AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19177, 7 December 1927, Page 15

AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES.

FUTURE OF THE RACE.

PLEA FOR EQUALITY.

(lEOM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

SYDNEY, November 27.

The future of tho Australian aborigines is a question that has agitated the minds of politicians, Churaiinen, and all leaders of public thought and opinion. Opinions concerning the aborigines are diverse and divergent — how divergent can best be judged by a survey of recent happenings and interviews.

This week in Sydney was held a conference between the iiishop Coadjutor of 6yuney (liev. D'Arcy Irvine), the chairman of tho Australian Hoard of Missions (the Kev. J. S. Needliam), and seven aborigines, members of the Australian Aborigines Progressive Association. The natives sought the opportunity of stating their claims to racial equality with tne whites and certain other concessions foi the less educated brethren. Two of the natives were women, and one of these, Mrs Duren, astonished Bishop D'Arcy Irvine by saying that she had written to the King. "To the King?" he asked. "Yos," replied Mrs Duren, "I addressed it to King George V., England." Certain land, she complained, which had been reserved to the blacks for years, had suddenly been alienated for other purposes, and that had raised her ire. Hence the letter to the head of the Empire. "Do you think tho King received it?" asked Bishcip D'Arcy Irvine. "Well," replied Mrs Duren, "I registered it, so he must have." She admitted, however, that she had received no reply, but the land had not been sold.

The natives intelligently pleaded their claims for the repeal of the existing Aborigines Act, and its substitution by another that would be more agreeable to them and that would mnke less distinction between them and the. whites. Their chief spokesman declared definitely against the proposal to institute a native State in the Northern Territory, as some of the less civilised tribes would insist upon adherence to old-age tribal customs. He asked, that natives should be provided with thefir own communities, with schools and other public buildings, and should be supervised generally by educated and capable aborigines. He declared that on the North Coast of New South Wales he had found 60 native men, women, and children suffering from starvation. The 1 public did not hear of these conditions because there was a "hush" policy. He said that help from the polioe was not sought, as it was feared that the children would bo taken from their parents. That was considered crueller than starvation. He urged that the clause in the Aborigines Act forbidding the sale or supply of liquor to aborigines should be abolished, as it-was an insult to them. Natives as Film Actors. A few hours before this conference took place a film producer told the Federal Royal Commission that is enquiring into the motion picture industry that the manager of a company which recently made a film in Queensland was delighted with the way in which the aborigines had acted. Ho said that their intelligence was an "eye-opener." They performed their duties with remarkably little instruction, were wonderful mimics, and were anxious to be photographed. ' 'A Necessary Menace.'' There is another side to the picture, according to Mr H. V. Miller, who for 12 years has owned and operated a cattle station in the Northern Territory. "The aborigines," he told a recent interviewer while in Melbourne, "are the Territory's greatest problem. They are a menace in many ways. They are gradually dying out. They might be better away, but at present they cannot be done without." Mr Miller said that he had suffered through aborigines' theft of thousands of cattle. They did their thieving in the wet season, when it was impossible to follow them. They killed the cattle and ate the tongues or the beasts, leaving the carcases.. When they got hungry again they killed for their nest meal. He divided the blacks into four classes—those who were lazy, roamed around the cattle runs, would not work, and kept running away from the camps; those who were wild and unsafe ; those who were sneak thieves; and those who were sick, delicate, or diseased. He admitted that some of the aborigines made good stockmen, but said that these had to be taken away early from their tribes, from the influence 1 of lazy, cunning old "bucks" who lived on what their Tubras could get in the way of food, and would not hunt for themselves. But away from the gipsy camp life of stockmen, the aborigines were useless. Set at a steady job, they would work for a week or two. but when the novelty had worn off. their emnloyer would wake up one morning and find that they had "gone bush."