Abstract
THE petition of eighteen hundred Australian aborigines addressed to the King, and asking for representation of their interests in the Federal Parliament (see NATURE, Nov. 6, p. 798), whether it attain its end or not, has at least served to direct attention once again to the question of their present condition and their future. Difficulties of the situation, which contribute to the failure to find a solution of a problem—for long a reproach to the Australian people—are set out with due appreciation of their weight by an Australian correspondent of The Times in an article in the issue of November 25. After pointing out the gravity of conditions which tolerate "tribe after tribe dying on their feet", and contrasting conditions among the natives of New Guinea, the writer refers to the mentality and character of the aborigines as in no small measure responsible for much for the failure of the Governments to check the degeneration which is taking place. Even such a beneficial, and indeed essential, provision in the organization of aboriginal protection as medical attention is rendered in a degree ineffective through the disinclination of the aboriginal to take advantage of it, owing to magical belief or misunderstanding. At the same time the nomadic habit, as well as the tendency to drift to centres of white civilization, neutralize the advantages of reserves of aboriginal lands. On the other hand, the inadequacy of the financial provision made by the Australian Governments is stressed, its most serious consequence being the lack of a trained body of special officers, such as the service organized by Sir Hubert Murray in Papua. A graver indictment of the Australian people appears in the same issue of The Times in the form of a report of a valedictory address by Prof. F. Wood-Jones to the Victorian Anthropological Society, which, notwithstanding a certain lack of restraint in language and certain inaccuracies, cannot be passed over by Australia as ill-founded, even though Prof. Wood-Jones, as well as the writer in The Times, as has been pointed out in subsequent correspondence, gives little or no credit to Federal and State Governments for what has been attempted to ameliorate aboriginal conditions.
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Aborigines of Australia. Nature 140, 1004–1005 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/1401004c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1401004c0