Stop The

Rock!

Young Islanders

Want To Get Off

There is restlessness in the Pacific. Islanders are beginning to see their rocks and atolls as cramped, confin ing places. They want to spread their wings and fly, to see the outside world. In the article bejow Lasarusa Vusonlwallala, a Fijian scholar in the field of communication who is now working at Hawaii s East-West Center, takes a close look at the problem.

There is no easy solution to the present migration fever in the Pacific: if the desire to move out is satisfied for large numbers of people, stresses and strains will appear in the host countries to which they go; if it is not satisfied, their countries of origin will be

increasingly troubled by their

desire to leave.

Discovery of the region by the outside world led to the slow disintegration of tra ditional societies and cultures.

As technology improved and

communication increased, the tempo of disintegration quickened. The inflow of infor mation spelt the end of same ness and consistency the end of the era of certainty.

We all wanted to be modern.

It was a practical consideration.

A steel knife certainly beats hacking away for days at a piece of rock just to sharpen it into some cutting tool. Flying here to Hawaii certainly beats sailing up by canoe. And it’s consoling to have a high con fidence in the chances of Mum’s baby surviving, of sister not having to die from dysen tery, or big brother from tetanus. There was now a dis

pensary nearby.

These improvements to life’s

“physical quality” have social

costs. Unfortunately, we have not yet learned to accept them.

Instead we are torn between two loves in our yearning for the physical comforts of the new and the psychological cer tainty of the old. We suffer from ambivalence.

Let us try to recreate three “Pacific Scenes”.

First Contact: He

looks strange, so white! Is he not from the sky? Must be the god our forefathers talked about. He must be for his tech

nology is superior. Whoever

sent him here must be an able provider. I want those nails, steel knives, axes and guns oh yes, those guns. Maybe, if I worship him, and his culture, boats will come with more car goes. Perhaps, one day I will go to see where all these treasures are, and maybe dig some out

myself. I think I’m getting white!

Colonialism: And So

we went to classrooms, grew up to put on ties and sweat in jackets, to pull white socks over our black shins. We looked around and took stock. We could tell those with still some way to go, for they walked barefoot. We changed our pol itical systems and tried adopt

ing foreign economic

principles.

“Hey! You there, stop think ing in Pacifican!”

Told to be rational, that human emotions stunt GNP growth, we become unreason

able, forgetting that rationality

is culturally relative. We leave the old and infirm in the vil lages and rush to the towns.

Some are employed, how lucky

they are! Many more keep

searching, looking for the jobs

they may never find.

Modernisation: There

is that boy in the village. He turns on his radio, hears Elvis and dreams of becoming another Presley. Will he never realise? He walks to town to gape at tourists. They look so affluent. Does he know that they are not all that rich back home? Who will tell him?

The above scenarios try to convey a very brief socio history of a fermentation which is often the seed for change. If

given time and opportunities

societies evolve, otherwise they

just revolve.

Just what alternatives for change are there open to the Islands? By their nature islands have limited resources. What then are their chances for

development?

An economist faced with this question may “Ooh!” and “Aah!” and say, “Well, aah!

Tourism?” An individual living the situation may whimper an Island version of the Broadway hit, “Stop this rock! I wanna get off!”

Where can an Islander go if and when he gets the urge? The system which spelt stability for his forefathers is spinning off balance. How does one hold on to things that may not be there tomorrow? How does one handle new situations? These are some of the musings that may be going through the minds of Pacific people, es pecially those with whom the education toward “mod

ernity”, and

has been successful. Their dip loma of achievement is spelt in capital letters FRUS

Tration.

As I see it, a major problem with developing countries is the one-way flow of infor mation emanating from the more developed. This centre to-periphery direction is just as true within the developing countries where it is from the urban to the rural. All this re sults in the creation of dissatis faction in the low-information sectors as seen in the rural-to urban drift in the less developed countries and the increasing desire to go one step further, to migrate to the

metropolis, to the developed

societies. Unfortunately, this is not possible under present world conditions.

Immigration laws are based on the rationale that the econ omies of any given country cannot support a liberal inflow

of all sorts of people. This makes the recently announced intentions of the North Solomons provincial govern ment in Papua New Guinea to control free movement of their

people an interesting test

case in international under

standing.

“People who wanted to leave their communities to visit towns or urban settlements would have to obtain written permission. The scheme was in the overall interest of the people and their economy. We don’t want to stop people with special skills going to an area

where they can get good jobs,

but as a principle we want to stop people with less skills from moving around. We want to keep them on their land where they are of most value to the community in general, and where no special certificate of trade is necessary” says Prem ier Dr Alexis Sarei (PIM, Jan, 1978, p 6).

The above words could eas ily be those of President Carter, of Prime Ministers Fraser or Muldoon, on laws regulating

migration into their respective

countries because their econ omies cannot sustain the influx into their markets of unskilled “Third Worlders.”

However, Dr Sarei may have to prepare a line of defence

against possible accusations of

“human rights” violations.

Something like, “Liberty

begins at home”?

When a man’s prospects in life appear dim his natural instinct in the past has been to uproot himself and move. In fact, that is believed to be a

probable cause of migration

Lasarusa

into the Pacific Islands in the first place. But what happens when this basic human need, the ability to move when restlessness sets in, cannot be

expressed?

Most likely this is what is happening in the Pacific today,

growing aspirations stifled by

the realities of world econ omics and politics.

International flow of infor mation. through education, media, tourism, travel, and

development in general, has

resulted in the diffusion of the image of a better life outside.

But when these pictures acti vate the search for the real thing, peole find that most of the doors are shut, marked “Closed! Bona Fides Only!”.

We are aware of the econ omic, political and social reper cussions that free human movement creates. Perhaps this is why Australia has long been rather stingy on Island

immigration (though not so

with European movement).

New Zealand may just be awakening to the socio-cultural and politico-economic con sequences of Polynesian in flow.

However, while tight immi

gration policies by developed

countries may partly solve their own socio-economic problems, they do not help the less devel oped. In fact they complicate

the problems of development

further when dissatisfaction ac cumulates into restlessness which can escalate to explosive

proportions. This possibly

poses a real threat to the Islands’ future stability.

To my mind, as a student, of human communication, the major problem of the Pacific Islands, and the developing bloc as a whole, is informa tional. As transitional societies their cultures are experiencing certain degrees of alienation.

The anxiety of being in per petual transition is a real fear.

And since they got there, not of free choice, but by initiation, the high priests in the more de veloped countries have a moral obligation to help them out of their dilemma.

I was pleased to read Aus tralian Senator John Knight’s comments in PIM (Jan, p 14), referring to the new inter national economic order. Some of us look forward to the

establishment of a new order and wish it success in dealing with some of the world’s basic problems. One of them must be this question of the movements of people. Another problem is what can be done about a world communication order for the balancing of infor mation flow. UNESCO is already very much involved in this field.

Furthermore, communi cation should have as one of its

objectives the promotion of

dialogue between the centre and the people and also people-to-people. This should help prepare them for change, with a mentality that knows how to deal with it.

We should now be able to see the pitfalls of the past and present models of one-way flow. It presupposes that the in

formation producers, be they

the mass media or govern ments, know what the people want to know. The system has functioned with little consider ation for what the people’s in formation needs in fact are.

What is required today are communication systems with feedback channels that

encourage the enunciation of the people’s needs.

Development, that is, change

seen by the greatest number to be for the greatest good, is

possible only through effective

communication. No develop ment plans, no matter how pretty they may look on the drawing board, will ever suc ceed if there is no agreement as to purpose and the ways of

attaining goals between the

planners and the implementers

or the subjects of change.

Future world peace may de

pend on the political stability

of Third World countries. Such

stability will depend in good

measure on whether the pic tures seen by Third World peoples with their eyes corre spond with the images in their minds. Such a result can only be achieved through a system working on principles of bal ance in the creation and fulfil ment of their dreams, wants and needs.

It would be good for the Pa cific region if its neighbouring metropolitan powers began to put such a policy into effect in their relations with the Island countries.