NATIVES SPOILED

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22468, 11 July 1936, Page 10

NATIVES SPOILED

MISSIONARY WORK POSITION IN NEW GUINEA ANTHROPOLOGISTS CRITICISM [from our OWN' correspondent] SYDNEY, July 2 After working among the natives of Mowerhafen, New Guinea, Mr. J. A. Todd, anthropologist, of Sydney University, has returned with a profound sceptisism of the value of the civilising work of the missionaries. He has been particularly interested to observe the disintegration of native customs and morality through contact with white men and their institutions. " The natives are being pacified," ha said, " but in the process of weaning them from one kind of internecine conflict, the missionaries are infecting them with the urge to new and bitter sectarian quarrels. The natives are highly temperamental, and in a family divided over religion, seeds of a violent schism are sown. To compel belief, the missionary falls back on the crudest forms of intimidation, telling the natives that if they do not accept what they are told the missionary will cause an earthquake. Incentive to Work Lost "For example, it is a custom in parts of New Guinea to take the skull from a recently-buried body and set ifc up, as a venerable relict, in a houso built for the purpose. Around these skulls the periodic feasts take place. The skulls thus become one of the great economic incentives of the tribe, driving the natives to rear pigs and grow yams out of respect for ,the dead. The missionary comes along and tells the native that it is sinful'to remove the heads of dead bodies, as the decapitated soul will not be able to enter Heaven. The native loses the incentive to cultivate his yam patch and his pigs, becomes lazy, and supports himself by dishonesty. After a while he gets to wondering how it is that so many saints decapitated in the service of their religion got into Heaven if the missionary is telling the truth. He is not such a fool, the native. A Very Strict Morality " The missionaries educate the natives, but education is not an end in itself. What does reading and writing fit a native of New Guinea for? They say that these educated natives may become clerks, but will there be a public service in New Guinea big enough to absorb all the natives? It is true also that the missionaries give medical service to the natives, but only too often these medical services are used as an instrument for spreading doctrine in the ceaseless war between Christian sects. " There is no question," Mr. Todd said, "that native society must change, but the point is how to change it for the benefit of all concerned. In Australia people think of the native as a poor heathen living in orgiastic abandon. That is far from the truth. He has a very strict morality."