Up Front

with the Editor

As Micronesian Carl Heine puts it in an article on p. 32 of this issue, there’s a “revolution of rising expectations” among the people of the Pacific Islands. The younger generation is not satisfied with the way things are and is beginning to demand something better.

Carl Heine has the advantage of having recently made a sweep through the South Pacific, and thus he has seen the changing picture for himself. But what’s more to the point, the Micronesian Political Status Commission, which he accompanied, has had this advantage too, and I think we may expect some important developments to flow from this.

What developments?

The members of the commission are Micronesian leaders. Their tour comes at a time of a Micronesian awakening—an awareness by some of the people of those widespread North Pacific islands, which between the two wars had been absorbed into the Japanese Empire, that they are really part of the South Pacific. Not geographically, of course, but there is a special “South Pacific flavour” of common environment, common problems, common aspirations. This awareness will intensify following the commission’s tour.

Micronesia has already served notice that despite its respect for Americans, it does not want to go American to the extent of being absorbed by such a dominant culture, One way or another, it wants to make its own decisions. In this, it wants to do what every other South Seas territory has done, is doing, or expects to do. The problem the Micronesians still have to solve is how best to do it, and the commission s tour must also have been something of an eye-opener as to the variety of methods available.

When you think of it, the South

Our Cover

These two young charmers are Gilbertese, photographed by Sheree Lawrence Lipton on Fanning Island, in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.

Pacific these days is an extraordinary illustration of the number of dif ferent ways you can go to heaven.

The Western Samoans, the first to go-it-alone, still follow a Matai system, are not members of the Com monwealth, yet use the Common wealth. Nauru is a republic, with a president, yet is a member of the Commonwealth.

Tonga, virtually independent since the year dot anyway, now wants to join the Commonwealth, and mean while operates a system with a king and feudal serfs, which nobody much complains about.

The Cook Islands have independ ence enough for their wants—they could have more but didn’t want it —while still able to retain New Zea land citizenship. Yet they have up graded the powers of the Arikis.

Meanwhile the British Solomons are beginning to experiment with something unusual, and Papua-New Guinea and Fiji are carefully testing the heat of the bathwater.

Micronesia is beginning to see more clearly that somewhere it fits into all this—that it is not a scattered group of outcasts. The South Pacific is home.

More and more, those islands now called the US Trust Territory must come into closer association with the islands to the south. Already there are closer connections with Nauru, and both the Micronesians and Nauruans see still closer ties. The visit of President Deßoburt to Micronesia recently was received far more enthusiastically by the Micro nesians than by the American admin istration, but it is Micronesian de sires, not American desires, that count in the long run.

As Carl Heine says, there is a revolution of rising Pacific expecta tions—and the revolt is coming from within.

Stuart Inder