MIXED BLOOD IN PACIFIC

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25735, 22 February 1949, Page 7

MIXED BLOOD IN PACIFIC

“No Biological Harm To Island Groups” CHIEF PROBLEM SEEN IN SAMOA The position and problems of peoples of mixed blood in the Pacific area was the topic for a symposium when delegates in the social sciences, anthropology, and public health sections of the Pacific Science Congress combined for sessions all day yesterday. “For most of the century and a half of its contact with western Europe. Polynesia has been a frontier to which have come or drifted alien populations, mostly small and mostly male,” said Dr. Ernest Beaglehole, of Victoria University College, Wellington. “These alien elements have mixed freely with the dominant Polynesian stock, thus continuing a process of racial intermixture that has gone on among Polynesian people since very early times. “The number of mixed bloods in the various island groups is difficult to estimate,” he continued. “Most census returns probably under-estimate very seriously the amount of miscegenation that has taken place. Biologically, the mixture between alien Europeans. Asiatics, and Polynesians has been of no harm to the island groups.” Offspring of mixed matings had generally been absorbed into native life and culture. Through consequent inter-marriages of the mixed blood back into Polynesian strains, minor amounts of alien heredity had been transmitted widely throughout most island groups, except those most isolated and, therefore, to-day most inbred.

Socially and economically, the mixed blood presented no particular problem in Polynesia, with the exception of Samoa, where a group labelled Europeans of part-Samoan ancestry represented a segregated group suffering from various legal and social disabilities. “A major problem of government in modern Samoa is to devise ways and means whereby this group can be absorbed into contemporary Samoan social and political life,” Dr. Beaglehole said. Position of Maoris “The Maori people is likely to remain a distinct element in the life of New Zealand for many years to come,” said Professor I. L. G. Sutherland, of Canterbury University College. The degree of Europeanisation varied from tribe to tribe. “There is much to be said at present for a conservative policy (in the proper meaning of conservative) of slowing down the rate of inevitable culture and personality change,” Professor Sutherland said. The attitude of white New Zealanders toward the Maoris varied from district to district. Indifference was probably the commonest feeling, though there was some genuine liking and respect and, where Maoris were numerous, some intolerance and discrimination. Recent official policy had been to place the Maori people “on terms of full equality with the pakeha.”

The 1936 census figures (the latest available) placed 32 per cent, of the total Maori population as of mixed blood, Professor Sutherland said, but this was certainly an understatement. Both full and mixed bloods had been increasing, but the latter more rapidly. Part-Maoris usually identified themselves with the Maori people and married within it. “There are no special problems of any importance applying to mixed bloods,” he added.