Native Races In Pacific

Scientists Consider Future Of

LARGE section of this issue would

be needed, to present an adequate

report of the more valuable papers relating to Pacific affairs submitted at the Science

Congress in Melbourne in January; and

as so much space is not available, we give hereunder a summary of same. The full text of most of the articles will be pub lished in the officially printed report of

the proceedings.

Need For Special Officers.

The following is a summary of a paper by Mr. W. C. Groves, B.A., on “Anthropology and the Future of Native Adminis tration in New Guinea”: My experience among the natives of New Guinea, as an anthropologist study ing their social life, has convinced me of the need for approaching certain of the problems of native administration, problems of adjustment to a changing life due to contact with European civiliza tion, along anthropological lines.

Village life to-day has lost its savour.

The breakdown of old customs and weakening of old sanctions and traditions have given rise to many problems, as has the recruiting of natives for work in association with the white man away from their villages. A serious aspect of the situation is the weakening of social cohesion and unity that were such pro nounced and valuable features of the old life, and that is expressed in the con tinuous differences that arise between

the old of “fashion before” and the younger generation.

What the natives need, more than the magistrate, is help, guidance, under standing in their bewilderment. And for this it is suggested that a number of selected young officers of the service, with special aptitude for the work, be set aside as a force of Native Affairs Field Officers, after having had additional training in the principles of anthropology and their application to New Guinea con ditions. While it is urgently necessary to continue the present system under which Cadets in the service of the Administration, after a year or so in the Territory, spend a full academic year in anthropological study at the University of Sydney, where necessary literature and facilities for such study exist, it is suggested that the special Native Affairs Field Officers have the additional training necessary to equip them for the special work of native adjustment guides or advisers, directed by the specially trained, experienced, senior officer of Native Affairs to be stationed at Rabaul, who will be in close touch with the actual problems of administration.

This special training necessary (for the new Field Officers) is not so much in academic anthropology, as in the actual conditions of native life and organization and problems of adjustment, for the understanding of which local experience among natives is necessary. The Director of this special training and the Super visor of the specialist Field Officers should be a Deputy Director of Native Affairs, with social training, and experi ence and the right outlook for this deli cate work.

It is therefore suggested that the Department of Native Affairs include two divisions: the magisterial, for court work, tax collecting, penetrative patrol work, and all routine duties of native adminis tration; while the other section should serve the special purpose indicated, its specialist field officers ultimately coming to be looked upon by the natives as their “Kiap true” (real own officer), and thus gaining their confidence in the Adminis tration —a valuable and necessary thing for their future development.

These officers, besides investigating certain specific troubles and questions that involve sociological aspects—prob lems of land ownership, for example— might serve the more important purpose of effecting a close and understanding liaison between the Central Department of Native Affairs and actual native vil lage administration. Thus the Govern ment would be able to keep an effective finger on the pulse- of changing native society.

Papuan Customs And European

Influences

Mr. F. E. Williams, Government anthro pologist in Papua, submitted a paper in which he described some of the effects of European influence on the natives of Papua.

It was generally agreed, he said, that we could not expect any native culture to survive iu toto and even anthro pologists had come to see—what aca demically minded people saw long before them—that to aim at the perpetuation of any such culture was as ill-advised as it was futile. What we must expect was

some sort of blend of cultures, and all we could do. in the interests of native welfare was to help, guide and control the formation of that blend.

Mr. Williams explained that it could be plainly seen that some confusion obtained in the life of that large class of part-Christians or near-Christians, who divided their allegiance between the strict laws of the church and the very different laws of the tribe; between sexual purity in the Christian sense and the comparative laxity of their own regu lations; between the mission nurse and the native doctor; between prayer and magic.

It was probably realised by the most optimistic missionary, said Mr. Williams, that conversion was a matter of degree.

He well remembered an occasion when the natives of Apiope brought out their flag and ran it up the flagstaff. Apiope was a very heathen village affected by the semi-religious movement known as Vailala madness, the flag and the flag staff belonging to the paraphernalia of the cult. The flag in question was a small Union Jack, with a portrait of King George enclosed. When asked what this picture represented the natives replied, “Jehovah, the younger brother of Jesus.”

The Vailala madness, which had a tre mendously wide vogue, was full of such contortions.

Dealing with the special influence of the missions, Mr. Williams said it would be wrong to charge the missionary with attempting to lower the native’s indivi dual opinion of himself; the native, in deed, was more likely to meet with sym pathy and the gesture of human equality from a missionary than from any other white man. But by constantly preaching the superiority of Christianity and by his unwillingness to tolerate those be liefs and practices which were deemed incompatible with it, the missionary tended to bring some of the most sig nificant parts of native culture into con tempt.

Mr. Williams’ paper, which was gener ally commended for its fairness and frankness, appeared to provoke some missionary wrath. One woman mis sionary from Papua expressed resent ment at Mr. Williams’ references to the part played by the missions in the cul ture breakdown of the natives.

A Secret Society

Mr. F. L. S. Bell presented a peculiarly interesting paper on “Sokapana,” a native secret society in Melanesia, in which he described rites associated with a secret and initiatory society in Tanga Island, off the east coast of New Ireland.

Mr. Todd, as a result of a year spent in the village of Mowehafen (south coast of New Britain), described the native organisation for maintaining law and order—including some very shrewd and practical ideas.

An Appeal To Europeans

“The Need for Europeans in New Guinea to Think Black” was a paper submitted by Mr. Gordon Thomas (Rabaul) and read by Mr. Groves. It was a challenging appeal to all concerned with the employment of natives in New Guinea to try to “think native,” to study and attempt to understand the native, and so avoid the terrible mutual distrust and resentment that animate the two communities in the Territory.

Even white residents should realise their responsibility and set a high moral example. Nothing too bad could be said of the present method of appointing managers and white employees.

Papuan Medical Trainees

Discussing “Medical Education Among Papuans,” Dr. W. M. Strong (chief medi cal officer in Papua) said natives trained in Sydney University were visiting the villages in the island administering simple medicines and giving injections.

After working amongst Papuans for 30 years he would make bold to say that they were no less intelligent than brown and white peoples. They might be deeply ignorant, but that was different from being deeply unintelligent.

Regeneration Of Fijians

In a paper, “Some Aspects of the Education Problem in Fiji,” Mr. C. Sharp of the Fiji Education Department said the history of Fiji in recent years was one of deliberate regeneration by the natives, largely because of missionary enterprise.

The coming of the Indian and the threat to swamp the Fijian out of his birthright; the rise of the sugar indus try and industrialism had caused young Fiji to seek a new life and an education largely along European lines. Primitive Fiji, with its former communal life and social organisation, was almost past.

Individualism had superseded the com munal idea. Education to-day recog nised the inevitable, and offered a school ing and training to fit the natives for their absorption into the new order.

Education showed an increasing ten dency in Fiji to reproduce reality and to interpret the real needs of the natives for their life.

Rev. J. R. Metcalfe, with his wife, ar rived in Melbourne recently on leave, He is a worker for the Methodist Church of New Zealand, at Buka Passage, Bou gainville, New Guinea.