Case History of Yali, New Guinea's

First Native Leader

FROM time to time in the last four or five years there have been references to the activities and influence of Yali, a native of northern New Guinea.

Most of the references have been vague.

No one individual seems to know every thing about Yali but he has been fre quently produced as typical of the so called new order for natives.

Recently, it appears, the affairs of Yali have been undergoing some sort of official investigation in Madang but proceedings have been very hush-hush and the find ings have, so far, not been made public.

Yali, until his recent troubles, evidently has had the blessing of the Administra tion, with the idea of ascertaining whether or not natives with his influence and per sonality (and he seems to have both) could carry out local administration.

Yali, of course, is not just a product of the Ed-Wardian era in New Guinea, but is a phenomenon of the post-war era in native countries generally. As such his history is interesting.

FROM what we have been able to piece together, it seems that Yali was bom near Saidor in the Madang district and is probably in his early thirties. Dur ing the war he served with the AIB and during this service was for some time at Darwin. It was here, apparently, that he picked up the idea that Brown Brother was being exploited (that overworked word of our lately-departed socialist masters!) and that henceforth the natives should receive everything for nothing from the Europeans.

After his discharge, he returned to Saidor, dressed in European clothes and

wearing service medals and ribbons, which from all accounts, he had every right to wear. His appearance and his bearing so impressed the local natives that he was able to set himself up forthwith as a petty dictator.

Possibly at this stage some inex perienced patrol-officer or other official of the starry-eyed persuasion helped the

Yali legend get really going by using him to direct the natives in planting their gardens, cleaning their villages and gen erally beginning again on a peace-time footing.

The inevitable happened, and Yali got too big for his boots. His activities spread throughout the district and he began to believe that he was above the white man’s law. Plantation people, on the other hand, believed he was behind the disrup tion of labour that occurred at that time and that it was he who, for some whim of his own, recalled their plantation boys to their villages. This is open to some doubt because by this time his name was

used extensively not only throughout the Madang area but in other disricts, by natives who did not want to plant gar dens, or work or build new houses. His name was used also by adherents of the Cargo Cult doctrine who believed (or pre tended to believe) that the cargo (Euro pean manufactured goods) which was really sent to them by their ancestors but which for years had been diverted into the white man’s stores, would soon be in their hands, heralding a golden age where everyone lived in luxury and worked not at all.

Because of the complaints of employers of native labour against Yali, he and several other local native VlP’s were sent tn Port Moresby where they were given instructions in civic leadership and Ad ministration policy, took tea with the Administrator and returned to Madang several weeks later with even bigger heads and even bigger ideas of their own im portance.

Yali was welcomed home with many feasts and sing-sings, one of the largest being at the island of Beliau where the decorated roads, platforms and feasting were something in the nature of a seven days’ wonder.

Yali has been described to us as not looking the arrogant type; not well educated —probably can read and write a little Pidgin but has a “clerk” to attend to his correspondence!

We do not pretend to know what has caught up with Yali, other than that his activities are, or have been, a matter of investigation, and that the experiment, if that is what it was, of using such men for administrative work was in this case a failure.

THERE is nothing new, of course, in using natural native leaders to fur ther the interests of sound adminis tration. It has been done all over the

Pacific and in other colonial countries.

But its success depends on the native leader —and the Administration behind him.

Perhaps one of the most marked dif ferences between Papua-New Guinea and the Solomons on the one hand, and Poly nesia and Fiji on the other, is the dearth of native leaders in the two former terri tories. There are no Cakobaus. Malietoas, Tamaseses or Sukunas there. Even the Papua-New Guinea delegates to the recent South Pacific Conference could in no way be called leaders of their people—the vast majority of whom have never heard of them and could not care less. The social set-up in Melanesia proper, as it still exists at the present time, the vast areas that still are in the stone-age stage, pre clude anything in the nature of a national native leader. But the fact that there is a Yali proves that a start could be made; that the basic material is there and, in the right hands, could be a power for good.

However, such men as Yali, in whose minds the great exploitation myth has been inculcated, when instructed by the inexperienced Administration official who felt it incumbent upon him to espouse the cause of Brown Brother and turn official thumbs down on Euro ~ean enter prise or Europeans generally, could be a great potential danger in a country like New Guinea.

Someone gave Yali a lot of rope and in this he has evidently gone close to strang ling himself. But does the fault lie with Yali or with the supplier of the rope?

Four selected native lads from the island of Nauru appear to be making good progress as students at Knox Col lege. in Svdney. Two have been there for two years, and two for one year. One is a son of the well-known chief Detu damo.

A special Catalina flying-boat will be made available to carry a party of 20 from Brisbane to Papua on Monday, June 26, to attend the consecration of Arch deacon David Hand as Bishop Coadjutor of Papua. The ceremony will take place on St. Peter’s Day, June 29, at the church of St. Peter and St. Paul, Dogura, Papua.

Mr. J. C. Grover, of Sydney, who has been appointed for a term of three years to conduct a Geological Survey of the British Solomon Islands, arrived at Honiara by the April Morinda. Mr.

Grover began his geological studies be fore the War, which interrupted them for five years. Demobilised, he began again and has had a distinguished University career. He will spend most of his time

in the Protectorate on expeditions to search for deposits of minerals and test their possibilities.

Mr, Richard Burt, who has been for the last four years an air pilot for Guinea Air Traders, Lae, New Guinea, arrived in Australia on leave at the end of April.

He brought his own transport with him— two jeeps and a motor cycle. ,