Abstract
THE series of three articles by Dr. Donald F. Thomson, reciting his experiences among the aborigines of Arnhem Land, which appeared in The Times of July 5-7, will have been followed with close attention by all who desire a wider application of scientific methods in the approach to the problems arising out of the contacts of Western civilization and peoples of backward culture. A preliminary account of Dr. Thomson's work appeared earlier and was noted in NATURE of January 8 (p. 68). Dr. Thomson, as he himself expresses it, was 'loaned' by the University of Melbourne to the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia to visit, establish friendly relations, and make an anthropological survey of the native tribes, who had been responsible for unrest and trouble in Arnhem Land in 1933. His expedition, as is now well known and as he records, was completely successful in getting into touch with tribes reputed unapproachable, and as a result of his investigations lasting over the two years 1935-37, he was able to present to the Federal Government a report in which he, as an anthropologist, suggested certain measures to be taken if this interesting and, in their way, attractive people were to be saved from degradation and extinction. That extinction is their inevitable fate, unless immediate steps for their protection are taken, is patent from Dr. Thomson's alarming discovery that the number of aborigines in these tribes has fallen lower by far than was thought. Further, he was able to point to the grave injury which is being inflicted on the aborigines by well-meaning but mistaken philanthropy. A people who had established an equilibrium in the technique of existence in a country of difficult conditions are abandoning their traditional mode of life to obtain the inadequate benefits of a weekly ration and a few of the cast-off rags of civilization, to their irretrievable detriment.
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Protection of the Aborigines of Australia. Nature 142, 106 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/142106a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/142106a0