Native Administration

Fiji Official Feels Pacific Islander Still Unfitted For the Task

following comment on the pro posed plan of the British and Dominion Prime Ministers to centra lise, in Australia, the administration of Pacific Islands, comes from a Fiji resident. He has had a unique oppor

tunity of studying the native peoples

during a lifetime’s experience in deal

ing with Polynesians, Melanesians,

Micronesians and Euronesians.

Australian pm chifiey stated on May 4 that the headquarters of the new Institution to control improved conditions for the South Sea natives would be situated in Australia. It prob ably is a very nebulous scheme, although native officials themselves are to be asked to co-operate.

There’s a long way to go yet before Melanesians or even Polynesians can con trol such things as roads, transport, or co-operative businesses. Even as teachers, clerks, and native medical practitioners they require constant and sympathetic supervision by competent Europeans who are willing to devote a lifetime of study to their peculiarities. Occasionally even then your best trainees will give it all up on the slightest whim—for there is no “struggle for existence” in the Islands.

Any native can and will go “sick” for a few days on the slightest excuse. He knows that there are not dozens wapting to take his job, as there would be in densely populated Asia. No native under the communal system ? can ever become wealthy or rich. But do the big political bosses know these things?

Where is the money to come from to pay for schools, hospitals and roads for these hundreds of islands?

The South Sea Islander is completely averse to working steadily, day after day, in a regular routine manner, like the Chinese or Indian, or the Indonesian, and, as long as he is satisfied with native village life, native clothes, native cere monies and customs, native foodstuffs, and native witchcraft, I fail to see how anyone is going to change him into a citizen of the world.