AUSTRALIAN NATIVES

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 124, 19 February 1938, Page 2 (Supplement)

AUSTRALIAN NATIVES

Not Cruelly Treated

EFFORTS AT BETTERMENT

“It is all very well for Professor F. Wood Jones to tell us that when Australia was first subjected to British colonisation there were 300.000 aborigines living happily and healthily. Earlier visitors—such as Pelsart in 1029 and Dumpier in 16SS—seem to have formed an unfavourable impression,” said Air. Hal Colebatch, AgentGeneral for Western Australia, in “The Times” recently.

In any event, a total population of 300,000 scattered over a territory as large as the Continent of Europe, and of which it had enjoyed undisputed occupation for countless centuries, does not suggest a particularly virile race. The number is at least as consistent with the probability of an already decaying people. “Times change, and when we are told that ‘Tasmania will never live down the extermination of her native race by cruelty and neglect,’ it is well to remember that at the beginning of the period of which Professor Wood Jones sneaks England was still actively engaged in the slave trade. Women and children were still employed in the coalmines of England, and in Tasmania itself convicts were not always gently treated. “The early settlers in each of the Australian Colonies had difficulties to contend against that cannot be fully appreciate! by people comfortably circumstanced in her great cities of today. Merely to sustain life involved a grim contest, and, if they had not in all cases the regard for the displaced native that might have been desired, it can be fairly claimed that their record is cleaner Tian that of any other similar pioneering community. There are many cases—several in Western Australia within my personal knowdedge—of families who for more than half a century have toiled arduously, with no comforts and very little material reward, to establish the cattle and sheep industries in the North of Australia, and who during the whode of that time have treated the natives with exemplary kindness and much wisdom, earning the warm affection of the many hundreds who, in making the station their home for the greater part of each year, have escaped much of the hardship that unquestionably attends those still outside the bounds of white civilisation. That there have been exceptions no one will deny, but Governments have been active in their prosecution of offenders.

In a leading article you [“The Times”] make reference to the amending legislation recently enacted by the Western Australian Parliament. This was largely the outcome of an exhaustive investigation by a Royal Commission appointed by the Government to advise upon matters in relation to the condition and treatment of the aborigines, of whom there are some 25,000 in Western Australia, about 10,000 being outside the influence of white civilisation. While the Commissioner was able to make many recommendations, the adoption of which it is hoped will improve the lot of the natives, he found no justification for the charges of widespread cruelty, slavery, wilful neglect. and ill-treatment that had been made against both officials and settlers. Natice Reserves. “In "Western Australia the reserves set apart for aborigines total nearly 25.000,000 acres. Medical attention, rations, etc., are provided. At Moola Bulla, in the Kimberley district, the Government established a large cattle station for the benefit of the aborigines 27 years ago. To this station natives come in large numbers, the average monthly attendance being about 120. They are all healthy, well nourished, and happy. There is a school for the children, and many of the natives make the station their permament home, entering actively into its life. They run a tannery, from which excellent leather is produced. Other stations and feeding depots have been established where care is given to indigent natives.

“The Government also supports by subsidy several missions conducted by different religious bodies, and few people having experience on the spot would be prepared to accept Professor Wood Jones’s wholesale condemnation of those institutions. It simply is not true that “most missionaries are like the one who declared that he thought the salvation of one native's soul was worth the death of the remainder.’’ The missionaries, almost without exception, lead hard, comfortless lives, and are earnestly devoted to the material as well a.s the spiritual well-being of those with whom they are able to establish contact. The story of Dorn Rosendo Salvado. the Benedictine priest, who established the mission station at New Norcia, in Western Australia, more than 90 years ago, is an epic of self-sacrifice, tireless effort, and almost superhuman endurance in this cause. Neither ’*e nor the many other diligent workers who have spent their lives in this field have found a solution to the problem of how to save the Australian aborigine from the fate that seems to be awaiting him. Neither the Australian Government »or the Australian people are callous or indifferent. They are not unwilling to adopt any -proposal that promises improvement, and perhaps the Professor's suggestion of a central anthropological administration of native affairs may be worthy of consideration: but it would lie essential that such an administration should be in the hands of men having a sense of proportion and a practical knowledge of pioneering difficulties, as well as profound anthropological learning.”