‘Traditions Grow and Develop’

The opening ceremony, which took place a few months ago, was attended by many visitors from surrounding districts. After appropriate action songs and chants had been performed, speeches were made by Mr C. Hunia, a spokesman for Tuwharetoa who was also representing the Arawa people, Mr Paul Delamere, and Mr Eruera Manuera, a spokesman for the Ngati-Awa people and a representative of the Mataatua tribe. Tributes were paid by Mr C. B. Boyce, Mayor of Kawerau, and Mr P. B. Allen, the member for Bay of Plenty, to the qualities of self-help, enterprise and perseverance which had made the Centre possible; he was sure, Mr Boyce said, that it would achieve the purpose of preserving Maori culture, and that it would also be of extreme benefit to the district as a whole.

The Minister of Maori Affairs, the Hon. J. R. Hanan, who took part in the opening ceremony, spoke in an address of the way in which traditions grow and develop. ‘You have decided’, he said, ‘that your need was for a modern community centre, rather than the carved meeting-house that is now regarded as traditional. In this type of building tradition is not discarded—rather, a new one has been forged’. Mr Hanan spoke of the success in which old and new traditions had been combined in the building, and referred to the rapidity with which the district is developing. ‘Already, I understand, there is an urgent demand for such a building. In the future the need will be even greater.’