Na to Hoa Aroha, from Your Dear Friend, Volume 2

The Correspondence of Sir Apirana Ngata and Sir Peter Buck, 1925–50 (Volume II, 1930–32)

Sir Peter Buck, Sir Apirana Ngata

• Publisher: Auckland University Press
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781775581253
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The leading historian Keith Sorrenson has collected in three volumes the complete correspondence (174 letters in all) between two distinguished twentieth-century M?ori scholars and statesmen, Sir Apirana Ngata and Sir Peter Buck (Te Rangi Hiroa). 'The letters confirm that each man was indeed a totara tree of some magnificence and that each was a tree that stood alone. Even today such trees remain rare,' writes Hirini Moko Mead.

56

OFFICE OF THE MINISTER OF NATIVE AFFAIRS, PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS, WELLINGTON, N.Z.

22nd. May, 1930.

Dear Peter,

Yours of the 4th., came to hand on Tuesday the 20th. inst., a few hours before the Maori Delegation left for Rarotonga without me. The Delegation consisted of Judge Carr with Mrs. Carr, Tai Mitchell and Te Aomihi, Smith, Bal, with members of my family, to wit: Hana, Henare, and Hori, Wi Potae, Renata Tamepo, Hoani te Heuheu, and Joe Marumaru.1 Tonga Mahuta was taken ill in the last week and could not go. I had made all preparations as proposed when you were here, to run down to Rarotonga to take a much needed rest, but as you will have learnt from the cables, Sir Joseph Ward announced his resignation of the Premiership. I had to stay behind, therefore, for the necessary conference and caucus meetings which resulted last night in the election of our old friend George Forbes to the Leadership of the Party and the position of Prime Minister. The Party caucus held yesterday is the best we have had since taking office. The Jenkins fiasco2 which, though it resulted in the loss to us of the Parnell seat has been a good thing for the Party discipline, although there was an appreciation of a very stern and difficult job ahead of us. The Party was never more compact united and confident. If we can satisfy our friends with our efforts to palliate unemployment we should not have much difficulty in carrying on in other respects, although the official difficulties ahead are quite unprecedented. The people of New Zealand, however, recognise that these conditions are not of our making but are world-wide. I am disappointed at not being able to visit Rarotonga just now. The change in Government, however, may result in my having to administer Samoa in which case we may be able to put into practice some of our ideas regarding co-ordinated administration of Maori and Polynesian affairs. I have, as you know, never hankered for any job outside New Zealand and you realised during your recent visit to us what an opportunity there is offered here to realise on a respectable scale the dream of a lifetime.

1. I am glad that in your wider vision of the Polynesian Race you were able, during your all too brief month with us, to get a perspective on the position of the New Zealand branch in relation to the others. The experiment that you saw at Horohoro is based on the results of thirty years practical adaptation on the East Coast and an experience of Maori psychology which one finds difficult to put into writing. I think we could have done without pakeha supervision at both Horohoro and Waiuku, but one has to satisfy Departmental prejudices particularly those of the great Department of Finance. Although they gave me, grudgingly, only £15,000 to paint the map of New Zealand with Maori farms, they did so with very little confidence in Maori ability to achieve practical results with due economy. One’s first efforts, therefore, had to be directed to the satisfaction of officialdom. The first victory was achieved on the day that Sir Joseph Ward resigned and I was able to take the whole of the Cabinet except, of course, Sir Joseph and Taverner, out to Horohoro. All the Ministers came back singing the praises of the scheme. They were struck with the human material and greatly astonished with the progress made in a very short time. I can now ask for 50% increase on the allocation for this year which was £55,000, and so get to the figure asked for at the Waiomatatini meeting, namely, £75,000. I will deal with other schemes and the position in regard to the North Auckland Peninsula later in this letter.

2. I agree thoroughly with your remark that due credit has not been given to the part played by the Maori in bringing about the position he now occupies. Keesing in “The Changing Maori” has done something to explain the position in tracing as he has done the efforts of the Young Maori Party. Someday some interested student may trace the careers and performances of successive Native Ministers. In that galaxy I am sure that history will give the most prominent place to Carroll. You have put his policy in a nutshell. He bridged the gap between the two Races; also between the Maori regime and the new. He restrained the impatience of the new, as you and I, Heke3 and others of the young generation fully appreciated, while he made it possible for our elders to recognise merit and racial altruism in the efforts of their sons. The Carroll philosophy may then be attributed to his Kahungunu descent (refer to the siege of Maungaakahia at Mahia4) on the one side, and the intuition of his Irish father resulting in the attitude of detachment even in the thick of such action as he permitted himself to be involved in. I served from 1900 to March 1912 with Sir James himself all that time seeking to interpret his philosophy in practice. At the end his Kahungunu psychology was uppermost but he left his blessing on the Young Maori Party and went out in the confidence that the welfare of the Race was in good hands. I think we may say of him that he fathered the policy of cultural adaptation and that he succeeded on a large scale on the psychological plane because that success had to be achieved more with the passing generation than with the present. He paved the way absolutely for what came after and he left in a period when ideas had to be very nicely adjusted and balanced, the Carroll idea as against the Herries idea.5 The clash of the two resulted in an easy victory for the Carroll idea which, though without published acknowledgement, Herries had in fact to adopt. After these two Providence sent us Coates whose practical sympathy due to his Ngati-Whatua environment and rangatira descent made possible all the work that I was able to do during his period as Native Minister and the subsequent development and extensions of my own brief tenure of office.

3. Your paragraph about the depreciation of the mentality &c., of so-called subject races in the view of those governing them is very interesting. It is so characteristic of Departments here. It was a surprise to me to learn that in the last two years of the Coates administration that we were up, not against the Ministry, but against certain State Departments. If I have achieved anything during my short term it is to induce the Ministry to assert its view regarding the duty of the State towards the Maori people against that, say, of Treasury, Public Works, Lands and Education. In the Native Department it has been possible to shift the axis of the official view the least part of a degree but sufficiently to convert a listless automatic and somewhat unsympathetic body of superior officers into a fairly active and responsive machine for the execution of the Ministerial policy and this without having to sack one single man. In the upper reaches of the Native service, however, we have been very fortunate the last few years and the men who are there now are getting their opportunity to make good and when the angle has been adjusted it is wonderful how men thoroughly well qualified in other respects are capable of rendering the very best service. It is only the mental kink that has to be straightened out for most men are capable of good work but will work best when they see a definite and desirable objective.

4. I had a note from Keesing by the same mail that brought your letter and therein he refers to meeting you. The Institute of Pacific Relations is busy on a programme which in Keesing’s terms relates to the definition and initiating in the various countries of the Pacific of the project “Government of Pacific Dependencies”. He is quite bucked up with the way the Americans both [in] educational and official circles, have taken up his study of the Red Indian.6 He had a smattering of Maori before he left here. He comes back with a smattering of Red Indian. He will of course, presume on a smattering of Hawaiian and thus equipped he will run round Fiji, the Western Pacific, and Australia and dash off a thesis on the government of Pacific Dependencies. That is, of course, how things are done nowadays. The World is so large, time so short, communications rapid and the people impatient to get results. I wrote Keesing that I thought that there was an element of superficiality in the proceedings of the Institute that if they wanted depth and abiding results and work that would appeal to the solid judgment of thinking people they should base their operations on fundamental work such as you are doing in regard to Samoa and the Cook Islands. Anything will, of course, do for the Institute of International Affairs and the League of Nations. Those Institutions are so high up, so far away that they cannot discriminate between pretentious and earnest work.

5. Development of Culture.

(a) Polynesian into Maori. I think you should put together the bibliography on this (in view of your own researches) for the edification of students like myself. We have many books on our shelves, but I presume they must be read in a certain order to get a proper line on the subject. Your claim that we know more of the past than any of the other ‘seed which came from Rangiatea’ will I am ready to believe not be difficult for you to substantiate. The introduction of Christianity seems to have laid a thicker crust over pre-existing Rarotongan culture than it seems to have done here. Enough mischief was done as it was in shutting up the human repositories of the ancient knowledge. The Matorohanga and Nepia Pohuhu stuff published is sufficiently tantalising to make one speculate as to what went west with men like Turaukawa, Rangiuia and Mohi Ruatapu.7 Some of the most learned of the men educated under Rangiuia and Mohi up my way joined the Church as ‘monita’ and parsons. Mohi Turei,8 Raniera Kawhia, Hare Tawha are known to have been initiates of the Tapere-nui-o-Whatonga and Rawheoro. Hare Tawha was probably the most learned of the three. But he closed up like an oyster when he joined the Church.

By the way the female flower of the kiekie which ripens with us in June is called “te-ure”. Your view that resemblances of the flora kept alive the Hawaiki names is probably correct. It explains many things. It explains also why local versions of traditions common to us and our island relatives throw back to Hawaiki elements in the local environment not found in Hawaiki — the giant totara — the deeply hewn hull — the whare-puni — the fortified pa — probably war-dancing and other things that are either locally developed or imported from elsewhere, say the Western Pacific.

Your general conclusions in “The Evolution of Maori Clothing” of local development based on phormium as opposed to ‘aute’9 and the necessities of a colder climate, may have...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• PUBLISHERS’ NOTE
• ILLUSTRATIONS
• EDITORIAL NOTE
• 55: BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUM HONOLULU, HAWAII
• 56: OFFICE OF THE MINISTER OF NATIVE AFFAIRS, PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS, WELLINGTON, N.Z.
• 57: BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUM HONOLULU, HAWAII
• 58: OFFICE OF THE MINISTER OF NATIVE AFFAIRS, PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS, WELLINGTON, N.Z.
• 59: OFFICE OF THE MINISTER OF NATIVE AFFAIRS, PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS, WELLINGTON, N.Z.
• 60: BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUM HONOLULU, HAWAII
• 61: OFFICE OF THE MINISTER OF NATIVE AFFAIRS, PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS, WELLINGTON, N.Z.
• 62: BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUM HONOLULU, HAWAII
• 63: OFFICE OF THE MINISTER OF NATIVE AFFAIRS, PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS, WELLINGTON, N.Z.
• 64: BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUM HONOLULU, HAWAII
• 65: BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUM HONOLULU, HAWAII
• 66: OFFICE OF THE MINISTER OF NATIVE AFFAIRS, WELLINGTON.
• 67: OFFICE OF THE MINISTER OF NATIVE AFFAIRS, PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS, WELLINGTON, N.Z.
• 68: BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUM HONOLULU, HAWAII
• 69: WELLINGTON, N.Z.
• 70: BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUM HONOLULU, HAWAII
• 71: OFFICE OF THE MINISTER OF NATIVE AFFAIRS, WELLINGTON.
• 72: BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUM HONOLULU, HAWAII
• 73: Wellington, N.Z.
• 74: BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUM HONOLULU, HAWAII
• 75
• 76
• 77: BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUM HONOLULU, HAWAII
• 78
• 79
• 80
• 81
• 82
• 83
• 84: OFFICE OF THE MINISTER OF NATIVE AFFAIRS, WELLINGTON.
• 85: BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUM HONOLULU, HAWAII
• 86
• 87
• 88: BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUM HONOLULU, HAWAII
• 89
• 90: BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUM HONOLULU, HAWAII
• 91: WELLINGTON
• 92
• 93: BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUM HONOLULU, HAWAII
• 94: OFFICE OF THE MINISTER OF NATIVE AFFAIRS, WELLINGTON
• 95: BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUM HONOLULU, HAWAII
• 96
• 97
• 98
• 99: BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUM HONOLULU, HAWAII
• 100: BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUM HONOLULU, HAWAII
• 101
• 102: BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUM HONOLULU, HAWAII
• 103
• 104: OFFICE OF THE MINISTER OF NATIVE AFFAIRS, WELLINGTON
• 105: BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUM HONOLULU, HAWAII
• 106
• 107
• 108
• 109
• 110: BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUM HONOLULU, HAWAII
• 111: BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUM HONOLULU, HAWAII
• 112: R.M.M.S. AORANGI
• 113: R.M.S. MONOWAI
• Plates
• Copyright