Refined, Please
p. 115 · Read in the full issue
Let’S All Be Very
AN indication of the coming of age of the Pacific Islanders is shown in the latest Cook Islands annual report, recently published.
Wherever, in the past, the word “native” was used, it has this year ben replaced by “Maori.”
The perfectly innocent and in offensive word “native” is now com pletely tabu in most parts of the Pacific. Only a very few years ago, all students graduating from the Central Medical School, Suva, were called NMPs. The removal of that offensive “N” was the first move in the deletion of the odious word
from the Pacific dictionary. The graduates are now SMP’s, CIMP’s, TMP’s, etc., according to whether they come from Samoa, Tonga, Cook Is., etc. The word native somehow, has come to mean “primitive/' “ignorant” and “inferior.”
To-day there just are no inferior people in the Pacific unless they happen to be Europeans.
And by the same token, it is high time someone began a campaign for the uplift of that downtrodden race.
Let us begin by banning the word “Whites” when referring to them. The term is still used all over the Pacific, and is equally as degrading as “blacks,” “c o o n,’ r “kanaka,” etc., and infinitely more so than plain “native.”