NEW ZEALANDER TO SPEND LONELY VIGIL

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 248, 10 January 1928, Page 9

NEW ZEALANDER TO SPEND LONELY VIGIL

ON PACIFIC ISLET TO STUDY TIKOPIANS A lonely vigil on a Pacific isle, a voluntary exile from civilisation for a whole year, is a prospect that would daunt the average New Zealander. MOT so, however, Dr. Raymond Firth, a young Auckland anthropologist, who is now visiting his parents at Otahuhu after carrying off his Ph.D. degree in anthropology at London University. Dr. Firth has set himself a task of a year’s field work on the island of

Tikopia, an islet lying to the southwest of the Solomons, where the only visitor is the Melanesian Mission steamer Southern Cross,” and she puts in an appearance only once a year. The Aucklander will be the only white man on the island, which is only six square miles in area, and carries a population of 500 Polynesians. Dr. Firth is anxious to make this stay at Tikopia, because, from an anthropological point of view, it is particularly interesting—and what is even more important, untouched by scientific research. He will be surrounded by gigantic scantily clad islanders—few of the men are less than 6ft in stature —and his initial task will be to acquire the language. Not that this is likely to cause him a great deal of trouble. For Tikopian is something akin to Maori. Though Dr. Firth has not done a great deal of field work among the Maoris he is sufficiently acquainted with their mother tongue to make contact with the inhabitants of Tikopia. “Though I daresay I shall hate it for the first fortnight when I realise that the steamer has gone,” he confessed to THE SUN to-day, “once I commence to study in real earnest and make myself thoroughly at home in Tikopia, I shall be very busy. The time will pass quickly enough.” THE WHITE STRANGER To the Tikopians the prospect of a white man settling in their undisturbed midst for no other reason than lie wants to discover all he can about them, will be somewhat strange. These natives, however, are quiet and peaceful, and as Dr. Firth pointed out, there is no possibility of him suffering the fate of certain Europeans in the neighbouring Solomons. The Tikopeans and the inhabitants of the Solomons are different in race, colour, physique and in every other way. Commenting upon the study of anthropology in New Zealand, Dr. Firth declared that the loss of Dr. Peter Buck was one that the Dominion could ill afford. His own studies at London University had been in the direction of research in Maori economics, a field practically unexplored. Australia, he said, had set an example to New Zealand by equipping a number of anthropologists in the Western Pacific. Dr. Firth’s sojourn at Tikopia will be under the auspices of the Australian National Research Council.