NATIVE ART.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 12, 15 January 1937, Page 9

NATIVE ART.

REVIVAL EFFORTS. i THE PLACE OF EDUCATION. » ADAPTATION TO NEW USES. Suggestions as to how the, interests of native races could be revived in their own arts were made to-day before the Australian and Xew Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science by Mr. F. E. Williams, Government Anthropologist in the territory of Papua. "The training of hand and eye is now recognised as an essential part of education," said Mr. Williams, "but manual training, in so far as it has been carried out, has been largely directed towards industrial ends. It is suggested that greater attention might be paid to such training for application to village needs, not only utilitarian, but aesthetic. We have concerned ourselves about the native's morals, his beliefs, his creature comforts and his capacity as a labourer. We have given toj little attention to him as an artist."

Native arts and crafts under the circumstances of European contact might take new forms, not always admirable, h» added, and they might decline or disappear altogether. "Education cannot take upon itself the task of rigidly controlling or forcing the artistic tendencies of a native people. The ideal is to train the pupils in taste and judgment so that they can make a satisfactory choice for themselves; then we must accept the choice they make as their own form of expression. But while recognising the value of self-determination in principle, it is held that we are at least entitled to re-direct the native's attention to his own arts and crafts so that he may choose whether he will develop them or drop them.

Their decline," Mr. Williams said,! was due primarily to the loss of motives brought about by European contact, largely as an indirect result of mission activity, the suppression of this or that custom often involving the decay of an art which was motivated by it The activities of curio-collectors were also considered a minor cause. One of the general causes was the contempt for their own cultures which was inculcated in some pupils by misguided educators." Practical measures are suggested in the paper for the revival of interest in the arte and crafts of Papua. It was proposed that they should be introduced into the school curriculum under the tuition of native experts. The old arts were to be adapted to new uses, and the commercial incentive was advocated, as providing some substitute for those motives which must disappear. "It iis regarded as essential to maintain the native's pride in his own culture and people," Mr. Williams continued, and in achieving this end' the cultivation and development of indigenous arts and crafts can play no insignificant