Minds Of Natives

Poisoned

Contact With Lower Class Whites

A New Guinea Problem

A WELL-KNOWN New Guinea

planter has asked The Pacific Islands Monthly to make an urgent appeal for stricter supervision over the visits of native “boys” to

Sydney.

“These young natives are brought down here as servants usually as attendants for young children,” said the planter. “The consequences usually are very bad.

“These natives, while here, are allowed to mix on terms of equality with low-class whites, particularly white women, and they go back to the Territory with a high opinion of themselves. They have the minds of children, and they cannot distinguish between the different classes of whites.

“The maintenance of discipline in the Territory already is a serious prob-

lem. The native is a child, and there is only one way to train the mind of the child against petty wrong-doing— that is, a quick application of the cane.

But employers of labour are forbidden to touch a native. If he is impudent, or disobedient, or lazy, or a thief, we must convey him to the District Officer, and he may get a term in the calaboose. By this time, he has forgotten his offence —and he regards imprisonment as a joke, and a relief from work, anyway. The system is farcical.

“Incidentally, the same District Officer punishes us, by fine, if we handle the labourers roughly. It would not be so bad if they were gentlemen trained to exercise the powers of magistrates.

But they are not. Of those who were holding office, not long ago, one was formerly a barber, one a railway porter, one a stonemason, one a cabinetmaker.

“The D.O. personnel is improving, however, and we might cope with the situation, if it were not for the constant poisoning of the natives by contact with low-class whites. Until recent years, we kept the natives in their proper place we were firm, just and kind and they respected us, and the necessary prestige of the whites was maintained. But when boys are allowed to associate with Europeans, and particularly with lower-class white women, the discipline that is based on race prestige breaks down. And it is difficult to combat this kind of thing when our hands are tied, in the manner described.

“One boy, coming back with ideas of equality, may contaminate hundreds of others; and then the danger to our white women becomes very great and real.

"People wishing to take nurses to Australia should be compelled to use female nurses. There is a probability of

trouble with that system, too, perhaps— but it does not react upon the Europeans in the Territory. New Guinea authorities also should sternly prevent the white crews of visiting vessels fraternising with the natives that, also, creates a difficult spirit among these conceited, truculent, yet childlike people.”

The planter said he was not attacking the Administration so much as the system, which was tragically wrong.

The officials, generally, recognised the need for discipline but they were shouted at, on the one side, by the League of Nations, and badgered, on the other, by the missionaries, and were almost as helpless as the planters. .

A gallows at Madang, where native criminals are given quick despatch. Rarely used. ———