Civil Rights for Aborigines

Australia's 40,000 full-blooded aborigines,* nearly half of whom live in isolated tribal groups in the Northern Territory, are "protected" by confused statutes restricting their movement, for bidding them to drink alcoholic beverages even if they remain sober and orderly, to own land or firearms, and to cohabit with white Australians.

Liberal-minded critics have long objected to these discriminatory laws. The boomerang-hurling aborigines, who still go naked in many areas, did not seem to mind cohabiting mostly with their own kind, but they took to drinking cleaning fluid and dissolved shoe polish. They also began demanding equal rights and equal pay -- cattlemen often employed them at bargain wages.

Last week the state legislature at Darwin passed a law striking down all un equal prohibitions against the aborigines in the Northern Territory and requiring them to attend school in English, since they have no written language. Other states are following suit. Some Australians fear that the natives are not ready for such freedom and should remain wards of the government. Says Western Australia's Native Welfare Minister Edgar Lewis: "Some people think there will be orgies and riots, but I am sure it won't happen."

*Thought to be of Dravidian origin and to have migrated to Australia at least 10,000 years ago from Asia via the Indonesian archipelago or over a since sunken land bridge.

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