TRIBAL JUSTICE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 290, 7 December 1932, Page 10

TRIBAL JUSTICE.

ABORIGINAL MURDER. STRANGE IDEA OF VENGEANCE. PROBLEM OF PUNISHMENT. (From Our Own Correspondent.) . SYDNEY, December 2. Laist year at the Forrest River mission station, in the north of West Australia, a black belonging to the mission was killed, and Harry Smith, a missionary, was charged with murdering him. Smith was acquitted, but the aboriginals in that part of the country, whose ethical code includes a principle analogous to the Maori "utu," decided that someone niltet die to make reparation for the blood spilt. In such cases, it seems, the blacks do not think it absolutely necessary to kill the murderer. "Often, in their strange psychology, a gin or child may be sacrificed who has no obvious relationship to the killer or the killed." In this instance, four blacks of the King River country took upon themselves the duty of exacting vengeance, arid, for reasons quite unintelligible to the civilised mind, they resolved to make a victim of a young gin who had nothing to do with the dead man or the missionary. With the help 3f two other women they lured the gin from her camp, then epeared her, and proceeded to ' eat portion* of the body ind to drink the blood", annotating,themselves with it "to make them strong."

Sentenced To Death. The crime was reported to the authorities, and Constable Marshall, one of the most experienced of the Northern Territory police—the rc.-euer of Bertram, the German aviator —tracked the murderers down. They were tried- at Wyiulham this week and sentenced to death, and an interesting controversy has arisen as to whether the sentence ought to be carried out. It should be remembered t!iat the jury, in recording- their verdict, made a recommendation for mercy on the ground that "the murder was purely a tribal matter," while Dr. Webeter, Protector of Aborigines, who appeared at the trial, pointed out that the four culprits were not "mission natives," and therefore had no conception of civilised ideas about the sanctity of human life.

"Bush Law." In Sydney, the opinions of men qualified to speak from experience of the aboriginals and i':e strange workings of their minds, have Ven freely quoted, and I will refer to two of these recognised authorities. Lan Idriess, the author of "Flynn of the Tnland," "Men of the Jungle," and other books dealing with the aboriginal.-, and the native life and character, maintains that "it would not be worthy of the white man"* civilisation to an uncivilised black man under such circumstances." A similar view ha* been expressed within the past two days in Sydney by the Rev. J. H. Needham. who is president of the Australian Board of Minions, and vice-president of the association for the' Protection of Native Racrs. "It is acknowledger! by all who understand the aboriginals."' sap. Mr. Needham, "that in trLile of bush natives, bu&h law should be taken into consideration." His association ha.3 already requested the Federal Government to provide native Courts for such cases, and he adds that "in Pamia the Administration would consider it absurd to try the native according to British law." Some punishment, of course, there must be, but it is finite irrational to prjtend that the aborigines am not actuated by regard for their own law or that they can have any instinctive respect for ours.