trapicalities

Mag Azine Section

Maori Claim To Kiwa’S

Ocean Fails

i NCIENT Polynesian history was %. the basis of a claim by the Ngapuhi people of North Auck nd, NZ, for the vesting of the as round the Dominion, including ,st tracts of the Pacific, in Maori iistees. The Maori Land Court, at iwene, North Auckland, dismissed e claim on March 22.

The region involved in the claim »v er e d Te Moana-Nui-a-Kiwa [iwa’s Great Sea), across which e Polynesian ca n o e-voyagers .veiled to NZ from tropical eastern lynesia. The litigants said they d a duty to their ancestors to )w respect for the wisdom of )ana, the personification of the :an, who made the South Pacific :ion so large that Maui could fish i North island (Te Ika a Maui— ni’s Fish) from the sea.

Legends concerning Maui, the ori hero-god, occur in most parts Polynesia. He is credited with ling up islands as far apart as iga and Tahiti). ’he claim aroused considerable Brest in and outside NZ, and at vene, Judge Clark complimented claimants on the preparation of ir case, which covered much lent Maori history. He said, vever, that the relation to the was confined to regulation dis cs about Maori fisheries, pre yed to the Maoris under the

aty of Waitangi (1840).

he Ngapuhi representative nked the court for its considera i and said he was satisfied with decision.

Regulation Is Not

Ordinance

IE British Solomons are to be blessed with a Chamber of Com merce at Honiara, but only after £tain amount o* commotion in Western Pacific High Commission ette, which is still printed in i. A Gazette Supplement, dated iember 7, 1954, replaces Gazette 27 of 1954, which mistakenly Jared with an Ordinance head ie second time round, a Queen’s nation constitutes a BSIP tnber of Commerce. This Regu n, dated March 24, 1954, pro s that the BS'P Chamber of merce shall be “one body politic corporate,” “shall have perpetual sssion” and may have and use mmon seal. The Chamber may

sue or be sued in all courts of justice, and has the right of purchasing and holding property.

Abandoned “Paradise” In

South Seas

UP again comes the story of August Engelhardt, the Aus trian who dreamed more than 50 years ago of a Utopia at Kabakon Island in the Duke of York Group, between Rabaul and the coast of New Ireland. This time the tale is told by a writer in the Sydney Sun> whose version is summarised here under. He mistakenly calls Kabakon “Kahakua.”

Described as a blond, blue-eyed, bearded giant who had studied at the University of Bavaria, Engel hardt selected Kakabon as the site of the first of what he hoped would be a chain of sun-worshipping com munities encircling the equator. De nouncing the “suicidal tendencies of modern civilisation,” he called his new Sun Order the “Palm Temple of Pure Natural Life.”

Rather complicating matters, Engelhardt regarded women as the source of all evil and made no pro vision for Eve in his projected Eden.

Members of the community would eat nothing but fruit and nuts, and would wear no clothes.

There were many hundreds of would-be disciples in Europe in the opening years of this century, but only two ultimately joined Engel hardt at Kakabon—Max Lutzow a former director of the famous Lutzow Orchestra at Berlin, and Heinrich Eukens, a student from Heligoland. Others had been dis couraged by reports of fatal fevers and cannibals.

After a short period, Eukens, a man of slighter physique than the others, became ill and died Engel hardt and Lutzow continued the ex periment in reasonable contentment until an argument over music de veloped into a violent quarrel Lutzow took refuge in a Wesleyan mission cutter from nearby Ulu Island, but contracted a chill and fever from which he died soon afterwards. He was buried at Kaka bon.

Englehardt lived alone in the Palm Temple for many months, but a drought almost wiped out the fruit crop and in 1904 a storm des troyed the remainder. Islanders re ported to the German officials at Herbertshohe (now Kokopo) that the white man at Kabakon had gone mad, and Engelhardt was found

very ill; died immediately; and was buried there. (But our writer, “Tolala” (see “Talk-Talk”) says all this is non sense, and gives the facts.)

Puppies Just Happen At

Mangaia Nowadays

OFFICIALLY there are no bitches in Mangaia nowadays, because they have been eliminated, theoretically at least, by a medical and-Administration ruling. It was decreed that female dogs were in so small a minority as to constitute a disease-risk as well as making the males savage and potentially dangerous.

But people at Mangaia, writes a correspondent, have been wonder ing how certain little pups, ob viously born since the edict went into force, have materialised. Did

they, like a famous Negro in America, “jest combust spontan- And it is a little curious, too, that the sex of the newcomers should be exclusively male.

Samoan Burials Sometimes

Have Variations

THINGS do happen differently in Samoa, notes the Anglican Church Gazette.

For example, when a funeral party arrived at the graveside, it was found that the coffin was too long for the grave. And the grave had been hewn out of very rocky ground. What was to be done?

After fetching a saw, a husky Samoan imperturbably sawed the foot of the coffin in accordance with the instructions of the on- Furthermore, the day was tropi cally wet. It was disconcerting— but nobody saw any impropriety in the proceeding —for the clergyman to have to say the initial prayer with three pairs of eyes Peering earnestly at him from under the coffin in the grave. Three Samoan gravediggers, with hygienically bare torsos, were sheltering there from the downpour.

Britain’S “Colour” Policy

DESPITE the recent noise over the post-war migration of West Indies people to Britain, in the United Kingdom it still is considered shameful to air colour prejudice m public, noted a writer in the Daily Telegraph, London, on March 2. He added; “Most of the West Indians here are happy and want to stay. In general, they seem to be regarded as excellent workers. Behind all the objections to them there may well lie a fear of competition for jobs, houses, wives and everything that people compete for. . . But it should be remembered that if we are really sincere in our policy of conferring self-government on coloured peoples, the best way to fit them for it is is not to grudge them a chance to learn our skills and way of life.”

Chauvel Has New Film

Plan For Tahiti

CHARLES CHAUVEL, Australian film producer, spent four days in Paris in early March to dis cuss the possible making of a French-Austyalian film in Tahiti.

Between the two World Wars, Tahiti was a happy hunting-ground for film-makers. Some of the Holly wood productions were excruciating claptrap: but others, like Ramon Novarro’s The Pagan, and the pictorially lovely White Shadows in the South Seas, had their moments, while Murnau’s Tabu, filmed mainly in nearby Borabora, remains a classic.

Serious filmgoers with long memories will recall that in 1933 Charles Chauvel’s In the Wake of the Bounty, contained many breath taking shots of Tahitian scenery and traditional dancing. An un

pretentious production that roused little interest outside Australia and New Zealand, this Chauvel effort, inter alia, introduced Errol Flynn as Fletcher Christian and, despite some inevitable shortcomings, gave a rather more accurate reconstruc tion of the Bounty saga than did the opulent later production which Hollywood based on the Nordhoff and-Hall novel.

In the Wake of the Bounty also gave a vivid picture of Pitcairn as it was in 1932, when Charles Chauvel and his wife were there.

Perhaps because of this, 16 mm prints of the film are still current for educational purposes.

H M. Rene Hoffherr, Governor of New Caledonia and HC for France in the Pacific, has gone to Paris accompanied by the head of the NC Mining Dept. A Noumea com munique stated that the main reason for the HC’s journey was the ques tion of the hydroelectric installation proposed for the Yate River in asso ciation with the nickel-smelting operations at Noumea.