It is just that the Maori rather dropped out of sight for decades," said a well-intentioned pakeha apologetically...

...The land issue is complicated by history, custom, treaty and law, but grievances, past and present, seem very real: according to Press writer Paul Hans-ley, Maori land has dwindled from 66,000,000 acres when the Europeans arrived to 2,500,000 today...

...A sergeant kicked the chair out from under him, called him "an illiterate black-" and said, "There should be a law to exterminate people like you...

...Retaining what is left of the land is probably crucial to in the survival of Maoritanga, but if Maoris as individuals are to achieve personal identity the problems of adjusting to city life will have to be grappled with," writes another pakeha...

...father, farewell...

...Maori are a people of aroha, of communal love...

...James K. Baxter, New Zealand poet who ended his life trying to live as a brother among the poor Maori, interrupts lyrics to write about his friend Tom who was picked up "for the double crime of being out of work and being Maori...

...A MAORI FAREWELL Abigail McCarthy "Lately I'd felt the splashes of a very big wave which bore me along in my very small boat...

...To the practiced eye the process of radicaliza-tion was apparent and familiar...

...The Tainui, Te Arawa, Mataatua, Kurahaupo, Tokomaru, Aotea...

...As long as you remember them you are a Maori...

...their language is living...

...if the slog through heat and rain means anything it is that New Zealanders, Maori and pakeha (white) must be more sensitive to the problem of the alienation of customary Maori land out of Maori ownership...