THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINALS

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 6383, 4 December 1907, Page 6

THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINALS

One of the most interesting matters treated by Bishop White ; in bis discuason of North Australian problems is the question of the best way of dealing with the aborigines. The elaborate legislative provision made in this Dominion for safeguarding the interests of the native population stands out in sharp contrast with the haphazard measures hitherto adopted in Australia in respect of the blacks. This difference in the way of regarding the native question is possibly due to the general belief that the native race of Australia is unfit for co-existence with the white man, that it is bound to die out, and that it is hardly worth while to go to any great trouble preserve so low a type. The Bishop of Carpentaria is, however, of quite a different opinion. He does not think that the Hack is incapable of social, industrial, and spiritual progress, or that his speedy disappearance need be taken for granted.

According to Bishop White the position of the Australian aborigines has in the past been singularly ill-defined. Their rights hare beeen ignored. Their ancestral lands hare been expropriated without compensation and without any formalities of law. They are hustled off their lands for fear of disturbing cattle, with the result that they hare tj more on to the land of another tribe, which in Australia is a certain casus belli between tribe and tribe. Yet the few efforts that hare been made to turn the blacks into settled and industrious citizens hare met with a considerable amount of success. Various missions, the Anglican mission at Yarrabah, the Presbyterian at Mapoon, and the Lutheran at Oape Bedford, with that optimism which is the inspiration of all missionary work, hare attempted to establish communities of aboriginals in permanent settlements of their own, managed for themselres by themselres. At Yarrabah, near Cairns, there is such a community, numbering four hundred souls, wno cultirate some serenty acres of land and carry on, besides, a large fishing industry. This community possesses the complete social organisation of a white settlement—drill, gymnastics, fire brigade, rifle corps, police court, with a natire jury and judge assessor, and a council for administration. The homes of the married people are as well kept as those of the white population. There are none of the relapses into saragery, which are generally holered to be ineritable in the case of ciriliaed sarages. Further, the communities send out colonies of twenty or twenty-fire persons to settle neighbouring islands and adjacent spots within the resorre, and these colonies in their time reproduce the full social and industrial l.fe of the older communities, with no more superrision than a weekly risit from a white missionary.

As regards the alleged rapid decrease in the number of the blacks, the population of the Yarrabalh, eo far from diminishing, is beginning to increase, though slowly; and this being so, the Bishop asks whether it is too late to

give the 60,000 aboriginals still left in North Australia the place in tho Commonwealth to which they are entitled. He clearly thinks it possible that those thousands of blacks might take their share in the effective occupation of Northern Australia. Bishop White’s statement, of tho case is so hopeful and so humanely sympathetic towards the native race that we give his summing up of the situation in his own words:—

The whit© population of the whole Northern Territory of South Australia amounts, according to the last census, to 1075 persons, and that of tho northw'est of West Australia is, I believe, still smaller. Now, I, think it will be admitted that could we, without affecting the good lands suitable for cultivation without affecting the question of white immigration aud settlement, and without importing any aliens, add in a few years a population of 10,000 or 50,000 persons, earning their own living by agriculture, combined with hunting and fishing, well ■ disposed to the Government of the country because well treated by it, developing certain industries, which the ordinary white man will not touch, because they do not produce sufficient profit to justify high wages, scattered in half a dozen central and many other small groups over the more desolate and neglected regions, recognising that the territory on which they lived was their own, and that they would not bo disturbed in it, regarding themselves as loyal members of the Commonwealth, and taught in school their place and office in it, well drilled, accustomed to ride and run immense distances, knowing every rock and water-hole, keen to detect the least sign of a strange foot, and capable of a very real trust in and affection for the white man who is worthy of their trust. Could we placo such a population throughout Northern Australia, we should without prejudice to other and larger schemes have done a great deal to safeguard the north, and to justify, in the eyes of the world, our retention of it.

Bishop White proceeds to outline a scheme by which the Federal Government, by utilising various religious agencies, might, with a comparatively small expenditure of public money, establish the native population in colonies which would ultimately become self-supporting, and prove an invaluable agent in that occupation which alone can effectually exclude foreign nat ons who may claim the right to seize unoccupied lands. He does not suggest that the blacks could ever be turned into soldiers, but he thinks they would be invaluable for purposes of intelligence and communication.