Scholarly Pakeha who despised racism

Professor James Ritchie had a deep respect for Maori culture and protocols. Photo / Supplied

Professor James Ernest Ritchie, psychologist. Died aged 79.

James Ritchie was once described as a psychologist (at Waikato University) but also as a teacher, author and sceptic with a sharp wit.

This son of Australian parents has been well acknowledged for his part leading up to the Tainui tribe's $170 million 1995 settlement with the Crown.

But his interest in and contacts with Maori went back well over 50 years.

He and his wife Jane, also a psychologist, were experts in many fields including child rearing and development (they also had five children themselves). Their surveys of parents and smacking dated back to 1963.

And in 1979, with at least 600 cases of serious child abuse a year coming to light, Ritchie noted the abuse was often associated with young parents and unplanned marriage, plus a heavy association with poverty.

In 1981 the Ritchies wrote a book Spare the rod on corporal punishment of children, describing it as assault that was not only considered acceptable by the majority but endorsed by law.

If the same violence occurred between adults it would be classed as criminal assault, they added.

James Ritchie grew up in a Wellington working class suburb. He told the Herald's Maramena Roderick in 1992 that no Maori lived in the neighbourhood and not one Maori attended his kindergarten or primary school.

Ritchie claimed his chief accomplishment at high school was learning how to act dumb. Since he could not learn, he could not be taught. And the best thing about that was not having to take history lessons seriously.

"I avoided indoctrination in the great New Zealand myth that we had dealt with 'our Maori people' and had 'the best race relations in the world'.

"So when at high school I met a real live Maori I had no culturally imparted load of prejudice to dump."

The friend took him to a dance at the Poneke Maori Community Centre and later, in 1949, Poneke was invited to take part in the haka competitions at the annual Tainui celebrations at Ngaruawahia. It was, Ritchie said, his first experience of "full outright culture shock". The rituals, traditions and black-clad woman engulfed him.

As a regular Poneke member he never expected his participation would be questioned when it was their turn to perform. It was - elders expressed doubts and to save trouble he went back from the group feeling more than a little hurt.

But in a gesture he never forgot Princess Te Puea, the organisational leader of the Kingitanga movement and Tainui, sought him out and ordered him back on stage. When Poneke won the competition Ritchie accepted the trophy on their behalf.

In 1950 after topping his year at teacher's college Ritchie applied to teach in the Maori School Service. The person allocating the trainee placements told him that with his record he should not be buried in "some Maori school".

"I had heard about prejudice ... here it was right in front of my nose," he said. His reward for winning the battle was to be sent to the remotest school on the East Coast at Rangitukia, where he was welcomed into the homeland of Ngati-Porou.

James Ritchie once said he was always careful in his approach to things Maori even when he had some status.

"I will never sit in a chair that should be occupied by a Maori. I will never stand and speak when a Maori person should be. That's a deep ethic with me."

Ritchie also published a book in 1992 Becoming bicultural, a review of race relations in New Zealand written for Pakehas by a Pakeha, challenging his own to "have a look at your racism and get rid of it." He made no apologies.

"One of the problems a lot of Pakeha have is that they try to put me into a box of some sort - as professor, as scholar - and then find bits of me leaking out the corners. I don't fit.

"One minute I'm seen in a traitorous light and next minute this so-called radical is coming out with all these conservative statements."

James Ritchie, who died after a lengthy battle with illness, termed himself 'a questioner, a man of words'.

"That's my talent," he said. "But in the end I am a Pakeha and that is that."