The Rights of Primitive Peoples

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PAPUA-NEW GUINEA: A CRUCIAL INSTANCE

IN the contemporary climate of opinion, all peoples of the world are claiming the right of nationhood, with all its perquisites-sovereignty, economic self-sufficiency and membership in the United Nations. Within this situation, the condition of "primitive peoples"-peoples who only recently lived a self-sufficient life without script or any relationship to script- occupies a peculiar place.

The world may be roughly divided into: modernized nations, some of which are also new nations, in the sense that they were colonized from Europe within the last five hundred years and are dependent upon a European tradition-for instance, the United States, Australia, Argentina; old, traditional or exotic peoples with traditions antedating those of the high cultures of Europe, currently struggling with problems of absorbing new economic and political forms-China, India, Burma, Thailand; and new nations within which the earlier forms of cultural life, while often elaborate and highly organized, lacked script and depended upon an oral tradition-for example, many of the countries of Africa south of the Sudan, Tonga, Samoa, etc., where political power has now passed or is passing to the immediate descendants of peoples who were substantially primitive until they came in contact with modern European or Asian cultures.