Judy Tudor

Bishops And Anthropologists To The

Rescue Of Fuzzy Wuzzy!

Two Thousand Words of Territorian Cynicism by Judy Tudor

JJ/HOEVER it was who said the pen is rr mightier than the sword, certainly said a mouthful. Seems like this “paper war” is going to drag on into a c< paper peace”: the number of people who are drawing up Mandates, Charters and what not is increasing daily. There are enough of them now to start a good-sized Union; certainly sufficient of them to come under the rationalisation schemes of the Department of War Organisation of Industry. Probably rationalisation is what is needed.

LATEST addition to the collection is the “Christian Charter for Melane sian Peoples,” drawn up by Dr. A.

P. Elkin, Professor of Anthropology at Sydney University, and adopted by a conference of Anglican bishops and archbishops in late November.

The strange things about these “Native Charters” is that, apart from clauses dealing directly with the result of war on the natives, they introduce nothing radically different in principle from the native policies already working in Papua and New Guinea before the war. All they do is stress the need for intensifi cation of effort in native welfare work.

But, when the Australian newspapers devote a column of their precious space to setting them out, the Australian public, which hitherto did not care two hoots what went on above the 15th parallel, naturally sits up and takes notice. And, by the cussedness of Fate, Territorians are, also for the first time on record, sensitive to Australian public opinion.

But, fear not, gentle reader—this is no further dissertation on the pros and cons of Pacific post-war reconstruction.

This nerve storm was brought on by the following clipping from the “Australian Christian World,” which, in the parlance of the times, makes me go into a slow burn:— The Bishop of New Guinea, Rt. Rev. P. N.

W. Strong, speaking at a fair organised by the Sydney Women’s Auxiliary of the Australian Board of Missions, held in the Town Hall on November 12, said that after the war they would have to guard against the men who planned to make money in New Guinea because of the cheap native labour. Papua for the Papuans was the aim of the late Sir Hubert Murray, and that phrase must again be the watchword of Christians.

Naughty! Naughty! And if you aren’t a good boy, I’ll pall the bogey man to bite you!

It may be true; but it still sounds childish. As for “Papua for the Papuans” —Mr. H. W. Champion, the man behind Sir Hubert Murray’s policy from start to finish, interviewed in November “PIM.” stated that Sir Hubert believed th«t to be the dream of an impractical anthro pologist. Your witness, Mr. Champion!

I imagined, until the last few months, that I had a fine unbiassed opinion of New Guinea, as it was, and as it mierht be. Now I am not so sure. My mind has spun itself into a nice, tight, little knot and it will take a couple of bishops, an anthropologist and round half-dozen “men with commercial interests” to un-spin it. Here’s hoping.

PHASE One: I was tenderly nurtured in the general beliefs of the Euro pean worker of native labour. I realised that, without “boys.” our lot would be untenable, but I believed, and

still believe, that my mind was better equipped than theirs.

I did not ask myself why. I emphatic ally did not believe that I had a better right to a place in the sun than they, or that they had been produced by God for the edification of me and my kind Territorians, I believed, had a right to expect their labourers to abide by the conditions of contract which the Ad ministration, in its wisdom, had drawn up between them. Native villagers were afforded the usual British right of living according to their lights.

Exploitation? Maybe! At the end of 12 months those boys had dug enough gold to give me a trip South, and a squirrel coat with all the fixings. In the same period, they had earned about £6 apiece, and their keep. But who got the best of the deal is only a matter of opinion—and latitude. If it would ease Mr. (No Exploitation) Ward’s mind, he can have the coat. I’ve had it.

Was I interested in the future of the Melanesian? Nope—l guess I was not.

Like everyone else, I occasionally said the darned country was going to the dogs and just run for the “coons,” who were getting cheekier and more arrogant every year—and, very soon, where would we be at?

But life was pleasant, and everyone, including said “coons,” seemed happy enough. A frame of pre-war mind not exclusive to New Guinea.

But I did not sit around devising ways and means of raising the status of Brown Brother, or getting him a seat on the Legislative Council —or doing very much for him at all, except letting him be—which he seemed generally to appreciate. rME marched on, and came phase two; In the line of duty, over the past 18 months, I have met most of the Islands missionaries whose head quarters are in Sydney; and, also, in the line of duty, each month I read all the mission magazines—from one of which I clipped the foregoing literary gem.

Most of these missionary men are real people, earnest and sincere about their job and endowed with strong common sense. Their publications, although of necessity mission propaganda which the layman—especially the bloke with an axe to grind—finds hard to swallow, are, nevertheless, usually sound. But, when they step on lay toes, they certainly step.

It is probably the same old ’story—the missionary in the field being a slightly different bloke, with a slightly different outlook, from the missionary back home who only has to write about the trials of his brethren wrestling with the heathen in furrin parts. Close proximity to a Fuzzy Wuzzy is likely to bring the most exalted evangelist down to earth, PHASE three: Because war teaches us geography, and an idea that it might be as well to find out what makes the other fellow tick, and why, I began to wonder if there might be some thing in the scientific approach to the wily Melanesian.

So, during 1943, I went back to school —Department of Anthropology, Univer sity of Svdney, to be precise. I found myself rather in the position of the man

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who went to church to scoff, and remained on to pray.

Any Territorial! who thinks he has nothing to learn from the anthropologist is a fool. Conversely, any anthropologist who thinks he has all the answers is a half-wit. Reconciling theory with human beings, each one of whom has his or her idiosyncrasies, does not always give an answer according to the text-book. Field working anthropologists realise and stress that.

With this background I feel that I should have a nicely balanced mind on Pacific problems. As long as the various elements stay in their little compart ments, it is a cinch; it is when they come out and start getting across each other’s necks that the bishops, etc., are needed, with their unwinding apparatus.

Anthropology teaches that there are no primitive men—only primi tive societies. That these native societies are not inferior to ours (in the sense that they should be a slave race), but that they are simply different—and they are different because they are the product of their environments, isolation and lack of opportunity.

It teaches, also, that there are no men without religious beliefs. Belief in the supernatural, a god, spirits, a hereafter— whatever form it takes—practically amounts to a fourth “fundamental urge” (the Big Three being, of course, food, shelter and sex). Put the most rabid atheist alone on a raft in the middle of the Atlantic, with rescue a pretty remote possibility and, even if his mother was an atheist, too, and taught him nothing, he’ll pretty soon find a God to pray to.

OK. We all have religion; theirs is just different from ours, that is all. So the feeling is the thing. That urge within the breast of Homo sapiens that makes him rise above mortal surround ings to seek communion with the Infi nite. What matter what label it has — Christianity, Buddhism, or something that has evolved with the Melanesian?

Why, then, should Professor Elkin, whom I have heard lecture on the beauty of the beliefs and spiritual life of the Australian aborigines—their be wilderment and disillusion and lack of will to survive, when the Europeans desecrated their tribal and religious

grounds—why should he draw up a “Christian” charter for Melanesians?

One of the four Freedoms, of which people prattle, is freedom of worship.

Why should the Melanesian have Chris tianity poked down his gullet willy-nilly?

How many of us, after 2,000 years of Christianity, understand it in all its present ramifications. What, then, of the “primitive savage”?

BEFORE the missions take it upon themselves to tell the world that they alone are fitted to stand between the benighted heathen and the designing layman, they should go to work on the layman. Raise him from his present apathy towards active par ticipation in Christianity—get him to go to church and sing praises to the Lord.

Then turn him loose among the natives.

The Melanesian is a creature of dis • ceminent —he mighty soon saw that our steel axes were more efficient tools than his stone adze. Let him also learn his new religion, if he must, by example. At present, the fact that a native goes to church sets him apart from his “master,” who usually does not.

Secondly—let someone work out a basic Christianity. When the Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Methodists, Seventh Day Adventists, Presbyterians, Salvation ists, Lutherans and Congregationalists sit dow r n together in peace and goodwill and agree on a fixed'and single policy, then and only then are they entitled to say how the natives are to be preserved. All go to the mission field with one aim— native welfare. But each sect is deter mined that the heathen shall be saved, according to the customs of his sect, and none other.

At present we have in Australia sev eral sets of people whose interests are wholly bound up in the future of New Guinea, And a goodly number of men in New Guinea doing a job. Why can’t the people in Australia get together on something?

Maybe the missions would like to see the future New Guinea sans commercial interests; maybe the commercial inter ests would like to see New Guinea sans missionaries. Maybe the anthropologists would like to see something else again.

But I guess they will all be represented in post-war New Guinea —and the sooner they learn to live together the better.

THE Pacific Territories Association compiled a memorandum on post war reconstruction some months ago; Mr. Burton, of the Methodist Mis sion, drew up a document called “Atlan tic Charter and the Melanesian People”; now Professor Elkin has launched his 14-point broadside.

From what I have seen of the work ings of the PTA, they would welcome suggestions from anyone, including mis sionaries and anthropologists, providing the whole thing could be thrashed out in open debate. The missions and anthropologists, if sincere in “Not for getting commercial interests,” would find an avenue for giving real help there.

The atmosphere buzzes with appar ently unanswerable questions and an open mind seems a liability, and no asset, these days. So what? Mr. Ward is going to raise the status of the Fuzzy Wuzzy, although most of us liked the old native—coon —kanaka —call him what you like. We could ignore him, and he us.

But the great mass of our fellows, seen round us each morning in trams and buses, are of the obtruding kind: people whose interest is limited to what goes on inside them, who eat prawns out of paper parcels, and spit in the street; who spend their Saturday afternoons in pubs making SP bets; who train grey

hounds; who read nothing but the Sun day supplements and have no more idea than a brick of how to take advantage of the civilisation which men have fought and died for 2,000 years to pro duce. No—we didn’t have to take to anthropology to know that they were no master-race —or that the Melanesian had possibilities.

THERE is comfort in looking beyond our own mud-puddle to other prob lem-children: Britain has her Indians and Africans; Holland her Indonesians; and the great US her negroes. There were a few things the Civil War did not fix there.

Anthropologists have written many tomes to prove that the American negro is capable of the same degree of mental development as the average white American. Apparently, the average white American doubts this as fervently as the average Territorian entertains doubts as to the relative intelligence of his labour ers. A recent issue of “The Journal of the Polynesian Society’’ notes that Ameri can military regulations, passed since Pearl Harbour, provide for the segrega tion of white and coloured blood-banks, so that there is no danger of a white soldier receiving a transfusion of negro blood.

Lastly: take two men at random from the many fine men “with commercial interests” in pre-war Pacific Territories.

“Doc” Vernon, of Papua, medical man and planter, whose exploits before and during the war are well-known; and “Blue” Allen, OBE, miner, of the Man dated Territory, who did sterling work in the Middle East, and who is now carrying on the job in New Guinea.

Let those who want Charters draw them up if they must. For me, I put my faith in men of the “Doc” and “Blue” calibre, whose knowledge of their fellow men is based on hard experience, who have the gift of seeing the other fellow’s side of things, and a flair for getting things done. I miss my guess if. in the ultimate wash-up, the real job of shap ing the Pacific Territories nearer to the heart’s desire is not done by men like these. And while we still breed them— should we worry?

The name of Mr. H. R. Helm has been included in the list of civilians missing in New Guinea after the Japanese inva sion. This was an error. Mr. Helm left Bougainville to enlist in 1940. He was discharged from the AIF in 1942, and now is living in the Crookwell district, New South Wales.

Mr. H. Larsen, who was transferred to the Samoan Administration from Rarotonga six months ago, has been appointed Resident Commissioner of Niue (which is under Cook Islands Administration).

During their stay in Samoa he and his wife became very popular and residents are reluctant to see them go.