Detribalized Natives.

How Papua Foresaw and Provided For Problem.

From Our Own Correspondent.

Pt. Moresby, Oct. 26.

THERE is to-day a great deal of un employment among the various na tive tribes of Africa.

Owing to the collapse of trade and the general depression in the country, the natives have been dismissed in large numbers from employment which formerly absorbed them.

They are becoming a serious prob lem to their Administrations. One reads of mobs of aimless and useless natives sweeping over the countryside robbing and pilfering as they pass! ihey are a menace to the settlers and the neighbouring tribes, and a nuisance to themselves.

These are the detribalized natives who, owing to continuous employment with Europeans extending over many years, have lost all connection with their former village life and have there fore forfeited their claims to any tribal inheritance. Even if the village em bargo against them were lifted and they were again permitted to mix freely with their tribal people, their former existence would embarrass and distress them. They would find village life in tolerable and unattractive after their long association with Europeans, and the easy security that white employ ment had given them for so long Though the conditions in the terri tory of Papua cannot well be compared to any colony in Africa employing native labour, yet the conditions are similar, so far as the difficulty of pro viding employment of unattached na tives is concerned.

The depressed state of business in Papua, due to the fall in the market values of the chief products of the ter ritory (copra and rubber) has led to a considerable amount of unemployment among natives who had been continu ously under engagement to Europeans until recently.

Unemployment among natives is a contingency that had not been over looked at any time by the Papuan Ad ministration, which has worked for the preservation of the individuality of the different tribes, and of their native customs. Sir Hubert Murray (Lieut.- Governor) wrote in the Annual Report of the territory in 1928-29: “This is one of the difficulties of Native Administration detribalized natives. It is, according to our ideas, a good thing that a native should go and work on a plantation; but it is an extremely bad thing if he works there so long and so often that he becomes detribalized. We have, therefore, lim ited the term of contract to three years and have provided that no one is to remain away from his village for more than four years without special permis sion from the Commissioner for Native Affairs.”

This system of the limitation of ser vice was well established when the economic depression reached Papua, and its beneficial results are now vis ible. Though many natives in Papua are unemployed, they have their vil lages, their gardens and their native industries and customs to fall back upon, for owing to the limitation of service and to the Government’s pro vision that all native labourers must return to their villages for a year, after completing four years of service, the Papuan native has not lost his tribal rights.

Very few of them have suffered “a

complete change of economic status— from peasant proprietors, as they are now, to a landless proletariat, depend ant upon the plantation for work and wages, while they can get it, and upon the Government for charity when they cannot.”

To quote Sir Hubert Murray: “So far as my personal observation goes, I could not point to any detribalized natives, except perhaps a few house boys, so possibly our present limita tions are sufficient.”