Book Reviews

Micronesia's Problem Of Unity

Among the things in common shared by the people of Papua New Guinea, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony and the United States Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands are breakaway movements.

In PNG some of the people of New Ireland, New Britain and Bougain ville have threatened at various times to break their islands away from the central government and run things their own way; in the GEIC the Ellice Islanders are seriously talking the same talk now; and in the Trust Territory (of Micronesian islands), the northern Marianas group is negotiating with the United States for a separate identity now.

It’s relevant that all these three ter ritories also have in common widely scattered islands, and a central government and political boundaries imposed from the outside.

It’s hardly surprising that after generations of running their various remote islands their own way, those islanders who happen to be farthest away from the “centre” of this artificial universe are not overly im pressed at some sudden insistence that they become “united” for the purpose of becoming independent. Who are those people they are supposed to share their independence with, and what the hell do they mean by independence anyhow?

In Micronesia: The Breadfruit Revolution, photographer Robert Wenkam and writer Byron Baker combine to tell the story to date of the scattered islands of the United States Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, and along the way show clearly the extent of the unity problems faced by the 100,000 Micro nesians.

Writes Baker in his good, clear reporting style: “Unlike other depen dent areas of the world, Micronesia has not had among its peoples until very recently even a glimmer of a sense of nationhood, nor an aware ness of a common cultural heritage.

“When the US Peace Corps went to the islands in 1966, for instance, it found it convenient to think of Micronesia in terms of 13 major

languages and nine significant cultural groupings. The people of these varied ethnic groupings did and do regard one another with a jaundiced eye: Chamorros are dubious about Caroli nians, consider Yapese primitive and have a hard time imagining the Marshallese; Yapese are condescend ing to everyone; almost everyone dis likes Palauans. High islanders con sider themselves better endowed than low islanders, and people at popu lation centres look down on country cousins from outlying islands.

“Until very recently there was little in the American administration of the islands to discourage this separatism and ethnic individuality. English is only just becoming a common language. Islanders have never had enough money to travel from one region to another.

“American policy has tended strongly to encourage the existence of cultural diversity. Only the govern ment itself, poorly understood by most islanders, bridged all the separate groups in Micronesia. The result is that Micronesians have acquired a patina of American usage over the alloy of earlier governments and their individual societies. It is a wonderfully diverse amalgam, dis tinctive in every place.”

Although some will take issue with Baker’s contention that Micronesia’s lack of a sense of nationhood is un

like that of other dependent areas of the world, those few paragraphs just about sum up the situation in Micronesia. Since, as he says, “to the people of the Marianas other Micronesians are for the most part naked savages”, one can understand the anxiety of the Marianas Chamor ros to get with the strength that is Uncle Sam, the friendly uncle who has brought material benefits to those islands that happen to be closest to “Guam USA”, and for the rest of the “outer” islanders to say good riddance to the Marianas.

Or do the outer islanders really say good riddance, or is it merely the expression of the educated elite— the people who are aware of wider issues. The truth is that nobody knows, and the pictures and text of this 192-page large format volume underline the difficulties of being certain of anything in emerging Micronesia because of the distances and the diversity.

As the authors say in a joint preface, “Micronesian societies are not stone-age; nor are they in the ordinary sense Western or modern.

This is not the first time they have lurched from one era into another, but the alterations that confront them are as complete as they have under gone, and the prospect is of greater change yet.

“There is about it that poignance

Some of the stone money of Yap, very much valued by the local people, but the target of many overseas col lectors. It is no longer possible to take them out of the territory.

known to any who have read of the vanishing of the red man, or of pearl traders, palm trees and lagoons; a poignance the more special because islanders do still wear loin-cloths and lavalavas and sail outrigger canoes— and ride jet planes and send their children to college in the United States.”

Between them Wenkam and Baker have produced more than a picture book and more than another re porter’s view of Micronesia. They have needed each other.

The black and white pictures illustrate better than words the diversity of history—Spanish, German,

Japanese, American occupation—and the diversity of cultures and scenery such as the bare-breasted Yapese with their giant stone cartwheel money, the Banzai cliffs of Saipan, the Palau rock islands, the barrier reef of Truk, the Nan Madol ruins of Ponape. But above all they illustrate the type of people who inhabit these places, and it is the people who will decide whether 2,000 islands stretching 3,000 miles across the Western Pacific can, or should, share a common

destiny.-

EW.

(Micronesia: The Breadfruit

REVOLUTION. By Robert Wenkam with text by Byron Baker. University of Hawaii Press. SUSIS ).

Who wants

Australian cricket

history illustrated?

The legendary contestants and the famous contests of Australian cricket over the last 150 years are chronicled by word and picture in this magni ficent, relatively inexpensive, volume.

The facts and figures are there, but they do not intrude because they are linked by numerous anecdotes written with wit and warmth.

Arthur Mailey, for instance, was a famous bowler but no batting genius. In a match against the Callan Park Mental Asylum side in Sydney, his bowling was hit around by an inmate who imagined he was Mailey; the real Mailey’s reaction was “Thank God the feller doesn’t fancy he’s Trumper”.

And there’s Trumper, whose batting was the epitome of style: minimum effort for maximum effect. A photo graph of his classic straight drive adorns the cover of the book. Trum per, who in 1891 as a schoolboy of 13 could score a century in every match of the season, and at whose funeral in 1915, 20,000 people lined Sydney’s streets while London’s news papers interrupted the wartime news to announce the “death of a great cricketer”.

Interspersed among the stories are 190 black and white illustrations. The selection of photographs, some of them very rare, as much as the photo graphs themselves, conveys the spirit of Australian cricket, so that the reader gradually and subconsciously feels, for instance, why Sir Neville Cardus wrote of those two giants of different eras: “Trumper was the bird in flight, Bradman was the aeroplane”.

Perhaps the reader should be warned that this reviewer is a help less, hopeless cricket addict who has even umpired cricket in Port Moresby.

He has not admired some of Dick Whitington’s previous books, but he feels that the author and publisher are to be congratulated for this ven

ture.-

Tony Shannon.

(An Illustrated History Of Aus

TRALIAN CRICKET. By R. S. Whitington forewords by Sir Robert Menzies and Lindsay Hassett. Lansdowne Press. $8.50.)

Australian

Seabirds

“Birds in Bass Strait” is written by Ken Simpson, one of Australia’s leading seabird ornithologists, who has spent a number of years working with the CSIRO, and from 1964-66 spent 20 months at Macquarie Island, and, during his two visits, assisted in long-term research on the Wandering Albatross and Royal Penguins.

The book’s 112 pages are profusely illustrated in both black and white and colour. Numerous diagrams ex plain and amplify the text, parti cularly on bird migration and ocean currents in the Bass Strait area. These currents play a major part in the breeding and feeding biology of sea birds of this area. The photographs have been chosen for both quality and presentation of diagnostic features of each species.

The valuable part that bird banding has played in discovering movement of sea birds is covered. Much of this banding has been done by amateurs working under the Australian Bird Banding Scheme, operated by the CSIRO Division of Wildlife Research.

Conservation has not been neglected with a description and history of the commercial harvesting of the Tas manian Muttonbird, and the desecra tion of Cat Island as a major Aus tralian Gannet rookery. “The rookery on Cat island in 1936 had 800-1,000 birds nesting, but in 1966-7 only twelve pairs were present and breed ing”. Perhaps the most interesting and one of the most controversial of the Bass Strait breeding birds is the Cape Barren Goose, “today con sidered to be the second rarest goose species in the world, after the Ne Ne (Hawaian Goose). The maxi mum number of Cape Barren goose in the wild and in captivity probably does not exceed 6,000 birds” yet, “In 1965 a two day open season was per

mitted for shooting the species in the Furneaux Group. In an effort to restore the goose population in West ern Victoria to its former level, the Fisheries & Wildlife Department established a feral flock at the Serendip Field Station, Lara, Vic toria”.

Ornithologists and students of natural history will find this book a complete study of the avian fauna of the Bass Strait area. A large number of the birds described occur over large areas of the Eastern coast of Australian and Pacific Ocean, giving this book a much wider relevance then the title implies.

Alan Leishman.

(Birds In Bass Strait. By Ken

Simpson. A. H. & A. W. Reed, Sydney, for the Oil and Gas Division of BHP Cos Ltd. $4.95.)

Colourful birds

of Fiji

Another recent bird book comes from Collins in New Zealand and is called Birds of Fiji In Colour. The paintings were done by W. J. Belcher between 1924 and 1935, and the text is contributed by the Auckland ornithologist R. B. Sibson.

The birds of Fiji are varied, beautiful and sometimes very shy. It was thus a great service by Belcher to produce, as a result of long and patient study, a superb collection of paintings covering most of the dominant species. Those included in this book are 24 of a collection of 90 bird paintings, reproduced by permission of the Trustees of the Fiji Museum. They are not available for regular viewing, and so this volume will be appreciated by both visitors to Fiji and bird lovers everywhere. (BIRDS IN FIJI IN COLOUR. W. J.

Belcher/R. B. Sibson. Collins, SNZ3.6O).

Bonanza Year

For Wallis

Island

Wallis Island, lying north of Fiji and north-east of New Caledonia, is a little-known French territory of 95 square kilometres.

It was first made known to Euro peans after Captain Samuel Wallis of HMS Dolphin chanced to discover it in 1767 and named it after himself.

Most of the 205 years since Wallis’ discovery have managed to pass with out the publication of any books de voted to that island.

This year, however, there have already been at least two. One is a coloured picture book of 64 pages entitled lies Wallis; the other is volume 2 of a Histoire de ITle Wallis by Bishop Alexandre Poncet, who was bishop of Wallis and Futuna from 1936 to 1962.

Because of the paucity of literature on Wallis Island, both books should be welcomed by Pacific libraries and collectors.

Both suggest that Wallis is an island where nothing much ever happens, and where much of what does hap pen is associated with the Roman Catholic Church, which first gained a foothold there in 1837. lies Wallis, published by Editions Delroisse, 113 Rue de Paris, Boulogne 92, France, is available from Mile Pise, of the South Pacific Commis sion, Noumea for 400 Pacific francs.

Bishop Poncet’s history, which covers the period of the French pro tectorate over Wallis Island from 1886 to 1959, is published by the Societe des Oceanistes, Paris, at 45 French francs. The first volume of the history, which will no doubt cover the period from the earliest times to 1886, has not yet been pub lished. Its appearance has been con siderably delayed by the exigencies of

archival research.

Robert Langdon.