Integration at Ground Roots

Tuahiwi straggles along both sides of a country road, about four miles from Kaiapoi. Blackbirds sing to the sun, but the wind blows keenly from the snow-dipped foothills across the plains.

This is family tree day at our school. The 25 pupils, Maori and Pakeha, with members of local families, have come to plant almost 200 native trees and shrubs. Our teacher, Mrs J. Goldsbrough, is busy and happy. This traditional planting was her idea. A Woodend resident, Mr K. Gdantz, has given us the trees and shrubs, which our families must care for in the future. Mrs Goldsbrough is going to use them for nature study too.

Mr M. Reuben, of the school committee welcomed us, saying, ‘I hope the gods will be good to this area and will stimulate and give growth where, over the years, not

much has survived.’ He was referring to a small number of existing trees amongst the newly planted area — remnants of the original trees planted by a similar gathering more than 60 years ago. Mrs J. Tirikatene told me of that planting when she was a small girl at the school, and also recalled the night when the former school building was burnt down.

After a hymn in Maori, the South Island Maori Missioner, the Rev. P. Manahi, led prayers in Maori and blessed the planting area, trees and shrubs. The Upoke Runanga of the pa, Mr W. Pitama, spoke in Maori and in English, saying that today would be a memorial to our teacher and to our ancestors who came across from Hawaiki.

Kaiapohia was the Ngai Tahu pa, sacked by Te Rauparaha in 1831. The people eventually resettled at Tuahiwi on reserves set aside for the Maori people, and in 1859 the pa became the centre of the Canterbury Maori Mission after the arrival of the Rev. J. Stack. Describing his new home, he wrote that ‘Tall tussock grass grew right up to the walls of the house, but to the south and west were hundreds of acres of native forest.’ This has gone long ago, but patches of cabbage trees remain scattered in the district.

Our school celebrated its centenary in 1963. Mrs Goldsbrough searched the registers back to 1900 to obtain the families' names, which will be on carved wooden stakes with the Maori and botanical tree names.

Mr Gdantz said that if the planting today encouraged us and those of the future to have a love of and respect for the beauty and the traditions of our race, it would be a success. ‘The Maori love of trees is not new. Trees are loved still in his heart: just take a Maori into the bush and look at his eyes,’ he said. ‘Far too many trees are being cut down, and the people get used to bareness. This is a good start to beautifying the land. It is impossible to grow 50 giants in this school area, so some are smaller. All are one, like a chief and his people.’

Mr Gdantz told us how to plant — then we all did our share. Our teacher says that next year we will plant more trees alongside the school, in a mixture of natives and introduced species, and in the third year, a rear boundary line of only introduced trees.

Mrs Goldsbrough calls it integration, signifying the two races in our community. Like these family trees in future years, our ground roots are mingling together.