THE HAPLESS ABORIGINAL

Hokitika Guardian, 3 September 1930, Page 2

THE HAPLESS ABORIGINAL

The native papulation of Australia lias .recently been reported upon by the Federal Ministry for Home Affairs, and it is stated that stejjfi are now to be tube a to improve tile position of the aborigines, and protect them more elfectively against the perils which beset them on every side. It is certainly high time. Anyone who wants to know precisely how the Australian aborigines have been treated in the past by the settlers should read the report of the Royal Commissioner, Dr Roth, appointed in 1904 by the Government of West- Australia to inquire into the condition of the natives in that State. Dr Roth’s general description of the manner in which they were dealt with hy the whites as “brutal and outrageous” is expressive enough; but the picture is incomplete without a whole series of horrible and revolting details. In a recently published book—M. Bennett's ‘The Australian Aboriginal as a Human Being’’—an attempt is made to arouse public sympathy for the aborigines. The author quotes with approval from the Commonwealth Year Book (1909) Dr Ramsay Smith’s description of the natives —“the most interesting at present on earth, the least deserving to be exterminated, the most wronged at out* hands,” and appeals fo>r mercy to these hapless derelicts, once the owners of a continent, now landless, outlawed, and existing in ft state closely analogous to slavery, Bennett's book, like all the authentic records, is full of awful stories of indiscriminate slaughter and horrible suffering inflicted upon these helpless creatures, even at the hands of police officers, humorously styled “protectors of the aborigines.’’ It is too late to undo the past hut it may still be possible to save •the remnants that survive.