PROBLEM OF ABORIGINES’ EGALATARIAN SOCIETY

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27990, 9 June 1956, Page 5

PROBLEM OF ABORIGINES’ EGALATARIAN SOCIETY

MISSION AR Y BISHOP

[Reviewed by

L.R.H.]

The Bishop With 150 Wives By F. X. Gsell. Angus and Robertson,

PPFor more than 40 years the Roman Catholic Bishop of Darwin Dr. F X Gsell. has been famous throughout Australia and known through much of the world for his work among Australia's aborigines m the Northern name became, in fact, world news when some bright and semiaccurate newspaperman described him as the Bishop with 150 wives. The Bishop, a shrewd Frenchman, and even more saintly than he is intelligent, had abolished child marriages among natives on Bathurst Island near Darwin by the simple expedient, which no one else had thought of, of buying all the girl children from their parents and their promised husbands. The girls were then brought up in the island mission and returned to their tribes as free women at the age of 18. They could then marry a native of their °'“Bishop C with 150 Wives” is Bishop Gsell’s own story of his 50 years in a mission field as tough as any in the world-wide missions of his Church Originally written in a sparkling French it at first defied adequate translation, but finally a happy compromise was reached by the use of a French writer, who also wrote English well, who worked from a literal translation and has managed brilliantly—almost entertainingly—to maintain the Gallic sparkle of a remarkable book. Few people in the world know Australia’s aborigines as well as Dr. Gsell He speaks their language (which few white men ever really contrive to do), he has lived with them for 50 years, and he is a genuine expert on their tribal customs and laws. Some of his observations will surprise many readers. On the theory that the aborigines of Australia come lowest in the human scale, and in fact are so near animals that their capacity for a spiritual life can be questioned. Dr Gsell is scathing. ‘‘They possess a conscience,” he writes. “They are capable of mental, even intellectual and spiritual processes and, given an opportunity, they can reach as standard as the best. What they have lacked is certainly not intelligence. Dr. Gsell is perhaps most interesting of all in his explanation based on observation and knowledge, of what it is that does keep the - aboriginal in his backward state. It is because, he says, their social system is communism, ‘‘not the diluted form practised as a political system in parts of the world today, but an integrate, absolute communism.” Thus if anyone with any faith in communism as i a practical system of government

wants to see what it all leads to, he should, in the view of Dr. Gsell, live for some time among the aborigines, and study their lives and habits. ‘ I am certain he would return cured of his illusions,” the Bishop adds dryly. The aborigines in their own words are “all on the same level.” , There are neither high nor low, rich nor poor, master nor servant, bosses nor employees, powerful nor weak, proletarian nor bourgeois. None cultivate the land. Private property is unknown, because everything belongs to everybody without exception, unless it be. to a certain extent, their wives and their weapons. All power is concentrated in the powers of the elders of the tribe, who form what in European parlance would be called the “party” and all outside the party do not count. Outstanding personalities will finish with an anonymous spear through their bodies, because no one is allowed to speak any louder than the others, and the head emerging from the crowd is cut off. ‘‘To go either more quickly or more slowly than the others is a sign of rebellion which merits severe punishment.” • The effects of the system. Dr. Gsell says, are to remove even the faintest hope of progress among the natives, left to themselves. No one will build a house or sow a field with crops, because what he builds and what crops he reaps will be collective property. So no one man will be stupid enough to work for the benefit of the others, and as a result no one does anything. “This explains in many ways the permanent character of aboriginal poverty,” says Dr. C sell. “They seem to be heirs of a myth with an origin as yet undiscovered, which in effect is a simple formalism based on terror.” The Bishop has symoathy for both sides —for puzzled, well-meaning officials trying to be fair and for the aborigines themselves—in the race problem which faces Australia if the aborigines are to continue even to exist, let alone assimilate the ways of the white men. He thinks the wisest policy in future dealings should be to serve the interests of the natives first, since they are the least numerous and the least favoured. He thinks that rather than being abandoned to their own devices (and their own anachronistic social system under which they can never improve) the natives should first be guaranteed their possessions, and then be joined little by little, in carefully supervised stages by white men who by settling quietly and gently on native land would obviate the shock that would be caused by mass invasion. Until they had learned to raise their own herds, the aborigines, the Bishop thinks, might well be employed as shepherds, and harmony might thus be preserved in a time of transition. The chapter which deals with the

Bishop’s first action against the men ace of child marriages, under a system where a woman, of any age, was never more than a chattel, is a fascinating piece of writing. H' has a vivid descriotion, too, of the Japanese air raids on Port Darwin, and a depressing comment on the number of half-castes now in the Northern Territory, who pos? special difficulties in their assimilation into Australian life.