Primitive Cultures
p. 148 · Read in the full issue
For The Record
Primitive Cultures Will Not Be Lost
IT is the justifiable boast of the: Papua and New Guinea Admin istration that, year by year, larger sections of the hithertoi primitive country are “brought under control.” This means that the natives, henceforth, take their orders increasingly from Europeans, and govern their lives according to Western laws.
Thus, the old orders disappear.
Systems of living, codes which govern inter-tribal and clan re lationships, are forgotten.
The young officials of District Services making their first contact with these primitive communities, are encouraged by their directors to provide records of the customs of the aborigines, before they are modified by European control. For this purpose, most of these District) officers are given some training in anthropology; and the records they make are passed back to head quarters, to go into the archives at Port Moresby and Canberra. Thus; long after the inevitable “European isation” of the tribes, research work ers who are studying the origin and development of these peoples will have authentic material or which to work.
Some of this material appears, ir one form and another, in Oceaniai “a journal devoted to the studx of the native peoples of Austraiiaj New Guinea and the Islands of the Pacific Ocean,” and publishec quarterly by the University of Sydney. It has carried out this work for nearly 30 years, and the value of the work is beyond prices Anthropologist Professor A. F Elkin has been editor for a long time, and assistant editors are H. II Hogbin and A. Capell, also well
known anthropologists.
The September issue is typical The two main articles are report;; by field men in New Guinea—“ Tin Ipili of the Porgera Valley’ (which describes the customs of s tribe in the Highlands) and “Th«j Gaigai in Tangu” (which repre-; sents a social examination of : tribe which lives among steej ridges, some 15 miles inland from Bogia Bay, near Madang.
There is also a scientific summary of “The Blood Groups of Some Cocos Islanders.” This should have significance, because (as thu authors point out), that Indian Ocean archipelago was settled; over 130 years ago by a couple oc Englishmen and a mixed company of Indonesians, Bengalis, Chinese.
Siamese, and a few Zulus anoj Papuans. That mixture should, represent all the great races on earth, except American Indians.