DEFIANT NATIVES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23281, 25 February 1939, Page 19

DEFIANT NATIVES

DWELLINGS DESERTED FEAR OF TREATMENT FALSE RUMOURS BLAMED [from our own correspondent] SYDNEY, Feb. 10 Eighty natives from the Cumeroogunga (N.S.W.) aboriginal station have stampeded in fear across tlio Murray River into Victoria. Tlio stampede resulted from an unfounded idea that endowment and food relief assistance were to bo stopped, and that native children were to bo taken away from their parents. There is no power in tho Act to enforce a native to live in a native settlement if lie does not desire to do so Tho onty power that tho Aborigines Protection Board has is to take control of native children if it can bo proved before a Children's Court magistrate that such children aro drifting into a bad life. Tho manager of the station, Mr. A. J. McQuiggan, said:—"There has been no violence, but the natives have been frightened. They believed that the station would be made into a close compound, and that they could not get out without a permit. Fear really gripped them, although they have been happy here for decades. By dribs and drabs, and then in big numbers, they set out in canoes and crossed the river, taking up their residence on tho Victorian side, near tho township of Barmali." About 100 of the natives are still defying the State of New South Wales. They are camped on a eucalyptus flat in hessian tents or in leaf-thatched gunyahs. Hardly more than a stone'a throw away across a still stretch of river is the Cumeroogunga gunyah settlement, with its neat homes from which they have fled. The "rebels" say that their crossing over to Victoria is a protest against malnutrition and unsympathetic treatment of tlieir race. Mr. McQuiggan said:—"Many of the aborigines go away fruit picking or shearing and make up to as much as £2OO a year, but still we keep tho wives and families here, housed, fed and clothed. Among 50 families here, there are 12 wireless sets and eight motor-cars. The belief that tho settlement is going to be turned into a compound and the families will be broken up is absolutely ridiculous, and tho story has been put around apparently to serve certain ends." J. T. Patten, of the Aborigines' Progressive Association, who gave evidence before the recent Parliamentary Select Committee into the conditions of natives, has been arrested on a charge of inducing natives to leave the Cumeroogunga station.