Happening In New Guinea

The Month S New Reading

Lucid Analy Sis Of What Is

In the flood of recent books on the vexed subject of where Papua-New Guinea is headed there has now emerged one of real significance—C. D. Rowley’s The New Guinea Villager.

IT is a highly perceptive and timely analysis of the current problems of the big Australian territory of two million inhabitants. There is urgent comment in almost every paragraph.

It examines the present-day situa tion in the light of New Guinea’s colonial past, and finds that many problems have yet to be faced— and that it is too late to solve many problems that should have been faced years ago.

Mr. Rowley is now a director of a project on Australian aborigines with the Social Science Research Council at Sydney University, but he :ompleted his book while he was ?rincipal of the Australian School of Pacific Administration—a position he icld from 1951 to 1964. The school las helped train New Guinea patrol )fficers.

The villager of the book’s title is lot necessarily the man who lives in i village. He is the New Guinean— man, in Mr. Rowley’s view, left lefenceless to a degree dangerous >oth for himself and for Australia.

He believes the appearance of lalleability of the New Guinean is eceptive, and the illusion that an dministration can, in fact, build a aciety to some kind of blueprint i as misleading in New Guinea as nywhere else.

Only those who concede that the few Guineans—ill-informed as they lay be—-are likely to be as clever 5 us, will not be surprised if they :main unmoved by the new flurry F developmental activity and ispicious that it is at least as much i our interests as in theirs.

In other words, Australia and Aus ahans are in New Guinea mainly •r their own purposes and the New umeans know it, and will be glad hen the time comes for us to leave.

Because of the influences of history md these Mr. Rowley lucidly itlines) the New Guinean remains spicious of both Asian and Euro

pean, yellow man and white, especially as they appear as seekers after the black man’s labour.

Mr. Rowley offers strong evidence that the future attitudes of New Guineans to the concept of a New Guinea nation, to Australians, and to the whole outside world, are taking place in the streets of the towns, and especially in Port Moresby.

“The town, and the capital, especially what the government and the Australians are reputed to do there, are discussed all over the country,” he says. “The attitudes and opinions formed in the streets tend to set the pattern of thinking in the villages. Discontents come to a head in the hard world of town. . . . The basic importance politically of good living conditions in the towns is clear”.

The author paints a depressing picture of urban living conditions for New Guineans, compared with the higher standards of comfort, health and general welfare of the Aus tralians.

He says if lawlessness, born of

urban discrimination (including wage discrimination), is allowed to grow, it may easily take a political tinge, providing reckless followers for the first urban leader who dares the violent short cut to power. This, he points out, has happened frequently in other emerging countries.

Mr. Rowley submits that urban rioting, of the kind seen recently in Rabaul and Port Moresby, can, in fact, be a protest against the white man, even though the dispute might appear to be between native groups, such as an attack by the Tolai on Sepik labourers in Rabaul.

Smaller, secondary targets are attacked because the New Guinean is not strong enough to overwhelm what he may feel is the real cause of his resentment, the white man.

The secondary targets could one day combine to attack the common foe.

Race relations are, by implication, the subject of Mr. Rowley’s valuable book, although the author may not have intended this when setting out to write it.

The impact of the explorer, the missionary, the patrol officer, the planter, businessman and base clerk —all of whom are dealt with in detail —is the impact of one race on the other; and Mr. Rowley does not sub scribe to the comfortable assumption that the prevailing attitude to Aus tralians is one of gratitude for favours received.

His book does give reasons why he thinks that what Australia has done in New Guinea is very like what other colonial powers have done in their colonies, and why he thinks the reactions of the people may be expected to be broadly similar. In this he deserves thanks for the stimulation he offers to all who care about New Guinea’s future.—Sl.

(The New Guinea Villager. P W

Cheshire. $5.)

Mr. Rowley.