The Editor's Mailbag

Nauruan Workers' Plight

I refer you to Mr Deiye’s letter (PIM, March p 15). His main con cern is in regard to the Nauruan Workers’ Organisation (NWO) and the Public Service. Mr Deiye is a public servant, secretary of the NWO and recently admitted to prac tise as a Pleader of the Supreme Court of Nauru. Hence his interest in the plight of the Nauruan workers.

His letter does not clearly outline the role that the NWO is to pursue in employer/employee relations and I am in doubt as to whether the organisation will ever be as active as it used to be under the chairman ship of the then Mr Hammer Deßoburt.

This is because its rank and file have been and always will be sus picious of the motives of the execu tive of the NWO. Furthermore, in a welfare state such as Nauru, the workers will be unwilling to go on strike etc and risk their jobs and loss of wages and other benefits. How ever, I hope that Mr Deiye as a court advocate will be also an ex cellent industrial advocate or what ever and be able to give the proper counselling that the NWO seeks.

Furthermore, he will need all the available resources and assistance he could get when he submits the back log of claims on behalf of the Pub lic Service.

He will be facing President De- Roburt over the negotiations table in a tough and gruesome meeting, since Nauru does not aspire to the arbitration system but to pure bar gaining in these matters. And Presi dent Deßoburt is a master in this sort of situation. In my experience no one in Nauru surpasses the Presi dent in negotiating a deal of any kind.

Mr Deiye’s concern over the lack of promotion of local public ser vants has my support. But he erred in his letter on this point because the Deßoburt government has been endeavouring to re-route the de velopment of Nauru from the path which the previous administration had undertaken to follow. A route, which I might add, that is not in the interest of the Nauruans let alone Mr Deiye. As a result the Nauru

Government is trying to “fill in the gaps” left behind by the Australian Administration such as the Public Service.

Mr Deiye cannot deny that more is done in the fields of education and technical training by the government since 1968 than the previous ad ministration, though I have no doubt that the present system of education needs to be looked into by a com mission of some sort. This is the source of his concern; lack of a good system of education. The use of expatriates is only a “stopgap” situation.

I was most disappointed to read the last paragraph of Mr Deiye’s letter. He gave me the impression that a revolution is about to sweep across the island; most unrealistic of a man of his position in his country.

If he is so concerned about “internal strife” what is the NWO going to do about it? Is it going to assist in that “nationwide reaction” or the insti gator of it or is it going to prevent its occurrence?

L. D. Keke.

Northcote, Vic.

Gutter Language

I heartily endorse the complaint of H. W. Cummings, (PIM, Feb, p 29), relative to the gutter language which appeared on page 62 of the Decem ber issue of PIM.

As a constant reader and admirer of your magazine for the past 30 years, I was astounded and nause ated by the pornographic tripe to which your correspondent made ref erence.

I greatly doubt whether this “com mon touch” was appreciated by the vast majority of those who read it, and earnestly implore you never again to stoop to such depths.

The lame explanation, explaining away this lamentable lapse, which appeared below your correspondent’s letter, left me coldly unimpressed.

PIM has kept its pages clean, while functioning successfully (and respect ably) for more than four decades.

Your readers can still do without this nauseating muck. I assure you Sir, that it does nothing to enhance

Letters

the tone, or reputation, of your magazine, both of which have set a high standard in the past.

I shall continue to subscribe to PIM, despite its dimmed prestige, in my estimation. However, I shall not hesitate to complain, in unequivocal terms, if this performance is ever repeated.

Incidentally, on the subject of lewdness. Is the rear view of a stark naked female, photographed at close quarters, really essential in an ad vertisement for automobile seat covers?

W. S. Hall

North Sydney, Australia.

Mr John McDonald, who designed the advertisement for French Knit (see p 28) replies: The advert is for both seat covers and beachwear (which the model is carrying). The swimsuits are so com fortable that the wearer feels almost naked. It seems to be a successful advertisement—even Mr Hall took a second look!

Cart Cook's Club

It was refreshing to read your article regarding Laurie Marshall’s Tongan war club (PIM, Jan, p 12).

I hope I won’t insult my Tongan cousins, but, I wonder whether the war club is really Tongan? As for me, the designs and the carving style on the war club are typically Rotu man. These designs were usually carved on long and short ancient Rotuman war clubs, ai peluga. The design is known as the fa’aipelu. . .

My great-great-grandfather, Ralifo (a Methodist missionary, who was one of the two witnesses and trans lators of the Deed of Cession of Rotuma into the English and Fijian languages, during the cession of Rotuma to the British Crown in 1881). had drawings of these de signs in his unpublished manuscript which my father had in his possession a few years ago.

Ralifo also mentioned in his manu script that his father, Paramount Chief Faefe of Noa’tau, gave away three carved war clubs as gifts in the 19th century. One war club was given to a John Robertson who visited Rotuma with Captain Peter Dillon on the Research in 1827, as a gift to the King and Queen of England; one to Captain Tromelin of

the Bayonnaise, as a gift to the Gov ernor of New South Wales, and the third club was given to a Hawaiian chief, named Poki, as a gift to King Kamehameha of Hawaii.

Some of these fa’aipelu designs first appeared on the cover and in side of a handbook to an exhibition of arts of the South Sea Islands, which was compiled by T. Barrow of the Dominion Museum, in Welling ton, New Zealand, in 1959.

Elcombe E. Antonio

Rapid Creek, Darwin, NT.

Sign Of The Comet

The subject of comets is a very fascinating one and one that has been extensively studied by man from time immemorial. Very often, in news papers, and more recently in PIM, I have read that some people take comets to mean a sign of impending disaster. Now to me, that is rather unfortunate.

I have the honour to be a member of one of the world’s oldest, mystical fraternities, the Rosicrucian Order, AMORC. According to our order, the comet is a sign of the birth of an avatar, or a great spiritual leader of men. Thus, the birth of Jesus Christ was heralded by a comet which ap peared precisely above his birthplace.

The births of Buddha, Khrisna, and some of the ancient gods of the Egyptians and Greeks were also heralded in like manner.

When I read stories describing comets as signs of disaster for the world, it makes me want to weep because to me comets are a sign of rejoicing for God has seen it fit to send a “Saviour” to redeem the sin ful people of the world.

Felise Va’A.

Apia.

Christmas Island

Mr Cowie’s re-collections of Christmas Island made very entertain ing reading. (PIM, March, p 57).

I spent five weeks there in August and September 1965 while on secondment from the Department of Agriculture, BSIP. Many things were still as Mr Cowie found them in 1937, especially the bird-life. But in 1965 the coconut plantation was run by the GEIC government and the “islanders” were from the Gilberts, whereas in 1937 they were French Polynesians. Christmas Island had no indigenous inhabitants when Cap tain Cook discovered it in the 17705.

The Bay of Wrecks was still living up to its name. Just a few days be

fore I arrived at Christmas Island on the RCS Nivanga an elderly and lone American was ship-wrecked in a tiny ketch named the Felix J. The mariner, whose name was also Felix, had left San Diego some months be fore, heading for “nowhere in par ticular”. There was a mix-up over the charts of Christmas Island, Paci fic Ocean, and Christmas Island, Indian Ocean. When he made land fall on the south-east point of the island he swung to the north expect ing clear water and ran slap-bang into the Bay of Wrecks.

Felix was surprised to find a bitu men road running along the Bay of Wrecks but he started walking north along it anyway, and the same day met the weekly copra truck making its run from Paris to London! He spent the five weeks of my stay help ing my party set up some coconut experiments. He was a professional sign-writer and did a great job of labelling the palms.

At that time there were very few remaining traces of the timber Mr Cowie had seen from the bigger wrecks earlier this century, so the pathetic little hull of the Felix J had the Bay of Wrecks pretty much to itself. Old Felix salvaged what he could and came with us back to Tarawa and after that I suppose he returned to San Diego, the latest and probably one of the luckiest mariners to keep an appointment with one of the Pacific’s best known navigation hazards.

Mr Cowie’s comments on Malden Island are interesting because that situation, multiplied a thousand times, developed on Christmas Island itself in the 1950 s and early 19605.

At the peak of Operation Grapple, the British are said to have had over 5,000 people on Christmas Island.

They covered dozens of acres with barracks, mess-rooms, workshops, storage sheds, wharves and fuel depots. After the British finished de tonating their A-bombs at the tip of the south-east point of Christmas Island the Americans moved in.

Their operation, code-named Domi nic, involved the testing of an H bomb above Malden Island in 1962.

Anyway, when it was all over, the military moved out to a man, and left all the splendid buildings and facilities behind, where most of them still stand. The jet-standard airfield is occasionally used now but most of the buildings are closed up and

stand simply as memorials of the time when the birds must have thought they were going to be ousted from their paradise.

Now, as far as I know, the Gilbert & Ellice Islands administration con tinues to tend the coconut planta tions while the sooty terns and their friends have re-claimed most of their old breeding grounds.

M. A. Foale.

Mareeba, Queensland.

Mission Effect On Art

In his review of Philip Rawson’s Primitive Erotic Art, (PIM, Mar, p 69) Mr L. Marshall says he has ‘yet to learn of any mission which has had any but a devastating effect’ on Melanesian art. May I, as one with an interest in the missionary record in New Guinea, ask what is the extent of Mr Marshall’s know ledge of missions in Melanesia?

I should have thought the evidence now available points to a wide variety of missionary responses to Melanesian art. Take eastern Papua, for example, where in the 50 years before the Pacific War there were four missions at work. One of these built an industrial school (Kwato), where village craftsmen taught tra ditional carving to upwards of 40 Papuan students at a time. A second was directed by a missionary patron (Frank Lenwood) who felt moved, as he said, ‘to a feeling of reverence for the peculiar beauty’ of Mela nesian art. Another encouraged com petitive racing of traditional canoes, and established at Salamo a carpen tering and boatbuilding station. A fourth was ruled by a bishop (Montagu Stone-Wigg) who col lected artifacts for the museum of traditional art in his library.

Surely these missions—Kwato, LMS, Methodist and Anglican— must have fostered tendencies very different from those suggested by Mr Marshall?

Mr Marshall probably bases his references on the rather woolly as sumption that Melanesian art forms changed because missionaries meddled with them, and that rea sonable people have always known this to be so. In fact, the assumption is relatively recent and, as far as historical data in the archives of the Melanesian Mission and the large New Guinea Anglican Mission is concerned, almost entirely erroneous.

Travelling in the Engineer Group in eastern Papua in the mid-1880s W. E. Armit found many finely polished stone axes lying on the paths where their owners had flung

them on being introduced to steel axes. Ten years later C. W. Abel wrote that the largest fighting canoe in Milne Bay, the tavero, had been cut up and its timber used as floorboards in the village of Wagawaga.

Now until such data has been sifted thoroughly in other Melanesian areas, it is premature to jump to conclusions about the reasons why Melanesians changed their art forms.

Few, if any, of the people involved in these two illustrations were converts of any mission. One suspects that they were acting for pragmatic rather than religious reasons: there

was simply no practical use for such objects any longer, The fact that some westernised Papuans in the 1920 s (who may or may not have been Christians) were unfriendly to traditional art forms is undeniable. Nor is the fact open to doubt that some Samoan teachers in the Papuan Gulf were iconoclasts, But, as F. E. Williams carefully pointed out m Drama of Orokolo, missionary attitudes and Papuan be haviour under Samoan influence in a changing Papua were two different things. If J. H. Holmes of Orokolo is any guide, missionaries of the

LMS in the Gulf must have regarded traditional ceremonies and art forms with more warmth and sympathy than has been generally supposed.

In short, some at least of the evi dence available suggests that where traditional art styles changed, it was in spite of missionary attitudes, not because of them. To equate early 19th century Polynesian missions with 20th century Melanesian miss ions, or to argue conclusions from small pockets of Samoan influence, is to walk a very shaky historical tightrope. , If Mr Marshall still thinks that Melanesian people would have stood stock still and let other people rum their art, he might like to ponder over the current issue of New Guinea (vol 8, no 4, Jan 1974, p 62-4) —if the editor of PIM will allow me a small plug for another

periodical!

David Wetherell.

South Yarra, Victoria. • The article Mr Wet her ell refers to in the New Guinea Quarterly (available by subscription in Aust ralia at $3.20 post free from Box 3408 GPO Sydney), is a letter from Brian Harrison discussing the alleged “destruction ’ of aspects of native culture.

"Condominium Means

Trouble"

With reference to his article on politics in the New Hebrides, I should like to say to Mr Dominick Halliday: “Although you have changed the spelling of your name to make it sound more English, you, as a French citizen, do not as an individual have anything at all on this earth to do with the New Hebrides National Party!”

This is because under the French system of governing the country, French traders who claim land as theirs, although they have actually stolen it by paying for it with empty bottles and pieces of material, have been hurting the feelings of the islanders since the birth of the con dominium. It was for this reason that the National Party was formed to improve the governmental system and to make it suit the needs of the New Hebrideans.

The way in which the French

have been treating most Pacific Islanders is not what God would accept.

In the French education system, three out of every five Melanesian students who are studying at French schools are entirely lacking in dis cipline, obedience and respect for their own people and care nothing for the prosperity of their fellow countrymen. Secondly, when these students return home for the holi days, they despise their traditional customs and try instead to establish French ways of behaviour, which distresses the old people. Obviously this is not what we want. We simply want them to know about modern civilisation and to preserve their tra ditional customs; to respect each other, and to bring peace and love to the whole community.

Let us now consider Mr Halliday’s sneering remark that “the occasional student who manages to reach the university in Fiji or New Guinea, (from a British school) does so by a miracle”. . .

Well, the plain answer to this is; every human being has the same vital need to improve his life and, in such a country as this where a high standard of civilisation is re quired, students have to pull up their socks to reach a certain level m order to develop their own country.

Therefore under the British system of education, some New Hebrideans have had the chance to obtain deg rees at universities.

The French, however, do not allow the natives of the New Heb rides to do so because otherwise they

might lose these luxurious islands from which they have gained so much profit, enough indeed to give some of them a world tour on the proceeds. They do not wish the New Hebrideans to take over their posi tions for otherwise they might have no jobs or no country to work in.

They still regard New Hebrideans and other Pacific Islanders as their slaves. This attitude still exists. Do the French think they are the only perfect race on this earth?

The British are quite right to re fuse residential permits to foreigners, thus preserving indigenous land for future generations of New Heb rideans and preventing the environ mental resources of the country from being spoilt by exploitation.

Most French residents on the islands of Efate and Santo have claimed that a great deal of land be longs to them, whereas it was actually acquired by theft. This will be returned in future by Frenchmen pretending to be New Hebrideans yet one can distinguish that they are out of step with New Hebridean culture. , The situation in the New Hen rides should not be equated with the situation in New Caledonia because the cases are by no means the same.

To reach a final solution to all our problems, the condominium system of government should be changed to something entirely different. The French will just have to leave the true natives of the New Hebrides alone to manage their own affairs.

Saniel.

Efate, New Hebrides.