We can learn from the Maori

 THROUGHOUT Prime Minister Peter O’Neill’s visit to New Zealand last week, one thing was obvious.

New Zealanders welcomed the prime minister and his group in colourful and traditional fashion starting with a warriors haka welcome and the hongi or rubbing of noses in greeting.

Welcome speeches were spoken totally in Maori. 

Yet none on the prime minister’s party could return the courtesy by speaking in any one of the 800 or so languages of PNG. 

English just did not sound right. Only after prompting from this newspaper on the final ceremony did Sohe MP Delilah Gore return a greeting in beautiful Orokaiva and then Motu.

This basically demonstrates the attitudes of our two peoples towards their culture and traditions.

New Zealand Maori numbering some 600,000 are making a valiant effort to keep their ancient customs and traditions, including their language, which was facing extinction. 

PNG, on the other hand, does not seem to have much of a national goal or policy about how to retain its many customs and traditions.

Although the third national goal is for promotion and preservation of Papua New Guinean ways, very little has happened since the document was passed by the Constituent Assembly on August 5, 1975.

The second schedule at the back of the Constitution calls for the development of an underlying law based on  customary beliefs and ways. 

No such law has been developed although an enabling act was passed in 1978, only three years after independence.

Maori land has passed on to the sovereign and only recently there have been moves to regain some for the land for Maori. 

The opposite is true in PNG where some  97 percent of land remains in the hands of the people. 

Yet no law has been passed which empowers landowners to turn their land to capital and wealth and so this vast amount of land remains outside of the economic system of PNG.

If the recent land grab through manipulation of the Special Agriculture and Business Lease is any indication, customary land is at risk of falling into the hands of unscrupulous developers and there is no protection from the law and government appears ill prepared to defend the people.

What the Maori are struggling to gain back, Papua New Guinea already has in having most of its customary ways and traditional languages still intact.

In addition, most of its land is firmly in customary landowning groups’ hands. 

The tragedy is that PNG does not seem to realise its good fortune.

As a result PNG is in danger of losing much of its noble and worthy customs and traditions.

On the last day of his three-day visit to New Zealand, the prime minister and his group visited a Maori trust called the Te Whanua O Waipareira.

This trust works solely to assist the Maori in West Auckland, giving them an identity, promoting and preserving their language and customs and giving them hope, security and social welfare. In fact, it has become a model for similar Maori organisations in other parts of NZ. 

The Te Whanau has existed for 28 years and has only just launched a 25-year plan focusing on building the future based on past experiences.

It is a concept that could very easily be replicated in Papua New Guinea, starting with marginalised peoples in urban communities such as the Ahi people of Lae and the Motu Koitabuans in Port Moresby.

These people’s identities are fast disappearing with the onslaught of modernity and the multitude of different cultures that converge in towns and cities.

Setting up trusts such as the Te Whanau  O Waipareira would immediately give urban landowning groups a focal point to revolve around. It can provide assistance in job seeking or skills training and in provision of health and education services such as those happening with the Te Whanau O Waipareira trust.

Such trusts can also network with others and gain from the experience of similar communities around the world such as the Maori in New Zealand and the Cree Nation of Canada.

In the final analysis, PNG is PNG only because of its unique and noble traditions and customary believes.

Lose that and we lose our very soul and the only thing that sets us apart from every other nation on the planet.