Abstract
AN innovation of no little importance in the method of controlling the Australian aborigines, who come under the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth Government, is announced from Canberra. The Cabinet has decided, it is reported by The Times correspondent in the issue of April 29, that in future the work of the police patrol in the south-west of the Northern Territory will be entrusted to an anthropologist who is familiar with the language and customs of the tribes. The district under the new officer will thus include the country of the Arunta, made famous in the annals of anthropology by the investigations of Sir Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen. This change in administrative machinery is, no doubt, in large measure due to the protests made, especially by anthropologists, when recently certain aborigines were tried for murder on account of killings in accordance with tribal custom. It is, at any rate, regarded as marking an advance in the method of dealing with native offences against the law of the white man, as the officer will have magisterial powers to deal with the great majority of cases, and will take only the more important to the court at Alice Springs. Mr. Paterson, the Minister for the Interior, has announced that Dr. Strehlow of the University of Adelaide, now conducting investigations on behalf of that University in North Australia, has been appointed to the post.
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Control of Australian Aborigines. Nature 137, 773 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/137773a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/137773a0