Job of writing

Palauans tackle Job of writing their own history

The History of Palau. Pub lished by the Palau Community Action Agency. Mark Berg, ed., Koror, Palau, 1979, 3 vols.

SUSIB, 547 pp, softbound.

With these volumes, the Palau Community Action Agency (PCAA) has produced what is merely the beginning of a much larger study of Palauan history and culture.

Actually there are two his tories of Palau. One is that recorded and written since Western contact. This is largely

a history of and by foreigners

and their influence on the islands. The second is the his tory of the Palauans and their land as they see it as told by and for themselves.

The PCAA has set out to do both these histories, and these first three volumes originally intended to be four represent the first history. They intend

subsequently to produce other

volumes which will ‘give Palauans’ own accounts of the origins and growth of their own culture: its most important in stitutions, its legends, and its

mythology’.

For this second history we must, alas, continue to wait patiently. For the past 15 years the Palauans have been collect ing materials, but the PCAA is

simply not yet ready to produce

them in organised form.

Indeed, it is a most formidable job, and I know of no other Pa cific Island group that has made such an effort at setting down its own history in written form.

These volumes are the work of many people too numerous to mention here. The promi nent Palauan folklorist and his torian Katherine Kesolai, the Director of the Palau Com munity Action Agency, cer

tainly provided and

continues to provide the leadership and support which a lengthy and deliberate effort such as this requires. Mark

Berg, formerly a Peace Corps

Volunteer in Palau, deserves

much credit as the principal editor.

Berg inherited a beginning of the text from Michael Yar borough, another Peace Corps

Volunteer, who initially helped

with the project. Working

slowly and carefully, Berg

checked the historical sources and documentation, and enhanced the narrative through Palauan commentary this is part of Kesolai’s and the PCAA’s intention for the

project.

Getting validating infor mation is often a delicate undertaking in Palau. Knowl edge is private, not public, property. And its revelation is often conditional and ritual istic. Hence an understanding of the historiographic processes of Palau is an essential precon dition for reputable intellectual performance and balance. Berg was certainly an excellent choice to undertake this. A graduate of Atlantic College in South Wales, England, and Yale University, he arrived in Palau in 1974 as a school teacher. Possessing a remark able intellect and keen sensi tivity to the Palauan culture, he settled gently in a village on Babelthuap, married, started a family, and shortly became a respected foreigner. An achievement in itself.

This History of Palau doesn’t contain any new or unknown data about Palau and there are a few errors in the text but it does bring together the existing data and offers it in smooth, coherent, and in formative style, which helps the reader to see a large picture rather well. It is noteworthy too that the Palauans have pub lished it themselves rather than asking or engaging a university or commercial press.

The volumes take the reader through the islands’ experience of some 300 years beginning with commentary on pre contact Palau, and ending with the US naval administration in 1947. A picture of Rous

seauesque peace and tranquil

lity is given of the early

Palauans, who existed in a near-perfect state of homeo stasis with their environment;

‘They completely understood

the ocean based upon gener ations of experience with it (and this) was predicated by their need for food, not sport or research.’

Although the written history

of Palau began with Keate’s book, An Account of the Pelew Islands ... in 1788, there cer tainly must have been outside contact before the subject of Keate’s book, Captain Henry Wilson, arrived in 1783 aboard the wrecked Antelope. Several allusions to earlier contact are

described authoritatively.

Wilson and the Palauans got on royally and their intercourse together was one of mutual benefit. After Wii ;on helped the people of Koror to solidify their political dominance, and they in turn helped him with the construction of a seaworthy craft, he sailed off to China. As gestures of friendship and social investment, Wilson took the young Palauan prince Lee 800 along, and left behind one of his crewmen, Madan Blanchard. While Lee 800 later died in England, and Blanchard proved to be less than culturally fit among his Palauan hosts, the exchange set an historical precedent of mutual party amelioration and social collusion which has dominated Palauan-foreign re lations ever since.

In Volume II one can read

about the prominent foreign

traders and adventurers who came to Palau during the

middle of the 1880 s including

Alfred Tetens, Edward Woodin, Andrew Cheyne, and the infamous D. D. O’Keefe.

The reactions of the Palauans to these people, together with statements and facsimiles of many documents, enrich the stories. Likewise the volumes are illustrated with a number of

excellent pictures.

Volume 111 contains an excellent account of World War II in Palau and an outline of the sequence of events which led to the securing of the islands from the Japanese by the Americans.

These volumes must find

their way to the shelves of all serious students of Micronesia, and can be used as school texts at secondary as well as college levels. A teachers’ guide has been prepared for the first two volumes and is available from the PCAA.

We can only hope that further works of this sort will appear in Micronesia. Dirk

Anthony Ballendorf