An extract from the Conference transcript (p11-18)
The Agenda was amended to provide for the presentation of PASTOR F.W. ALBRECHT’S paper, UNITED EVANGELICAL CHURCH IN AUSTRALIA. “Economic Rehabilitation of Aborigines” prior to that of Dr Cook’s.
DR. C.E. COOK, SENIOR MEDICAL OFFICER, COMMONWEALTH DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, CANBERRA, on addressing the Conference on the subject “Educating Natives in Higher Standards of Living” explained that the roneoed notes distributed were for the guidance of delegates and missionaries. He spoke on general lines about the Reduction of Communicable Diseases, as follows:-
A condition precedent to the development of tropical Australia by a healthy and economically secure population, living at a high standard, must be the reduction of communicable disease and the removal of those eradicable influences in the environment which predispose to the permanent endemicity oftropical infections.
Effectual and complete control of preventable disease is only practicable in a community so enlightened that the individual, without conscious effort, himself applies the controlling measures and habitually conforms to the sanitary prohibitions dictated by prophylaxis. If any substantial section of the population from choice will not, or from necessity, cannot attain and maintain a standard of existence consistent with successful control, the Health Authority cannot avoid the obligation to study the causes of this failure and initiate measures to offset them.
Dr. Watsford has very ably outlined for you the basic difficulties confronting him by reason of the failure of the native to integrate into the white community here, and it is not my intention to re-traverse the ground he has covered so well. My purpose is to discuss with you the relation of your own endeavours, not only to the resolution of his problem, but indeed, to the creation of it. As one who has from early youth ordered his training the better to study the native problem and to qualify for sharing in attempts to resolve it, as one who has worked with your predecessors and colleagues in this field before some of you perhaps were called to it, I believe I can speak to you on controversial matters with sympathy and understanding, yet with assurance.
From the view-point of preventive medicine, the free-living native in his own tribal surroundings creates no great problem. His mode of life at once protects him from most sources of disease and from the conditions which foster it.
Yet the irresistible advance of our civilisation, dictated by national interests which cannot be denied, inevitably involves the ultimate complete detribalisation of all natives. Experience elsewhere in Australia affords indisputable proof that it is folly to expect any other issue. The detribalised native, unless specially trained for life in a white community, presents a serious public health and social problem. Successive Commonwealth and State Governments have, therefore, permitted or fostered mission preparation of the native for the impact of white civilisation in the hope that by making his first contact with white men of high idealism and moral calibre, secure in the Christian faith and fortified by some secular education, he may be the better prepared to withstand the stresses attending his submergence in the white community.
I have no hesitation in saying that hitherto neither government nor missions have been successful in this objective, and I am quite confident in my expectation that you will agree with me. The Lord Abbott of New Norcia, probably the oldest native mission in Australia, was reported a few years ago to have said, “Were it not for the Grace of God we must at times despair”. I am sure that in your own experience there have been many occasions on which you have had good reason to share his despondency.
What are the reasons for this failure?
Christianity is a self-imposed spiritual discipline apparently capable of adoption by the individual in any social structure. Its profession has not been inconsistent with the varied social orders of imperial Rome, feudal Austria, republican Switzerland, industrial America and primitive Ethiopia. Conversion of a whole nation might be achieved, indeed has been achieved, following conversion of the ruling classes. Likewise, the conversion of a considerable portion of a nation has been achieved by mission activity without disturbance of the civil organisation.
Indeed, the social structure of most of these nations has permitted the practice of other religions or even of no religion.
Conceivably, therefore, it should be possible to convert the Australian native to our faith and still permit him to retain his own social structure. This course I have heard advocated here.
The native culture is intimately integrated into the environment and has been evolved in response to the stimuli of a nomadic existence in that environment, unchanged by human agency. In a changed environment it must be expected to reveal inadequacies and the psychological effect of new experiences must be expected to throw these inadequacies into sharp relief, to occasion doubt of the verities of the old culture and to prompt search after new concepts. Today, the mode of life of the native and the environment in which he lives are unavoidably and irrecoverably being changed. You, yourselves, play no small part in initiating these changes.
You retain the nomad as a dweller in permanent and restricted settlements. You teach him new wants and employ him in new tasks designed to retain him in a particular locality. You teach him monogamy and you endeavour to eradicate what you regard as the objectionable features of his culture and his law – ritual murder, infanticide, ceremonial wife exchange, polygamy and a host of less flagrant breaches of the Christian code. All these are important integral components of his primitive social order.
To secure Christian doctrine and to protect it from vitiation by pagan superstition, do you not retain the child as long as possible at the mission to prevent his diversion from your teaching? Does this not in itself imply that you are deliberately obstructing perpetuation of the native culture, which must be transmitted from the old men to the youth over a long period of indoctrination and a series of initiation ceremonies which you either prevent or discourage?
When all is said and done, the basis of the native’s social order is his kinship code. Do you respect and insist upon respect for the sanctions of this code – who shall speak to whom, who may work or play together? If not, can you expect the culture of which it is the basis to survive?
Do you not favour the monogamist marriage of mutually attracted Christian boy and girl, whatever may be the limitations imposed upon their mating by the native social order? Even when these marriages are consummated with the consent of all immediately affected parties, do you seriously believe that this can be done consistently with the preservation of native culture?
Is it not your belief that there is little to be gained by any endeavour to convert the old men – those to whom the preservation of tribal custom is entrusted? Am I not correct in saying that it is usual to concentrate your efforts upon the young – to raise a new generation which will not include in its culture the superstitions and practices repugnant to Christianity? Do you really believe that such a generation can be successfully evolved within the fabric of the old social order? Do you suppose that the unconverted elders of the tribe will confide their cherished lore to a generation taught to question their authority or doubt their wisdom?
Do you not appreciate the deep psychological effect of objects, commonplace to you, which are new to native experience? The boots you wear, the books from which you preach, the house in which you live, the furniture it contains, the means by which you obtain and handle fire and light, the engine that pumps the water and the aircraft that affords you transport? Is it conceivable that the native can first view these things other than as marvels which set his consciousness questing after new truths unrevealed in his own culture?
Let us be honest with one another and admit that social disintegration is the inevitable consequence of mission activity just as it invariably follows contact between white and native elsewhere.
Christianity itself does not provide, except on the mission, an alternative social organisation to replace that which is lost. There can be no full return to the old life, for which the native is now unfitted by training and perhaps by inclination. His life will now be spent in a fixed community. The alternatives confronting him are permanent residence under the protection and tutelage of the mission or migration to the vicinity of white settlement elsewhere. Dr Watsford has detailed to you the dangers to health attending the adoption of community life by a nomadic people. You, yourselves have discussed the necessity for an economic adjustment. It is clear then that mission activity and conversion to Christianity must be supplemented by training in the obligations of community life. Where can this be undertaken more appropriately than on the mission which is itself a community?
I propose to refer to two aspects of this training for community life – in hygiene and in what I shall term ‘Consciousness of Property’.
I need not at this time enter into detail regarding the necessity for or the technique of hygiene training. I need only say, as to necessity, that survival of a community depends upon either the exclusion of certain infections or the meticulous practice of the measures of prevention by each individual. For the first alternative it is too late – the second will be effectual in direct proportion to the sanitary consciousness of the individual.
The basis of our civilisation is the acquisition and conservation of property, the amassing of capital and its use to modify nature for our service in the production of food, improvement of domestic comfort, the facilitation of transport and the like. By contrast, the native has never valued property or learned to amass it. His philosophy has been one based upon the gratification of his immediate wants from the environment, without regard even to the immediate future. He has made no effort to modify nature for his service or for his greater benefit. It seems to me that if he is to be successfully integrated into white society, he must acquire that character of acquisitiveness, at least in sufficient degree to permit him to understand the value of money, the necessity of saving as a safeguard against periods of economic difficulty, or for the purpose of providing for a higher standard of living.
All the influences which have decided his evolution and determined his character have been directed towards facility of movement and the eradication of any impulse to encumber himself with property which will hamper his agility or discourage a nomadic economy.
It may even be that the centuries of selection which have evolved the native character we know have actually eliminated the genes requisite to the development of acquisitiveness. It must, however, be conceded that the conditions of his employment by us have never contributed to the inculcation of thrift or of a knowledge of the purpose and value of money.
Always, we have assured him his daily bread. In employment he has been fed and clothed by his employer. Any cash wage has been intended only as spending money. Out of employment he need never starve, he can be assured of sustenance from government settlement or mission or he may return to his own people.
I am told that in Darwin the native nowadays has a good appreciation of the value of money and that this is evidenced by his demand for a higher wage. I contend that this is not evidence of any conception of the value of money in the sense we are discussing – rather is it an appreciation of the price of labour – an entirely different matter.
I think it is indisputable that the native will never be happily integrated into our society until his character is modified more closely to resemble our own – the character of a people evolved for and by, existence in fixed communities. We must therefore use rational means of submitting him to influences calculated to develop the missing traits if they are latent within him. Certainly we must not by misdirected philanthropy foster the development of a dependence to the point of parasitism.
Instead of being fed and clothed in return for rendering a service he should gradually be taught to relate the purchase of these commodities to the value of his time. Increasing emphasis should be laid upon the production of goods which are exclusively his own for sale or barter in the satisfaction of his wants, from the produce of his fellows. I suggest that to this end he be trained in an avocation agreeable to him and providing him with an opportunity to handle the product of his labour – the cultivation of food required on the Mission, the cultivation and manufacture of fibres for weaving, the weaving of material from fibre, the construction of buildings by his own hands, from local materials, and so on. I know these activities are undertaken already on some missions but emphasis is not laid upon the worker’s ownership. For the greater part the labour is undertaken on a service basis by teams in employment of the mission.
In the foreseeable future there would appear to be no opportunity for the full and lucrative employment of all Territory natives in the white economy. Missions might well, however, set themselves to developing native colonies largely self-supporting and providing their people with an opportunity of a leisurely adaptation to community life under the same psychological and economic influences as have evolved our own race.
Certain it is that until this evolution has taken place there can be no prospect of assimilation nor any reasonable ground for hope for it.
I have gained the impression here that you have felt in the past a lack of cohesion and unanimity of purpose amongst native welfare workers and that you welcome the opportunity now offered you by the Minister to work to a progressive and concerted plan.
I have felt too, that you share a general conviction that now at last there is real hope for a happy solution to the native problem. I believe this optimism is justified, but I venture, from my experience, to warn you that the hope will be vain unless all who cherish it devote themselves unremittingly to its quest. Progress is not to be recorded by the taking of resolutions, however enlightened and advanced. The complex diversity of social embarrassments and iniquities which, for convenience, we call ‘the native problem’ has never lapsed into a condition of stasis. Where there is no progress there is retrogression. Its history has been one of rapid deterioration, from time to time interrupted or retarded, locally or more generally, by official or private intervention.
In the last 50 years enthusiasm for improvement has on occasion burned not less ardently than it does today and plans not less inspired and ambitious than those considered here have been formulated and even implemented. Soon however, in the face of temporary frustration, complacency with the merit of the plan itself has permitted acquiescence in its deferment and cessation of active effort towards its fulfilment.
This country is dotted with the crumbling monuments of advanced policies for native welfare begun and never pursued to fruition. If history is not to repeat itself, if in fact this conference is to usher in a new era of effectual co-operation between the Government and yourselves in pursuit of the enlightened objectives advocated by the Minister, it is clearly necessary that the plan be permanently conserved as the guiding principle of all workers in the field of native welfare.
Governments change, Ministers come and go, personnel of government departments change from time to time in identity and in opinion. In order that in future there may be no repetition of the unfortunate relapses of the past, may I suggest that as a conference of all missions’ interests you endorse and adopt as your own permanent policy the proposals now submitted by the Minister and pledge yourselves to work on the advancement of these objectives in collaboration with the Government.