Fuata Taito

Polynesian Pastor Among Australian Aborigines

rE speaker at the P.S.A. of Wesley Church, Melbourne, on March 3, was a South Sea Islands native pastor, Fuata Taito, has come to Australia on a novel enterprise from Rotuma, an island 300 miles north of Fiji, with a population of 3,000.

Seeing a notice in his church paper soliciting an Islands pastor to volunteer for work among the aboriginals of Aus tralia, he quickly embraced the oppor tunity; and, with his wife and three children, he passed through Melbourne on his way to Darwin to take up his work.

The employment of native teachers among the different Islands has long been practised, but this is the first time that a South Sea Islander has been engaged for work among the aborigin als. It is a bold and interesting experi ment. and the Mission Board is to be complimented on the choice it has made.

Fuata Taito is a capable speaker, with amazing fluency in English, and his appointment gives a new perspective to work among the aboriginals. He has not discarded his native dress, and will make no attempt to ape the European, but rather will live and work among the aboriginals as a fellow-member of a native race. Among his audience in Wesley Church, he caused great laugh ter by saying that the presence of him self and family in the Svdney Zoo created as great an attraction as the wild animals.

In his address, Fuata Taito related how he was led to take up the work bv reason of a misconception about Christianity prevalent among the abo riginals. While visiting a camp of aboriginals, four years ago, at Geral dine, West Australia, he discovered that they regarded Jesus Christ as the God of the white man, and confused His religion with the social customs of the white race. They thought it strange that he, a South Sea Islander, should worship the white man’s God with such devotion. Fuata Taito’s reaction to their misapprehension of Christianity changed his whole outlook, and he sought an opportunity to reveal the true God to the aboriginals.

The Rotumans, of whom Taito is one, are pure Polynesians; and Polynesian missionaries have done, and are doing, an extraordinary amount of work among the more backward Melanesians, Papuans, etc.

A native girl was swimming around the reef at Menapi (North East Divi sion of Papua) after fish, and when one darted into a hole, she dived down and put her hand in after it. Her hand, for some reason, became fixed in the hole and she was drowned. Her body was found there nine hours later by the men of the village.

The Fahnestock Expedition, sponsored by American Museum of Natural His tory and Columbia University, which is to collect rare birds, geological speci mens and records of primitive music in the region between Fiji and New Guinea, passed through the Panama Canal at the end of February, en route to Suva.