SAVING THE NATIVES.

Evening Star, Issue 23189, 11 February 1939, Page 14

SAVING THE NATIVES.

It is a strange tiling that while the Commonwealth Government has done so much for the benefit of the natives in New Guinea, both in Papua and the mandated territory, so little care has been devoted to the Australian aborigines. Now, however, the Federal Cabinet has been stirred to action. It is announced that a scheme has been propounded v.-.i’er which it is proposed to create a native affairs department under the control of a director. For years there have been animated discussions on this matter. Missionaries and anthropologists have stressed the urgent need for practical protective measures. Impetus has been given to the movement by Dr Donald Thompson, a noted anthropologist, who submitted a report to the Commonwealth House of Representatives. The contention ho put forward was that segregation was the only way of saving the tribes from extinction. Convincing arguments were advanced for the adoption of such a policy. As a result of his slow mental development contact with civilisation was detrimental to the aborigine’s welfare. Too ready to adopt the white man’s bad habits, in the words of Dr Thorn-son, “ ho loses his grip, ho can get neither backward nor forward, and ho dies, ultimately, in a dreadful state of spiritual and cultural agnosticism, adrift in a no-man’s land between the world of the white man and the black.” In reply to infrequent claims that the native population was increas-

ing, Dr Thompson gave figures to show that on a North Queensland station a community declined in thirty years from more than 400 to less than 20. On the broad issue he declared emphatically that there was only one way to save the aborigines and that was by segregation. Arrangements will have to bo made with various States. That should not bo difficult now that a definite lead has been given by the Federal Government, fo. the native problem is to them a constant source of embarrassment. The ultimate object of tho new policy, it is said, is to raise the status of the aborigines to qualify them to accept the privileges and responsibilities of citizenship. This is in accord with tho views of Dr Thompson, who considers that it should bo the policy to maintain inviolable for tho natives special reserves until such time as the need for them may have passed. A separate department staffed by men selected for their sympathies and qualifications would, it is contended, remove the stigma now attaching to tho administration of native affairs in the Commonwealth, The treatment of the aboriginal since the coming of the white man is not of a nature of which tho Australian people can be proud.