MIXED BLOODS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27012, 22 February 1949, Page 6

MIXED BLOODS

RACIAL PROBLEMS IN PACIFIC SCIENTISTS EXCHANGE VIEWS PA CHRISTCHURCH, Feb. 21. The position and problems of peoples of mixed blood in the Pacific area was the topic for a symposium when delegates in the Social Sciences, Anthropology and Public Health sections of the Pacific Science Congress combined for sessions all day to-day. “For the century and a-half of its contact with Western Europe, Polynesia has been a frontier to which have come, or drifted, alien populations, mostly small and mostly male,” said Dr Ernest Beaglehole, of Victoria University College. “ These alien elements have mixed freely with the dominant Polynesian stock, thus continuing a process of racial intermixture that has gone on among Polynesian people since very early times, and the number of mixed bloods in the various island groups is difficult to estimate,” he continued. No Harm Biologically “Most census returns probably underestimate very seriously the amount of miscegenation that has taken place. Biologically, the mixture between alien Europeans, Asiatics, and PolyPolynesians has been of no harm to the island groups. , . . “ The offspring of mixed matings had generally been absorbed into native life and culture through consequent inter-marriages of mixed blood back into Polynesian strains. Minor amounts of alien heredity had been transmitted widely throughout most island groups, except those most isolated, and therefore to-day, mixed blood, socially and economically, presented no particular problem in Polynesia, with the exception of Samoa, where,, a group labelled Europeans of part-S&moan ancestry represented a segregated group suffering from various legal and social disabilities. “The major problem of government in modern Samoa is to devise ways and means by which this group can be absorbed into contemporary Samoan social and political life,” Dr Beaglehole said. Europeanisation Varies

“The Maori people is likely to remain a distinct element in the life of New Zealand for many years to come,” said Professor I. L. G. Sutherland, of Canterbury University College. The degree of Europeanisation varied from tribe to tribe. “ There is much to be said at present for a conservative policy—in the proper meaning of conservative —of the slowing down the rate of inevitable culture and personality change,” Professor Sutherland said. The attitude of white New Zealanders toward Maoris varied from district to district. Indifference was probably the commonest feeling, though there was some genuine liking and respect and where Maoris were numerous some intolerance and discrimination. Full Equality The recent official policy had been to place the Maori people “ on terms of full equality with the pakeha." The 1936 census figures, the latest available, gave 32 per cent, of the total Maori population as of mixed blood, Professor Sutherland said, but this was certainly an understatement. Both the full and mixed*blood population had been increasing, but the latter .more rapidly. Part-Maoris usually identified themselves with the Maori people and married within it. “ There are no special problems of any importance applying to the mixed bloods,” he added.