Atareta Rennie plays the piano while fellow boarders work on handcrafts at the Pendennis Maori Girls' Hostel in Thorndon, Wellington, in 1954. This historic homestead housed several generations of young Māori women, and aimed to smooth their adjustment from a rural to an urban way of life. One former resident remembered that on her first night at Pendennis a kaumātua (Māori elder) gave them 'a whole lot of information and some talk about how we should take care of ourselves ... all those things that country girls don't know ... there are certain areas where you don't go in the cities.'
Using this item
Alexander Turnbull Library, Tourist and Publicity Department Collection
Reference: 1/2-040753-F
by T. Ransfield
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.