2 April 1938
INTRODUCTION: ABORIGINAL RESERVES
This report arises from enquiries made in the course of investigation into the activities of certain Northern Territory missions, with a view to the granting of subsidies. The matters there investigated proved so diverse and the subject of mission activities in certain areas was found to be so intricately involved with other apparently unconnected matters, that it has been decided to preface the main report with a subsidiary one on aboriginal reserves. The report unfortunately has become lengthy, but it is submitted as an effort at a comprehensive summary of certain aspects of aboriginal protection, which should prove useful to the Minister in considering policy as affecting reserves and missions.
It may be inferred that the purpose of a reserve is to protect the aboriginal from the destructive effects of the impact of white civilisation and it is conceivable, therefore, that reserves may be either:-
(a) Inviolable reserves, designed completely to isolate the aboriginal from extraneous influence of all kinds so that he may continue to live in accordance with native customs, completely unaffected by the development of a progressive alien civilization across the border;
(b) Controlled reserves, designed to regulate the tribal life within the reserve, with a view to the aboriginal’s ultimate adaptation to admission to the new advanced civilization, so that he may enter it with full capacity to enjoy its advantages without having been seriously affected by its sinister influences.
(a) Inviolable reserves. – The effect of such a reservation is to give an area of land the status of a sanctuary, within the boundaries of which the aboriginal lives and moves and has his being as a museum specimen, with the difference that theoretically there should be no observers to study him. It is debatable whether there is any moral justification for this arbitrary exclusion of the aboriginal from the benefits of modern social organization. The native organization has been evolved by him to suit he peculiar conditions existing in this Continent prior to white settlement. Particularly, one may quote the absence of big game and the lack of any domestic animal or crop developed to a stage suitable for intensive culture. Under the conditions prevailing, the aboriginal found it necessary to limit his population, to migrate from water to water in small hordes and to live upon the yield of the hunt, supplemented with fruits, honey and roots occurring naturally in the area traversed.
Is it logical to assume that the aboriginal of all human races is unwilling or incapable of developing beyond this stage once the natural factors under which he became adapted to it cease to operate? The new civilization offers him domestic animals, crops and the means of cultivation. The avidity with which tribesmen throughout Australia have left their hunting grounds and remain in the vicinity of white settlement in response to the attraction of a white dietary is sufficient indication that this mode of life is preferred to the old one. The well-recognised natural aptitude of the aboriginal for pastoral work reveals that he is not incapable of adaptation to a mode of life which the circumstance of his original deprivation of suitable animals has made novel to him. The history of the human race has been the history of hunters who, having recognised the advantages of domesticating their quarry, have become pastoralists and later have applied the same principle to the cultivation of plants used for food and other domestic purposes. One may assume that the peculiar conditions prevailing in Australia were met along different lines by the aboriginal inhabitants bit it does not follow that this race is not progressive. All experience in Australia has shown that the aboriginal is willing and capable of following the precedent of all other races in developing a higher civilization and it does not appear just that he should be compulsorily prevented from such development.
There are features, moreover, of the inviolable reserve which are calculated to make it ineffective if not actually noxious. The hunting grounds of individual tribes of necessity cover a very extensive area and, if a reservation designed to secure to a large number of tribes their hunting and ritual grounds is contemplated, it must embrace a vast section of territory. This assumes that it must have a very considerable length of frontage. In order that the reserve may remain inviolate, this frontage must be patrolled; all sections of it must be under observation every day and every night. Quite obviously this is impossible.
Not only must access be denied, persons outside the reserve but egress must be denied aboriginals inhabiting it. If this is not done, the natural urge of the aboriginal to avail himself of the amenities of the higher civilization will bring him off the reserve and he will return to it after clandestine contact with vices and disease, which he will disseminate through the reserve amongst his fellows. As the reserve is assumed to be inviolate these may develop, unknown to authority, until population on the reserve is degraded by vice and decimated by disease. Surely, this is not the purpose for which the inviolable reserve is intended.
There are features of normal tribal life of which the continuance on uncontrolled, inviolable reserves the Administration must take cognizance. Even assuming that the Government may, without compunction, connive the practice of cruel initiation ceremonies and such bitterly controversial matters as ritual rape, it is difficult to reconcile a policy of aboriginal protection with official connivance of tribal murder. Time and time again, we learn that an aboriginal, who has died of natural causes, is believed by his superstitious fellows to have been the victim of magic practised by a neighbouring tribe. The injured clan identifies the offender by methods of its own and the unsuspecting victim is, in turn, murdered. Retaliation follows, and so is commenced a vendetta which continues through succeeding generations. If the Commonwealth can view with complacency this serious factor of unrest and depopulation, it may subscribe to the principle of the inviolable reserve. In my own mind, however, I cannot reconcile the principle of aboriginal protection with such tolerance. Furthermore, the repercussions of these tribal murders are not confined within the limits of the inviolable reserve and eventually civilized, or partly civilized, natives become involved. These are strictly no more guilty than their less- civilized fellows, yet in their case the law must take its course.
The reservation of huge area of land for the exclusive use of the uncivilized aboriginal may constitute a national menace. Apart from the financial loss to the Commonwealth, occasioned by its failure to exploit the natural wealth of the area, this very neglect may serve as an argument for the foreign races to use in demanding, if necessary by force of arms, access of their nationals to it. It is not to be supposed that the Commonwealth’s solicitude for the myall aboriginal would be shared by an aggressive foreign people and the sparse population of the areas concerned, resulting directly from our neglect to exploit them, would make invasion easy and fence practically impossible. It should not be overlooked, moreover, that the aboriginal would be entirely devoid of appreciation of the efforts that the Commonwealth had made to preserve him in his native state and would be likely to render the invader every possible assistance as otherwise.
The inviolable reserve is an illusion. It is undesirable and impracticable. The principal argument for it is the prevention of the evil effect of white civilization on aboriginals encountering it for the first time. It should be recognised, however, that hitherto the aboriginal has been brought first time contact with the lowest strata of white society, wholly unprepared for such a contact. No serious effort has been made to adapt him to white civilization before introducing him to it. There is, therefore, the alternative of the controlled reserve, devoted to this purpose.
If, however, we resort to interference, we must recognise that there can be no compromise. The policy of the missionary, to which reference is made elsewhere, that interference should be as far as possible compatible with the retention of tribal organization and unobjectionable native custom, is fallacious. Once having interfered, we must admit the necessity of proceeding step by step until existing social organization has been completely demolished and replaced by a new structure adapting the aboriginal to an economic life in the white community.
(b) Controlled reserves. – If reserves are not to be inviolable, it would appear that inviolable reserves are at once undesirable and impracticable, it must be determined what degree of control is to be exercise upon a reserve whose primary purpose is the protection of the aboriginal during his development. To this end, brief reference should now be made to the manner in which the aboriginal is adversely affected by first contact with civilization.
The evil effects of the impact of civilization may be broadly summarised as the exploitation of the existing native social structure to moral and economic abuse. The moral factor may be exemplified by the experience resulting from plurality of wives. Ordinarily, tribal social structure provides that the old men usually have a number of wives, some old like themselves, some much younger. The apparent purpose of this provision is the safeguarding of the aged during the years when senility has rendered them unfit to hunt and thereby maintain themselves. Its result within the tribe is the placing of the female in a status not paralleled in white civilization. She is definitely a chattel provided as a source of livelihood and she may be traded without moral sanction in any capacity by her husband. Obviously she will be used to obtain a means of subsistence. Within the tribe this type of marriage serves the dual purpose of :-
(i) controlling the birth rate;
(ii) ensuring the maintenance of the aged.
When the tribe is brought into contact with a foreign race the hire of the woman for immoral purposes, in exchange for food, becomes at once a logical and profitable transaction. From this step no very great distance need to b traversed before the prostitution of the female, in exchange for opium, alcohol and tobacco, becomes recognised commercial enterprise and sale, with its unrecognised destructive effect on the whole social structure, is not far beyond.
This is an extreme instance of the demoralising effect of the impact of white civilization upon the native social structure. A less conspicuous effect is that following the breaking down of sanctions imposed by certain tribes upon the appearance of women in public. In certain of the eastern tribes, particularly those of Groote Eylandt, females must not see, and must be seen by, certain males of the tribe. This sanction applies universally to aliens of both sexes. The activities of missions, encouraging as they do the bringing of females to the mission for medical attention or rationing and the co-education of the sexes in the schools beyond an ages where these sanctions should operate, must involve ultimately revision of the moral code and social structure to embody these offences. It is not necessary, therefore, to attribute the breaking down of social organization only to the open and avowedly evil influence of white civilization, for even the best-intentioned and least subject to reproach may be equally a noxious.
Economic factors contributing to the demolition of the social structure and leading to anarchy may be exemplified from the pastoral industry. When a grazier forms a station in the tribal area of a native tribe he is immediately confronted with the native problem. If the aboriginals in his vicinity have not tasted the pleasures of white civilization and if he himself does not desire to make contact with them, he may, for a time, be able to engage in industry independent of them. Very soon, however, the natives will awake to the possibilities of the bullock as a source of meat supply and he will begin to lose large numbers of his stock from predatory hunters. The conditions of his lease deny him the redress of clearing the aboriginals from his holding – they are free to wander and to hunt all over it as the whim takes them. Even before cattle-killing commences, and even if it does not commence at all, the camping of aboriginals around water holes and their engagement in hunting there seriously impedes the profitable running of cattle, for these are necessarily harassed and kept in poor condition by their reaction to the constant native activity to which they are exposed. The grazier must therefore ultimately take cognizance of the aboriginal and do what he may within the law to meet this problem.
A solution almost universally adopted and, be it admitted, encouraged by the Government, is for him to encourage the numbers of the tribe to live, more or less permanently, near his homestead, where he can keep them under observations. They are induced to remain here by the issue of flour, tea, sugar, tobacco, beef and so forth.
It is at this point that the grazier realises that it is more economical to use native labour than to feed all natives unemployed and he begins to train the youths a stockmen and to employ any lubras as domestics and gardeners. Here the vicious cycle enters upon a new evolution, for by taking from the senile the young natural hunters and gatherers of native food, they are automatically rendered more dependent upon the diet provided by the employer. If this diet be adequate and well-balanced, little economic harm need follow, but usually the issues are confined to bread and beef, without regard to quantity or quality, and the natural resistance of the native to nutritional and infectious disease is destroyed, so that he becomes even more dependent upon the employer and may cause the youth to continue in employment under conditions approximating to slavery.
Nor are the ill-effects confined to the economic aspects. Tribal sanctions, in respect of association between individuals, the traversing of sacred localities by youths and women and the performance of certain tasks repugnant to the native culture, must perforce be undertaken at the behest of the employer, utterly unaware of the tribal significance of the instructions given. Nevertheless, the economic duress under which the tribe as a whole is labouring demands that the tribal authority shall waive these sanctions in respect of the individual, in the interests of the body politic, and so the destruction of the tribal organization inexorably proceeds. Young men lose interest in, or learn to scoff at, tribal ritual and social law and the old men, under economic pressure and disheartened by the anarchy they see around them, fail to transmit their lore to the rising generation, until finally there remain a number of individual natives with no place in the white community and with no social structure of their own.
Accepting the principle that reserves are not to be inviolable, they should be used as training grounds for the aboriginal where, secure from malign influence during his impressionable stage, he may be fitted to develop them as a stable economic unit or, at worst, to co-operate in their development without suffering socially or economically from the contact with white civilization which this co-operation entails.
There are various methods by which this transition phase may be bridged:-
(a) By permitting approved white enterprise to exploit the resources of the reserves and train the aboriginal in industry, paying royalty for rights. The disadvantages of this method have already been enumerated. As experience has shown that effective control, under these circumstances, is impossible, it is to be anticipated that these disadvantages could not be eradicated by official action and this method could not be adopted with any expectation other than that the calamities which overtaken the native race elsewhere in Australia, under this system, will be repeated.
(b) By permitting mission activity, controlled and directed to this end.
(c) By the establishment of Government stations. From the standpoint of aboriginal welfare, it is probably that this method is the ideal, ensuring as it does wisely directed and carefully co-ordinated effort and the moulding of policy in conformity with a wealth of experience gained over a wide area. On the other hand, there are the following considerations which make the use of missions for this purpose preferable:-
(i) The cost of Government stations would presumable be born entirely by the Government. Quite appreciable sums of money are annually available, by voluntary subscription, for mission purposes and this would doubtless be diverted elsewhere should the Government assume full responsibility. If it were possible, by some measure of Government control, to eradicate the evil influence of missions without taking full control, this circumstance may render the delegation of this function to missions preferable to the establishment of Government stations.
(ii) There is a class of individual prepared to make welfare work amongst aboriginals a life objective. Experience has shown that these persons of high ideal and singleness of purpose are more common amongst mission staffs than they are in Public Servants. Unfortunately, there are amongst missionary personnel individuals of low intelligence and poor capacity, who find missionary work an avenue of employment agreeable to them. It offers them a livelihood which their personal ability and merit could not elsewhere obtain, it affords the idle and incompetent a safe and comfortable existence and it places person of subject mentality into positions of authority which only too often are exploited by their vanity to establish them as autocrats whose administration, inspired by personal advantage, marred by indolence and unguided by intelligence, has a disastrous effect upon the welfare and morals of native people.
Mission bodies, moreover, appear to take no steps to ensure that personnel are free from infectious or epidemic disease. The introduction of tuberculosis may be traced, on at least two missions, directly to the appointment of missionaries afflicted with this condition.
None of these disadvantages would be offered upon a Government station.
(iii) Mission organizations have spent considerable sums in the past in establishing stations in the Territory. Notwithstanding the very great advantages to be gained by abolishing these missions and substituting Government stations for them, it is possible to plead that these pioneers, who have sacrificed so much, actuated only by the highest motives, should be given an opportunity of continuing, provided they can remove the objectionable features which have impelled the Government to interfere.
Under all circumstances, therefore, it is recommended that missions be given this opportunity, provided they submit voluntarily to strict Government control.
SUBSIDISING OF MISSIONS
It is not an easy matter to orientate a missionary in his precise relationship to aboriginal welfare and Government responsibility for native races. Most missionaries appear to be somewhat vague as to the purpose and policy of mission activity. Most are agreed that the primary object is “to bring the aboriginal to a knowledge of God”. In response to attacks, which have been numerous in the past, arising out of the disastrous effect of the propagation of Christian teaching by mission methods, this general policy is now usually vaguely modified by the addition of the palliative “as far as is compatible with non-interference with tribal organization and unobjectionable native customs”.
Arising out of this amendment to the policy, one may wonder why the Christianization of the native has been undertaken at all. The answer given me has been the recognised obligation of all Christian churches “to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every people”.
The relation of Government to missions has been for many years indefinite. Formerly, all missions were subsidised, more or less liberally, but the purpose of the subsidy was not stated, nor was its basic defined. It appears to have been assumed that it is in the best interest of the aboriginal and of the State that mission activity should be encouraged and when a mission pleaded that it needed financial assistance to continue its work, this assistance was granted. Practically all over the British Empire missions are subsidised by Government, on the ground that they provide an education system for the native population which the local administration prefers not to establish for itself. Other countries, notable U.S.A., prefer to provide their own system of education for native peoples. In Australia, the subsidies appear to have been granted on no specific basis whatever and certainly have no relation to the education of aboriginals, although the practice probably originated in adherence to British precedent. If it be the policy of the Government to educate aboriginals, either on reserves or generally, consideration may be given to subsidising missions on this basis, but a decision should not be reached until the following evil results of mission activity have been given due consideration:-
- Missions almost universally demand that the mission area must be a native reserve. They neglect the detribalised aboriginal, devastated by disease, disrupted by the impact of white civilization and lost in the new social order, and clamour for concessions in inviolable reserves, where they feel they will not be confronted with the insuperable difficulties obtaining in the vicinity of towns. The result is that the aboriginal who needs assimilation into the white community, elementary education and the inculcation of a moral and social code to replace that which he has lost, is thrown into the discard by the people who most loudly claim that he is the white man’s responsibility. On the other hand, the native, living happily in his own country, for the most part secure from molestation and the impact of white civilization, is selected as field for mission endeavour. The process of social disruption, so loudly lamented and deplored by missionaries, where its effects are seen, is deliberately commenced by them in areas where otherwise the native organization might remain intact for generations.
- To me it does not seem possible to Christianize the Australia aboriginal without destroying his social organization. The clans and tribes have no titular chieftain and their organization is wholly dependent upon the dominance of the elders. This dominance is based upon the elders being the repository of native lore, sanctions, ritual and ceremonial, inculcated through the years in a series of initiation ceremonies. Amongst tribes elsewhere in the world, it has been possible to effect Christianization without social disruption, simply by securing the goodwill and conversion of the chieftain. This is not possible amongst aboriginals. The very principles of Christianity, with its abhorrence of certain of the essential native ceremonies of initiation, make it incompatible with the native organization. It should be noted that if conversion where universal and complete, the existing native social organization must be utterly destroyed and, unless the mission provides a substitute, every individual must become an isolated unit, with no place in the white community and deprived of any tribal social structure to embrace him. Most racial religions of an elemental nature provide a scaffolding for the social organization. Christianity, as a religion, could be grafted on to the social organization of the aboriginal, the ill-effects attending mission activity would not be felt, but as has already been stated, it is incompatible, in many respects, with native social culture and the mission, having made no effort to replace the structure which it has destroyed in inculcating Christianity, the effects are usually disastrous.
- The evil effects of mission activity, in its present form, are not confined to the abstract philosophical factors contributing to social disruption. Normally, the aboriginal moves in small members over a considerable area of country, living upon I as he moves and never staying long enough in one camp seriously to affect the plenitude of game or to exhaust vegetable sources of food supply. Mission policy, however, is to concentrate large members, more or less permanently, in one particular spot, so that all may be convenient for Christina teaching over a prolonged period. The effect of this is very considerably to increase the number of people endeavouring the live in the area concerned, so that natural food supplies become very rapidly and permanently depleted and the natives become more and more dependent upon the artificial food issued them by the mission. Being wholly ignorant of the principles of dietary, but very much attracted by the refined features of European foodstuffs, they tend to remain abandoning, to a great extent, native forms of sustenance and adhering to the mission diet. If mission dietaries were chosen with enlightenment and issued liberally, this need not necessarily be a matter of great importance. The Medical Service has found that mission dietaries are uniformly inadequate and even positively damaging. A serious outbreak of Scurvy occurred at Hermannsburg owning to the persistence of the mission in issuing an inadequate and unbalanced diet. A diet of similar nature, at present being issued at Bathurst Island, has had very serious results in impeding the growth of aboriginal children and fostering hookworm anaemia.
- As a measure of economy, missions encourage aboriginals to bring native food to the mission to eke out the meagre European supplies. They also engage in a certain amount of agriculture for the purpose of substituting locally- grown vegetable matter – sweet potatoes and cassava appear to be the most popular. Payment for these services is usually made in tobacco, a convenient and cheap currency. The cheapness of tobacco lies in the fact the once the habit is inculcated, aboriginals will resort to almost any length to obtain even small supplies and, by judicious restriction of issues, the missionary, once having successfully introduced the habit, may inflate its value to the aboriginal to a figure out of all proportion to its relative cost. Thirty pounds weight of game may be bought by the missionary for a stick of tobacco, which costs him less than sixpence to land, whilst the equivalent weight of salt beef would cost him not less than 5/-, obtained in the cheapest market. Similarly, a week’s work in the mission garden may be obtained for a stick-an-a-half of tobacco, developed in the aboriginal by the missionary, becomes a potent force in his subsequent degradation by exploiting races when the time comes, as it inevitably must, for him to leave the mission.
- The aboriginal has no organized system of sanitation but his natural freedom from enteric infection, his superstitions relating to bodily excreta and his mobile habit protect him effectually. When large number of aboriginals, however, are herded in a small area where, under missionary influence superstitions are, to some extent, removed, and when helminth and enteric infection is introduced by alien peoples, there is a very real danger in this lack of sanitation. Notwithstanding this, missions, for the most part, make no effort to inculcate a knowledge of hygiene amongst the natives. So scandalous was the state of insanitation revealed to the Board of Enquiry investigating the Roper River Mission some years ago, that the Chief Medical Officer recommended to the Minister that he insist on a regular inspection of missions by an officer of the Medical Service. The Minister directed that this be done, and it was the discovered that the conditions at Roper River were typical of those obtaining at all missions. When instructions were given for the correction of these defects some missions offered bitter resistance, arguing that the procedures directed were alien to, and incompatible with, the native mentality. The Medical Service took the view that they were not more alien to, or incompatible with, natively mentality than were the articles of Christian dogma, the cultivation of the soil and the domestication of livestock, and it was felt that if the missionary could, with reasonable optimism, pursue his Christian teaching, there was no reason why he should not make an endeavour to teach the principles of hygiene. Compliance with this instructions, therefore, was enforced and it was very soon found that mission objections could not be sustained.
- One effect of mission activity is the development in the aboriginal of new cultural and economic wants. This fast appears to have been overlooked by the missions themselves, for the finished product of the mission school, taught to be appreciate and need the legitimate amenities of white civilization, is left without the opportunity of enjoying them, except by migrating from the reserve to centres of settlement. The mission, by its very activity, destroys the native culture that normally holds the aboriginal on his tribal area, it develops cultural and economic wants in the detribalised native, and then makes no effort to ensure that these shall be provided for him in his own country once he has left the mission school. The result is that he will take every opportunity of obtaining them for himself at centres of settlement elsewhere, migrating from reserves, to the despair of the missionaries, or congregating in the vicinity of fishing camps along the Norther littoral. Missions, however long established, have found it impossible to compete even with Japanese pearling crews for the simple reason that, whilst the former have inculcated in the native a craving for European dietary and tobacco, they have no taken the precaution to ensure the healthy gratification of these wants, which the missionary has developed and left unprovided for, and the mission then has recourse to abuse the Government for not preventing the traffic.
Actually, it is doubtful which influence is the more sinister in relation to the tribal social structure. The Japanese merely exploit the existing social organization and their influence is transitory. The mission, on the other hand, is definitely destructive and its effects permanent.
The following is a quotation from a report furnished to the Methodist Synod by a Northern Territory missionary :-
“The general mission policy of today has weaknesses in that it tends to create in the native a sense of dependence upon his would-be benefactor. Very little genuine improvement is shown and, in all too many cases, laziness, thieving, sweating, gambling and other vices, become evident. Generally speaking, as far as North Australian stations are concerned, gifts of food, tobacco, etc. are the most powerful factors in keeping natives on the settlement and it is doubtful if the people would settle at all and do light work if tobacco, or the means to it, were not given them. This amounts to a bribe to keep the native on the mission”.
When pearling crews were working shall-beds to the northwest of Bathurst Island, the Superintendent of the mission there found that it was impossible to prevent the natives congregating in the vicinity of camps favoured by the Japanese crews between neap tides. It was seriously suggested to the mission by aboriginals that they should provide them with the food, tobacco and other attractions which drew them to the Japanese. To this end, the mission asked the Government for additional subsidy.
The same experience is now being shared by Goulburn Island, Millingimbi and Yirrkala. When I visited Goulburn Island I was informed by the Superintendent that he had had no rations for issue to natives for some time and by far the greater number of his people had left for points along the norther littoral, where they could make contact with the Japanese. The same was true at Millingimbi and Yirrkala.
7. The concentration of aboriginals on mission stations and the importation of European disease inseparable from the staffing of these stations by European drawn from various parts of the world, constitutes a standing menace to health. The hygienic aspect of this matter has already been discussed, but it is noteworthy that, although missions claim that their medical work is one of their principal objects and although it is advanced as an argument for substantial subsidy, there is not a mission in the Territory which has provide so much as a suitable premises for the isolation of infectious disease. Treatment is very elementary and, I am afraid, in the vast majority of cases, futile. It has been reported, for instance, that the treatment of gonorrhoeal urethritis, at one mission, was the wholly ineffectual submergence of the glans penis in a tobacco tin of dilute potassium permanganate solution. Some improvement has followed the regular medical inspection of missions, particularly in the direction of the erection and equipping of small dispensaries for the treatment of outpatients, but much more is required and must be demanded before the existence of a mission upon a reserve can be justified on the ground of medical attention afforded aboriginals.
8. Education – the avowed ground for the subsiding of missions throughout Britain’s colonial empire – is sadly neglected at most Territory missions. At Bathurst Island – the largest and longest established mission in the north – I was very disappointed after my inspection of schoolwork. At Goulburn Island and Millingimbi, schooling is at best, sporadic. At Yirrkala there is no school at all. At Groote Eylandt and Roper River results are encouraging and serve to show what can be achieved in aboriginal education, even under embarrassing financial conditions.
To summarise, the Government is faced with the alternative of prohibiting or permitting mission activity. For the mission it may be urged that it provides one means of adapting the aboriginal to white civilization before he actually makes contact with it. On the other hand, the mission as at present constituted, has the following defects :-
- It neglects the detribalised aboriginal and devotes its full attention to the native who otherwise would not yet make contact with white civilization.
- It neglects the detribalised aboriginal and devotes its full attention to the native who otherwise would not yet make contact with white civilization.
- It neglects the detribalised aboriginal and devotes its full attention to the native who otherwise would not yet make contact with white civilization.
- It neglects the detribalised aboriginal and devotes its full attention to the native who otherwise would not yet make contact with white civilization.
- It neglects the detribalised aboriginal and devotes its full attention to the native who otherwise would not yet make contact with white civilization.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The continuance of this deplorable position is definitely a Government responsibility. These people are trespassers on aboriginal reserves, no less destructive to the native race than are the Japanese pearling crews, towards which attention is usually directed. The Government must either prohibit their further activity and remove them from the reserves, or take steps to see that the abuses which their presence there entails shall be removed. If a mission is too poor to carry on this work effectively the Government must either close it or provide it with the funds to carry on. There can be no middle course if aboriginal welfare is to be determiner in these matters.
It is recommended that all missions, whether established or to be established, shall be required to obtain a licence from the Chief Protector annually. Any mission which fails to obtain a licence, or to which a licence is refused, will receive no subsidy from the Government and its officers will be liable to prosecution for trespass. It is further recommended that regulations under the Aboriginals Ordinance be gazetted for the purpose of controlling missions activity. These regulations should embrace :-
(a) Sanitation of the mission.
(b) The diet scale of mission people.
(c) The conditions of employment on the missions.
(d) The standard of education of mission schools.
(e) Provision of facilities for the adequate nursing of the sick and the isolation of infectious disease.
(f) Provision of adequate means of communication by sea or land and air.
(g) Provision for the restraint of disciplinary cases on the mission or sent there by order of Government.
If the Government permits missions to continue, it commits itself to the responsibility of financial assistance. In order that mission subsidies may be placed on the equitable basis, it is suggested that subsidy be calculated as follows :-
(a) Two shillings and sixpence per week for each schoolchild, the standard of education to be set down as that for Fifth Standard and the school to be regularly inspected by an officer of the Education Branch.
(b) Then shillings per head per week in respect of every aboriginal patient nursed in an approved native hospital, and Two shillings and sixpence per week for every outpatient receiving treatment over a period exceeding one week.
(c) Five shillings per head per week towards the sustenance of aged and infirm aboriginals approved by the Chief Protector.
(d) Fifty percent of the cost of material for hospital, dispensary and school buildings, subject to these being effected to a specification approved by the Chief Medical Officer.
(e) Free issue of blankets for school children, the aged and the sick.
The fundamental difficulties confronting the missionary operating under the present system – if the purposeless and ineffectual routine characterising mission activity can be so described – is the impossibility of elevating to the white standard a native living largely in a native environment. Stated bluntly, it may be regards as impossible to make a white man out of a black man in a black’s man country. Mission activity must be directed to the complete alteration of the environment in the vicinity of the mission, so that he end product of mission teaching may take his place in an environment which will satisfy the economic and cultural wants of his new outlook. Mission bodies which conscientiously direct themselves to this objective are deserving of assistance, particularly as the costs of achievement will be high.
It is further recommended, therefore, that missions be subsidised :-
- Per acre of land cleared for cultivation, the amount of subsidy being determined on the basis of 50% of the cost of clearing, provided the Supervisor of Agriculture certifies that the land is good agricultural land, which may be profitably used for the agricultural purposes of the mission and/or for the ultimate settlement of the self-supporting families.
- On the cultivation of crops, the amount of subsidy to be determined on the basis of a maximum of 50% of the cost of cropping, where the Supervisor of Agriculture and the Chief Medical Officer certify that the crop is of maximum value, agriculturally and economically, judged by the standards of the ultimate objective, namely the settlement of peasant families.
It is recommended that missions should be assisted in transport. Once of the greatest difficulties of the existing conditions is the lack of suitable marine transport to remote coastal missions. It is recommended that the Aboriginal Branch should provide a suitable lugger, which will maintain a regular freight and mail service from Darwin to Groote Eylandt, vial all coastal missions. Perhaps one of the seized Japanese luggers might be suitable and available for this purpose. Such as vessel could be manned by an aboriginal crew employed by the Aboriginal Branch and include a number of native police for patrol purposes in Arnhem Land where necessary. It could be used by a patrol officer to be stationed in Arnhem Land, to be responsible for the maintenance of order there.
The obvious advantages of such as service would be :-
- The improvement of diets at various missions by the transport of beef from mission cattle stations to others without cattle, and the transport of agricultural products from agricultural missions to others less favoured.
- To facilitate supervision and control by the Chief Protector, not only of missions but of the Arnhem Land Reserve.
- To improve communication as it would be probably be possible to make at least six trips per annum.
- To facilitate medical treatment of aboriginals on missions and on Arnhem Land Reserve.
It is further recommended :-
- That the Northern Territory Medical Service undertake the training at Darwin Hospital or elsewhere of missionaries in the diagnosis, treatment and nursing of maladies likely to be encountered amongst aboriginals on mission stations. During the period of training these persons will be maintained at the Hospital, without charge and without remuneration.
- That at least once in every year all missionaries attend a conference with the Chief Protector in Darwin.
One of the most conspicuous features of mission activity noted during these inspections is the fact that missionaries appear to be working in a maze. Their controlling bodies are, for the most part, unaware of local conditions and unfamiliar with the aboriginal problem. They vest little authority in their local officer but, on the other hand, give him very inadequate instructions. Each newcomer appears to evolve for himself a plan of campaign, which he submits for approval. Every change of staff disorganizes the existing policy, if any, so that eventually a status quo is reached, which involves the continuance of minor routine and nothing more. Conscientious adherence to this routine is a conspicuous feature of several missions, but the ultimate objective of mission purpose is not known and conflict of opinion was evident as to what it should be.
As already stated, it must be a sine qua non of mission activity that the end product of mission school shall be provided for in his own country. Provision must be made locally to satisfy his new economic and cultural wants. How this may be done will constitute a major problem, which each mission must solve for itself. By bringing all to periodical conferences, where the problems and achievements of each during the year may be discussed with the others, the stagnation inseparable from isolation and lack of co-ordination may, to a great extent, be avoided.
(C.E. Cook)
Chief Protector of Aboriginals