Interesting Development in

Sects Clash Over Village

School

Interesting Development in New Guinea

From Our Own Correspondent

P. Moresby, Aug. 25.

rHERE has been an extraordinary kind of war going on in a Papuan South Coast village between ival church factions.

Although Hisiu Village is near fule Island, old-established head [uarters of the Roman Catholic Mission, Hisiu villagers are mostly dherents of the London Missionary bciety, which has had a school there Ince 1890, In 1951, a minority of villagers, dherents of another Church, began d erect a building for another lission school. Other villagers emonstrated against this plan; but le minority group persevered. They 'ere holding a prayer meeting in the artly-erected building when other illagers attacked and demolished le building.

Arising out of this, six natives ere charged with unlawfully damag ig a house valued at £3. One of the :cused said in Court; "We like to ave only L.M.S. Mission in our illage and we don’t want to have ay other. That is why we took this inkling down”.

The six were convicted. Two were ned £2 each, and the others sen need to 10 days’ hard labour. The fagistrate ordered them to restore ie partially-built house, but this rder was later quashed on appeal to ie Supreme Court.

The Hisiu Village Council mean me had gone ahead with plans to hid its own, secular school. They ere delayed by difficulties in getting aterials, but eventually they erected ie building.

They were quite unaware that, in fay of 1952, the Government azette carried a proclamation tcising five acres from the Hisiu ative Reserve, for mission purposes, id that one of these acres had been ased to the Roman Catholic fission.

Naturally, there was consternation hen it was discovered that within is one acre was the site of the Hagers’ new secular school build g. The Mission denied them the ;e of the building, but said they mid remove the materials.

A deputation of 11 Hisiu villagers, eluding four councillors, came to foresby this month and protested tterly to the Government. They tinted out that they were not

readers of the Gazette —otherwise they would have appealed against the alienation of that particular area.

Government was sympathetic. It now has sent the,trawler Arawe, with a load of building materials, to Hisiu. With it has gone Patrol Officer J. Griffin, to site the school and start the building operation, and Ila Sam, an experienced native teacher, to take charge of the new school as soon as possible.

The Administration has taken this step to preserve native confidence in self-help (secular) schools which, under official encouragement, are now appearing in various native communities, especially in the High

lands. The cost of staffing and equipping such schools must be borne by the Education Department.

Hitherto, most of such duties have been undertaken by the various Mission bodies, free of all cost to the Administration.

Honolulu newspapers lately have been making a fuss over “Leeteg of Tahiti”, an artist who has won world fame by developing the practice of painting on black velvet.

He is described as a 49-years-old American who went to live in Tahiti 20 years ago and one of whose chief interests is building and designing homes.