SEEDS OF SCHISM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 185, 6 August 1936, Page 21

SEEDS OF SCHISM.

CIVILISING NATIVES.

MISSIONARIES IN NEW GUINEA.

ANTHROPOLOGIST CRITICAL,

Jffter working among the natives of Mowerhafen, New Guinea, Mr. J. A. Todd, anthropologist at the Sydney University, returned recently with a profound scepticism concerning the value of the civilising work of the missionaries. ■ He has expressed his view in an interview with an Australian paper. Mr. Todd said he had been particularly interested to observe the disintegration of native customs and morality through contact with the white man and his institutions. "The natives are beinrr pacified/' Mr. Todd said, "but in the process of weaning them from one kind of internecine conflict, the missionaries are infecting them with the urge to new and bitter sectarian quarrels. The natives are highly temperamental, and in a family divided over religion, seeds of a violent schism are sown. Skulls and Their Meaning. "To compel belief, the missionary falls back on the crudest form of intimidation, telling the natives that if they do not accept what they arc told the missionary will cause an earthquake. For example, ; it is, in parts of New Guinea, the custom to take the skull from a recently buried body, and set it up as a venerable relic, in a house built for the purpose. Around these skulls the periodic feasts take place. The skulls thus become one of the great economic incentives of the tribe, driving the natives to rear pigs and grow yams out of respect for the dead.

"The missionary comes along and tells the native that it is sinful to remove Hi© heads of dead bodies, as the decapitated head will not enter heaven. The native loses the incentive to cultivate his yam patch and his pigs, becomes lazy and supports himself by dishonesty. After a while the native gets to wondering how it is that so many saints decapitated in the service of their religion got to heaven if the missionary is telling the truth. He is not such a fool, the native.

Education and Medical Service. "Yes," agreed Mr. Todd, "the missionaries do educate the natives, but education is not an end in itself. What does reading and writing fit a native of Xew Guinea for ? They say that these educated natives become clerks, but will there ever be a public service in New Guinea big enough to absorb all the natives ? "It is true also that the missionaries jT give medical service to the natives, but T-. • only too often these medical services 'are used as an instrument for spreading doctrine in the ceaseless war between Christian sects. "There is no question," Mr. Todd admitted, "that native society must change, but the point is how to change it for the benefit of all concerned., Down here people think of the native as a poor heathen living in orgiastic abandon.. That is far, far from the truth. He has ?_ a very strict morality, and when he to assume a morality he dues 'not understand, ; he nine times out of ten, nothing but a plain thief and a wastrel."