NEW GUINEA

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 64, Issue 4559, 13 April 1942, Page 7

NEW GUINEA

EFFECTS OF MANDATE RULE SLOW EVOLUTION

(By

E.T.)

What will be the fate of New Guinea’s natives if, temporarily, they must live under Japanese domination. This question deeply interests many former residents of the Territory, who have struggled with a native policy which yearly grew more complex. •

Native policy is a multi-sided question, and in New Guinea it was complicated still further by the League of Nations. A mandate implied in its literal translation a trust, and was not designed as an asset to the country to which it was apportioned. Australia observed the terms of the mandate in spirit and letter. Theoretically, the League’s native policy was well enough, but practically it had its 'weaknesses—in the elasticity of the system to meet the requirements of the individual, in the bewildering transition period between stone age and twentieth century—a period he was often asked to bridge in weeks—and' the acknowledged fact that the place to govern a country is from within that country and not from 10,000 miles away. NO PARADISE ON EARTH The contention amongst many that before the advent of the white man the natives lived in an island paradise, free from all cares and therefore content, is a myth. There is no earthly paradise, even for natives. Some of their conditions of living were at the other end of the scale. Then, with nothing to do but exist, they complicated life for themselves by building up elaborate social systems and cultures concerning pigs, canoes, shell ornaments, rings, head hunting, cannibalism. Life did not stand still even for them. The other school of thought—“that nothing native is any good”—is equally wrong. Denude a tropical country of its natives, and it is no longer tenable for Europeans. Take away a native’s customs and cultures and give nothing in substitution and depopulation commences at once. But every rightthinking and intelligent Australian who lived in New Guinea believed that there was a place for both white and brown, each contributing to the common good, and taking strength from each other. They also believed that it could be only through a stronger policy than the one in existence. White residents were primarily concerned in making a living, and in encouraging the native to help them do it. The kanakas to them fell into two classes—those who worked for Europeans and those who did not—and they were concerned with the first and not at all with the second, leaving them to the Administration, the missionaries and the recruiter. KANAKAS AT WORK At the Government post each recruit was medically examined, and then, through an interpreter if he could not speak pidgin, made his contract to work for one firm or individual at from 6s to 10s a month and rations, binding himself solemnly by pressing an inky finger print on to the contract form—a piece of hocuspocus that impressed the boy well. He was then issued with an enamel bowl, a spoon, a blanket, a gay cotton lap-lap and a small wooden “bokis” or alter-

natively, an army rucksack, and was considered fit to face the working world. Perhaps he would go hundreds of miles by steamer to ultimately become someone’s cook or houseboy, perhaps to a plantation to cut copra, or be carried by plane to the gold fields to dig for the yellow metal that had absolutely no value to his primitive mind. Kanakas worked the skips and mended the roads, drove taxis and lorries, became drink waiters, telephonists, nurse maids, gardeners, anything and everything that does not require a high degree of initiative. The majority worked at something that required some' energy, but no brains, and when their contract expired returned home with a collection of Japanese rubbish and forgot as quickly as possible any refinements they might have acquired abroad. The majority had some ability and ambition, and from these came the car drivers, the police boys, the semiskilled tradesmen and those rare domestic gems who are a fair substitute for the old family retainer. It is also from this class that the trouble maker evolves—the shrewd head with a little dangerous knowledge, who becomes a menace to both races. The sophistication of the kanaka in his native state varies with the contact he has had with Europeans. It is centuries since the white man made his first sporadic visits to the islands, although it was not until 1883 that Germany annexed what we now call our Mandated Territory, and the coastal natives naturally became more civilised than those in the hinterland. Then those near the missions, usually on the coast, had the advantage of a very elementary education. They are taught to read and write pidgin, and were usually persuaded to burn their wooden idols and “house tambarans” and take in their stead Christianity and a galvanised iron church. VENEER OF CIVILISATION Many villages in the Gazelle Peninsula region were comparatively wealthy, owing their own copra driers and boats. The inhabitants of Hatupi, near Rabaul, once had a Chevrolet saloon, which they ran as a taxi for mutual profit until it fell into disrepair. But inland this veneer of civilisation falls away, and the inhabitants are stone-age people, with life in slow tempo, regulated by the time it takes to work shell and wood with stone implements, and by the pace of foot travel. New Guinea’s population is large and increasing. One of the most populous areas is on the north-east of the mainland, where, as always, the degree of civilisation tapers sharply off from the coast until 30 or 40 miles inland primitive man carries on as did his forefathers. On the coastal strip life is bound up with the sea—picaninnies learn to swim and paddle an outrigger canoe as soon as they can walk. In the high dividing ranges the villages are small and scattered, the inhabitants ill-conditioned, with old men predominating. They are the weak people, who have been pressed back on both sides to find some sort of security in the mist-draped mountains. On the plains and plateaus and rolling foothills over the range are the large agricultural villages, with here and there on the hillsides chocolate patches of ground under cultivation, and around the thatched houses the inevitable cocoanut, banana and pawpaw groves. The villages are built on the summits of the hills, with “hap villages” or outer suburbs, straggling down the spurs, the whole forming a self-contained community, with its individual customs, and often an individual language, and each holding as aloof from neighbouring communities as do the smaller European States. TRIBAL CUSTOMS They all have their men, maries and picaninnies and the several kinds of

live. stock peculiar to kanakas —pigs, dogs and poultry—and none of them appear to have anything to do but exist. Yet one dimly feels the undercurrent of tribal custom and tradition, and the rigidly kept “must nots” and tambus. On the surface all is placid —the old men, thin and bony, grizzled hair and greying beard, dressed in nothing but a shell or a woven cane armlet or a ,few filthy rags and strings crouching over their fires and chewing a betel nut and lime—young men, with 8-foot throwing spears or bows, unashamed and natural in their nakedness—young women coy and giggling, wearing their little grass sporrans, or nothing at all—fat brown babies—repulsive old hags—self-reli-ant lads. It might have been thus hundreds of years ago or even a thousand or two. Yet their frail villages and attitude towards life have an atmosphere of permanency which our helter-skelter rush lacks entirely. Everything follows a plan for them, revolting though it might be to us at times; certain things are done, others forbidden; there are rules for men and for women, for the young and the old, for marriage ahd death and birth —all these things because it has always been so, and it is not in them t« become introspective or rebel merely for the sake of rebellion or because it may have become old-fashioned. They have their trade route down to the sea, but they are more, likely to be unfriendly than friendly with their neighbours. War, however, does not follow our plan—they have no stomach for hand-to-hand fighting, but rely on ambush and witchcraft, or “poison,” as it is called in New Guinea. They believe in an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, but if they can get it while the other fellow is not looking so much the better. Their evolution away from European contact is slow. Year by year time-expired labourers who have juggled fine china at ladies’ tea parties in Rabaul or had a reputation for sponge cakes and tasted other doubtful joys of civilisation go back to an existence like this. Their influence among their own people up to the present cannot be detected. Instead they discard their starched white laplap for a shell or a piece of bark, buy themselves a wife or a few pigs, and are content. Those who are not content do not return. WHITE MEN’S EXAMPLES But whether indentured labourers or in their native state, they have been taught to believe in the white man’s integrity, to give up war and bloodshed, and substitute for it arbitration and conciliation —to walk, if need be, 100 miles to bring their troubles, large or small, to a distant officer or one of his assistants. There were native hospitals at all Government posts where they could obtain treatment for diseases which they have suffered dumbly for generations —leprosy, yaws, fevers, elephantiasis, tropical ulcers —horrible in their way but responding to medical attention. There were Government patrols, and the scheme whereby suitable natives were trained as medical orderlies and sent back to their villages. They had their own courts and redress for their grievances. Theft- welfare has been a Government fetish for twenty years. Yet such is destiny that in the first Japanese bombing raid twelve of these natives were killed and thirty others wounded from flying bomb splinters. We introduced the aeroplanes, which they called “balus,” or pigeon—to them they were a symbol of our might and genius, for surely only the Godlike could take wing. Now death and destruction rain bn them from the skies, and there seems to be nothing we can do but wait and to wonder how we are to give back to them that confidence they had in us, that is the only sure basis of ruling a country that is 98 per cent, native.