"Me no wantem cencus",

Santo's bushmen said

Although the New Hebrides has been jointly administered by Britain and France for more than 60 years, there are still parts of the large island of Espiritu Santo which have never been brought under effective administrative control and where little is known about the inhabitants.

This is stated in a recently-issued 500-page report on the Condo minium’s first census, which was taken on May 28, 1967.

The report says that nearly 2,000 people are estimated to live in the untamed parts of Santo, which are known as the Santo bush.

These areas have had a long history of nativistic movements result ing mainly from unhappy contacts with Europeans. The Santo bush also contains the highest mountains in the Condominium, and as these are linked with a system of steep ridges and deep valleys, they have helped to keep it isolated.

Despite the human difficulties and mountainous terrain, census officers, in conjunction with a WHO anti tuberculosis team, made an effort to make a census of the bushmen. But they finished up with a list of 832 people who refused to be enumerated.

When asked why they would not co-operate, most of the bushmen simply said: “Me no wantem” and refused to be more explicit.

Anti-European feeling

The worst area for non-co-opera tion was the Upper Jordan Valley where only 13 of the estimated popu lation of 313 were prepared to give details about themselves to the census officials.

“The almost complete failure of the census in the Upper Jordan Valley can be attributed to the long history of anti-European feeling in this part of Santo,” the report says.

The report adds that census officers also ran into uncooperative New Hebrideans on the island of Tanna, where the John Frum cargo cult has created difficulties of administration since World War 11.

However, the census on Tanna was conducted with considerably less difficulty than was at first feared.

Only about 500 people were not enumerated out of a total population of nearly 11,000.

The main finding of the census was that the total population of the New Hebrides on May 28, 1967, was 77,988.

92 p.c. New Hebrideans

Of this figure, New Hebrideans numbered 72,243, or 92.6 per cent.

The biggest of the other ethnic groups were; Europeans, 1,773; Polynesians and Micronesians, 1,270; and part- Europeans, 1,151.

The non-New Hebridean popula tion tends to be concentrated in the urban and periurban areas of Vila and Santo, the report says. But the New Hebridean poulation in those areas is growing, and each town now contains, respectively, about 3,200 and 2,500 New Hebrideans from other islands besides those locally born.

There is an increasing tendency by young New Hebridean men to drift away from subsistence and vil lage agriculture to more sophisticated occupations.

On this subject, the census report says: “Whereas 80 per cent, of males aged more than 30 years who were gainfully employed were engaged in subsistence and village agriculture, less than 60 per cent, of those aged 15 to 29 years were so occupied”.

The report goes on to say that the New Hebridean population is probably increasing at about 2.5 per cent, per year, which means that it will double in less than 30 years if the estimated growth rate continues.

Work force

By 1982, the New Hebridean work force could be nearly 30,000 compared with fewer than 20,000 in 1967, while the increase in the number of school-age children is likely to be of similar magnitude or even larger.

Despite a surplus of males of most ages, the New Hebridean birth rate is more than double that of

lost populations of European origin, fhile the rate of natural increase 45 births and 20 deaths per 1,000 opulation) is considerably higher lan the corresponding rate in Aus ■alia (19 and 9 per 1,000).

After reviewing estimates of the opulation in the New Hebrides nee Europeans discovered the group i 1606, the report says: “There can e little doubt now that much of le old thinking about disastrous eclines in poulation numbers in the lew Hebrides should be discarded.

“Too many writers have accepted ncritically estimates of pre-contact opulations which had no more lundation in fact than the assump on that a large island must have a irge population, and the bigger the land the bigger its population must e.

Labour traffic losses

“At the other end of the time :ale, they have relied—equally un ritically—on inadequate or in implete population estimates, so lat the extent of the decline in umbers has been doubly exagger ted.

“In addition, epidemics and perhaps >me chronic diseases which have een introduced have been assumed ) fall equally on all populations hatever their size or distribution; tid despite all evidence that it was ot, the labour traffic to Queensland id Fiji is generally depicted as a le-way movement from which ractically no one returned.

“The effects of epidemics on popu ition size and structure, and thence i subsequent growth cannot be isessed, but the direct loss to the ipulation through the labour trade as probably little more than 10,000 eople over a span of 40 or more sars, and this represents a loss of ily a few hundreds each year.”