LINDSAY MITCHELL: 'Brown Optimism'

I visited the new Wellington Library today unprepared for the towering inscription, rising through almost three stories, which has been installed on the west face.

This is the text of the poem depicted:

Brown Optimism

With dust of labour on a summer’s day

They slouched with careless stride of people come

From nowhere, going nowhere, smiling, tired,

And cursing with a laugh the pakeha

Veneer. For them life is a childish farce

To paint in white the brown which stains their lives.

Their ancient world is gone, and in the pa

The death of past traditions of a once

Proud race is mourned by age with mumbling gums

In soft tones of despised melodious tongue.

You seek your future in the white man’s joy;

You sing your songs to ape his foolish tune;

You change your rhythm to the jazz band’s beat;

And slave and sweat for coin so easily spent;

You play a losing game with loaded dice

And know no rules to help you win a chance;

While pakeha stands quietly waiting with

A smile, to move you at his will across

The draughtboard of his policy and faith.

A child went past; neglected, poorly clothed

In imitation of the white man’s dress.

Hard feet on hard road running in the heat

To spend the white man’s money in the white

Man’s store. And what is there for you, oh child

Of Maori pride? Will you be swallowed in

The rising tide, and mingle blood till all

Your heritage is gone?

This shall not be.

For brown must learn from white, the rules to make

Him equal partner in the game they play;

And white must cease to trample underfoot

These dark leaves of the Polynesian tree.

When this is done, and each the other’s worth

Has found, from union will spring a new

Race keen, with courage strong to face the world

And find at last its place and aim in life.

J.C. Sturm 1947

Born Te Kare Papuni 17 May, 1927

Taranaki & Te Whakatohea iwi

Returning home, I looked up the poem, read it through multiple times and learned about the author - "one of New Zealand’s first Māori woman graduates" - who was raised in a European family then later reunited with her paternal Maori relatives.

What is your reaction?

For me it insults Maori and Pakeha alike. When it was written, Maori and European had long worked, lived, prayed and played together. But it was written by a young person, kicking against perceived injustice and naively believing in happily-ever-after endings.

I don't think I am ever going to behold this 'monument' with any sense of sympathy or warmth. The history of European and Maori melding is far more nuanced and reciprocal than a casual reader of this poem would appreciate.