Editor’S Mailbag

Island Independence

An anti-European flavour emerges in correspondence to PIM in recent times and the ordinary Australian or New Zealand reader must find himself reflecting are these the people who continually ask, frequently demand, our financial, technological, administrative and commercial assistance? Because, if so, they have a peculiar manner of showing their appreciation and thanks. It would appear that they are trying to close the door on their own fingers.

Probably the most significant development in the Pacific Island communities in the last decade' is not independence,' which is in itself a most inaccurate term in its current application, but the emergence of a parasite Pacific Islander class who masquerade as leaders and administrators. Most newly

“independent” communities survive today

not because of their leaders, but in spite of them. Most Islanders are materially far worse off today than they were before “independence” and if we listen to the Islanders themselves, this is evidenced very clearly. The political leaders of the more advanced nations (European) in the Pacific area must accept a large measure of the blame for not only permitting but in promoting situations whereby atoll- Napoleons and village opportunists have been able to use the administrative process and systems of European nations to establish themselves in positions of influence and power over their fellow Pacific Islanders.

Today’s spectacle of developments in the South Pacific augurs ill for the future of the people in this area. “Independence”, that prime misnomer, has in almost every Island group yielded nothing more than

heavy and increasing financial

indebtedness with little prospect for repayment and a limited number of administrative posts for the local “fat cats”.

Dire poverty, ignorance, abysmal living conditions, drunkenness and crime are increasing and uncontrolled. Racial discrimination is being fostered and demonstrated by native administrations and so-called leaders, in their attitude towards Europeans and European interests (racial discrimination throughout the world is now rapidly dissipating, but in the South Pacific it is being rekindled with a twist a ludicrous exercise, if ever there

was one, of the “tail wagging the dog”).

Immaturity, inexperience and inadequacy are clearly demonstrated in the arrogance and pomposity of recently-elevated native politicians and public servants, encouraged by European Church movements who, recognising that their position of influence has deteriorated dramatically among their own countrymen, are making a “death throes” bid for survival among the simple folk of the South Pacific.

These attitudes obviously will do nothing to build the bridges, cultural and economic between peoples, black and white, of the Pacific region which are vital to the real advancement of living conditions and standards of the Pacific Island communities.

The currents and ripples of anti- European discrimination are starting to come to the attention of some ordinary, tax-paying Australians, who must ask themselves and their representatives in parliament why they are expected to contribute toward the almost-one billion dollars being passed out each year as overseas aid much of it to our Pacific neighbours.

What the Islands need of course is trade not aid. Economically, they have a lot of “catching up” to do and they won’t do it by building barriers about themselves.

Tourism, investment and general interest in the Islands have fallen off noticeably in the past two years and, it appears, will continue to decline.

I doubt whether the current Pacific Island (native) administrators will recognise or act upon these factors and facts, but then, why should they? Most of them are sitting pretty in comfortable jobs with all mod-cons (European mod-cons perish the thought!) believing that they will be able to go on scrounging foreign “handouts” to maintain their position for a long time to come, while the stoic and

uncomplaining multitudes of simple

Pacific Island people stagnate in the worsening “no man’s land” between primitive darkness and the unrelenting advancement of modern society.

R. Cherry

Brisbane, Qld

more letters on page 23

Food Imports

Why is it that Pacific Island nations are buying large and increasing quantities of meat, fish, dairy products, fruit and vegetables from New Zealand (or from anywhere else for that matter) as reported in the New Zealand Feature (PIM, Feb, p 31).

Trade based on the complementarity of resources is usually beneficial to all concerned, but when fertile countries, surrounded by seas that are rich in fish and other seafoods, are importing large quantities of food to supplement their own production (or lack of it), something would appear to be very wrong.

At least a partial explanation may be that Pacific Island governments, regardless of their countries’ economic capabilities, are committed to allowing their residents to shop freely on world markets for whatever they want, and that also, because they must regularly face elections, these governments invariably choose shorter rather than longer term economic strategies. The result is that in order to pay for the desired imports the economic resources of Pacific Island nations are channelled into foreign exchange earning activities and the production for domestic consumption of such items as food is neglected. Once this

happens there is then no choice but to import food, and so the vicious circle goes on.

The current emphasis on foreign exchange earning activities is not a new phenomenon in the Pacific Islands, but a continuation of the former (or in some cases still existent) policy of basing the economy of colonies on the export of raw materials sugar, copra, timber, coffee, copper, nickel, gold, etc to the industrialised world. Any nation which promotes a narrow range of export orientated or foreign exchange earning activities, while not being able to feed its own people, becomes particularly vulnerable to outside forces and perpetuates its position as an economic colony. If this state of affairs is judged to be undesirable it is clear that the emphasis must be shifted to boosting domestic production for internal consumption in vital areas such as food production, and at the same time reducing unnecessary imports.

The writer of the New Zealand Feature

simplistically (or New Zealand-centredly)

advocated greater imports by the Pacific Islands from New Zealand, suggesting that beneficiaries of New Zealand aid “could reciprocate by buying New Zealand’s undeniably high-class exports”.

It is one thing to suggest this when talking

of types of goods that the Pacific Islands could not produce themselves, but it is quite another thing when talking of food products that the Pacific Islands could produce themselves. In that same February issue PIM reported Fiji’s renew ed resolve to promote self-sufficiency in agriculture and Tonga's efforts to develop her fisheries for her home market.

Perhaps it is time more thought was given to New Zealand's expanding food exports to the Pacific Islands.

C.H. Livesey

Boroko, PNG

The White

Man's Burden

Human variety in historical cycle never ceases to make me wonder. It strikes atiain as Maxime Tevi (PIM, April, p 25) and S.

Tebula and F. Kali (PIM, May, pp 23, 25) come out with their own quaint versions of “the white man’s burden” in the New

Hebrides today.

What did other people in the colonial history say? The Reverend T. Smaill, presumably a Presbyterian, could not see any kind of order in the lives of Fpi people until “the advent of a more enlightened religious faith” in 1899.

In 1909, a planters' newspaper in Vila

(Le Neo-Hebrides) said that the first duty of the French administration was to “facilitate the recruitment of natives for the absence of natives and their culture and the development of that culture, is the door through which will enter French prosperity in the New Hebrides”.

In 1914, the then French Resident Commissioner, Repiquet, said that he had come to the colony with “the high mission to serve the superior interests of France and her nationals.” This, he said, was always the source of inspiration in his work.

Sometime early this century, one of my great-grandfathers, Jek Suparana, a returned slave from the Queensland sugar fields, saw a recruiting vessel in a harbour at Tongoa collecting more slaves. One of his friends asked him to come to the beach and board the vessel. His well-known reply was “Mi blah ful wan taem, mi no blahful tu taem.”

I am not going to challenge the arguments of Tevi, Tebula or Kati. 1 would rather attain my results through action within the next several years. However, it is disturbing to note that these three persons sound like expatriate-whites using New Hebridean pseudonyms in your columns. Is this not a painful psychological revelation of the lost colonialist mind groping justification in a fast-crumbling dream world?

Kalkot Matas-Kelekele

University of PNG, Assist. Gen. Sec.

New Hebrides National Party.

Suspicious

The poem by Eti Sa’aga, reprinted in Up Front with the Publisher in PI M’s April, issue (p 5) looks far too suspiciously like a work by one of my own favourites, Lawrence Ferlinghetti; in A Coney Island of the Mind, no 5, Mr Ferlinghetti wrote: .. . And everybody after that is always making models of this Tree with Him hung up and always crooning His name and calling him to come down and sit in on their combo as if he is the king cat who’s got to blow or they can’t quite make it Only he don’t come down from His Tree Him just hang there on His Tree looking real Petered out and real cool and also according to a roundup of late world news from the usual unreliable sources real dead

Michael A. White

Saipan, USTT