Care Of The Aged

How Natives Are Being Contami nated by Whites

From Our Own Correspondent

Thursday Island, Dec. 2.

OUT on one of the distant islands in Torres Straits, there is a quaint little thatched house where a young native lives with his wife and family, and attached to the dwelling is a roomy lean-to, where a very old man, toothless and nearly blind, spends his days in comparative comfort.

The young Islander, who built the old man this shelter, provides him with food and tobacco, and his family do all in their power to make life easy for him.

I asked if the old chap were a relative, but the boy said that he was not, and I expressed some surprise at his having kept him for so long and thus given him a per manent home. I was told that he was merely an old friend of the boy’s father and came many years ago from the same Pacific Island, and he was therefore in honour bound to do what he could for him.

Such care of the aged, even if there is no blood tie, is a typical and praiseworthy trait in the character of the Torres Straits Islanders, and indeed of South Sea natives generally, and has always been faithfully carried out by the younger people. To-day, however, it is becoming exceptional. The modern tendency is to apply to a “Guv’ment” for a pension as soon as parents become a charge on their children through old age or sickness, and this habit, encouraged very often by well-meaning whites, is growing apace.

What with pensions, compensation money, and in some cases unemployment doles, the natives are quickly adopting the customs of their white neighbours and looking to the State to help them where, in the past, it would have been a dishonour to do so. It seems a pity that public relief measures should apply to natives at all, for, if left to act for themselves, their custom has always been never to allow relations or friends to remain in want. But the spirit of the age has crept in. like the serpent into Eden, and has already weakened their ancient sense of duty.