to get it right

letters

For those who have to get it right

One-man tribunal

In doing some research the other day prepartory to writing an article, I turned to your “Pacific Chronology” section in the 15th Edition of the PIM Yearbook hoping to find a shortcut to identifying some dates. I didn’t.

Are you aware that some how, old Louis Antoine de Bougainville who visited Tahiti in 1768, slipped through the cracks between 1767 and 1769? Curious.

I checked the other five edi tions of your Yearbook which I have in my library. He’s present and accounted for in the 4th edition (1942) edited by R.W.

Robson; the 10th (1968) and the 11th (1972), edited by Judy Tudor.

But he isn’t in the 14th (1981). Now did John Carter edit de Bougainville out when he took over as editor for some reason? If so, I’d like to know what it was.

Or did Ms Tudor leave the old boy’s name scrawled on a small slip of paper which flut tered, unseen, to the floor when she handed the files over to her successor? Then, of course, it would have been swept up while the cleaning lady was tidying, to end its identity in the dustbin.

I think he probably ought to be put back. At the very least, he was Tahiti’s first recorded French tourist and got a bust and a street and who knows what all, to commemorate the occasion.

I wonder, too, if Capt. Don Domingo de Boenechea shouldn’t rate a mention in your venerable chronology?

According to Robert Langdon, he dropped by Tahiti from Peru in 1772 and took three Tahi tians away with him.

Then he returned in 1774,

planted a pair of Franciscan Friars and the first European buildings (wooden pre-fabs) on Tahiti. He sailed on to Ra’iatea, returned to Tahiti, died of natu ral causes and was buried there.

The friars, by then, were so paralysed with culture shock they had to be taken away from that “awful’’ place leaving be hind their European mission house. Regardless of their track record, wouldn’t that make them the first Christian miss ionaries to live on Polynesian soil?

And wouldn’t that give the Catholics the dubious distinc tion of giving it a go, first?

Later, when using your chronology for another reason, I discovered that you are not consistent in listing the com plete independence or self government dates of numerous Pacific countries including; Western Samoa, Cook Islands, Nauru, Fiji, Niue and Papua New Guinea. The years are there, but not the days. I had to look up each one individually, which would have been accept able if you’d left all the rest our.

But you didn’t. You gave full dates to Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Marshall Is., FSM, Vanuatu and the Repub lic of Palau (shouldn’t it be Belau?) Though you mention that the U.S. signed a treaty of friend ship with Tuvalu and Kiribati relinquishing claims to islands in those groups, you neglect to mention that in 1980, (June 11), a similar treaty was signed between the U.S. and the Cook Islands. The treaties with the three countries were approved by the U.S. Senate on June 21, 1983.

In this package, the U.S. also agreed to give up claims to the Tokelaus. Total islands in volved was 26! The Treaty of

Friendship was ratified and signed between the Cook Is. and the U.S. on 9 September 1983. I don’t have the ratificat ion dates for the other countries involved but I’m sure they will appear in the Chronology of your next PIM Yearbook.

I deeply appreciate the very existence of the PIM Yearbook and the tremendous service you perform in producing it.

For myself, I consider it in dispensible.

It travels with me wherever I go along with a battered paperback dictionary and the saurus as my basic necessities.

I imagine there are many people besides myself who de pend on your Yearbook for quick reference because there

The PIM article about land matters in Hawaii was most informative. Their system con trasts with today’s land situation in Fiji.

All non-native agricultural land usage and disputation is dealt with by an Agricultural Tribunal comprised of a single person, who would have to hold one of the most important and powerful positions in the South West Pacific today.

The Tribunal, without benefit of practical legal or judicial experience pronounces his de cision which is, in effect, final and absolute.

The effect in recent years has been that, with exception of the sugar industry, set up entirely by CSR long before Fiji became independent there is virtually no substantial agricultural in-

No appeal to tribunal of one

simply is no other compact Pacific encyclopaedia or alma nac in existence in English, that I’ve ever heard of.

I hope you continue to publ ish, expand and enrich it and thoroughly re-edit it in the years to come for the sake of all researchers, students and people “who need to get it right.’’

Mel Kernahan

Newport Beach, California,

Usa.

* John Carter writes: The ommission has occurred be tween the 11th and 12th edi tions. The chronology section was revised then (not during my editorship) and it could have happened at that time.

dustry in Fiji today. This, not withstanding Fiji’s many thousands of hectares of rich, fertile land.

Experienced investors and developers will not lay them selves open to the whim of the Agricultural Tribunal, knowing full well they have effectively no means of redress.

PlM’s Hawaii article indicates that they do not suffer this development impediment.

One may assume that this is because in Hawaii, as in most democracies, they would not countenance Fiji’s almost medieval one man rule over agricultural land.

D. F. Parkinson

Sunnybank Queensland