Telling Pacific Lives
Prisms of Process
Telling Pacific Lives
Prisms of Process
Brij V. Lal & Vicki Luker
Editors
Published by ANU E Press
The Australian National University
Canberra ACT 0200, Australia
Email: anuepress@anu.edu.au
This title is also available online at: http://epress.anu.edu.au/tpl_citation.html
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Title: 	 Telling Pacific lives : prisms of process / editors, Vicki
	 Luker ; Brij V. Lal.
ISBN:	 9781921313813 (pbk.) 9781921313820 (pdf)
Notes:	 Includes index.
Subjects: 	 Islands of the Pacific--Biography.
	 Islands of the Pacific--Anecdotes.
	 Islands of the Pacific--Civilization.
	 Islands of the Pacific--Social life and customs.
Other Authors/Contributors:
	 Luker, Vicki.
	 Lal, Brij.
Dewey Number: 	 990.0099
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Cover design by Teresa Prowse
Cover image: Choris, Louis, 1795-1828. Iles Radak [picture] [Paris : s.n., [1827] 1 print :
lithograph, hand col.; 20.5 x 26 cm. nla.pic-an10412525 National Library of Australia
Printed by University Printing Services, ANU
This edition © 2008 ANU E Press
Table of Contents
Preface vii
1. Telling Pacific Lives: From Archetype to Icon, Niel Gunson 1
2. The Kila Wari Stories: Framing a Life and Preserving a
Cosmology, Deborah Van Heekeren 15
3. From ‘My Story’ to ‘The Story of Myself’—Colonial Transformations of
Personal Narratives among the Motu-Koita of Papua New
Guinea, Michael Goddard 35
4. Mobility, Modernisation and Agency: The Life Story of John Kikang
from Papua New Guinea, Wolfgang Kempf 51
5. Surrogacy and the Simulacra of Desire in Heian Japanese Women’s Life
Writing, Christina Houen 69
6. ‘The Story that Came to Me’: Gender, Power and Life History
Narratives—Reflections on the Ethics of Ethnography in
Fiji, Pauline McKenzie Aucoin 85
7. A Tartan Clan in Fiji: Narrating the Coloniser ‘Within’ the
Colonised, Lucy de Bruce 93
8. Telling Lives in Tuvalu, Michael Goldsmith 107
9. My History: My Calling, Alaima Talu 117
10. Researching, (W)riting, Releasing, and Responses to a Biography of
Queen Salote of Tonga, Elizabeth Wood-Ellem 139
11. On Being a Participant Biographer: The Search for J.W.
Davidson, Doug Munro 149
12. ‘You Did What, Mr President!?!?’ Trying to Write a Biography of
Tosiwo Nakayama, David Hanlon 165
13. Telling the Life of A.D. Patel, Brij V. Lal 177
14. On Writing a Biography of William Pritchard, Andrew E. Robson 195
15. Writing the Colony: Walter Edward Gudgeon in the Cook Islands, 1898
to 1909, Graeme Whimp 205
16. An Accidental Biographer? On Encountering, Yet Again, the Ideas and
Actions of J.W. Burton, Christine Weir 215
17. E.W.P. Chinnery: A Self-Made Anthropologist, Geoffrey Gray 227
18. Lives Told: Australians in Papua and New Guinea, Hank Nelson 243
19. Biography of a Nation: Compiling a Historical Dictionary of the Solomon
Islands, Clive Moore 277
Notes on Contributors 293
Index 295
v
Preface
Make bare the poor dead secrets of the heart
Strip the stark-naked soul
                                                    Swinburne
The great poet’s words, of an era long gone, speak to continuing biographical
conventions and aspirations. Even those who believe that life writing, as a genre,
is more easily handled than other forms of historical and creative writing concede
the complexities and uncertainties involved in constructing a life—whether
another’s or one’s own. This volume of essays is an exploration of the way in
which scholars from different disciplines, standpoints and theoretical orientations
attempt to write life stories in the Pacific. It is the product of a conference
organised by the Division of Pacific and Asian History at The Australian National
University in December 2005.
The aim of the conference was to explore ways in which Pacific lives are read
and constructed through a variety of media—films, fiction, ‘faction’,
history—under four overarching themes. The first, Framing Lives, sought to
explore various ways of constructing a life—from a classic western perspective
of birth, formation, experiences and death of an individual to other ways, for
example, life as secondary to a longer genealogical entity, life as a symbol of
collective experience, individual lives captured and fragmented in a mosaic of
others, lives made meaningful by their implication in a particular historical or
cultural web, the underlying values and world views that inform one or another
approach to framing a life. The second theme, the Stuff of Life, looked at
materials, methods and collaborative arrangements with which the biographer,
autobiographer and recorder work, their objectives, constraints, inspirations,
challenges and tricks. The third section, Story Lines, focused on formats and
genres such as edited diaries, collections of writings, voice recordings, genres
of biography, autobiography, truth and fiction (verse, dance, novels) and the
varieties and different advantages of narrative shapes that crystallise the telling
of a life. The final section, Telling Lives/Changing Lives, focused on
biography/autobiography and the consciousness of identity, history, purpose,
lives as witness and windows, telling lives as change for those involved in the
tale, the telling, the listening. The overall aim was to bring out both the generic
or universal challenges of ‘telling lives’ as well as to highlight the particular
tendencies and trends in the Pacific.
Yet these four themes, which seemed analytically promising at the outset,
proved in practice difficult to disentangle from the presentations at the workshop.
Instead, another pattern of difference began to emerge, anchored in apparent
contrasts between the literate and oral cultures of the Pacific. On the one hand
were ‘life tellers’ operating with what could be called Western concepts of the
vii
individual, time and history—or at least with people or texts which harmonised
with these. For the subjects of these life stories and their tellers, literacy was a
crucial element of their existence that in fundamental ways could be taken for
granted. On the other hand were ‘life tellers’ dealing with people and evidence
influenced by a different matrix: by traditional Pacific cultures which are oral.
Here personhood is defined largely by relations with kin, alive and
dead—Western concepts of the individual, together with the consciousness of
the self on which ‘biography’ and ‘autobiography’ in important Western senses
depend, are alien and, some would argue, inconceivable. In these cultures, time
is imagined, ultimately, as cyclical rather than linear; and the past is palpably
immanent in the present. Niel Gunson’s comprehensive keynote address to the
workshop, which as chapter one serves as an introduction to this volume as a
whole, adumbrates this cultural divide. Though it can be overstated and several
of the ‘lives told’ here, and their tellers, in different ways bridge or question it,
nevertheless this divide remains fundamental to the collection and poses
particular challenges for those ‘tellers’ who work across it.
Anthropologists Deborah Van Heekeren, Michael Goddard and Wolfgang
Kempf, more searchingly than any other contributors, explicitly address the
cultural foundations of biography and autobiography. They deal with lives
rooted in traditional Pacific cultures or with lives lived, and represented, in the
midst of great cultural change, including a shift towards literacy. Each of these
authors poses a difficult question.
Deborah Van Heekeren meditates upon the stories which the Vula‘a people
of coastal Papua New Guinea tell of a fabled warrior, Kila Wari, who lived
between 1820 and 1860. She asks: why do the Vula‘a tell these stories? The
question is all the more arresting because the informant who pressed her to
record stories about Kila Wari—and indeed wanted a film to be made of Kila
Wari’s life—appears to reject so much that his ancestor, Kila Wari, embodies.
Whereas Kila Wari was a great killer of men and a pagan, his descendant is a
fulltime Christian evangelist. Deborah concludes that these stories serve two
purposes: first, they establish relationships between the tellers and Kila Wari
that can advantage the tellers in local disputes over land and politics; second,
these stories preserve and provide access to a pre-Christian Vula‘a existence.
Kila Wari’s stories do not constitute biography in the sense indicated by
Swinburne—‘making bare the poor dead secrets’ of the subject’s inner heart:
rather, they constitute identity for their tellers and have an important collective
function in protecting, through the tales of Kila Wari, a traditional worldview
and way of life.
Michael Goddard reflects on the autobiographical writings of Bobby Gaigo,
from the village of Tatana in PNG’s capital, Port Moresby. Bobby Gaigo’s
autobiographical writings, unlike the majority of Melanesian ‘autobiographies’,
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Telling Pacific Lives
were written entirely by himself, without a European collaborator or mentor.
For Goddard, the question is: how did Bobby Gaigo develop the autobiographical
self-consciousness necessary for such writing? Goddard argues that in the
traditional culture from which Gaigo sprang, the concepts of ‘self ’ and ‘history’
that are necessary preconditions for autobiography were nonexistent. To support
this argument, Goddard describes traditional concepts of self and time among
Bobby Gaigo’s people and draws analogies from other Melanesian cultures.
Goddard also finds supporting evidence in certain so-called ‘autobiographies’
which have resulted from collaboration between a Melanesian ‘teller’ and a
European mentor-cum-editor. These particular ‘autobiographies’, on scrutiny,
reveal how the teller’s concepts of personhood and time were often radically at
odds with those of his or her collaborator. Goddard notes the thesis that among
the traditional cultures of the Pacific, ‘autobiographical consciousness’ has been
fostered by Islanders’ interaction with Christianity and capitalism, which
promotes concepts of the ‘individual’. However, he rejects this thesis in the case
of Bobby Gaigo. Instead, he proposes that Gaigo’s long participation in
land-claims for his people against the colonial administration led to an
appreciation of the value Europeans placed on documentary evidence and history
in the Western sense. Gaigo thereby developed the ‘autobiographical
self-consciousness’ from which to write ‘The Story of Myself ’.
Finally, Wolfgang Kempf writes from his experience as a
collaborator-cum-editor, co-constructing the life story of John Kikang, a man
from PNG’s Madang hinterland. John Kikang was of an earlier generation than
Bobby Gaigo’s, but like him grew up in a traditional oral society, though with
less formal schooling. As a youth, Kikang left home to work for the whites,
participating in the colonial economy and engaging with Christianity. On
returning to his home village, Kikang was an energetic promoter of agricultural
projects and Roman Catholicism, working closely with administrators and
missionaries.
Kempf ’s question is: how best can he put John Kikang’s life on paper? He
uses John Kikang’s own writings: a journal and a ‘holy book’, both unsettling
and thought-provoking texts; and recordings of John Kikang’s narratives and
conversations with his collaborator. Kempf has thought about the processes by
which Kikang tried to make sense of the world and change his corner of it. He
also respects Kikang’s projections of himself as a mediator between his ‘backward’
home and the spiritual and material realms of the whites. Further, Kempf sees
commonalities in the processes—characterised by Kempf as ‘mimetic’—by which
he, as collaborator, tries to understand and reproduce Kikang’s writings and
narratives and by which Kikang understands and represents his own life. Kempf’s
resolve to honour these processes result in plans for a ‘life story’ that will
graphically distinguish the different materials used, Kikang’s and Kempf’s
ix
Preface
respective efforts, and the dynamics of co-creation. It will look unlike ‘biography’
or ‘autobiography’ in the conventional Western format.
Several other chapters can be savoured within the problematic suggested by
contrasts between traditional/oral and Western (alternatively modern)/literate
approaches to the telling of Pacific lives. Thus in his efforts to write a biography
of Tosiwo Nakayama, David Hanlon is keenly sensitive to the cultural differences
between biographer and biographee, including Nakayama’s fundamental
ambivalence about texts. Pauline MacKenzie Aucoin is left with unanswered
and perhaps unanswerable questions of what to do with the life story imparted
to her by a Fijian village woman, one day as they sewed together and the rain
fell. Though Michael Goldsmith, in his survey of Tuvaluan life stories, challenges
schematic contrasts between ‘traditional’ and ‘Western’ concepts of the self (and
reader take note: treat the dichotomies drawn in this preface with suspicion!),
in the chapter that follows his, the autobiographical reflections of Tuvalu-born
Alaima Talu at one level record a painful process of individuation through which
she separated from her parents, their wishes and their church.
Christina Houen’s contribution on Heian Japanese women’s life writing may
appear out of place in a collection on the Pacific. But it is the methodology rather
than the subject matter that is of interest. Houen is concerned with the way The
Tale of Genji speaks pleasurably to a certain kind of woman of which Houen
presents herself as an examplar. ‘It is a mirror to my own life’, she remarks. The
genres which Heian women developed, in poetic diary and prose romance, with
their themes of loss, longing, exclusion, separation, loneliness and repressed
desire for emotional security and artistic freedom, find resonance in her own
life. Alaima Talu, too, reads other attempts at life writing—by Mahatma Gandhi,
Sidney Poitier and Sheila Graham—for inspiration and guidance before writing
down her own life. Aucoin is a similarly autobiographical contributor, in that
she dramatises the ethical issues posed to her—as a woman and an
anthropologist—by the question whether and how to interpret the story told
to her. Lucy de Bruce embeds her family history in a kind of autobiographical
essay—the kind that postulates the author as typical of a social category. The
kailoma story (and her own) is that of moving from silent invisibility to articulate
visibility through self-narration.
The contributions by historians Wood-Ellem, Munro and Lal are about the
process of research and discovery, chance encounters with revealing bits of
information, about the role of contingency in scholarship: a stray letter here and
a piece of paper there which throw interesting light on the subject, such as Lord
Dening’s letter to Lal about A.D. Patel’s critical arbitration into Fiji’s sugar
industry and Davidson’s letter to his musical friend about sleeping with him.
The contributions by Hanlon and Moore and, to some extent, Wood-Ellem are
about biographical projects aligned with the project of nation-building in
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Telling Pacific Lives
situations where centrifugal dynamics render the task perilous. Hanlon notes
and accepts Tosiwo Nakayama’s stated motives and intentions. Moore is more
explicit: he intends his dictionary as an impetus towards nationhood in the
Solomon Islands.
There are many similarities in the way historians and anthropologists approach
the task of life writing, but there are important differences as well. Historians
sometimes seem less interested in questions about the role of culture in the
formation of ideas, attitudes and values in the life of the individuals about whom
they are writing. Whereas anthropologists tend to expose western models of life
telling, historians generally work within their broad strictures. They often focus
on the unique particularities of a lived life. The concerns of most
historian-biographers in this volume are the explication and illumination of
individual lives caught in a particular set of specific historical, cultural and
political circumstances. The telling of these lives can indeed throw light on the
complexities of circumstances and larger patterns of change. In telling the life
of Walter Edward Gudgeon in the Cook Islands, Graeme Whimp aims to use
biography for insights into the multifaceted, labile and ambivalent dynamics of
the colonial world—characteristics that several scholars of recent decades have
stressed against visions of a monolithic and omnipotent ‘colonialism’. Similarly,
Christine Weir, musing on the possibilities of writing a life of John Wear Burton,
foreshadows a project that would reveal little of the inner or private man, but
much about the intellectual, political and religious milieu of a liberal Christian
committed to ‘native development’ through the work of governments,
international organisations and Christian missions.
Telling the life of another person is often necessarily an obtrusive act. The
teller or writer is taken into confidence, and allowed to enter spaces of a life
unseen by others. The act of writing or recording is never neutral or innocent.
A subtle mutual manipulation is an integral part of the process, as several
contributors remind us. David Hanlon’s experience of interviewing Toshio
Nakayama will be familiar to many biographers. He talks to the first President
of the Federated States of Micronesia at the end of a distinguished career, his
life slowly coming to an end on the island of Oahu. Hanlon’s interviews reveal
many hitherto hidden aspects of Nakayama’s life, but many remain shrouded
in mystery about which Nakagama is not forthcoming. ‘To be honest’, says
Hanlon, ‘I think Nakayama was also careful, selective and even evasive at times
in these interviews’. How the biographer finds his or her way through the
deliberately hidden tracts of a private life becomes a challenge that will be
recognised by many.
Several contributions allude to the complexities of telling or recording lives
in cross-cultural situations. But the difficulties are not cross-cultural alone.
Similar problems arise when story tellers attempt to uncover lives largely absent
xi
Preface
from the records, from family ephemera and memorabilia, or when there is a
reluctance to tell the story. How does one write about a past where memory is
not properly archived, when verifiable facts are bare? Official archives may hold
little promise of revealing much to the aspiring life teller, but fortunately, as
Hank Nelson reminds us, there are other rich sources to exploit, most notably
memoirs. Papua New Guinea has been particularly lucky in this regard. Once,
writing memoirs was largely male domain, recording achievements and savouring
satisfaction of a job well done, whether in the field of missions or plantations or
ordinary life. But in recent years, women have published their own accounts of
their time. Often these are not about moments of grandeur: ‘they are the memories
of nights spent on pitching small boats, clinging to small children, chucking up
over the side, and accepting the impossibility of using the only toilet, a
bucket…or trying to explain to a 16-year-old son why he could not ride a motor
bike exuberantly in front of a group of Highlanders who once would have been
entertained but were now enraged because this was an arrogant display of what
they did not have and could not do in their own country’. Such finely-grained
detailed accounts of everyday life, unnoticed by officials and unrecorded in
official archives, provide historical story tellers a valuable mine of material.
Telling lives, focusing on the specific and the particular, can act as valuable
corrective to ‘generalisations and stereotypes spawned by older, positivist
historical schools of thought and more recent theory-based postcolonial
approaches’, writes Andrew Robson. His own account of William Pritchard
destroys the conventional wisdom about Pritchard’s role in mid-19th
century
Fijian politics as an imperialistic, unfeeling meddler in the islands’ affairs. Lal’s
account of Fiji leader A.D. Patel in mid-20th
century shows him as a man ahead
of his times, reviled by his critics in public but respected in private, who made
significant if at the time unheralded contribution to Fiji politics, especially in
its march to independence. Geoffrey Gray in his contribution rescues the
government anthropologist E.P. Chinnery from the confusion and
misunderstanding about the influences which shaped his work in Papua.
‘Luck and serendipity are just as crucial, although good researchers will often
make their own luck’, Doug Munro writes. ‘[B]umpy rides are frequently enough
the biographer’s lot, something I wish that I had known earlier because it might
have given a measure of grim comfort’. Lal shares that sentiment although he
did not encounter as many setbacks as Munro in his researches into the lives of
A.D. Patel. He was however worried about writing a book without seeing the
enormous archives in London. He was relieved when he did consult the London
archives several years after he had published his book, that the story he had
told was substantially supported. David Hanlon searches in archival and oral
testimony for clues into the life and motivation of Tosio Nakayama believing
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Telling Pacific Lives
that his life ‘offers a critical focal lens through which to examine a host of key
themes that link Micronesia to the larger Pacific region and beyond’.
Clive Moore is the only contributor to this volume who takes the challenge
of life writing to a national scale in creating a dictionary of biography as well
as a historical encyclopaedia of events for the Solomon Islands. This is a mammoth
task requiring meticulous planning and coordination, involving scores of
contributors from all walks of life, many of whom may not have written
biographical entries before. The emphasis in such projects is not on a carefully
nuanced account, properly contextualised and documented. Its purpose, rather,
is more utilitarian: to make basic, reliable, information about individuals and
institutions accessible to the larger public and which could in the process
contribute to the creation of a national identity. The task in the Pacific is not
easy where documentation on individual lives outside official circles is sparse
and where, in some cases, there may be actual resistance to making such
information available. Moore’s project has counterparts in other parts of the
Pacific, notably Papua New Guinea and Fiji, but lack of financial resources and
local expertise—in contrast to the national dictionary of projects in Australia
and New Zealand—have prevented them from reaching fruition.
Among historians at the workshop, animated discussion took place about the
purpose of the historical enterprise and the role of biographical writing in it.
All the old arguments were rehearsed, but no conclusion reached. Later, Doug
Munro sent Lal an excerpt of a piece written by the Australian historian Geoffrey
Serle. It captures the way many historians conceive of history. ‘After the
fundamentals of truth-seeking and honesty, the first requirement for history is
that it should be literature’, Serle wrote.1 ‘My main purpose in writing general
history is to tell a story (a ‘true’ story) and to reflect, however inadequately, the
nobility and grandeur and the squalor and misery involved in man’s striving.
The great secondary task of the scholar is to communicate.’ He noted the advances
the profession had made in developing the techniques of scholarship, regretting
the loss of the ‘mass reading public there was for history in the nineteenth
century’. In particular, he regretted that historians had ‘banished the individual
to some remote limbo and forgotten how to tell a story’. The need to ‘preserve
the story, to retain the biographical element, to write for a literate public’: these
are as much a part of our discipline, as urgent a concern now as they were in
the past.
To end, we return to the beginning. ‘Telling Lives’ is an intricate and
contested exercise. As several of our contributors remind us, entering the life
world of another person is problematic even at the best of times. Some matters
always remain beyond the reach of reason and rational research. The problem
is especially fraught in cross-cultural and non-literate contexts where notions
of time, space, history, myth, the role and obligations of individuals in society
xiii
Preface
differ greatly and where, moreover, historical memory is not archived. How, in
these situations, do we construct lives? This volume shows that the answer varies
enormously depending on the teller’s discipline as well as the subject’s
circumstance and context. If ‘making bare the poor dead secrets of the heart’ is
the task, it is not easy, never was.
Finally, some words of thanks. First to the Division of Pacific and Asian
History in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at The Australian
National University which sponsored the workshop and provided administrative
assistance. Oanh Collins prepared the manuscript for publication with her
characteristic efficiency. Second, we are truly grateful to all the contributors
who waited patiently to see their work in print.
B.V.L. and V.L.
ENDNOTES
1 See Geoffrey Serle, ‘Recreating an Era: Victoria in the ’50s and ’80s,’ in David Duffy, Grant Harman
and Keith Swan (eds), Historians at Work: investigating and recreating the past (Sydney 1973), 52-54.
xiv
Telling Pacific Lives
Chapter 1
Telling Pacific Lives: From Archetype
to Icon
Niel Gunson
If historians aim at presenting what can only be an approximation of the past,
biographers, for their part, attempt an approximation of a life. Usually a good
biographer goes beyond the life, and attempts to illustrate the age in which his
or her subject lived. Authors may think their own autobiographies achieve a
more exact approximation of their lives but the historian is not always convinced.
Autobiography is a doubtful primary source for writing biography, usually
being less reliable than letters, diaries, vital statistics and archival files. Apart
from the tricks of undocumented memory, the writer of autobiography is often
subject to self-delusion, polemic and, in the pejorative sense, romance. We shall
later consider this in the Pacific context.
Because writing biography and autobiography is a fairly recent development
in the history of the Pacific Islands we might first look at the way Islanders
themselves, and no doubt the preliterate ancestors of humankind in general,
first commemorated the individual life.
When I first knew the anthropologist Derek Freeman he was in the habit of
explaining everything in terms of kinship.1 At every history seminar he
attended, he was never satisfied until the whole hour’s historical analysis had
been reduced to a formula using kinship terms. One scholar was even reduced
to tears because she had not introduced kinship into her otherwise immaculate
presentation. Certainly kinship provides the basic framework for identifying
the individual life. In some societies, there never seems to have been a real sense
of history. The basic kinship structure was so set in the ethnographic present
that it simply repeated itself as the generations passed away. There were a limited
number of personal names that could be used in particular preordained
relationships and these names were re-used, or rather, embodied in a child born
into an identical relationship.2 To an outside observer such a society could
appear static. The sense of self was identified with a particular role. Something
of this survives in the way Pacific title-holders readily identify with their ‘past
incarnations’, that is, the previous title-holders, and can speak in the first person
of having been present at certain events in distant historical time.3 This can be
1
very confusing when a narrator uses the personal name of a title-holder instead
of the title in what we would regard as an anachronistic context.
Closely related to the concept of the perpetuation of the ethnographic present
was the circular view of time based largely on the recurring seasons, and on
other cycles in nature, particularly the rising and setting of the Pleiades. The
physicists Isham and Savvidou recently voiced the obvious: ‘If time is represented
mathematically by a circle then it is clear that no real concept of history can be
developed. For if an event lies in the future of a present one, then it also lies in
its past’.4
In those societies where the shaman regulated social and artistic ritual the
whole drama of human existence was transformed into an epic cycle. Every
event in the cycle such as a flood, a hurricane, a war or a famine drew on all
floods, hurricanes, wars and famines, every new experience adding to the detail
of the repertoire when the cycle was either performed or recited. There was no
room for individuals and in so far as there were characters they were
archetypes—trickster, shaman or king and warrior. In the Pacific, song cycles
were as developed as in India, Greece and Finland, all regions with circular views
of time, some of the longest and best known song cycles being in Polynesia.5
We might ask to what extent the archetypes represent real lives. What do
the cycles of the great culture hero Maui tell us about real people? I have argued
elsewhere that the historical Maui is more likely to have been a shaman than an
actual voyager, though the composite character undoubtedly draws on stories
of the ancestral voyagers.6 I have also suggested that Maui represents the more
common shaman, the trickster noted for shape-changing and cunning as opposed
to Tafaki, the high initiate who manipulates knowledge. But everywhere that
one finds Maui, he has been localised. He has numerous birthplaces, different
partners, even different mothers. He has been merged with other tricksters and
soul travellers such as Rupe, Kura and Kisikisi and it is not always easy to know
how recently Maui has supplanted an earlier culture figure.7
The distribution of the Maui myths seems to emanate from Tonga and the
Western Polynesian triangle, one main route leading direct to Hawaii and the
other main route leading direct to New Zealand, particularly the South Island.
These routes are supported by tradition if not by current theories of migration
to the Islands. We owe much to Katharine Luomala for her delightful study of
Maui, but it is doubtful if the Maui myths were as widespread as she suggests.8
In the 1950s I was told that her search for Maui in the Gilbert Islands was
rewarded by indigenous story-tellers only too happy to recast their own tricksters
as the Polynesian demigod in exchange for American cigarettes.
While I shall settle for Maui as archetype there may well have been a Tongan
figure for whom we could resurrect a life. Just to outdo Gavin Menzies9 and
2
Telling Pacific Lives
send a shiver down the spines of my prehistory colleagues, I offer Crown Prince
Maui, a genuine historical figure and last of the Silla dynasty of Korea, exiled
in 936, not that long before the Tu‘i Tonga dynasty was allegedly established
on Tongatapu.10 I might add that the Silla royal burial mounds closely resemble
the royal burial langi of Tonga, and there were interesting shamanic parallels in
the royal lineages including the veneration of snakes and eels. But when all is
said and done the historian has no life story to tell. I am reminded of Peter Sellers
as Sir Eric Goodness being interviewed on the life of a 13th
century mystic Fazab
El Barashadam Hashid, known as Smith, and his ‘endeavour to bring to the
common man the portrait of a man [who was culturally significant but] about
whom we know practically nothing’.11
We are on safer ground in telling Pacific lives when we have a large corpus
of traditional stories supported by archaeology. Even then some historical figures
can be as elusive as Smith. Chris Ballard, in his current research in Vanuatu,
may be able to date the remains of Roimata/Loimata and his minions to the 16th
century but will he be able to embody and authenticate the historical life of the
legendary figure? Fortunately, in some Pacific countries, particularly in Hawaii
and Tonga, the existence of parallel inter-island and inter-family traditions
enable the biographer to check and countercheck the genealogical and
chronological sources. Using such sources scholars such as Augustin Krämer and
Penny Schoeffel-Meleisea have attempted to piece together the life of Salamāsina,
the first Samoan Tafaifā (holder of all four paramount titles) and, as I would
argue, the first Tongan Tamahā (the most sacred female chief).12 I shall briefly
look at another important female figure in Tongan history, the high chiefess
Ta‘emoemimi, whose name, if translated for a children’s story, would be rendered
Princess Pooh and Piddle. A respected senior Tongan colleague thought the
name was so disgusting that he assumed the missionaries who recorded it had
been the victims of irreverent leg pulling. But the traditional sources taken
together with the evidence of archaeology, ethnology and the methods of
historical revisionism reveal that Ta‘emoemimi was a person of great
consequence.13
The sanitised records of the 19th
century and the rewritten or censored records
of the Tupou dynasty have reduced Ta‘emoemimi and her full brother to children
who died in infancy, but these are flawed sources.14 More convincing is the
vast langi of Ta‘emoemimi in Vava‘u and the fact that genealogies kept in Vava‘u
and related traditions name Ta‘emoemimi as a Tu‘i Tonga Fefine, the most
influential female figure in the Tongan Islands who bore the title Sinaitakala.
We also learn from fragments of song that her full brother, like several dynastic
heirs before and after, was installed as co-regent during his father’s lifetime.15
This may have been done to allow the son to marry his moheofo or Great Royal
Wife. The junior Tu‘i Tonga died before his father presumably without issue
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and his moheofo, known as Tupou Moheofo, then married one of her husband’s
younger half brothers, the warrior Pau, who was, at various times, a contender
for the hauship (or position of political king) of Tonga.
Pau and Tupou Moheofo were to produce a family of four daughters, the
male heir probably being the son of a secondary wife of the moheofo’s lineage.
When the first daughter was born it was probably the Tu‘i Tonga Fefine’s
privilege to name the child.
One can only guess, but I think with cultural insight, how Ta‘emoemimi
acquired her mucky moniker. The name is a title for the matāpule (or chief’s
attendant) whose responsibility it was to attend to the royal toilet needs and
wrap and bury the royal stool. A baby was likely to mess or wet a chief or
chiefess who held it and it was not unknown for a chiefly person to kill rather
than cuddle such a messy child. One supposes that the Tu‘i Tonga Fefine was
so delighted with her baby niece that she looked after her toilet needs and took
the matāpule name for herself in exchange for her own title, Sinaitakala‘i
Fekitetele, which became the child’s name and was no longer a title, a puzzle
for those who correctly believed Pau’s eldest daughter never succeeded as Tu‘i
Tonga Fefine.
Ta‘emoemimi was an important figure and no doubt when her father died
she selected Pau as his successor particularly as he was already married to the
moheofo. When Ta‘emoemimi died she was succeeded as Tu‘i Tonga Fefine by
Pau’s older half sister Nanasipau‘u who lived into the 1790s. Elizabeth Bott
believed there was no way of finding out why the succession of Pau was
‘irregular’ but by telling or reconstructing the life of Ta‘emoemimi we are able
to show that it was not altogether irregular.16
With the advent of Europeans in the Pacific the amount of primary material
for writing lives should have made the biographer’s task easier but most of us
know that reconciling voyage narratives with recorded traditions and orally
transmitted accounts is one of the most difficult exercises for the historian. In
the case of Tonga, just when scholars were beginning to agree about the identity
of high ranking Tongans who met the British and French explorers, the
appearance of new translations of Malaspina’s visit to Vava‘u has raised many
questions.17 Certain characters remain particularly elusive such as Cook’s Fīnau.
The biographer, particularly the brief biographer, could get the identification
horribly wrong.
With the advent of Europeans we also find the writings of beachcombers and
missionaries. In 1964 Harry Maude listed all the then known writings of
beachcombers.18 Since then other accounts have been found, one of the most
recent being that of Joseph Barsden, known in Tahiti as ‘Joe the beachcomber’,
who played a major role in the transition from paganism to Christianity.19 That
4
Telling Pacific Lives
Barsden has surfaced after nearly two centuries highlights the constant need for
revision and research and also the element of chance in telling Pacific lives.
For missionaries, chance was replaced by a providential view of history, an
elaboration of the linear concept of history, supposedly rooted in Judaeo-Christian
theology. Time was defined as the linear ordering of events between the creation
of the world and its ‘final apocalyptic consummation’. Although much missionary
literature was objective and even scientific, it was also pious and didactic. The
natural mode of missionary biography was hagiography. Missionaries sometimes
complained that they were the instruments of ‘pious fraud’ and nowhere was
this more blatant than in telling the lives of Pacific missionaries. Many a
missionary confessed in his diary that the published life of a colleague was very
different from the reality. The apotheosis of the renowned Protestant missionary
John Williams was a case in point and his colleagues were only too glad to point
out he had feet of clay.20 While Williams was undoubtedly a great pioneer
figure, Congregational historians in particular have turned him into a sanctified
blacksmith-carpenter who built ships single-handedly apparently with little
help from the faceless and virtual slave labour put at his disposal by compliant
chiefs. One of his first biographers, the minister of his own church, the Reverend
Dr John Campbell, was quick to point out Williams’ personal limitations but
until the 20th
century the sanctified image remained largely unchallenged.21
Hagiography lends itself to visual images. Williams’ life was mirrored in the
oil prints by George Baxter, and several of Baxter’s missionary prints are highly
idealised such as the death and martyrdom of Williams, where he is attacked by
brutish looking New Hebrideans, and the Reverend John Waterhouse
superintending the landing of Wesleyan missionaries at Taranaki in 1844.22
With these in mind we leap forward to a modern idealistic painting by the New
Zealand artist Piera McArthur showing Bishop Pompallier after disputing with
Henry Williams, in which the great Catholic missionary bishop is shown
levitating, a fine example of the hagiographic image.23
Until well into the 20th
century missionaries remained in charge of the telling
and representation of their own lives. With the development of Freudian analysis
and advances in forensic science the telling of missionary lives became more the
function of social and largely secular historians. Father Damien de Veuster, now
beatified by his Church as the Blessed Damien of Molokai, has been the subject
of numerous biographies. Although traduced by Protestant critics, particularly
the Presbyterian Dr Hyde, Father Damien was ably defended by Robert Louis
Stevenson,24 yet it is clear that, like John Williams, he was not the plaster saint
of the pious monographs. Two biographical studies of modern times have done
much to reveal the essential character of the leper saint as an inspirational if
flawed human being. Gavan Daws, in 1973, provided a sympathetic portrait in
Holy Man, drawing on the new techniques of psychohistory and analysing his
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subject in terms of sibling rivalry. Richard Stewart, a professor of medicine in
Wisconsin, has produced the most recent biography in which much new
information is used in conjunction with a medical analysis of the disease and of
Damien himself.25 These studies reveal, in the words of one commentator, that
‘even his detractors could not deny that he was almost single-handedly
responsible for tremendous improvements to Kalaupapa [leprosy settlement] in
the face of overwhelming odds having taught himself the practice of medicine
and the skill of a master builder of chapels, churches and houses’.26
In telling Pacific lives through psychohistory Gavan Daws was able to help
us understand historical processes that might otherwise have eluded us. Just as
forensic science convinces us who it is that committed a crime, so the clinical
study of the biographical subject enables the historian to understand the
workings of the subject’s mind and prompts him or her to ask particular questions
and look for particular signs. The historian becomes a profiler. The method was
particularly useful for understanding missionaries usually partly concealed in
pious propaganda. Apart from Father Damien, Daws treated at least three other
missionaries, John Williams, Father Laval of the Gambiers and Walter Murray
Gibson of Hawaii.27 I recall that Barrie Macdonald once commented that he
could learn as much from my essay on John Williams and his ship as from the
Daws analysis, but he was forgetting that the Daws analysis, because it was
clinically sound, had a scientific finality about it. My own reservations about
the Daws psychohistory methodology are that the clinical analysis is converted
into literary prose when I would prefer it to be presented in clinical terms like
a forensic analysis. Of Gavan Daws’ missionary portraits, the one I found most
enthralling was that of Father Laval when it was presented as a clinical case
rather than as a finished portrait. That even the portrait was never published
suggests that sometimes the dark places of the mind can be unnerving, something
we are aware of in his portrait of Melville.
In his fascinating notes on writing biography in the Pacific, Daws touches
on another controversial missionary, Shirley Waldemar Baker, sometime premier
of Tonga. Noel Rutherford in his excellent study of Baker and the King of Tonga
had some doubts about Baker’s antecedents, contrasting the missionary’s apparent
lack of education and polish with the relationships he claimed. Daws took the
contrast further, arguing that ‘Baker’s shame about obscure origins was
counter-balanced by strong drives to aristocratic status, prestige and power,
and he mediated all this through family romance’.28
But is this the correct analysis? Were Baker’s origins as obscure as the scant
records suggest? Geoff Cummins, himself the author of a very insightful life of
Baker’s rival, the Reverend J.E. Moulton,29 discovered that Baker’s father was
who he claimed him to be, the Reverend George Baker, an Anglican priest who
died on 28 December 1869. As Noel Rutherford attests, Baker’s maternalWesleyan
6
Telling Pacific Lives
connections with the Woolmers and the Parkers were highly respectable. But
there are hints that it was not obscure origins that Baker was escaping from.
Baker’s clergyman father died in the Marylebone Workhouse of chronic cerebral
disease and paralysis, a common euphemism for death from alcoholism and
syphilis. Shirley Waldemar Baker was probably escaping from his heredity and
also possible neglect, causing him to run away from home at an early age.
Madness was almost certainly inherited in Baker’s family and his first given
name, the surname Shirley, points to a great Methodist dynasty which produced
the Countess of Huntingdon and several Evangelical divines. This was a family
who were literally ‘mad as hatters’ as they suffered from transmissible mercury
poisoning and inherited syphilis. When the head of the Shirley family, Lord
Ferrers, was tried and hanged for murdering his steward, the Reverend Walter
Shirley and his brothers testified to the madness in their family. Any reassessment
of Baker is likely to find that a fresh clinical analysis is called for and this may
explain Baker’s fierce spirit of independence in breaking with the parent
Methodist body and also his eventual return to the church of his father.
There are, of course, many ways to write biography. I sometimes think that
the well-tried ‘life and letters’ method is a good way to capture the essential
nature of the life subject. This method has been well utilised in the Pacific in
religious, literary and anthropological circles; to a lesser extent in the other
sciences. Another valuable approach is the group biography. Many of us have
drawn on the lives of particular groups of men and women in the Pacific to
illustrate missionary, commercial and general historical themes. Diane Langmore
was a pioneer in setting out to write a group biography of missionaries in Papua
New Guinea.30 The group biography has the advantage of showing complexity
and variety, an excellent corrective both to hagiography and the literary or
popular stereotype. What Langmore has done for Papua New Guinea could also
be done for other areas and other social groups. Caroline Ralston and Ian Campbell
have both worked on beachcombers and transculturists but most of their findings
are based on general primary sources rather than on collecting and analysing
individual lives.31 By tagging and asking questions of the individuals we are
likely to produce a group biography which will give us a fresh perspective on
transculturists. Islander missionaries and teachers are another group who would
benefit from the techniques of the group biographer.
This brings us to another related topic, the suitability of the biographer. Is
an Islander the best person to write the lives of other Islanders? I would like to
think that this whole issue has been put to bed. As Oskar Spate believed in 1978,
Island-born and trained historians from Fiji or Tonga, for instance ‘should [be
able to] tackle John Wesley as well as the Lotu Weseli na Viti; be able and willing
to consider Sir Basil Thomson as a political figure in England, not only as the
supplanter of Shirley Baker’.32 It must be admitted, however, that some Pacific
Islanders are going to be more suitable than most non-Islanders to tackle
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indigenous biography. Growing up in a community is the best qualification for
understanding others brought up the same way and knowing the language and
culture is half the battle. But one can make wrong assumptions based on
environmental influences. Anyone who knew that at the age of seven I recited
a piece of verse from the Victorian School Paper—
Little Jika Jika, all the darkies like her
In her dainty dress and pinny
—and was not aware of the influence of home and church, might conclude I
was already an incipient redneck racist.
The late Jim Davidson had strong views about the suitability of prospective
historians, and especially biographers. Preferably they should have a similar
background to the subject, or at least have a common thought-world and he
believed it desirable if they had abandoned or at least questioned these common
values. I remember that he was apprehensive that Norman Douglas was proposing
to study the Mormons in the Pacific as their religion was foreign to him and
Douglas was an amused outsider.33 Certainly the best work on Mormons has
been done by ex-Mormons such as Fawn Brodie. Historians who tackle unknown
or unfamiliar psychological territory can come to grief. Perry Miller was a great
historian of Puritanism but the dark conflicts of the Puritan mind eroded his
own mental stability.34
The biographer from outside is often tempted to ignore or dismiss facets of
a subject’s life that appear alien or irrelevant to him or her. I recall attending a
seminar on the Victorian Premier Alfred Deakin by the late John La Nauze when
he almost boasted that Deakin had possessed an extensive library of theosophical
literature but he, La Nauze, could see no point in reading it. I was therefore not
surprised when a Sydney historian produced a book which gave significance to
Deakin’s interest and which complemented La Nauze’s excellent political
biography.35 Pacific historians would be similarly unwise to neglect the input
of both traditional and introduced religious values when writing the biographies
of Pacific Islanders.
Biography is usually not a main preoccupation of historians but something
which emerges from a period study or thematic analysis. Most historians have
had the experience of immersing themselves in the sources they are using for a
wider project and realising that excellent material exists for the biography of
an important representative individual. At one stage, I started to work on a
biography of the maverick London Missionary Society missionary John
Muggridge Orsmond as the archival material was so rich. I even had my title,
Chaplain to Venus. The only thing that stopped me from continuing was the
knowledge that the greater part of Orsmond’s writing has not surfaced. Many
volumes of history, letters, journals and lexicons in his handwriting were known
8
Telling Pacific Lives
to exist in the early 20th
century and may well do so in France, Sweden, California
and even in the Society Islands. Perhaps one should not be put off by this. After
all there are many lives of buccaneer William Dampier and they all ignore the
missing years which I am told on good authority are fully documented in the
Dutch Archives. On the other hand, ANU historian Barry Smith was savaged
by one reviewer because he did not know of a huge cache of Florence Nightingale
papers she was editing.36
There are, of course, biographers who tackle major subjects. In the area of
‘big biography’ it is almost inevitable that there will be competition. There
appears to be no end to lives of James Cook. Each new life is forced to proclaim
something new to justify the exercise. Multiple biographies exist for voyagers
such as Bougainville and La Pérouse. Next are probably the lives of artists and
literary figures such as Gauguin, Melville and Stevenson. Missionary lives
abound for John Williams, Father Damien, and James Chalmers. There are also
multiple lives for the Society Islands celebrity Mai (called Omai), and Will
Mariner of Tonga. Islands royalty much written about include Kamehameha of
Hawaii and Queen Sālote of Tonga.
In the field of ‘big biography’ the academic lives tend to be definitive,
towering above their subject competition such as Di Langmore’s life of Chalmers
and Elizabeth Wood-Ellem’s biography of Queen Sālote.37 I myself am a
big-biographer manqué. Sir Keith Hancock suggested in the 1950s that I should
write a life of Chalmers. ‘He was eaten, wasn’t he’, said Hancock. As we had
been discussing the education of missionaries, I assured him that Chalmers did
not go to a public school. For most Pacific figures there has been scope for only
one serious biographer though some of the political figures, such as Rabuka,
have several books written about them. Some of these figures belong in the
category of ‘big biography’ such as Deryck Scarr’s lives of Thurston and Ratu
Sukuna.38 Many of those with single biographies may not be known so well
outside the Pacific.
Jim Davidson’s life of Peter Dillon is a representative biography which was
seen by its author as a spin-off project which provided relief from more
demanding projects. Dillon was a romantic alter-ego and Jim found great pleasure
in piecing together small snippets of Dillon material culled from obscure places.
He intended to name the volume Pita, the name by which Dillon was known in
the Islands. When Jim died the chapters were in various stages of completion.
Oskar Spate, who took on editing the manuscript, found one set of chapters and
set about completing the text. I remember discussing Dillon’s charges against
the missionary John Thomas with Oskar and did not realise he was using an old
draft. When the book was published39 I checked it to find the dates for Dillon’s
visit to Vava‘u, and was dismayed to find there was no mention of the visit,
especially as I had discussed the visit with Jim. Some time later when we were
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From Archetype to Icon
moving some of Jim’s papers to the archives I was amazed to find Jim’s more
complete versions of several chapters.
I might now return to autobiography as a way of telling Pacific lives. I have
already suggested that autobiography is a doubtful source for writing biography
and that the writer of autobiography is often subject to self-delusion, polemic
and, in the pejorative sense, romance. Certainly we can be badly deceived by
some alleged life histories. The Swiss adventurer Henri Louis Grin, known more
familiarly as Louis de Rougemont, invented fanciful adventures searching for
pearls and gold in New Guinea and living with a tribe of Aboriginals in
Australia.40 These were serialised in Wide World Magazine from August 1898
and, on examination, deceived members of the Royal Geographical Society and
the British Association for the Advancement of Science. But if de Rougemont
was perhaps the most blatant Pacific fictional adventurer he was not alone. From
the 18th
century to the present there have been adventurers who have been
happy to hoodwink the public with fictional lives. One or two writers simply
cannibalised the writings of others and it is difficult to establish whether or not
they actually visited real islands. More convincing are the writings of authors
such as Louis Becke and Frank Bullen who actually sailed in the Pacific and
wrote from experience. Bullen wrote with knowledge about whaling and life at
sea though sometimes his islands were changed about, a device also used by
Arthur Grimble in his popular books.
More genuine autobiographies should be treated like any other source used
in biography. An aging person’s memory is notoriously unreliable. As an early
diary keeper, I am frequently surprised to find that events that I imagined
happened over three years actually all happened in one year as confirmed by
my diary. Many of the story-tellers’ techniques used in the dim past of cyclic
history still apply. The story-teller starts with a complex historical situation
which is meaningful to those involved. Next time the story is told the audience
may not be able to appreciate the fine detail so the setting is simplified or changed
slightly. Still later the story-teller relates the story back to the original scene but
incorrectly surmises where it took place so we have a new variant. By the time
a remembered event is recorded in memoirs it often differs considerably from
an account which may have been recorded in a contemporary diary or letter.
Another problem with autobiography in the Pacific is that it is sometimes
ghost-written so that one is never sure whether the original information or text
has been tailored to fit the outlook and prejudices of the ghost-writer.
Missionaries automatically edited the published writings of their indigenous
colleagues though texts such as the Cook Islander missionary Taunga’s narrative
constitute an autobiography relatively free of interference.41
The autobiography is often seen as a key to the essential nature of the writer,
but this is not always the case. Peter Hempenstall, himself an experienced
10
Telling Pacific Lives
biographer, stated in his review of Robert Langdon’s autobiography, Every Goose
a Swan, that it did not tell the reader much about the inner man. But with Bob
what you saw was what you got. His stoical approach to life was far removed
from the self-discovery that frequently accompanies puberty and sometimes
leads to religious experience. Bob admitted that he never had such feelings. Not
for him the Great Yea and the Great Nay of Carlyle’s questioning.42 We learn
from this that we cannot impose our own experience on another’s. In telling
Pacific lives we need autobiography but we can only use it properly if we
understand ‘where it is coming from’ and its limitations.
Finally, we might consider the biographical collections, one of the oldest
historical forms in the linear tradition, exemplified in classical times by the
Romans Plutarch and Suetonius and in early Christian times in the Lives of the
Saints. The British Lives of the Saints tell us more about individual Celtic lives
than any other source from that time. Byzantine historiography was largely
centred on the lives of court officials. The Western world has a long tradition
of biographical dictionaries and collected lives. In the Pacific, the earliest attempts
at collecting lives were the necrologies of Island teachers and missionaries
sometimes published in the missionary magazines. William Gill published lives
of teachers in Gems from the Coral Islands and A.W. Murray assembled more
lives in his Martyrs of Polynesia.43 Most serious work on collections dates from
the mid-20th
century, notably the regional biographical dictionaries and
bio-bibliographies of Father Patrick O’Reilly for Tahiti, New Caledonia and the
New Hebrides. These excellent compilations contain indigenous entries but most
relate to persons of European origin. Pacific Islands Portraits edited by Jim
Davidson and Deryck Scarr initiated short studies of important or representative
Pacific personalities.44 Potted Pacific lives can be found in earlier editions of
the Pacific Islands Yearbook. Various Hawaiian biographical series appeared in
the course of the 20th
century. John Dunmore’s Who’s Who in Pacific Navigation45
covers the voyagers while the Marists have published a necrology for their
missionaries. Multiple Pacific lives appear in collections such as the Australian
Dictionary of Biography and other general collections. There have also been more
recent attempts to compile regional or modern biographical dictionaries of the
Pacific.
Dictionary projects are highly desirable not only in providing essential vital
data for those working in general areas of history but also to commemorate the
lives of important or representative individuals. There are dangers, of course,
in arbitrary selection as sometimes undue importance is given to those included
at the expense of those excluded. Any good dictionary system should have a
revision policy. I have been impressed by the new material in the new English
Dictionary of National Biography, especially many new entries that did not appear
in The Dictionary of National Biography Missing Persons volume. I was also
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disappointed that some of these entries were written by people who had no
background knowledge, obviously members of the dictionary staff. Also, there
are still important omissions.
The telling of Pacific lives has moved from the mythical archetypes of early
settlement in the Islands through the ruling families of traditional Island cultures
to the representatives and icons of modern times. Our increased knowledge and
new professional techniques help us to better understand the lives of those who
lived many centuries ago as well as the lives of contemporary men and women.
We may soon be able to reconstruct the life of a man such as Roimata who
presently, apart from a few myths, is in the words of Peter Sellers’ Sir Eric
Goodness, ‘a man about whom we know practically nothing’.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Hugh Laracy for introducing me to Piera McArthur’s
painting of Bishop Pompallier, Masato Karashima for explaining Korean characters
and Gillian Scott and Oanh Collins for preparing the text.
ENDNOTES
1 As most of the references to past colleagues are drawn from my own reminiscences, observations and
personal communications, annotation has been restricted to documenting printed sources and elucidatory
comments.
2 This was common in many traditional Australian Aboriginal societies.
3 For a Samoan example see Robert J. Maxwell, ‘Anthropological perspectives’, in HenriYuker, Humphry
Osmond and Frances Cheek (eds), The Future of Time (London 1972), 55-6.
4 Christopher J. Isham and Konstantina Savvidou, ‘Time and modern physics’, in Katinka Ridderbos
(ed.), Time: the Darwin College Lectures [no. 14] (Cambridge 2002), 8.
5 See Niel Gunson, ‘Shamanistic story and song cycles in Polynesia’, in Tae-gon Kim and Mihály Hoppál
(eds), Shamanism in Performing Arts [Bibliotheca Shamanistica, vol. 1], (Budapest 1995), 213-24.
6 Ibid., 214-15; see also Niel Gunson, ‘Understanding Polynesian traditional history’, Journal of Pacific
History, 28: 2 (1993), 147, 151; and ‘Great families of Polynesia: inter-island links and marriage patterns’,
Journal of Pacific History, 32: 2 (1997), 142.
7 The merging of characters in association with the circular view of history was present in medieval
romance as both Merlin and King Arthur were composite characters. Despite assumptions that the
Judaeo-Christian view of history was linear it was not always so. Graham Phillips, The Moses Legacy:
in search of the origins of God (London 2002), has made a good case for the scriptural Moses being based
on two persons of the name and even the historical Jesus was recast in a composite mould.
8 Katharine Luomala, Maui-of-a-Thousand Tricks: his Oceanic and European biographers [Bulletin 198]
(Honolulu 1949). See also Luomala, Voices on the Wind: Polynesian myths and chants (Honolulu 1955/rev.
ed. 1986). For a Jungian view of Maui see Rita Knipe, The Water of Life: a Jungian journey through
Hawaiian myth (Honolulu 1989), 59-76.
9 Gavin Menzies in his provocative 1421: the year China discovered the world (London 2002) clutches at
every unusual piece of information to support his thesis. His chapter on the Pacific is particularly weak
and the story of the emerald ring which he accepts as evidence for a Chinese presence has already been
shown by Robert Langdon to be based on a faulty translation.
10 For Prince Ma-ui     see Edward B. Adams, Korea’s Kyongju: cultural spirit of Silla in Korea (Seoul
1979/86), [354] and appended genealogical table of Silla Kings.
11 ‘“Smith”—an interview with Sir Eric Goodness’, recorded by Peter Sellers on high fidelity stereo
recording, Peter and Sophia, produced by George Martin in London and Rome.
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Telling Pacific Lives
12 Augustin Krämer, Salamasina: Bilder aus altsamoanischer Kultur und Geschichte: Lebens- und
Kulturbilder aus ehemaligen deutschen Kolonie Samoa (Stuttgart 1925). Translated by Brother Hermann
as Salamasina: scenes from ancient Samoan culture and history (Pago Pago 1949/1959). Penelope Schoeffel,
‘Rank, gender and politics in ancient Samoa: the genealogy of Salamāsina O Le Tafaifā’, Journal of Pacific
History, 22:4 (October 1987), 174-93. For a popular biography see Glen Wright, Salamasina, Queen of
Love: romantic mystery of the Samoan Islands (Hawaii 1982).
13 A genealogy that I collected in Vava‘u lists her correctly as a Tu‘i Tonga Fefine. For her langi see
Pesi and Mary Fonua, A Walking Tour of Neiafu, Vava‘u (Tonga 1981), 13.
14 See, for instance, the genealogy of the Tu‘i Tonga collected by E.W. Gifford in the Bernice P. Bishop
Museum Library, Honolulu, and other genealogies approved by Queen Sālote.
15 ‘On the death of the Tui Tonga’ in E.E.V. Collocott, Tales and Poems of Tonga [Bulletin 46] (Honolulu
1928), 79, 139.
16 Elizabeth Bott with the assistance of Tavi, Tongan Society at the Time of Captain Cook’s Visits:
discussions with Her Majesty Queen Sālote Tupou [Memoir no. 44], (Wellington 1982), 100.
17 After Queen Sālote had edited Tongan traditions to accommodate what she read in the Mitchell
Library, Robert Langdon publicised the visit of Malaspina to Vava‘u in Pacific Islands Monthly. Although
Karl R. Wernhart drew on Malaspina’s account in Fatafée Paulaho, der 36. Tui Tonga (1740-1784) …
(Horn-Wien 1977), Malaspina has only recently become available in English translation (3 vols, Hakluyt
Society).
18 See the list appended to H.E. Maude, ‘Beachcombers and Castaways’, Journal of the Polynesian Society,
73: 3 (1964), 254-93.
19 See Grant Rodwell and John Ramsland, ‘The maritime adventures of Joseph Barsden, according to
his own account, 1799-1816’, The Great Circle, 21:1 (1999), 16-45. Barsden’s journal has since been
deposited in the Mitchell Library, Sydney.
20 See Niel Gunson, ‘John Williams and his ship: the bourgeois aspirations of a missionary family’, in
D. P. Crook (ed.), Questioning the Past: a selection of papers in history and government (St Lucia, Qld 1972),
73-95.
21 John Campbell, The Martyr of Eromanga: or the philosophy of missions, illustrated from the labours,
death and character of the late Rev. John Williams (3rd edn, London 1843), 194 ff provides a ‘warts and
all’ portrait. ‘On nearly all subjects, except that of Missions, his views were narrow and superficial’,
197.
22 For Baxter’s prints see C.T. Courtney Lewis, George Baxter, Colour Printer, His Life and Work: a
manual for collectors (London 1972) and Max E. Mitzvah, George Baxter and the Baxter Prints (Newton
Abbot 1978). For commentary see Bernard Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific (2nd edn,
Melbourne 1989), 320-21.
23 Piera McArthur, [‘Pompallier levitating’], untitled, in series ‘The Holy Ghost among the Fantails’,
2005. Exhibition Auckland, Studio of Contemporary Art, November 2005. Painting in private collection.
24 Hyde’s letter and Stevenson’s response have been reproduced in various lives of Damien; see, for
instance, Omer Englebert (trans. by Benjamin T. Crawford), The Hero of Molokai: Father Damien, Apostle
of the Lepers (Homebush, NSW 1954), 263-82 (The testimony of Robert Louis Stevenson).
25 Gavan Daws, Holy Man: Father Damien of Molokai (New York 1973) (numerous printings and
translations); Richard Stewart, Leper Priest of Molokai: the Father Damien story (Honolulu 2000).
26 Synopsis of Leper Priest of Molokai (www.booklineshawaii.com/book/bhh/ 823222.html).
27 Gavan Daws, A Dream of Islands: voyages of self-discovery in the South Seas: John Williams; Herman
Melville; Walter Murray Gibson; Robert Louis Stevenson; Paul Gaugin (New York/Milton, Qld 1980). The
clinical analysis of Laval was presented in a seminar.
28 Gavan Daws, ‘“All the horrors of the half known life”: some notes on the writing of biography in
the Pacific’ in Niel Gunson (ed.), The Changing Pacific: essays in honour of H.E. Maude (Melbourne 1978),
305. For Baker see Noel Rutherford, Shirley Baker and the King of Tonga (Melbourne 1971).
29 H.G. Cummins, ‘Missionary Chieftain: James Egan Moulton and Tongan Society 1865-1909’, PhD
thesis, Australian National University (Canberra 1980).
30 Diane Langmore, Missionary Lives: Papua, 1874-1914 (Honolulu 1989).
31 Caroline Ralston, Grass Huts and Warehouses: Pacific beach communities of the nineteenth century
(Canberra 1977); Ian Christopher Campbell, ‘European transculturists in Polynesia 1789-ca. 1840’, PhD
thesis, University of Adelaide (Adelaide 1977).
13
From Archetype to Icon
32 O.H.K. Spate, ‘The Pacific as an artefact’ in Gunson, The Changing Pacific, 44.
33 Douglas produced an excellent thesis but as a complete outsider he had a number of difficulties, and
publication was made almost impossible. Similarly, another outsider, the Irish biographer Rex Taylor,
faced legal opposition in his attempts to publish his biography of John Williams. On the other hand
Fawn M. Brodie successfully launched No Man Knows My History: the life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon
prophet (New York and London 1963), and became a prominent psycho-biographer.
34 Professor Perry G. Miller of Harvard, who died in 1963, was regarded as America’s greatest interpreter
of the Puritan mind and ‘the master of American intellectual history’. He wrote lives of Roger Williams
and Jonathan Edwards. There was an inevitable tension between his acknowledged atheism and his
sensitivity to the complex religious issues of Puritanism.
35 J.A. La Nauze, Alfred Deakin: a biography, 2 vols (Carlton 1965, 2nd edn 1979); Alfred J. Gabay, The
Mystic Life of Alfred Deakin (Cambridge 1992).
36 Lynn McDonald, ‘An unscrupulous liar? Florence Nightingale revealed in her own writings’, The
Times Literary Supplement (8 Dec. 2000).
37 Diane Langmore, Tamate—a King: James Chalmers in New Guinea, 1877-1901 (Melbourne 1974);
Elizabeth Wood-Ellem, Queen Sālote of Tonga: the story of an era 1900-1965 (Auckland 1999).
38 Deryck Scarr, The Majesty of Colour: a Life of Sir John Bates Thurston, vol. 1, The Very Bayonet
(Canberra 1973), vol. 2, Viceroy of the Pacific (Canberra 1980); Ratu Sukuna: soldier, statesman, man of
two worlds (London 1980).
39 J.W. Davidson, Peter Dillon of Vanikoro: chevalier of the South Seas, ed. O.H.K. Spate (Melbourne
1975).
40 For a recent biography see Rod Howard, The Fabulist: the incredible story of Louis De Rougemont
(Milsons Point, NSW 2006).
41 R.G. and Marjorie Crocombe (eds), The Works of Ta‘unga: records of a Polynesian traveller in the South
Seas, 1833-1896 (Canberra 1968).
42 ANU Reporter (Canberra 1996). Thomas Carlyle’s great spiritual autobiography Sartor Resartus
(1833/34) is a useful reminder to the biographer of self-awareness and the subjective nature of intellectual
scepticism.
43 William Gill, Gems from the Coral Islands; or, Incidents of Contrast between Savage and Christian Life
of the South Sea Islanders, 2 vols (London 1856); Archibald Wright Murray, The Martyrs of Polynesia:
memorials of missionaries, native evangelists, and native converts, who have died by the hand of violence,
from 1799 to 1871 (London 1885).
44 See J.W. Davidson and Deryck Scarr (eds), Pacific Islands Portraits (Canberra 1970); Deryck Scarr
(ed.), More Pacific Islands Portraits (Canberra 1979).
45 John Dunmore’s Who’s Who in Pacific Navigation (Melbourne 1992).
14
Telling Pacific Lives
Chapter 2
The Kila Wari Stories: Framing a Life
and Preserving a Cosmology
Deborah Van Heekeren
This chapter is a sketch drawn from a work in progress about the way a collection
of stories which together frame the life of a single heroic figure engender the
identity of the Vula‘a, a coastal people of Papua New Guinea. I conducted
fieldwork in the Vula‘a village of Irupara in 2001 as part of my doctoral research,
and made a return visit in 2005. My doctoral research was concerned with
Melanesian Christianity, particularly women’s experiences of the United Church.
During the first visit I did not anticipate the project that would be initiated by
my male interlocutors. From the outset, the men were eager to tell me about Kila
Wari, the great warrior of Alewai. At first I paid little attention to their stories,
dismissing Kila Wari for his apparent lack of relevance to my research. Yet I
came to realise that the Kila Wari stories were contributing to my historical and
cultural understanding, as they have much to say about Vula‘a religion and
cosmology.
My investigation of these stories speaks to a number of theoretical concerns
which arise in the interstices of the transition from an oral tradition to a written
one. These include the relationship between myth and history and the influence
of Christianity, the possibility of biography in light of relational theories of
Melanesian personhood, and, consequently, the significance of genealogy and
place in the constitution of identity. My perspective is both anthropological and
phenomenological insofar as my focus is on the particularity of Vula‘a
story-telling—its context, intent and existential significance. I recognise, though,
the richness of the narrations themselves and so present them as fully as space
allows as an invitation to further analysis. Phenomenologically it is important
to know who our story-tellers are and to whom their stories are told and why.
This edict provides the framework for my discussion in which some similarities
as well as differences in Vula‘a and Western story-telling traditions may be
discerned.
TheVula‘a occupy six villages on the southeastern coast of Papua New Guinea,
four of which are located on the western side of Hood Bay and two on the eastern
side. Including those now living in the National Capital District, they constitute
a population of more than 4,000. The largest of the Vula‘a villages is known as
15
Hula, a term which also describes the language and which has been widely used
to refer to the people. Nevertheless, the so-called Hula people call themselves
Vula‘a and I follow their convention. Traditionally a maritime people, the Vula‘a
settled in the Hood Point area at the beginning of the 19th
century, having
migrated from the Marshall Lagoon area, further east. By the beginning of the
colonial period they had established themselves as expert fishermen and traders.
The Vula‘a first encountered Christianity in the early contact period of the
London Missionary Society (LMS) during the 1870s. And it has been claimed
that they were the first people in the LMS sphere of influence to enthusiastically
adopt Christianity.1 Further, by the end of World War II the LMS is said to
have consolidated its position in Hula village with almost all social activities
being undertaken in the name of the Church.2
The Hula language forms part of what is sometimes called the ‘Austronesian
One’ group which is mainly found in two language patches in the southeast,
one in Milne Bay and the other in Central District.3 Today the Vula‘a use the
Tok Pisin term stori when referring to a range of story-telling activities, from
anecdotes and local gossip to events of historical importance. Vula‘a enjoyment
of stori is noteworthy, as is the fact that conversation is given a high social value.
Generally, social interaction begins with the chewing of betelnut, is followed
by stori and, on some occasions, concludes with the sharing of food. There is
another Hula term, rikwana, that may also be translated as story, but has almost
fallen from use. This term was originally translated from the Hula language by
Lillian M. Short in the 1930s as ‘story of olden times; folklore’.4 It is usefully
compared with Malinowski’s translation of the Boyowan (Trobriand) word
libogwo, a general term for ‘old talk’ which, he suggests, includes historical
accounts and myths, or lili‘u.5
The stories of the past most frequently told in the Vula‘a villages of Irupara
and Alewai recall the important events of the life and death of the great warrior
Kila Wari. In the past, the Kila Wari stories would have been classified locally
as rikwana. In Western terms they most closely resemble our classification,
‘legends’, and this is how English-speaking Vula‘a would translate rikwana
today. Most importantly, these stories traverse the divide between myth and
history. They are not strictly ‘myths’ in the conventional sense because they do
not have the quality of timelessness which characterised the old stories. They
have now been fixed in time—historicised. They do, however, retain other
mythic qualities. As myth, they are experiential and demonstrate a tangible
connection between place, teller and ancestor. This is aptly demonstrated in the
convention of introducing the stories with the teller’s genealogy. And although
they are now often invoked in the context of local land claims, the Kila Wari
stories have come to serve a quite different Vula‘a concern—the preservation
16
Telling Pacific Lives
of pre-Christian language, tradition and cosmology in the face of a growing sense
of cultural loss.
Even though they focus on the life and death of a local hero, a uniquely
identified individual—the Kila Wari stories both are and are not biography.
While a number of Vula‘a and non-Vula‘a people know the Kila Wari story, each
of them tells their own inherited version. Together these are complementary
rather than contradictory and it is only when they are organised by the researcher
that we see a resemblance to Western biography. For the Vula‘a, though, they
are ‘biographical’ in a different sense and this is related to their ontology—the
particular way in which they experience their existence. From this perspective,
the biography is not that of Kila Wari, the warrior, but, rather, that of the Vula‘a
themselves. For it encapsulates their collective identity as a people and preserves
the possibility of a mode of existence which belonged to their ancestors and so
is also theirs. Those who tell the story of Kila Wari are also telling the story of
themselves. In short, the stories are ‘biographical’ because that is how we read
them but phenomenologically, they are not biography in the conventional sense
because their intention is not to reveal the life of a single individual. They are
a representation of cultural identity. They are existential. This makes sense for
a people who, it has been argued, value relation over and above individualism.6
Genealogy as Wealth and Preface
It is important to recognise that the distinction between an oral tradition and a
written one has become blurred in this part of Papua New Guinea. While oral
conventions continue to operate insofar as the flow of certain types of knowledge
is controlled through rights of inheritance, a significant amount of information
is written down. This is not to say that it becomes public, though. In Irupara
the ‘traditional wealth’ or ‘customary treasure’ of a lineage is passed from
generation to generation in the form of the poni poni. The term refers to a small
woven basket which actually, or symbolically, contains the treasured items. It
was explained to me as follows:
A string bag (bilum) can hold many purse-like bilums inside. There could
be several. For example, a mini bag for betel nuts, another for cigars and
the other for gas lighter parts etc. in different mini bags all in one
shoulder-to-waist-bilum. Of all these, one is the sacred poni poni.
Such treasure may include remedies for certain types of sickness, incantations
for abundant food, the tooth of an ancestor, special gingers for successful fishing,
the rights to land, or it may simply consist of the passing of a ‘genealogical book’
which has replaced the remembered relationships or gulu ai (lit. generation
counting) of former times.
The purpose of the genealogical book was explained to me by Wala Iga, a
senior man who holds a poni poni, as maino (peace). Its keeper is the designated
17
The Kila Wari Stories
mediator in matters of conflict. For instance, if there is a dispute between two
men, the holder of the genealogical book will use it to link the men to a single
ancestor and say ‘You are not foreigners [strangers] but brothers. Why then are
you fighting?’
As an anthropological tool, genealogies have the capacity to verify certain
types of information, such as the approximate dates of settlements and battles.
They help us to situate individuals and, therefore, events in time and place. For
the Vula‘a, genealogy attests to identity and endorses a person’s authority or
right to tell a story by claiming a connection to ancestor and place.
In the 1960s, Nigel Oram commented on the fullness of Vula‘a genealogies.
He wrote that ‘not only wives’ names and origins are known but the shifts in
descent group allegiances of various individuals are remembered’.7 Vula‘a
genealogies do not trace blood-lines. Rather, they are mnemonic indicators of
the obligations and entitlements constituted in human relationships. They are,
in a sense, stories in themselves. Vula‘a genealogies gather. They gather person
to ancestor and ancestor to place. It is to village founders that origins are traced.
Genealogies may thus be invoked to explain such things as an inter-village
alliance, a person’s entitlement to land, or their claim to certain types of
knowledge. And so it is that each and every story which constitutes the legend
of Kila Wari may be, and generally is, represented by its teller in terms of a
genealogical relationship. It we wish to translate the Vula‘a convention into our
own we might aptly say that the relationship story serves as a preface.
The accounts of Kila Wari’s exploits, like those of many legendary heroes,
have taken on mythic proportions, but there is no doubt that he actually existed.
He was the fourth-born son of the founder of Alewai village, a fact which is
easily demonstrated in the genealogies I collected. Alewai village was settled at
the beginning of the 19th
century by Kila Wari’s father, Warinumani Lui, and
Vula‘a oral traditions which present the period between about 1820 and 1860
as one of intense warfare along this section of the coast comfortably accommodate
Kila Wari’s life span.
The complex of stories that constitute the legend of Kila Wari is thus clarified
diagrammatically. The kinship diagram shown in figure 1 identifies the founders
of the western Vula‘a villages. It also illustrates that an important connection
between Warinumani Lui, the founder of Alewai village, and Kana Vali, one of
the founding brothers of Irupara, was established during the early period of
settlement. It happened that Kwamala Wari, Warinumani’s third-born son,
married the daughter of Kana Vali. Her name was Kopi Kila Kana and Irupara
people say that regardless of the custom of patrilocality she persuaded Kwamala
Wari to settle in Irupara because it was still a young village and there was a lot
of work to be done there. The people of Alewai village claim that Kwamala Wari
18
Telling Pacific Lives
went to Irupara to oversee land there that had been given in compensation for
the death of Kila Wari.
Fig. 1. The founding fathers of the western Vula’a villages (following original
migration from Alukuni), and genealogical links to two story tellers cited in
the text.
Meeting Kila Wari
My introduction to Kila Wari came from Wari Lui Kila Rupa of Irupara. Wari
Lui was, at the time of my fieldwork, a man in his mid-30s whose self-stated
occupation was ‘Christian evangelist’. As such he had devoted himself to
spreading the gospel and was not often to be found in his home village. Our
meeting was fortuitous. Wari Lui told me that he and a brother had wanted to
film a documentary about the life of Kila Wari which was to be titled ‘Shark
Warrior’ but the demands of his work did not allow the time to pursue this goal.
He anticipated my assistance and consequently shared with me his accumulated
knowledge of local history—his ‘family treasure’—most of which had been
gathered by his father during his long employment as a magistrate in the land
courts.
Wari Lui’s family treasure includes a genealogical book such as that described
above as a poni poni. His underlying motives for sharing his family treasure with
me are partly obscured by a complex intertwining of local politics and
Christianity. Nevertheless, his evangelical employment suggests that he is well
placed to recognise the power of a good story. To Wari Lui’s credit, then, The
Shark Warrior of Alewai will be the title of my book. He is not, though, the only
19
The Kila Wari Stories
story-teller of note in this collection. We will encounter a cast of other narrators
as well, all of whom are important contributors, and discover that the telling of
the legend of Kila Wari does not entail the construction of a single ‘true’ story
or a fixed chronicle of events.
I will begin with Wari Lui and note that his genealogical relationship to the
great warrior is of the utmost importance.8 His brief, written account of the
Kila Wari story is prefaced by a genealogy which links him to the warrior’s
sister, La‘a, who married one of the chiefs of a neighbouring inland village in
order to secure land for the people of Alewai. Having family links to that village,
Makerupu, as well as Irupara, Wari Lui describes himself as being of
‘mixed-blood’ (see figure 1). He explains that:
Wari Lui’s (the founder of Alewai) daughter, La‘a Wari, Kila Wari’s sister
was given to the chief of Makerupu’s son in exchange for land and peace.
She was eventually forced to return to Alewai with her children. She
had two sons and two daughters. Her first born daughter married land
lords of Irupara.9 Her second born son married the daughter of Irupara
land lords. From this alliance came my grandfather Kila Rupa. His son,
who was also called Kila Rupa had seven children. Among them I am the
sixth born named after the forefather and founder of Alewai village.
Before I relate Wari Lui’s story of Kila Wari, I want to draw attention to an
aspect of its narration. James Clifford, commenting on the characteristics of myth
in Melanesia, has written that the mood of a story is recreated as its teller
re-enters the space-time of the occurrence.10 This was borne out in the
transformation which Wari Lui’s person underwent as he recounted the greatness
of Kila Wari. Drawing on every aspect of his ancestral connections, he appeared
as the embodiment of the legendary figure. For instance, Wari Lui did not merely
describe Kila Wari’s spear throwing ability, he lived it out. His expression
changed. His eyes were seemingly focused on another reality as he demonstrated
the action the warrior used. The persuasiveness of his engagement with the
subject—his familiarity with the minutiae of the events described—was
captivating. Ancestor, place and story-teller became a single mythic identity in
that moment.
What follows then is Wari Lui’s verbal description of Kila Wari.
Wari Lui, the father and founder of Alewai village, had ten children.
Kila Wari was the fourth born son. One day the father took his sons out
to the reef to fish. At low tide the father sighted a small shark in a reef
pond. He challenged his sons saying, ‘The one who catches the shark
will become a great warrior’. The brothers rushed to the pond. Although
Kila Wari was the youngest among his brothers, he caught the shark and
held it up by the tail. From that day onward, he was to live like a
20
Telling Pacific Lives
warrior—fasting, eating only certain foods and sleeping lightly. He was
not to touch any woman but to sleep in the company of men.
As a young warrior, Kila Wari underwent extensive training and had to pass
many tests. Wari Lui elaborates:
Kouagolo, near Kwaipo11 village, was known as a mountain of power
and mystery. It had been said that no one ever returned alive from this
mountain. Kila Wari was the first warrior from the coast to receive its
special powers and return unharmed. He procured a powerful ginger
called lavi rakava [bad, or spoiled evening] which made him a fierce and
great battle warrior. The Kwaipo war chief gave him special gingers and
spells for protection and extra strength. His final test, which he passed,
was to jump into many spears.12 Kila Wari became known as a great
spear-thrower. He could kill his enemies from 50 metres away. Enemy
spears were beaten aside by a wooden club. In his left hand other spears
were caught and thrown back at the enemy with accuracy, never missing
their targets. He would move four to five metres ahead of his fighting
men with his armoury bearers following behind him with dozens of
spears. His eyes were fixed and forecast on the enemy. Spears were placed
one by one in Kila Wari’s hand as he charged forward without fear. He
could throw them from 30 to 50 metres ahead. His head dress was unique
and colourful. He fought his battles as far away as Kapa Kapa, Kila Kila,
Manumanu and on to Kerema.
Walo Kalawa of Alewai is a direct descendant of Kila Wari. I will say more
about him later. Here I include his description of Kila Wari’s visit to Kwaipo.
One day Kila, wanting to get some mula‘a (power from some plants or
other sources) went to Kwaipo, further inland from Kalo village. Upon
meeting the Kwaipo chief, Mapakulu, they tested him making him jump
from the treetop and onto the ground where sharp sticks were planted
pointing upwards. This he achieved without injuring himself. And so
to him was given an ivoa (ginger) called lavi rakava.
The special powers that Kila Wari received from the mountain near Kwaipo
village are part of a system that is conceptualised by theVula‘a as waka. Generally
speaking, waka is a form of ritual preparation which is based on a period of
fasting and sexual abstinence. Ani waka (lit. food abstinence) is that part of the
preparation which relates specifically to fasting. It includes restrictions on the
type of food eaten as well as the way it is cooked and usually consists of so-called
‘burnt’ vegetables, the emphasis being on dryness. Waka abstinence aimed to
eliminate moisture and hence softness from the body. For example, fish and meat
were to be avoided and smoked banana was acceptable. The aim of the practice
21
The Kila Wari Stories
is to become like the ancestors, who are perceived to be dry and light. It is used
today in preparation for sporting events.
Traditionally waka aimed to develop a relationship with the ancestral
spirits—to gain their favour, and protection against malevolent forces. The more
difficult the task to be undertaken the more intense must be the waka. In the
case of warfare, there is a sense in which the battle is fought by invisible forces
as well as visible ones. Certain types of hunting and fishing are approached in
the same way. Battles undertaken by war chiefs required an intense waka which
also included social restrictions such as periods of seclusion, and the chewing
of powerful gingers. To be in breach of these requirements was to invite death.
Wari Lui told me that Kila Wari returned from Kouagolo Mountain, where he
had gone for his waka, via the village of Makerupu. He was in such a wild state
that he was yelling and screaming. During this ‘uncontainable’ outburst he is
said to have killed a pregnant woman.
Chewing special gingers during waka heats the body, providing courage and
power. Both the terms ‘heat’ and ‘power’ are translated as iavu in the Hula
language. When a successful waka has been performed the practitioner is said
to be in a state of vea‘a. In Christian times vea‘a is translated as holy. Ultimately,
the success of a war chief was perceived to be determined by his iavu but, as
we have seen, Kila Wari was appointed over his brothers because he exhibited
chiefly qualities. Much of Wari Lui’s description focuses on Kila Wari’s physical
prowess. The kinds of skills required of such a great war chief are consistent
with the legends of other areas of the Pacific. The Hawaiian story of ‘Lono and
Kaikilani’, for example, in which we are told that ‘Early in life Lono exhibited
remarkable intelligence, and as he grew to manhood, after the death of his father,
in athletic and warlike exercises and other manly accomplishments, he had not
a peer in Hawaii’.13
Telling the Battles of Kila Wari with Some Contributions
from Western History
It is said that Kila Wari’s reputation extended from Mailu in the east to Kerema
in the west. He had established friendly connections with the war leaders, Mea
Gure and Gure Gure, two brothers from Paugolo (the neighbouring inland village
which is now known as Babaka). In their own village the brothers are known
as Mega Velapo and Gure Velapo. The war leaders had assisted Kila Wari and
his war party when they fought with Mailu in the southeast and in the battle
of Kila Kila. (Apart from the battle at Babaka in which Kila Wari finally met his
death, he is most often remembered for the burning of the Koita village of Kila
Kila which is also called Kira Kira.) While the Gure brothers had been Kila Wari’s
allies in this task, accompanying his war party when they travelled down the
coast in their war canoes, they were later instrumental in bringing about his
death.
22
Telling Pacific Lives
The Koita or Koitapu as they are sometimes called have been described as the
‘uncompromising enemy’ of the Vula‘a.14 Oram sheds some light on the rivalry
explaining that ‘The western group of Vulaa villages, who traded with the
Western Motu, were hostile to the Koita because they thought that the Koita
caused wrecks and loss of sago [their main cargo] through sorcery’.15 When he
visited the Papuan coast in 1885 Lindt observed that ‘The charred ruins of old
Kapa Kapa [Gaba Gaba] were still discernible away to the east of the ship. This
village had been destroyed about two years ago by the Hula natives, who, sparing
women and children, massacred three of the men’.16 Eleven people were also
wounded in this battle which Oram has suggested was probably the last
traditional war to take place on the Port Moresby coast.17 He gives the following
explanation for the incident:
A Hula man returning from Hanuabada with two women in a canoe laden
with pots was enticed on shore by some Gaba Gaba people who speared
him. According to one account, an inland man speared him. In those
days there were two Gaba Gaba villages and in retaliation the Hula in
their war canoes burned the Eastern village.18
Sometime before the burning of Gaba Gaba, the Vula‘a are reported to have
burned a Kila Kila site on the hill of Varimakana. Evidence suggests that Kila
Wari was dead by the time of the destruction of Gaba Gaba but he led the
expedition that was responsible for the burning of Kila Kila. Oral testimony cited
by Oram claims that the Vula‘a destroyed the Koita villages of Kila Kila and
Roku. More recent Vula‘a accounts focus on the role Kila Wari played in both
battles.19
Through a number of conversations with Wari Lui, I learned the details of
the events that led to the burning of Varimakana village.
The chief from Kila Kila would invite other chiefs who were known for
their victories and bravery to his village for friendly visits and assassinate
them. One day he and his warriors visited Kila Wari at Alewai. Kila Wari
had invited them to a great feast. On their way they had killed a chief
from another village, removed his necklace and hidden it in their canoe.
While Kila Wari was entertaining his guests his servants were cleaning
the Kila Kila chief’s canoe. There they found Kini Olo chief’s lime pot
and necklace hidden in the inner section. Meanwhile, Kila Wari had
agreed to go and talk with the Kila Kila chief in his village and they set
a date. At that time days, weeks, and months were counted on tied knots.
Kila Wari tied knots in a string and gave it to the Kila Kila chief along
with his necklace, string bag and lime pot. He was to hang them as a
sign outside his house. When the chief left the servants took the necklace
and lime pot to Kila Wari. He became furious and vowed that on the
arranged date he would challenge the Kila Kila chief. Tied knots were
23
The Kila Wari Stories
untied. Days, weeks, months passed until only a few knots remained.
As the days grew closer to the meeting with the Kila Kila chief Kila Wari
gathered his fighting men. They paddled their canoes to the host camp
under cover of darkness. By sunrise they had sunk the canoes in the
mangroves and marched to Sabama and surrounded the mountain village.
They beat their drums so the Kila Kila chief knew there was going to be
a battle. He put on his armour and waited. Kila Wari made his way to
the chief’s house. ‘Who has come to fight with me?’ asked the surprised
chief. ‘Don’t they know I am the mighty warrior of Kila Kila?’ Kila Wari
answered, ‘I have come to kill you’. The Kila Kila chief threw his spear
and missed. As he rushed back into his house for his weapons, Kila Wari
thrust his spear through his chest killing him instantly. The Alewai
warriors killed men, women and children and burnt the village to the
ground. The site of the battle was given the name Kila Kila which means
‘talk’ because Kila Wari had promised the chief he would talk when they
met at the feast.
Walo Kalawa also tells the story of the battle of Kila Kila. Importantly, he
recalls that they sang a song to mark the event of the death of the Kila Kila chief.
He explains that ‘after killing Iovauna, the Kila Kila war chief, and burning the
village they sang this lekwai’:20
Kira Kira ati vanuga rage rage
Kila Wari na mora geana
Iovauna venena kouta koutalia
Kwamala Wari ama kini veatona
Lekwai, lekwai.
Although Kila Wari had named the battle site Kila Kila it is also known as Kira
Kira which the Vula‘a translate as humiliated, destroyed, or trampled flat. The
shore of a small bay near Kila Kila is known by the Vula‘a and the Motu as
Taikone, which means ‘beach of tears’. It was so named because of the destruction
of Kila Kila.21
The Death of Kila Wari
The death of Kila Wari is the centrepiece of the legend. It exemplifies the
warrior’s bravery and enforces important cosmological precepts.
Wari Lui explains that some time after the burning of Kila Kila, Kila Wari
and his warriors killed a man from Paugolo (Babaka). This man had two sisters
who walked up and down the streets22 of the village crying over their brother’s
death. After this went on for a number of weeks, Mea Gure and Gure Gure began
to feel sorry for them. They prepared themselves and their weapons to take
revenge on Kila Wari and his party. When everything was in order the two
brothers went early one morning to Alewai village.
24
Telling Pacific Lives
According to Wari Lui, on the day Kila Wari was killed he was visiting his
uncles in Hula village. The point is significant because, as we know, it was usual
before a battle to undergo waka—a rigorous regime of preparation and fasting.
But on this day Kila Wari had eaten fish with his relatives. (The point attests to
the strategic timing of his enemies.) It was at Hula that Kila Wari received the
news that Babaka warriors were at Alewai, which is adjacent to Hula on the
western side. ‘He got his string bag and his spear and rushed to the battle zone’,
explained Wari Lui.
The most detailed account of the ensuing events is provided by an Alewai
resident, Kila Kaile Igawai, who at the time of telling was aged in his early 70s.
The brothers [Gure and Mea] went down to the beach as they regularly
did. They called the name ‘Kila Wari’ and said ‘say goodbye to your
family and follow us’. Kila Wari heard them and went after them and
his brother, Parula Wari, followed him to Paugolo. However, Kila Wari
was not afraid of Mea and Gure’s tricks because he knew they could not
take him by surprise. He followed them to the entrance of the village
where the battle began.
Wari Lui recalls that: ‘When Kila Wari reached the battle zone he was pushing
the enemy back’. He goes on to explain that a man from Riwali village, who was
fighting with the Babaka forces, had been instructed to aim for Kila Wari at close
range with a poison spear—this would ensure his death. Attacking from the
rear, he speared Kila Wari in his right leg.
Igawai’s account states that it was one of the Gure brothers who speared Kila
Wari and that it was his left leg that was hit. According to Igawai:
Mea Gure speared Kila Wari in the left leg and called out ‘ah, kea kino
kolovana’. Kila Wari struggled through the bushes with the spear in his
leg until he reached the site where the present church station is. Then
Kila Wari fell down and the war party threw spears at his body. At that
time La‘a Wari (Kila Wari’s sister) ran to her brother and threw herself
on top of him. The fight stopped. Later, Parula Wari and others took the
body back to Alewai for burial.
Again, Wari Lui adds to the description of Kila Wari’s death. He explains
that after he was speared and ‘as spears landed on him like rain’ he instructed
his brother to run for his life. His body was then taken to the village for public
display and for Babaka warriors to use for target practice. As we know, Kila
Wari’s sister, La‘a was at that time living at Makerupu. Hearing of the incident,
La‘a ran to her dead brother and took off her grass skirt and placed it over his
body. The violence to her brother’s body ceased immediately. The reasons for
this remain unclear, although I am confident they will be found in further
investigation of the cosmological system.23 What is known is that Kila Wari’s
25
The Kila Wari Stories
head would have been removed if La‘a had not acted as she did. The head of a
warrior was a valued trophy. Alewai warriors then took the body home, intact,
for burial. Later they joined forces with Riwali and Kaparoko in a revenge battle
in which they killed the Babaka chief.
Fig. 2. Patrilineal relationship of a story teller, Walo Kalawa, to Kila Wari.
Other relatives are included as named and/or described by narrator.
As I have said, Walo Kalawa is a direct descendant of Kila Wari. His
genealogical story (see figure 2) reveals that Kila Wari had three wives and many
descendants. Here is Walo Kalawa’s version of Kila Wari’s death. He begins with
the assumption that Kila Wari is at Hula village when Alewai is attacked:
Kila Wari although absent sensed defeat and joined his warriors to wage
a full scale war. They fought almost as far as Babaka village when Gure
Velapo, the Babaka chief, speared Kila Wari on the ankle above the heel.
Walo Kila, his son, realising his father was struggling and in agony, raced
to help his father to maintain his standing to give courage to the warriors.
By then Kila Wari, going weak with heavy loss of blood, pleaded for his
son’s safety and said ‘magulimu on avua (run for your life)’. His warriors
then retreated with a broken heart and left him. Babaka then took their
trophy—Kila Wari—alive and lined him up for target practising. La‘a
Wari was at her husband’s village when news arrived that Kila Wari
was captured and the warriors were spearing him at Babaka. La‘a Wari
26
Telling Pacific Lives
was devastated and ran all the way sobbing to the spearing place. There
she untied her grass skirt and covered her brother’s body. Seeing the
nakedness of a woman the warriors broke up and left quickly without
chopping off the head. Kila Wari’s body was brought back by his people
to Alewai for burial and the people mourned for some time.
The place where Kila Wari was speared to death is called Kila Kalana,
now the place where Babaka United Church is. Previously it was called
Iome Kalana—a place where a poor old lady was buried.
Kila Wari’s spear was made into a warimo (long-tom[garfish]) spear for
fishing which my grandfather, Walo Kila, used.
The View from the Other Side: A Babaka Story
I went to Babaka village to hear the story of Kila Wari’s death from a descendant
of a war chief of the enemy side, Numa Nama Gure. Numa Nama’s knowledge
and authority in this matter are located in the genealogy which relates him to
the war chief who fought Kila Wari (see figure 3). Numa Nama was born at
Babaka in 1927. His father was Gure Kila, Gure’s father was Kila Mega, Kila’s
father—Numa’s great grandfather—was Mega Velapo, who, alongside his
brother, Gure Velapo, had been involved in the killing of Kila Wari. Before Mega
Velapo came Velapo Vanua, Vanua Kila and Kila Keina. In figure 3, I compare
Numa Nama’s genealogy with that of Walo Kalawa. It shows that Numa Nama’s
great grandfather was a contemporary of Kila Wari and, because Numa Nama’s
is the lineage of Babaka village war chiefs, it is reasonable to conclude that his
ancestor was involved in the battle in which Kila Wari was killed. It is interesting,
in light of the ancestry illustrated here, to note that Numa Nama is a deacon in
Babaka United Church and that Walo Kalawa is also a retired United Church
deacon.
In the course of my meeting with Numa Nama I was shown the place where
Kila Wari received the fatal blow and also the place where he died. The distance
between was significant, attesting to the warrior’s endurance. Numa Nama’s
version of Kila Wari’s death provides some additional details and clarifies some
points that have already been made. Most importantly, he claims that it was
Gure Velapo, or Gure Gure as he is known in Alewai, who actually wounded
Kila Wari in the leg with the first spear.24 He begins:
Kila Wari was a great warrior. One day he killed someone from Babaka
(name unknown) so…He had two sisters. When this man was killed by
Kila Wari his sisters wept so much for him and wished for someone from
Babaka to kill him for doing that. While this was going on, two brothers,
Gure Velapo and Mega Velapo, my great grandfathers, sent some people
over to remove the dead man’s necklace and to comfort them. When the
two had gone over to remove the neckwear the sisters stopped them
27
The Kila Wari Stories
saying, ‘Whoever thinks they are strong enough to kill Kila Wari can
come and remove the neckwear. There is also food there that we will
give in return for the killing of Kila Wari’. The men became scared
because Kila Wari was such a great warrior.
Fig. 3. Patrilineal relationships of two narrators to principal figures in the Kila
Wari stories.
Seeing this, the two brothers, Gure and Velapo, spoke to each other.
After some time the younger, Gure, went over and removed the
neckwear. Later they discussed tactics and began intensive exercise and
training—not only the brothers but all the warriors in the village. They
practised until it came to the time when they thought they should avenge
their loss. They sent word to Kila Wari. They didn’t send messengers.
They went themselves. Arriving in the early hours of the morning at
Alewai beach they called out to Kila Wari (his house was over the sea),
28
Telling Pacific Lives
‘Kila Wari Oh! Kila Wari Oh!’ (the houses were built some 200 metres
off shore).
Then Kila Wari appeared from his house and said ‘Who are you? You
think you can just call my name like that? Wait, I’m coming over’.
Hearing all this Kila Wari’s warriors got their weapons and the fighting
began. But it had been carefully planned. They fought their way inland
and just before reaching the village (Rilo),25 fresh men in large numbers
joined the Velapos but Kila Wari’s dignity did not allow him to withdraw.
Then suddenly Gure Velapo speared him on the leg just above the heel.
As Kila Wari jumped up, Gure called to him, ‘Eagle where will you go?
You are going to die’. Then Kila Wari’s brother came and fought beside
him while Kila Wari, still throwing spears, was struggling to kick off
the spear in his heel. [During the course of the interview it was mooted
that the spear had barbs that would prevent it from coming out.]
By now Kila Wari had tired so he spoke to his brother, Parula, who had
been trying to help him safely home while fighting at the same time,
‘I’ve been hit. It’s no use, I’m dying so leave me here. But please go back
or else you will end up dead like me’. It was here that they left him and
his enemies killed him. This place is called Kila Kalana (Kila’s grave).
Because Kila Wari was a war chief the Velapos wanted to cut off his head
(this was the custom). But the ladies from Babaka rushed over and covered
Kila Wari, who was speared again and again (the ladies’ names are
unknown). So they did not cut off his head. He had a fishbone tattoo
from jaw to mouth on both sides. They did however remove his chiefly
neckwear.
Numa Nama concludes by saying that because the two women had now avenged
their brother’s death and because some other women had covered the body,
nothing more could be done with it so his villagers carried him back. He says
that nobody knows the exact spot where the death took place because there was
no village there then, although ‘it was a busy place’. The general vicinity is now
the grounds of the United Church pastor’s house and it is marked on local maps
as Kila Kalana (Kila’s grave).
Collectively, these accounts of the death of Kila Wari are rich in detail. We
notice, though, that they present a number of contradictions. For instance, that
three different men inflicted the mortal wound—an unknown warrior from
Riwali and each of the Gure brothers. Such claims are not contested, however.
It is evident from the multiple versions presented here that those who tell the
story of Kila Wari are telling the story of their own ancestors. That Kila Wari is
at the centre of these stories is coincidental. So, when Numa Nama was questioned
about the revenge battle that inevitably followed the battle in which Kila Wari
was killed his response was to suggest that we should speak to Kila Wari’s
29
The Kila Wari Stories
descendants about the matter. The inference was that the revenge battle was
not a story told by his family.
The point Numa Nama did make was that when his ancestor, Gure, was killed
his body was badly mutilated, unlike the death of Kila Wari when ‘they didn’t
spoil his body or cut off his head’. This Christian descendant of a war leader
finds himself on familiar ground with regard to the importance of taking the
head of a dead warrior. Numa Nama explains, ‘Chopping off the head was
important. It signifies something. Think about David and Goliath. David chopped
off Goliath’s head to prove he killed him’.
We return, then, to the Vula‘a villages for the story of the battle that was to
avenge the death of Kila Wari. First, we have an account from Wari Lui:
Riwali and Babaka people were invited to ‘bring and buy’26 [this was
a common form of trade] at Kaparoko [the westernmost of the Vula‘a
villages]. Alewai warriors chose to go fishing on this particular day.
Riwali and Kaparoko chiefs together with Hula and Alewai warriors had
made a plan to kill the Babaka chief. After the ‘bring and buy’ the Babaka
chief was making his way home. The Alewai warriors hid in the bush
waiting for him to come their way. They had placed a large human
excrement on the road where he would pass (to signal the impending
death). When the Babaka chief saw the human waste he knew something
was wrong. Minutes later he was ambushed and taken alive. His ears
were cut off and he was told that he was going to die because they had
killed Kila Wari. After they killed him they cut off his head and rolled
the body from Irupara to Alewai. The head was taken to Alukuni and
sold for pigs’ tusks and arm shells.
Walo Kalawa also gives us an account of the revenge battle.
Then came a time when Babaka and Riwali agreed to a raiwa [trade].
Traditionally a knot was tied to mark the day and month of the raiwa.
Just days before the voi/raiwa 27 a Riwali man broke the news of the
voi to Kila Wari’s brothers who were still mourning the death so an
ambush was planned by Wari’s brothers. Very early on the morning of
the raiwa Babakas made their way to Kaparoko through the bush (it was
so early that the birds were up and about trying to catch the first worm
and the people’s presence caused a commotion). Gure’s warriors were
cautious of the natural warnings but Gure reassured them saying ‘auna
paga vagia’ (we killed him [Kila Wari]). After a while they found a human
waste. Gure realised someone had gone before them. Just then someone
shouted ‘poika amana era’ (now you are finished) and a battle erupted.
Surrounded and seeing his men die, Gure ran for his life with Walo Kila,
who was holding a kora [net], and Lui Wari in pursuit. Finally he was
30
Telling Pacific Lives
caught by Lui Wari and pleaded for his life, ‘Koa Kila govagi kona era?’
(Koa Kila—brother of the dead man—are you killing me now?). And was
answered, ‘Arimai poro va magulia, paga na va magulimu’ (Should you
spare our brother’s life, we would…[spare yours]). Then they pushed
all the rubbish including the morning leaves into his mouth and killed
him. The man who chopped his head off was Pala Pika (the head chopper).
Gure’s head was then rolled all the way back while spearing it. At Hula
it was given to Vele Kopi for transportation to Keapara [on the other side
of Hood Bay, adjacent to Alukuni]. The place where Gure died was called
Gure Kalana (Gure’s grave) and is now commonly known as Gurika—just
after you leave Kone Kone creek towards Kaparoko.
It is said that after this battle Alewai village was given land maino pakunai (for
the sake of peace) between the coastal villages and their inland neighbours.
Relations between the Vula‘a and Babaka people have remained relatively
friendly. Intermarriage is common and the presence of the United Church has
created greater opportunities for a shared sociality. As we might expect, though,
it is considered unwise to raise the topic of Kila Wari when both Babaka people
and Vula‘a people are present. More problematic today is that the people of two
Vula‘a villages, Irupara and Alewai, who describe themselves as ‘one family’
and, as such, share ‘the same story’ dispute its legitimacy in the determination
of land claims. The question is a simple one: what was Kila Wari fighting for?
Some say land, others disagree. The purpose of this chapter has not been to find
answers to these questions, however.
Myth, History, and Existence: Some Concluding Remarks
It was Wari Lui’s intention that the story of the life of the Shark Warrior be told
to an audience beyond the southeast coast of Papua New Guinea. His request
has been met. Clearly, though, this collection of stories has a significance far
beyond the documenting of the life of a great warrior. For myself as researcher,
the Kila Wari stories have provided a focal point for examining many aspects of
Vula‘a history, culture and cosmology. For instance, the practice of waka which
emerges as an important theme in the narratives can be linked to similar
concepts—the themes of other Vula‘a narratives—which together provide a
glimpse of a more complete cosmological system.
We have also seen that each and every story which constitutes the legend of
Kila Wari is represented in terms of a genealogical relationship. These treasured
relationships connect people to their ancestors in a most immediate sense. They
also serve as a form of logic28 that maps people into—because it is an experiential
conjunction—the locations of emplaced events. Although differently conceived,
genealogies are maps for the Vula‘a and for the anthropologist. As maps they
offer a unique opportunity for translation.
31
The Kila Wari Stories
For the Vula‘a, the Kila Wari stories embody identity. Although they are not
widely known among the younger generations, they are held in trust by those
who know their value. And while the application of this knowledge is
occasionally invoked in the context of local politics, the Kila Wari stories serve
a broader purpose. They are a repository for ‘traditional’ knowledge in a climate
where the practices of the past have been significantly eroded by Christianity.
Most importantly, they are reminders of an alternative way of life—a possibility
of Being that is available, at least in the imagination, should people choose to
engage it.
We have seen the weight that Wari Lui attributes to his genealogical
connection to Kila Wari and glimpsed his mythic enactment of the warrior’s life.
Similarly, when Numa Nama Gure speaks of the chiefly lineage to which he
belongs, he is not merely commemorating the past. Rather, he is acknowledging
a possible present—a present in which he may be called upon to enact the duties
of his forebears. And he remembers the actions of his ancestors largely in terms
of the landscape in which they are embedded. The Kila Wari stories speak of
history but they are also mythic. They tell of the life of a great man but they
also tell of what it is to engage with such a life—story-teller, ancestor and place
participate in a shared identity that is aptly described as mythic.29 Western
philosophy makes the existential point that human existence in the world is the
primary concern of historical reflection.30 Although the Kila Wari stories are
profoundly existential, they are more than the reflection of historical subjectivity.
They encourage mythic Being in the face of social change and feelings of loss.
Nevertheless, there is a common ground that transcends distinctions usually
made between myth and history. The motivation for ‘telling lives’ stems from
the need to reproduce identity—our sense of ‘self’ in whatever way that is
conceived.
Acknowledgements
This chapter would not have been possible without the assistance of the Rupa
family of Irupara village, especially Gerre Rupa, who provided much of the
translation. I am also indebted to Wari Lui, Numa Nama Gure, Wala Iga, Vela
Kila, and everyone who shared their stories with me. My thanks go also to my
good friends Kila Viri Rupa and his wife Elizabeth, Tani, Meena and Mape, and
the many other men and women whose kindness and companionship made my
work in Irupara so rewarding. Michael Goddard has patiently endured many
readings of earlier drafts and offered helpful comments and discussion. Finally,
I am grateful to Brij Lal and Vicki Luker for organising ‘Telling Pacific Lives’.
32
Telling Pacific Lives
ENDNOTES
1 N.D. Oram, ‘Culture change, economic development and migration among the Hula’, Oceania, 36:4
(1968), 254.
2 Ibid., 259.
3 J. Kolia, The History of the Balawaia (Port Moresby 1977), 21-22.
4 L. Short, The Phonetics and Grammar of the Hula Language with Vocabulary and Translation and Notes
of Other Dialects of the Hood Bay District (Adelaide 1963 [originally MA thesis, University of Adelaide
(Adelaide 1939)]), 68.
5 B. Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (New York 1961), 299.
6 See Goddard this volume; D.Van Heekeren, ‘“Don’t tell the crocodile’: an existential view of Melanesian
myth’, Critique of Anthropology, 24:4 (2004), 430-454; Van Heekeren, ‘Feeding relationship: uncovering
cosmology in Christian women’s fellowship in Papua New Guinea’, Oceania, 75:2 (2004), 89-108; J.
Robbins, Becoming Sinners: Christianity and moral torment in a Papua New Guinea society (Berkeley
2004); M. Jolly, ‘Epilogue’, Oceania, 74:1-2 (2003), 134-147; M. Strathern, The Gender of the Gift: problems
with women and problems with society in Melanesia (Berkeley 1988).
7 N.D. Oram, Papers, Nigel Oram Collection, Box 4, Folder 23, MS9436, National Library of Australia,
Canberra.
8 Some of the narrations that follow were given to me in written form, others are transcriptions of taped
interviews. The tapes were translated by Gerre Rupa who also collected some of the written accounts.
As much of the material was prepared for an audience unfamiliar with its details, it occasionally has an
explanatory tone. The narrator’s explanations appear in the text in round brackets and where I have
felt it necessary to include further elaboration for the sake of coherence I have used square brackets.
9 Wari Lui’s use of the term ‘land lords’ should be taken as referring to the lineage head, or other
designated individual who is responsible for overseeing family land. I have also heard the term used
to refer to the ancestral spirits that have guardianship of garden land. I see little difference in the two
examples, however, as the ancestral lineage is the significant aspect.
10 J. Clifford, Person and Myth: Maurice Leenhardt in the Melanesian world (Berkeley 1982), 253, note
27.
11 In a paper published in 1898 R.E. Guise describes ‘Kwaipo’ as ‘a much dreaded village’, 207. He
offers no explanation but it is reasonable to assume that it is due to its reputation for powerful magic.
12 Wari Lui is referring particularly to the ability to pass through a shower of spears without being
hit.
13 D. Kalakaua, The Legends and Myths of Hawai‘i: the fables and folk-lore of a strange people, ed. R. M.
Daggett (Honolulu 1990), 321.
14 J.W. Lindt, Picturesque New Guinea (London 1887), 113.
15 Oram, ‘Pots for sago: the hiri trading network’, in Tom Dutton (ed.), The Hiri in History: further
aspects of the long distance Motu trade in Central Papua (Canberra 1982), 9.
16 Lindt, Picturesque New Guinea, 60.
17 Oram, ‘The history of the Motu-speaking and Koita-speaking peoples according to their own
traditions’, in D. Denoon and R. Lacey (eds), Oral Traditions in Melanesia (Port Moresby 1981), 220-221.
18 Ibid.
19 Oram, ‘Pots for Sago’, 9.
20 Lekwai is an archaic song form which had a commemorative purpose. There is no accurate translation
of this song because the language is archaic. Nevertheless, it is evident that the actions of the protagonists,
Kila Wari, the Kila Kila chief, Iovanu and Kila Wari’s older brother, Kwamala are celebrated.
21 Oram, ‘The Hula in Port Moresby’, Oceania, 39:1 (1968), 7.
22 This is not merely a modern interpretation. Early European visitors found that the houses in the
agricultural villages of this area were built in rows creating ‘streets’. The Vula‘a villages were built
mainly over the water until after World War II. Their houses were also built in neat lines.
23 In Maria Lepowsky’s account of women’s roles in warfare on the island of Vanatinai (Milne Bay
District) she explains that the removal of an outer skirt expressed the woman’s protection or, according
to context, signalled an attack. Leposky, Fruit of the Motherland: gender in an egalitarian society (New
York 1993), 62.
33
The Kila Wari Stories
24 A leg wound is the equivalent of a fatal blow. The victim can no longer jump to avoid further spears,
or run at sufficient speed to escape. When the infamous Papuan Karo was hanged for murder by the
colonial government many stories were told by the Papuans who witnessed it of the wounds inflicted
by his white killers. One of these claims that when the body was taken away from the gallows there
was a knife wound in its side and both Achilles tendons had been cut. Amirah Inglis, Karo: the life and
fate of a Papuan (Canberra 1982), 119.
25 At the time of Kila Wari’s death Babaka village was located further east near the present site of Rilo
school. It was then known as Paugolo (the name the people call themselves) until the move took place
around the end of the 19th
century.
26 Here Wari Lui used the contemporary term for a gathering where food is prepared by one village
and sold to another, usually to raise money for church projects, rather than elaborate the more traditional
form of exchange of goods which was locally known as raiwa.
27 ‘Voi’ is a general term for trade as compared to ‘raiwa’ which refers to a more ‘social’ exchange which
included feasting.
28 I use the phrase ‘form of logic’ here because I do not wish to suggest an abstract framework. Rather,
I want to emphasise that genealogies are a concrete reality intrinsic to identity.
29 Van Heekeren, ‘“Don’t tell the crocodile”’.
30 M. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (London 1962), 433.
34
Telling Pacific Lives
Chapter 3
From ‘My Story’ to ‘The Story of
Myself’—Colonial Transformations of
Personal Narratives among the
Motu-Koita of Papua New Guinea
Michael Goddard
Since the late colonial period, there have been a significant number of
publications which could be roughly classified as Melanesian autobiography.1
The majority of these have, in fact, been encouraged and commonly written
down, edited and substantively organised, by European acquaintances of the
subjects. The observation that the phenomenon of Melanesian autobiography
is a product of the colonial encounter is a statement of the obvious. Further, as
autobiography is an account of the development of a self-conscious individual
during a period of historical time, the existence of the individual at its narrative
core invites consideration in terms of currently popular critiques of the
development of individualism in Melanesia. Problematising the traditional
Melanesian person as non-individualist,2 critical considerations of nascent
Melanesian individual-ism contextualise its development particularly in the
encounter with Christianity and capitalism, which are commonly seen as the
major historical determinants of individualism in the West.3
Other aspects of the Melanesian experience of colonialism, however, may
have influenced discursive representations of the self in the form of
autobiography. In what follows, I use an example of a brief autobiography which
itself was produced with no direct encouragement from a European mentor.
Rather, its generation can be understood in terms of the development of a
historical consciousness through the praxis of its writer, who was a prominent
advocate in his village’s legal claims to land around Port Moresby, Papua New
Guinea, in the late colonial period. The advent of unsolicited autobiography in
the society to which he belonged, the Motu-Koita, demonstrates a significant
shift from the traditional role of a story’s narrator, for in the mythopoeic, and
therefore non-historical, worldview of the Motu-Koita an autobiographical
individual could not exist.
35
I begin with a brief discussion of the Motu-Koita, their traditional mythopoeic
worldview, and two examples of mentored narratives indicating a lack of
autobiographical consciousness in the mid-colonial period. I then turn to the
case of Bobby Gaigo, who represented Tatana, a Motu-Koita village, in land
claims in the late colonial period and wrote a number of historical documents,
including an autobiographical account. Finally I offer some comments on the
development of a historical consciousness, in relation to autobiography.
Motu-Koita Mythopoeia
The land on which the city of Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, has developed
was traditionally the territory of two intermarried peoples now often collectively
called the Motu-Koita, or Motu-Koitabu. The Koita spoke a non-Austronesian
language, closely related to that of a group further inland, known as the Koiari,
of which they may once have been a part.4 The implication of linguistic evidence,
oral tradition, and archaeological investigation is that at some stage in the distant
past they moved, or were driven by the Koiari, toward the coast.5 There they
settled, and began to intermarry with the Western Motu. The latter spoke an
Austronesian language, and built their houses at the edge of the sea, or sometimes
offshore. The Western Motu migrated into the area from places both inland and
on the coast6 and when Europeans arrived they were settled in a number of
villages along about 50 kilometres of the coast, separated from their coastal
enemies, the Eastern Motu, by an inlet.7
A number of Koita groups became allied with the Motu villages known as
Hanuabada, Tanobada, Tatana, Vabukori and Pari close to where Port Moresby
would develop and friendly relations were maintained between the two peoples,
though the Motu regarded the Koita as prone to sorcery. Both the Motu and
Koita were fearful of the Koiari, whom they regarded as barbaric and possessed
of great sorcery skills. Of the seven Motu villages established when Europeans
arrived in the 1870s, two—Vabukori and Tatana—claimed different origins
from the rest, despite sharing with them a common language and social
organisation. Both the Motu and the Koita villages were divided into residential
groups with a patrilineal idiom. These groups were, and are, called iduhu, a term
popularly translated as ‘clan’, contrary to the caution of anthropologists.8
Traditionally, the Motu-Koita comprehension of their world was mythopoeic.
That is, mythic narratives disclosed extra-ordinary potencies beyond what we
might regard as commonsense explanations of everyday experience. Here I take
Motu-Koita mythopoeia to be an intellectual activity similar to that which
dominated ancient Greek thought before myth in that society was largely
displaced by philosophy. Hatab suggests that for the Greeks myth was not a
‘detached account’, but a spoken correlate of an acted rite, or a thing done:
‘Myth is therefore non-theoretical in the sense that it is not detached from praxis;
36
Telling Pacific Lives
it is originally a lived reality’.9 This phenomenological interpretation is
particularly apt in respect of traditional Motu-Koita society, and in talking of
mythopoeia in the Melanesian context I follow an exemplary and succinct
formulation by Mimica, to mean a ‘mode of activity of consciousness instrumental
in the structuring of experience of the world in which humans are situated’.10
As a brief example of Motu-Koita mythopoeic consciousness, we can consider
a figure known as Buasi, the founding ancestor of Tubumaga iduhu, who lived
eight generations before the Motu culture hero Kevau Dagora. Archaeological
investigation and the comparative examination of oral history suggest Kevau
Dagora himself was active about 250 years before the present,11 and core male
members of the iduhu now known as Idibana Taulamiri in Pari village (near Port
Moresby) trace their descent patrilineally to Kevau, and hence to Buasi. Beyond
his human lifespan, Buasi continued his existence in serpentine form within a
fissure in the rock of the hill called Taurama, overlooking a section of the local
coastline. Crews of passing canoes paid obedience to Buasi and fell silent, lest
their canoes capsized. The story of Buasi continued to be told through the colonial
era, although it is largely forgotten nowadays.12 We note the conflation of the
past and present in the mythopoeic apprehension of Buasi’s potency. The ancestor
was present and efficacious, transcending the mundane abilities of the canoe
paddlers, who depended on his benevolence as they negotiated what a foreigner
might observe to be a relatively unhazardous stretch of water.
The immanence of ancestors meant that the past was not conceived historically
in relationship to the present, but was experienced as part of a lived-present.
Moreover, the relationship between members of a mortal community and
ancestors could be enhanced by siahu, which can be glossed in English as ‘heat’.
Heat was an important constitutive concept in traditional Motu cosmology.
Ancestors could be ritually approximated through the creation of conditions of
heat, dryness and lightness. One way of achieving this was by intensifying a
fire at an irutahuna, a potent central space in, for example, a house, which
facilitated enhanced communication between a living assemblage and the phalanx
of their ancestors. Men or women could also increase their siahu by chewing
ginger in combination with other foods recognised as generating lightness and
dryness. Such dietary regimes were instrumental in achieving a state of potency
known as helaga, in which the participant became partially separated from
communal mortality and closer to the existential status of ancestors. Becoming
helaga enabled people to embrace their ancestors’ power to a degree. This last
achievement is reflected in the English glosses of siahu in translation, which
include ‘power’ and ‘authority’ as well as ‘heat’.
Siahu, in the sense of authority, was also a legitimating force when telling a
sivarai (story),13 insofar as genealogical connections to specific ancestors
legitimated narratives of the past, which might include, for example, stories of
37
From ‘My Story’ to ‘The Story of Myself’
the movement of ancestors from place to place establishing or abandoning villages
or gardens, fighting battles, killing or being killed and buried. It is in this light
that we should understand the Motu-Koita relationship to land, for example.
For siahu is the word used when talking about what English speakers call
land-rights. Through narratives about their ancestors, speakers would iterate
their siahu, or that of their iduhu, to inhabit, or use, or pursue various activities
at, the places to which they referred. In other words, their siahu derived from
their ancestors’ presence and actions at a given place. As mythopoeia, these
narratives were not articulated as truth claims, nor were they subject to proof
in any European legal or philosophical sense. They ‘belonged’ to the people who
told them by virtue of their genealogy, and thereby their content was not
challenged by other individuals or groups. Sivarai of the past, particularly those
asserting ‘land-rights’ exemplify the way the Motu-Koita phenomenologically
viewed the environment as constituted by places which were given meaning
for the living by the activities of ancestors.
These briefly-sketched aspects of the traditional worldview of the Motu-Koita
indicate the significance of relatedness as an aspect of people’s being. Not only
was genealogical connectedness a source of authority, but a temporary increase
in the intensity of a person’s relationship with ancestors (the attainment of
degrees of helaga) was at the same time a lessening of his or her relationship with
the community. The importance of relatedness can also be seen in, for example,
Motu use of teknonymy and other encompassing terms of address. Familiar
people were not normally addressed by name, but in terms of a relationship to
someone else—‘mother/father of x’, ‘husband/wife of y’, ‘my sibling’, ‘my father’s
sister’ and so on. Their social being was in fact acknowledged through explicitly
relating them to others. This is demonstrated mythopoeically in the partial social
negation, during his youth, of the culture hero Kevau Dagora, who was
mentioned earlier. Kevau Dagora was yet unborn when his father was killed in
the massacre of Taurama village. His pregnant mother Konio was the only
survivor of that massacre, fleeing to her brother’s village, where Kevau Dagora
grew up not knowing who his father was. He was mocked by other children for
not belonging to a place, or having a father. When he went hunting, other
children took the game he killed (a further negation of Kevau). Kevau Dagora
eventually overcame this negation, after learning the story of the Taurama
massacre, in an episode during which he killed one of his tormentors and declared
himself. His utterance varies according to versions of the story—in some he uses
the name of his father, in others his father’s iduhu name or an invocation of
Taurama, his ancestral home.14 The variation discloses a commonality; in each
account Kevau consolidates his social being through the elaboration of his
relatedness beyond his own mother.
A further point of note in this narrative is the very name Kevau is given, in
relation to his slaughtered father. Children were commonly named in the first
38
Telling Pacific Lives
instance by prefixing a name to the ‘first’ name of their father—thus the son or
daughter of a man called ‘Kevau x—’ would be named ‘y— Kevau’. In the case
of Kevau Dagora, however, genealogies ascribe to him the whole name of his
father (that is, there is a ‘Kevau Dagora No. 1’ and a ‘Kevau Dagora No. 2’). In
this narrative, then, Kevau’s natal relationship to his already deceased father is
articulated through the shared relationship with the woman Konio (‘Kevau
adavana’ = ‘married of Kevau’ and ‘Kevau sinana’ = ‘mother of Kevau’), and his
emergence as a new iduhu head and war leader replacing, rather than simply
succeeding, his father through the avenging of the Taurama massacre.
In combination, the foregoing insights into the lack of historical separation
of the past and present, and the primacy of relatedness, indicate that the
autonomous self, as commonly understood in Western society, was not possible
in Motu-Koita society. To elaborate this I draw on the terminology of Maurice
Leenhardt, who attempted to represent Melanesian understandings of what
Westerners consider to be the person, based on his study of New Caledonia in
the early 1900s.15 Without capitulating to the evolutionist cast of his
representation, I find value in Leenhardt’s distinctions between three kinds of
human beings, which he designated, in French, personnage, personne and individu.
The last of these terms can be translated as ‘individual’, and denoted for
Leenhardt the Western notion of the autonomous, ego-oriented entity, imbued
with temporal continuity.16 In the standard English translation of Leenhardt’s
Do Kamo, Gulati renders personnage as ‘personage’,17 but I prefer to use the
term ‘persona’. In contrast to the individual, the persona is constituted by and
dependent upon relationships, is intrinsic to the mythopoeic experience of the
world, and cannot exist outside of these conditions.18 Between the two is the
personne, or ‘person’, neither mythopoeically structured, nor fully individuated.
The relationship between the Leenhardtian ‘person’ and ‘individual’, understood
by him as a modality of a problematic evolution from archaic persona to rational
individual, could be recast in terms of more recent anthropological discussion
of the relationship between ‘self’ and ‘person’.19 My preoccupation here, though,
is with the persona, the ‘participatory’ entity, which, among the Canaques of
Leenhardt’s ethnology, was known as the kamo:
The kamo is a living persona who recognises himself less in his human
contour than in his form, one might say in his human likeness.
It is in this form, and not in the exterior contour, that the persona exists.
Humanness thus transcends all physical representations of man. It is not
perceived objectively, it is felt. It encloses in itself the aesthetic and
affective elements which belong to man and which the Canaque
experiences as such. It is this living, human, ensemble which he means
by kamo.20
39
From ‘My Story’ to ‘The Story of Myself’
The kamo, the Canaque persona, is not defined by his or her body, but is
sustained by a set of relationships with similar entities. To a predominant degree,
the persona’s being is experienced as participation, not as an independent
existence. Leenhardt gives a handy example of this in the negative instance, a
Canaque cursed and driven out of his society, who feels himself in ‘perdition’.
Deprived of any relationship through which to find himself, he cannot even
assert his being through speech, because he no longer corresponds to any persona.
Without a participatory relationship and a corresponding name he has no
existence.21 ‘Persona’ is, then, a particularly apt term for the mode of being
Leenhardt is attempting to portray, being derived from the Latin terms per
(‘through’), and sonare (‘to sound’), giving the compound personare, ‘to sound
through’.
To return to the Motu-Koita, the culture hero Kevau Dagora is in every sense
a persona. In the narratives he is initially in ‘perdition’, as his social being is
denied by others, until he finds himself by establishing the relationship to his
father, to his iduhu, and to Taurama and declares himself. Consequently in the
remainder of the narrative he is, as Leenhardt might put it, a living Motu-Koita
ensemble in the qualities he displays and in his achievements. But importantly,
the narrator of such stories is also a persona, using his or her relationship to
Kevau Dagora to establish authority, both to tell the story, and to maintain a
practical engagement with the places which the narrative traverses. The narrator
declares himself or herself in this mythopoeic fashion. The obverse of this
dependence on relationships is a lack of acknowledgement of a self which can
exist autonomously outside the mythopoeic context. That is, traditional
Motu-Koita did not acknowledge themselves as the autonomous, ego-oriented
entities, imbued with temporal continuity, which we might call individuals.
Consequently, they could not have an autobiographical consciousness.
An indication of this traditional lack of autobiographical consciousness among
the Motu-Koita is found, paradoxically, in the ‘autobiographical’ reminiscences
of Ahuia Ova, written in collaboration with the anthropologist F.E. Williams
and published in 1939. Ahuia Ova was prominent in his day, the early colonial
period. He was a major informant of C.G. Seligman, who published an ethnology
of the Koita,22 an informant of Malinowski during the latter’s short time in Port
Moresby,23 and enjoyed some patronage from the Governor, Sir Hubert Murray.
Williams was partly motivated to record Ahuia’s biography by Radin’s apparent
success with a native American.24 Certainly the finished product contained a
significant amount of biographical material and, as Williams observed, was
evidence of considerable hubris,25 but its form was the result of guidance, ‘some
encouragement’, a syllabus and pre-arranged table of contents provided by
Williams, significant editing of the manuscript dictated by Ahuia, and substantive
rearrangement to achieve the conventional autobiographical structure desired
40
Telling Pacific Lives
by Williams.26 The anthropologist expressed ‘some disappointment’ at the
quality and quantity of the finished product, compared to Radin’s achievements,
and clearly had expectations of what an autobiography should contain which
were unfulfilled by Ahuia, whom Williams said was ‘more at home in relating
legends than in writing personal history’.27 Indeed, Williams tells us that ‘A
few quite irrelevant passages have been dropped, and some long-winded ones
summarised in square brackets’.28
Less interference was involved in another celebrated document, ‘Kori Taboro’s
story’ dictated to a literate Papuan in the 1940s and published both in English
and in Motu.29 Kori Taboro was a prominent Koita woman in Port Moresby, a
diviner, mistakenly represented by some as a sorcerer,30 and witness to early
government and missionary activity in the area. Some phraseological liberties
were taken in the translation, but the substance of Kori’s story was preserved,
and she appears to have told her story in her own way. Moreover, G.A.V. Stanley,
the European at whose house the story was narrated, forbade any questioning
of her during the telling. This document is a marked contrast to Ahuia Ova’s
reminiscences, in that Kori Taboro gives very little autobiographical information.
She gives her birthplace and genealogy31 and testifies to being a child when
the missionary W.G. Lawes began translating the Bible into Motu.32 This
information, though, is used only to legitimate and orient her narrative, about
migrations, warfare, missionary and other colonially related activities (which
are themselves mythologised in the account). Kori Taboro, in other words, refers
to herself only to indicate her relationship to the persons whose actions she
describes and thereby her siahu, her authority to tell the sivarai.
The Motu title of Kori Taboro’s story, Kori Taboro Ena Sivarai, also indicates
its lack of autobiographical consciousness. Two types of possession, alienable
and inalienable, are marked in the Motu language. Kori Taboro Ena Sivarai,
unlike its English translation ‘Kori Taboro’s Story’, is unequivocal in meaning.
It is specifically ‘the story told by Kori Taboro’. To indicate a story about Kori
Taboro, a different phrase, Kori Taboro Sivaraina, would be required, and the
speaker would be someone other than Kori Taboro. Sivaraina (sivarai with a
possessive suffix) is the inalienable case, the story and its subject are inseparable,
as with the story above about Kevau Dagora. Such a construction cannot sensibly
occur with the speaker as the object, such as lau sivaraigu, ‘the story of me’. In
order to use the inalienable construction in a reflexive manner, Kori Taboro
would have to tell a story about her participation in an event (e.g., lau Mosbi
nala sivaraina, ‘story about my trip to Moresby’). In conformity with the
mythopoeic conception of the persona, Kori Taboro cannot represent herself as
an entity with its own life history.
41
From ‘My Story’ to ‘The Story of Myself’
Representing Tatana
An autobiographical account, in the conventional sense, by a Motu-Koita person,
would represent a significant transition from the mythopeoic worldview and
the non-historical self-perception of the narrator as persona, which I have
described here. It is worth noting that when Williams elicited the reminiscences
of Ahuia Ova more than 50 years after the arrival of Christianity, the latter had
long since converted to the introduced religion, and had explicitly denounced
the kinds of activities which the administration labelled ‘sorcery’ and associated
with a pre-Christian worldview.33 Kori Taboro, who continued her traditional
divinations and midwifery until her death in 1950, was schooled in her youth
by the London Missionary Society.34 Long experience of Christianity did not
foster the degree of individualism necessary for an autobiographical consciousness
in either of these articulate narrators. However, in the 1970s, a series of writings,
culminating in an account which could rightly be described as autobiographical,
was produced by a Motu-Koita man who had internalised the message of legal
documents at least as much as the word of God. His name was Bobby Gaigo, and
he was from Tatana, a village which had barely been mentioned in academic
literature on the Motu-Koita until he began writing history.
Tatana is on a small island, essentially a hill, in the inner harbour beside the
town of Port Moresby. At first contact by Europeans in 1873, a village of up to
200 people occupied the northern edge of the island and had only a little
gardening land at the base of the hill. Archaeological research suggests that as
a result of a fission when the forerunners of the Motu were in a state of migration
centuries earlier, Tatana villagers, and the people of another village on the
mainland coast, Vabukori, moved into their present sites via a different route
from the rest of the Motu.35 A few oral traditions reinforce this possibility,
giving Tatana people different migration routes than the majority of Motuans,
mostly from beyond Galley Reach to the west.36 Early European observers noted
that Tatana villagers appeared not to make pots, which distinguished them from
most other Motu villages in the area, but specialised in the manufacture of shell
beads (ageva), and shell headbands (gema).37 They were of less interest to early
anthropologists than the much larger village complex nearby known as
Hanuabada, and little was written about them. Turner, a missionary
anthropologist, wrote in 1878 that they ‘have no plantations and so they live
by plunder’.38
Missionaries and the administration ‘bought’ land from the Motu-Koita,
especially those of the Hanuabada village complex, initially paying with items
of clothing and axes. Whether the Motu-Koita recognised this process as a land
sale in the European sense is debatable: traditionally land had either been taken
by conquest in warfare, or land-use by outsiders was negotiated in terms of
ongoing tokens of reciprocation and goodwill. The administration’s land
42
Telling Pacific Lives
acquisition procedure later included rental agreements and more substantial
payments, but by the mid-20th
century local landholders had become alarmed
by the growth of permanent infrastructure and buildings. By the end of the
colonial era (the 1970s) the de facto loss of their land to what had become a city
of migrants was developing into a major issue for the Motu-Koita.39
In the 1960s Motu-Koita discontent manifested in a number of claims for
compensation in respect of land which they regarded as inadequately paid for,
or even illegally acquired, during the early colonial period. The land claims
created legal conflict among the Motu-Koita, as various groups occasionally
claimed to have been the original owners of the same piece of land, alleging that
the colonial authorities had paid the wrong people when acquiring the land, or
had made inadequate enquiries as to whether land was owned in the first place.
An example of the latter was a tortuous case lasting two decades in which a large
number of groups claimed ownership of Daugo Island, near Port Moresby, which
the administration had acquired as ‘waste and vacant’ land in 1889. Tatana
villagers became involved in several claims to land in and around Port Moresby,
including the Daugo Island claim, in the 1960s.
It is conventionally legally held in Papua New Guinea that the process of
establishing genealogical linkages to the actions of apical ancestors is customary
and therefore legitimate, and indeed warranted, in land claims. But in relation
to Motu-Koita claims, the traditional sense of siahu was made irrelevant a priori,
by virtue of the cases being a contestation of ‘ownership’ demonstrated according
to principles of probability, requiring claimants to reasonably prove their
habitation of an area of land and use of its resources during a particular period
of historical time. This necessarily obliged commissioners and judges to consider
the credibility of claimants’ testimony, which could only be done by reference
to a measure of historical ‘fact’, provided by documentary evidence and European
testimony. Siahu, in its original sense of affirming the mythopoeic simultaneity
of the past and present, the incontestable expression of the potentiality of
occupation or use of a place by virtue of an ancestor’s presence, had no legitimacy
in these sorts of procedings.
Of all the claimants to Daugo Island, the Tatana villagers recognised the
importance of demonstrating to the court a detailed knowledge of historical facts
and articulating themselves with those facts. In contrast to the other claimants,
who relied on assertions that they had traditionally fished and camped at Daugo,
the Tatana villagers claimed that they had actually lived and gardened on Daugo.
They also claimed to have planted coconut trees on the island (against the
documentary evidence that the trees were planted by prisoners working on the
government plantation in the late 19th
century). As the hearings progressed visits
were made to Daugo Island, where Tatana witnesses pointed out pottery sherds,
and what they claimed were the sites of their village, and gardens and a
43
From ‘My Story’ to ‘The Story of Myself’
waterhole. Tatana witnesses also claimed variously that their grandparents had
been active on the island or had lived there in the days of prominent early
colonial figures such as Captain Moresby, Governor William MacGregor and the
entrepreneur Robert Hunter and had interacted with these people.40
Much of what they said contradicts not only the documentary evidence
before the court, but the body of knowledge available from a spectrum of
academic research (not used in the Daugo claim hearings) touching on Daugo
Island.41 Nevertheless, as the claim continued, their ability to position themselves
as actors in the conventional history of the island became focal in convincing
the courts of their ownership of the island. A National Court appeal hearing in
1979 was a turning point in the fortunes of the Tatana claimants to Daugo. The
Court, reviewing the evidence, was impressed by the extensive historical
knowledge of Daugo Island apparent in the witnesses’ testimony and in
subsequent hearings Tatana village had the ascendancy over other claimants.42
They were eventually judged to be the traditional owners of Daugo Island, in
1985.
Bobby Gaigo’s Story
The Tatana villagers’ most prominent representative in the Daugo and other
claims was Bobby Gaigo, himself from Tatana village, who died in 1987, shortly
after victory in the Daugo claim. Bobby Gaigo had no legal training, but he had
developed the ability to read and interpret legal texts, and commonly represented
fellow villagers in court cases.43 During the 1970s while the land claims were
in process, Bobby Gaigo started to produce written accounts of the history of
Tatana Island and the social practices of its villagers.44 In all of them, beginning
with a short paper on fishing practices, his introductory section included a claim
of extensive land holdings. The first of these was as follows:
According to our traditions the ancestors of the people now living at
Tatana Village formed the first community in the Port Moresby area.
Their population was large, as were their landholdings. We occupied
land around Fairfax Harbour and the offshore islands of Daugo and Gemo.
Old village sites may be seen in several places, including a fair sized one
on Daugo Island.45
In subsequent papers he elaborated by listing specific mainland sites comprising
the northern and western sides of the harbour and beyond to Malara. He also
listed various islands scattered through fishing grounds around Port Moresby
and along the coast to the east and west: for example, ‘Tatana owned large
traditional fishing areas, including Daugo island, Nadera reef, Gavera islands,
Walter Bay, Gemo Island, Hesede reef, Nonorua Island, Konebada and Port
Moresby harbour’.
44
Telling Pacific Lives
In marked contrast to the oral traditions of migration and movement
commonly offered by Motu-Koita, including Tatana islanders in the past, Bobby
Gaigo’s writings represented Tatana people as the original people of the area.
Indeed he stated that other Motu negotiated with Tatana people to be allowed
to settle at sites such as Hanuabada. The significant difference between the
conventional wisdom informed by the collective oral traditions of other
Motu-Koita groups and Gaigo’s own claims of territorial priority and extensive
landholding by Tatana people was attributed by him to the selectivity of
European researchers, whom he claimed never consulted Tatana people. In
elaborating this claim he revealed the extent of his own reading, for he listed
individuals he considered complicit in the misrepresentation of local prehistory.
These included Governor MacGregor, prominent early missionaries, later
churchmen and writers, anthropologists, their local informants (specifically,
Ahuia Ovia), linguists and colonial officers. He even included publication dates.
While Gaigo’s writings contradicted much of the historical evidence about
the Port Moresby area, as well as being self-contradictory, and contained a
number of anomalies such as attributing some of Owen Stanley’s exploratory
activities in 1850 to John Moresby in 1873, they are evidence of considerable
documentary research on his part. For example, the claim that his forefathers
saw ships which may have been Spanish or Portuguese relates to a debate among
historians about whether the Spanish expedition of Torres and de Prado sailed
close to the area in 1606. Gaigo even includes a reference list in one document,
an indication of his acquaintance with academic literary convention.46 In
addition to discursively shifting Tatana islanders from a marginal position in
local history to a foundational and central position by claiming that Tatana
islanders, and his own genealogical ancestors, were the original inhabitants of
the territory, Gaigo provided autobiographical information, particularly in a
document entitled ‘The Young Bobby Gaigo of Tatana Island’, which was clearly
produced without editorial assistance.47
By his own account, Bobby Gaigo was born at Malara, which is where Tatana
villagers were evacuated to during the Second World War, inviting the inference
that he was born between 1942 and 1945.48 His parents were both from Tatana
and his father was a village councillor. He attended a London Missionary Society
school and then a primary school, but left before completing primary education,
due to ‘family problems’,49 and obtained work as a tea boy and messenger in
the Department of Native Affairs. He worked intermittently in a number of
administrative departments as a clerical assistant, and for some private firms as
a storeman, frequently leaving his employment—or being sacked for
non-attendance—to attend the land-claim hearings in which he was involved
for two decades.50 After dropping out of school he continued to try to educate
himself by reading local and overseas newspapers when he could obtain them
45
From ‘My Story’ to ‘The Story of Myself’
and, significantly, by spending time in the public library and (from the late
1960s) the library at the University.51 He also learned the rudiments of typing.
In the 1970s, he attended the University of Papua New Guinea’s academic
conferences known as the Waigani Seminar, where he gave short seminar
papers.52 Bobby Gaigo was a supporter of the Pangu Party (the party of Papua
New Guinea’s first Chief Minister, Michael Somare) and later of Papua Besena,
the party led by Josephine Abaijah, switching allegiance, he wrote, because
Pangu failed to support Tatana’s local land claims.53 He served as a ‘village
court’ magistrate on Tatana in the 1970s and campaigned unsuccessfully as an
independent political candidate in the 1977 elections.54 He spent two periods
in gaol during the time he was active as a representative in court cases—one for
‘contempt of court’ and the other for ‘fraud’—implying in his account that he
was a political prisoner.55 He went on to claim that in his youth he lived at
Daugo, made gardens and planted coconut trees. The document re-visited the
testimony of Tatana witnesses in the land claim, some of whom Gaigo represented
as being centenarians, and included a reference list of documents tendered during
the hearings of the Daugo Island claim.56
Law, History and Autobiography
Bobby Gaigo’s collective writings demonstrate a sophisticated understanding
of the exigencies of civil legal processes and the value Europeans place on
documentary sources and the establishment of historical ‘facts’. He was putting
a version of history on the record for future scholars in the manner of others he
had consulted during his own research for land claims. In pursuing those claims
he had come to recognise the importance of demonstrating a detailed knowledge
of historical facts and articulating himself with those facts. His accounts, placing
Tatana geographically and politically at the centre of the prehistory of the Port
Moresby area, were far removed from the mythopoeic narratives which his
forebears had told oral historians, but which the Tatana land claimants never
told in court, about man-eating giants and migration from somewhere north-west
of Galley Reach. Those narratives, he realised, would not satisfy the real criteria
by which ‘customary’ ownership was proved in courts of law, and he probably
doubted they would be credited as acceptable history by a western reader.
It was through this praxis, then, that Bobby Gaigo developed a historical
consciousness, and thereby the conditions for representing himself as an
autobiographical subject.57 For success in the court cases required stories to be
testimony, subject to interrogation requiring proof, or at least probability,
whereby the speakers had to represent themselves as witnesses, at first hand or
second hand (the latter through recalling what a grandfather or other relative
had witnessed). Called upon to describe themselves, their actions, their
whereabouts at particular times, their qualifications and authority to make
46
Telling Pacific Lives
statements of fact, their memories of specific events at specific times, Bobby
Gaigo and his fellow witnesses learned to position themselves in historical time,
witnessing events from the point of view of an individual, an autonomous,
ego-oriented entity, capable of discursively detaching themselves from what
they described.
When Bobby Gaigo finally wrote his autobiography it is notable that although
he referred to his father and grandfather, he did not narrate a detailed genealogy,
in the way Kori Taboro had at several points in her story. His story was the story
of himself, his achievements and occasional failures, as an individual historically
shaped through his own praxis, not as a persona constituted by and dependent
upon relationships, intrinsic to the mythopoeic experience of the world, and
unable to exist outside of these conditions. As I said at the beginning of this
paper, critical considerations of nascent Melanesian individual-ism contextualise
its development particularly in the encounter with Christianity and capitalism,
which are commonly seen as the major historical determinants of individualism
in the West. But there is not a great deal of evidence of such determination in
the stories of Ahuia Ovia or Kori Taboro. Bobby Gaigo’s story, though, indicates
a link between the encounter with European criteria of proof and legitimacy,
for example in legal contestations, and the development of the historical
consciousness which shapes the concept of the individual, and thereby,
autobiography.
ENDNOTES
1 For example, Josephine Abaijah, A Thousand Coloured Dreams (Mt Waverley 1991); R.M. Keesing,
‘Elota’s Story: the life and times of a Solomon Islands big man (St Lucia, Qld 1978); A.M. Kiki, Kiki: ten
thousand years in a lifetime (Melbourne 1968); Michael Somare, Sana: an autobiography of Michael Somare
(Port Moresby 1975); Andrew Strathern, Ongka: a self-account of a New Guinea big man (New York
1979); Andrew Strathern, Ru: biography of a Western Highlander (Port Moresby 1993); V.D. Watson,
Anyan’s Story: a New Guinea woman in two worlds (Seattle 1997).
2 There is certainly no consensus on the nature of traditional Melanesian ‘individuals’ beyond the
observation that individual-ism was not a part of their worldview. For a comparative range of perspectives
see for example A.L. Epstein, Gunantuna: aspects of the person, the self and the individual among the Tolai
(Bathurst 1999); C.A. Gregory, Gifts and Commodities (London 1982); Maurice Leenhardt, Do Kamo:
person and myth in the Melanesian world, trans. B.M. Gulati (Chicago 1979); K.E. Read, ‘Morality and
the concept of the person’, Oceania, 55 (1955), 233-82. Michele Stephen, A‘aisa’s Gifts: a study of magic
and the self (Berkeley 1995) and Marilyn Strathern, The Gender of the Gift (Berkeley 1990).
3 Louis Dumont, Essays on Individualism: modern ideology in anthropological perspective (Chicago 1992)
on the historical shaping of individualism in the West are a handy guide, and Tawney’s discussion, in
1922, of the relationship between Christianity and capitalism remains relevant, R.H. Tawney, Religion
and the Rise of Capitalism: a historical study (London 1990). Examples of the contextualisation of
individualistic attitudes in the encounter with Christianity and/or capitalism in Melanesia can be found
in T.S. Epstein, Capitalism, Primitive and Modern: some aspects of Tolai economic growth (Canberra 1968);
Ben R. Finney, Big-Men and Business: entrepreneurship and economic growth in the New Guinea Highlands
(Canberra 1973); Gregory, Gifts and Commodities; Edward LiPuma, Encompassing Others: the magic of
modernity in Melanesia (Ann Arbor 2000); and Joel Robbins, Becoming Sinners: Christianity and moral
torment in a Papua New Guinea Society (Berkeley 2004).
4 T.E. Dutton, The Peopling of Central Papua (Canberra 1969), 32.
5 Dutton, The Peopling of Central Papua; N.D. Oram, ‘The history of the Motu-speaking and
Koitabu-speaking peoples according to their own traditions’, in Donald Denoon and Roderic Lacey (eds),
47
From ‘My Story’ to ‘The Story of Myself’
Oral Tradition in Melanesia (Port Moresby 1981); Pamela Swadling, ‘The settlement history of the Motu
and Koita apeaking people of the Central Province, Papua New Guinea’, in Denoon and Lacey, Oral
Tradition in Melanesia, 240-251.
6 Oram, ‘Introduction’, Oral History, 7:3 (1979), 2-7; Oram, ‘The history of the Motu-speaking and
Koitabu-speaking peoples’.
7 Oram, ‘The history of the Motu-speaking and Koitabu-speaking peoples’.
8 For example, Cyril Belshaw, The Great Village (London 1957), 13; Michael Goddard, ‘Rethinking Motu
descent groups’, Oceania, 71:1 (2001), 313-3; Murray Groves, ‘Western Motu descent groups’, Ethnology,
2:1 (1963), 15ff.
9 Lawrence J. Hatab, Myth and philosophy: a contest of truths (La Salle 1990), 20, italics in original.
10 Jadran Mimica, Intimations of infinity: the cultural meanings of the Iqwaye counting and number systems
(Providence 1988), 5.
11 Oram, ‘Taurama—oral sources for a study of recent Motuan prehistory’, The Journal of the Papua
and New Guinea Society, 2:2 (1968), 79-91; ‘The history of the Motu-speaking and Koitabu-speaking
peoples’; R.L. Pulsford and V, Heni, ‘The story or Taurama village as told by Aire Aire Rahobada of
Pari village’, The Journal of the Papua and New Guinea Society, 2:2 (1968), 97-100; Susan Bulmer,
‘Prehistoric settlement patterns and pottery in the Port Moresby area’, Journal of the Papua and New
Guinea Society, 5:2 (1971), 29-91; Jack Golson, ‘Introduction to Taurama archaeological site Kirra Beach’,
Journal of the Papua and New Guinea Society, 2:2 (1968), 67-71.
12 Partial accounts of the Buasi story are given by N.D. Oram, (used by permission of the Australian
National Library), ‘The History of the Motu-speaking and Koitabu-speaking peoples’, 211; Oram Papers,
Nigel Oram Collection, Canberra, Australian National Library, MS9436; and R. L. Pulsford, ‘Changing
attitudes of the Motu-Koita to illness and misfortune’, MA Thesis, University of Sydney (Sydney 1974),
18. I was given a version in Pari village in 1994 in conversation with a group including Lohia Daure
(head of Idibana Taulamiri Iduhu), Morea Hekoi and Puka Vagi.
13 Sivarai is a general term for ‘story’. Another term, gori, is translated in the standard dictionary of
Motu (Lister-Turner), as ‘legend’, but would be better interpreted to mean stories told for amusement,
for example to children, or to ‘pass the time’. Gori are the Motuan equivalent of ‘tall tales’ and ‘fairy
tales’. Stories of cosmogony, culture heroes, which might be viewed as ‘legends’ or ‘myths’ (i.e.
exaggerated or untrue) by Europeans, are not regarded as gori by the Motu-Koita.
14 Cf. I.O. Nou, Pari Hanua Edia Sense Sivaraidia (Port Moresby 1975), 4-5; Oram, ‘Introduction’, 2-7;
Pulsford and Heni, ‘The story of Taurama village’, 98-99. In the latter version, his cry is given as
‘Gwadagwada Taurama Biri’ which the authors erroneously say is the name of his iduhu. An approximate
translation is ‘Speared by Taurama!’ Kevau Dagora’s father’s iduhu is generally understood to have been
Tubumaga, which Kevau Dagora subsequently re-established at Tauata, a site now known as Pari village.
The account given here is condensed from a number of versions, as cited and also orally given to me at
Pari village.
15 Leenhardt, Do Kamo: La Personne et le Mythe dans le Monde Mélanésien (Paris 1998 [1947]).
16 Leenhardt, Do Kamo: La Personne et le Mythe, 264, 270-71.
17 Leenhardt, Do Kamo: Person and Myth, trans. Gulati, xxxii and passim.
18 Leenhardt, Do Kamo: La Personne et le Mythe, 248-251.
19 Leenhardt, Do Kamo: La Personne et le Mythe, 1998, 261-271; cf. Leenhardt, Do Kamo: Person and
Myth, 162-169. In respect of Melanesia in particular, see for example Kenelm Burridge, Someone, No
One: an essay on individuality (Princeton 1979); A.L. Epstein, Gunantuna; Deborah Gewertz, ‘The
Tchambuli view of persons: a critique of individualism in the works of Mead and Chodorow’, American
Anthropologist, 3 (1984), 615-29; LiPuma, Encompassing Others, 128-152; and Stephen, A‘aisa’s Gifts.
20 Leenhardt, Do Kamo: La Personne et le Mythe, 73-4, my translation of ‘Le kamo et un personnage
vivant qui se reconnaît moins à son contour d’homme qu’à sa forme, on pourrait dire à son air d’humanité.
C’est dans cette forme, et non dans la ligne extérieure, que le personnage existe. L’humain dépasse ainsi
toutes les représentations physique de l’homme. Il n’est pas perçu objectivement, il est senti. Il enferme
en lui les données esthétiques et affectives qui sont de sont de l’homme et que le Canaque éprouve
comme telles. C’est cet ensemble vivant et humain qui’il signifie par kamo’. Cf. Leenhardt, Do Kamo:
Person and Myth, 26.
21 Leenhardt, Do Kamo: La Personne et le Mythe, 251.
22 C.G. Seligman, The Melanesians of British New Guinea (Cambridge 1910).
23 B. Malinowski, A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term (California 1989), 9-22.
48
Telling Pacific Lives
24 Radin cited in F.E. Williams, ‘The reminiscences of Ahuia Ova’, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 69:1 (1939), 12.
25 Williams, ‘The reminiscences of Ahuia Ova’, 13 and passim.
26 Williams, ‘The reminiscences of Ahuia Ova’.
27 Williams, ‘The reminiscences of Ahuia Ova’, 12-13.
28 Williams, ‘The reminiscences of Ahuia Ova’, 13.
29 Sinaka Goava, ‘Kori Taboro’s Story’, Oral History, 7:3 (1979); and Goava, ‘Kori Taboro Ena Sivarai’,
Oral History, 7:3 (1979), 95-123.
30 For example, Caroline Mytinger, New Guinea Headhunt (New York 1946) 202ff.
31 Goava, ‘Kori Taboro’s Story’, 65, 67, 79; Goava, ‘Kori Taboro Ena Sivarai’, 95, 96, 107.
32 Goava, ‘Kori Taboro’s Story’, 79-80; Goava, ‘Kori Taboro Ena Sivarai’, 108.
33 Williams, ‘The reminiscences of Ahuia Ova’.
34 Oram, ‘Introduction’.
35 Bulmer, ‘Prehistoric settlement patterns and pottery in the Port Moresby area’; Swadling, ‘The
settlement history of the Motu and Koita speaking people’, 245-247.
36 For example, Bulmer, ‘Prehistoric settlement patterns and pottery in the Port Moresby area’; Swadling,
‘The settlement history of the Motu and Koita speaking people’, 45; Oram, ‘The Hula in Port Moresby’,
Oceania, 39:1 (1968), 1-35; Oram ‘The history of the Motu-speaking and Koitabu-speaking peoples’,
215.
37 Bulmer, ‘Prehistoric settlement patterns and pottery in the Port Moresby area’, 44; Seligman, The
Melanesians of British New Guinea, 93, 114; W. Y. Turner, ‘The ethnology of the Motu’, Journal of the
Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 7 (1878), 470-499.
38 Turner, ‘The ethnology of the Motu’, 492.
39 Nigel Oram, Colonial Town to Melanesian City: Port Moresby 1884-1974 (Canberra 1976), 175ff.
40 Papua New Guinea Law Reports (hereinafter PNGLR) 1979, National Court of Justice (hereinafter
NCJ): Re Fisherman’s Island, 225-229.
41 For example, Bulmer, ‘Prehistoric settlement patterns and pottery in the Port Moresby area’; T.E.
Dutton, Police Motu: Iena Sivarai (Port Moresby 1985); R. J. Lambert, ‘Some archaeological sites of the
Motu and Koiaria areas’, in The History of Melanesia: proceedings of the 2nd Waigani Seminar (Port
Moresby 1969), 411-9; Oram, ‘Taurama’; Swadling, ‘The settlement history of the Motu and Koita
speaking people’. Briefly, Daugo was uninhabited when first visited by Capt. Moresby in 1873 and
archaeological evidence suggests that it had not been inhabited for at least 1000 years. The colonial
administration acquired it as ‘waste and vacant’ in 1889 and attempted to establish a coconut plantation
which was abandoned after a few years. Various local groups fished around the island, but it remained
uninhabited until people from Hula, 100 kms east of Port Moresby, began a settlement on it in the
1950s.
42 PNGLR 1979, NCJ: re Fisherman’s Island, 225-229; see PNGLR 1986, NCJ: Arthur Ageva v. Bobby
Gaigo and Mahada Resena, 160-166; PNGLR 1987, Supreme Court of Justice: Arthur Ageva v. Boby
Gaigo, Naime Daure and Madana Resena, 12-15.
43 PNGLR 1971-72, Supreme Court of the Territory of Papua and New Guinea: Rahonamo v. Enai, 58-67;
PNGLR 1977, NCJ: Arthur Ageva, Gadiki Sanai, Madaha Resena, Jack Mase, and Bobby Gaigo v. the
State, 99-106; PNGLR 1979, NCJ: re Fisherman’s Island, 202-46; PNGLR 1979, Gaigo, Representing Mrs
Henao Batari and Mrs Dai Bais v. The Employers Federation of PNG, Representing W. R. Carpenters,
92-98; PNGLR 1986, NCJ: Arthur Ageva v. Bobby Gaigo and Madaha Resena, 160-66; PNGLR 1987,
SCJ: Arthur Ageva v. Bobby Gaigo, Naime Daure and Madana Resena, 12-15; also Ralph R. Premdas
and Jeffrey S. Steeves, Electoral Politics in a Third World City: Port Moresby 1977 (Port Moresby 1978),
38.
44 Bobby Gaigo, ‘Present-day fishing practices among the people of Tatana village in Fairfax Harbour,
Papua New Guinea’, in B.A.C. Enyi and T. Vaghese (eds), Agriculture in the Tropics: papers delivered at
the tenth Waigani Seminar, PNG University of Technology, Lae 28 May 1976 (Port Moresby 1977), 143-9;
Gaigo, ‘Present day fishing practices in Tatana village’, in John H. Winslow (ed.), The Melanesian
Environment (Canberra 1977), 176-81; Gaigo, ‘The history of Tatana village, National Capital District
Central Province’, Oral History, 7:5 (1979), 88-102; Gaigo, ‘Social disorder’, in Richard Jackson (ed.),
Urbanisation and its problems in Papua New Guinea (Port Moresby 1980), 209; Gaigo, ‘Past and present
fishing practices among the people of Tatana village, Port Moresby’, in Louise Marauta, John Pernetta
and William Heaney (eds), Traditional Conservation in Papua New Guinea: implications for today (Boroko
49
From ‘My Story’ to ‘The Story of Myself’
1982), 301-2; Gaigo, ‘The young Bobby Gaigo of Tatana Island’, mimeo, Attorney General’s Department
Library, Waigani, no date; Gaigo, ‘The history of Tatana’, mimeo, Michael Somare Library, University
of Papua New Guinea, Port Moresby, no date.
45 Gaigo, ‘Present-day fishing practices among the people of Tatana village’, 143.
46 Gaigo, ‘The history of Tatana’.
47 Gaigo, ‘The young Bobby Gaigo of Tatana Island’.
48 Gaigo, ‘The young Bobby Gaigo of Tatana Island’, 1. In contrast, Premdas and Steeves, in a
biographical note on 1977 election candidates, suggest he was aged 30 in 1977; Electoral Politics in a
Third World City, 38.
49 Gaigo, ‘The young Bobby Gaigo of Tatana Island’, 2.
50 Gaigo, ‘The young Bobby Gaigo of Tatana Island’, 3-4.
51 Gaigo, ‘The young Bobby Gaigo of Tatana Island’, 4.
52 For example, Gaigo, ‘Present-day fishing practices among the people of Tatana village’; Gaigo, ‘Past
and present fishing practices among the people of Tatana village, Port Moresby’.
53 Gaigo, ‘The young Bobby Gaigo of Tatana Island’, 9.
54 Gaigo, ‘The young Bobby Gaigo of Tatana Island’, 10-11.
55 Gaigo, ‘The young Bobby Gaigo of Tatana Island’, 12. I have been told by a witness (whom I will
not identify here) to the ‘fraud’ gaoling that Bobby Gaigo was charged with obtaining money from
people ostensibly to arrange for their representation in court by lawyers—arrangements which were
not actually pursued.
56 Gaigo, ‘The history of Tatana’, 12-23.
57 I am not suggesting that this was simultaneously the demise of a mythopoeic consciousness.
50
Telling Pacific Lives
Chapter 4
Mobility, Modernisation and Agency:
The Life Story of John Kikang from
Papua New Guinea
Wolfgang Kempf
In this chapter I focus on the autobiographical notes and oral accounts by John
Kikang, and how I have used these sources in writing a version of his life. My
interlocutor came from a village in the heartland of the Ngaing, a people who
inhabit the Rai Coast hinterland in Papua New Guinea’s province of Madang.
Kikang was over 70 years old when, in February 1997, he died in the village of
his birth. Throughout his life Kikang had valued the ideals of progress and
development. His narratives and writings tell of identifications and initiatives
aligned to Western discourses and practices, particularly those of Australian
government officers and Christian missionaries. He portrayed himself as someone
who played a leading role in modernising his home region and was proud that
his personal efforts as a pioneer of modernity were recognised and remembered
in his village. I argue that Kikang’s desire to record his individual history cannot
be detached from this process of modernisation. I see my task as narrating
Kikang’s life story in a way answering to his notions of modernity.
I owe the term ‘life story’ to Peacock and Holland,1 who used it to bring
together two different dimensions in the study of biographies. ‘Life’ represents
an approach that seeks via narratives to access historical, cultural and/or psychic
facts. The spotlight here is on a reality standing outside the narrative; the
narrative as such receives little attention. ‘Story’, on the other hand, foregrounds
the narrative itself and its power to create reality in the act of narrating. Peacock
and Holland see life stories as participating in a variety of processes:
[life stories] do indeed offer a window—though not a perfectly
transparent one—on historical periods, cultural practices, and psychic
events. And their content and telling no doubt do vary by audience.
The communicative purposes, the effort to promote understanding yet
sometimes to defend and hide, played out in the production of a life
story, do result in narration tuned to, but not totally dominated by,
immediate social conditions and communicative intent.2
51
I talk of Kikang’s ‘life story’ with both approaches in mind. In order to illuminate
the construction of my account of Kikang’s life, I have drawn on the idea of
‘mimesis’.
Following Gebauer and Wulf, I conceive ‘mimesis’ as embracing equally
imitation and change, acquisition and articulation. Mimesis thus designates the
interplay of internalisation, interpretation and re-enactment. Gebauer and Wulf
talk of the subject’s capacity to incorporate the outer world into the inner world,
thereby creating references and identifications for subsequent use in social
performances.3 Through such mimetic processes of referencing and performing,
certainties are created, attachments are generated, and realities are construed.
‘Mimesis construes anew already construed worlds.’4
My account of Kikang’s life is based on his journal entries and oral narratives,
themselves the product of diverse mimetic processes. Kikang’s representations
refer to prior processes of internalisation, interpretation and re-enactment of
discourses and practices from the world of the whites, such as allowed him to
identify as a pioneer of modernity. His long years away from home working
with Europeans changed how he saw his home region; compared with the world
of the whites, his home region came to represent one thing: backwardness.
Therefore, a leitmotiv in Kikang’s self-representations was first the vision, then
a concrete commitment, to re-structuring his home region, with a view to
implanting the economic, political and religious modernity he had come to know
in the capitalist and Christian colonial system. Kikang saw himself as a
go-between, adept at organising exchanges between the rural countryside and
the world of white modernity—yet also, on a spiritual level, as enabling
exchanges between the real world of the Here and Now and the realms of the
dead, or the Beyond.5
Mobility was crucial for Kikang’s mimetic practice. Two forms of mobility
need to be distinguished. One is the physical movement of a living person in
the Here and Now. Thus the young Kikang left his homeland on the Rai Coast
and spent many years in the white colonial world. After returning, he mainly
worked for Australian administrative officers, who commissioned him to oversee
agricultural projects. His other form of mobility was based on the indigenous
belief that a portion of the self, namely a person’s spirit-being (asabeiyang or
ananuang), is able to detach itself from the body.6 When its owner is asleep and
dreaming, the spirit-being can have out-of-body experiences. Kikang spoke of
dream-journeys that he took to the world of the dead, who, according to his
representations, now lived as whites in a Western and largely urban landscape,
in material prosperity free from care. In these spaces inhabited by the dead he
saw the very modernity that, he believed, still awaited creation in the local world
of the living.7 Through his journeys into these different zones of whiteness,
and his interactions with the whites, Kikang acquired cultural experiences,
52
Telling Pacific Lives
habitual imprints and new forms of power-knowledge, all central to his
self-perception and masculine identity, his agency and authority.8
When I attempt to fashion from Kikang’s notes and oral accounts a life story
that tallies with his identifications and initiatives, ‘mimesis’ describes my practice
too. For what else do I explore but a mimetic process when I describe how I tell
Kikang’s life and change it in the telling? In this chapter, I begin by sketching
how our collaboration came about and introduce the two chief sources for
Kikang’s life story: a) transcripts from tape recordings of our conversations, and
b) Kikang’s own autobiographical notes. Then I reflect on my decision to tell
Kikang’s story in chronological order and, finally, discuss my reasons for
including in the text excerpts from our conversations.
Methods and Materials
Early in my fieldwork among the Ngaing, several of my interlocutors pointed
out John Kikang’s achievements. They portrayed him as politically influential
and instrumental in introducing both coffee cultivation and Catholic Christianity
to the region following World War II. In the national archives in Port Moresby,
Papua New Guinea’s capital, I came across several reports by Australian
administrative officers who depicted a restless, disciplined Kikang, a man with
an entrepreneurial spirit, energetically promoting vegetable marketing, coffee
cultivation and other economic projects, and outstanding as village headman:
‘Kikang is regarded as the most progressive Luluai in the Saidor Sub-District.
His village looks a picture, and they have running water … [He] is a tireless
worker and a deeply religious man’.9 His economic initiatives and his loyal
cooperation with the local authorities won him standing with the Australian
administration. The head of the Department of Native Affairs advised officials
in Saidor: ‘You should use Kikang as much as possible to spread progressive
ideas in the area’.10
Upon returning to the village, I told Kikang what I had learnt in the archives;
I asked him about this or that historical detail and expressed an interest in his
career generally. Then I broached the idea of recording his entire life story. He
was communicative—indeed he seemed honoured by my interest—and he agreed
to let me tape his reflections on the past. His long years of working together and
identifying with white people in Papua New Guinea certainly helps to explain
his cooperativeness. He could see in our conversations, perhaps, a renewal of
the recognition he had once received for his convictions, ideas, and initiatives.
We agreed on a series of interviews, usually meeting at my house in the
evening. Often Kikang would arrive wearing a jacket, long trousers and, on
occasion, dark shoes. Our conversations—conducted exclusively in Tok Pisin,
the lingua franca of Papua New Guinea—were recorded on tape and eventually
ran to more than 30 hours. The verbatim transcripts of the interviews form the
53
The Life Story of John Kikang from Papua New Guinea
primary source for my account of Kikang’s life story. I see my chief tasks as
translating the interviews, selecting salient passages, undertaking any necessary
editing (for clarity or to reduce repetition), ordering the material chronologically
and breaking it up into chapters. I take my bearings from the structure Kikang
himself provided in his remarks and writings. In ordering the interviews, I
wanted to keep as closely as possible to Kikang’s own narratives. I organised
them into a continuous body of text running to 12 chapters. References to
historical sources—such as missionary documents or patrol reports by Australian
administrative officers—are found in the introduction, but have chiefly been
relegated to footnotes in the actual narrative. The timeline of events forms the
background against which this life story plays out. As I will discuss in more
detail, this chronological ordering, oriented to Western conventions of linearity,
accords with Kikang’s own express wish.
Kikang’s written notes comprise the second narrative format of importance
for my construction of his story. When I began interviewing him, I had no idea
that for years he had kept a written record of episodes and events that mattered
to him. He began bringing photographs, medals, documents and sketches to our
sessions. Then one day he came along with two journals he had once kept.
The first of these was an ‘Australian Diary’ from the year 1958 with various
entries for the period between 1960 and 1983. Some entries take the form of
registers giving the place, year and number of coffee bushes planted in the
region; others are tables listing his personal income and expenditures; others
again list the amounts of church collections, as well as donations and membership
fees for local associations; there was a clan and family register for his own village
setting out dates of birth; reports from board members on local self-administration
bodies; also notes that Kikang had made on his political, economic and religious
activities; and finally, notes on his personal achievements.
The second journal, written in a school exercise-book, contains entries from
the 1980s. Here too are tables listing personal income and expenditures, but
most of the space is devoted to writings of a spiritual nature. Kikang writes of
events on the local Christian scene, his dreams and visions, his religious insights
and initiatives, Jesus and Maria, his encounters with the spirits of the dead, the
nature of the Beyond. On the journal’s back cover Kikang had inscribed the
telling words: ‘SANTU BOK 1983’ (‘Holy Book 1983’).
In his ‘Holy Book’, Kikang set down his thoughts in Tok Pisin, adding the
date of entry; and was careful to adopt a business-like, official tone, always
referring to himself in the third person. Many entries were rounded off with:
‘Kikang wrote this’ or ‘John has written’. The model for Kikang’s entries may
have been the notes Australian patrol officers entered in the ‘village register’.
In his years of service as village headman, Kikang had to keep just such a register;
54
Telling Pacific Lives
during my fieldwork, he still had it in his possession, the entries dating from
1956 to 1978. Here is an example of an entry made by an Australian officer:
9/6/61
Tax/Census Patrol. Stayed here for 3 nights. 1 ¼ hours walk from Waibol.
Had a meeting with nearby village officials on general progress and
economic development. Complaints re pigs spoiling gardens. Owners
warned and Luluai told to take action. A good village.
{Signature A.D.O.}
For comparison’s sake, here is a brief entry taken from Kikang’s ‘Holy Book
1983’:
March 28/3/88
Bishop Noser came by helicopter and spoke with J. Kikang on what was
the best way. And after the two had decided which way was best, he
went back.
J. Kikang wrote this.
Interestingly, though Kikang imitates the report-writing style of
administrative officers, Kikang’s subject is (often) his dreams and visions. Thus
the passage above tells of Kikang’s encounter with the former Archbishop of
Madang, Adolph Alexander Noser, who had died some time beforehand. Noser
communicated by dream to Kikang how the souls of the dead were in future to
be transported away from the locality. The dream was founded on Kikang’s
insight that the Catholic Church had modernised transportation for dead souls,
having switched from ships to helicopters.
Kikang’s two journals are heavy-going in a variety of ways. For a start, they
are in a bad state of preservation: many pages are either loose or fragmentary;
several have been torn out, and others have probably simply gone missing. Then
both journals contain passages that are barely decipherable. Further, Kikang
used a Tok Pisin orthography of his own devising, which I had to ‘translate’
into the standard version of Melanesian Pidgin after Francis Mihalic.11 Although
Kikang dated all his entries, they were rarely arranged in any systematic
chronological order. Kikang placed his entries anywhere in the journal as yet
unwritten upon. To this mosaic of entries, Kikang added narratives of past events
and experiences, these being assigned a year presumably from memory.
It is, therefore, only right to ask how these autobiographical records should
be handled. To me, Kikang’s writings are valuable historical documents bearing
on a specific time of transition. Kikang’s primary socialisation was in an oral
culture. After leaving his village, he received a rudimentary formal schooling.
His journals show how he related to reading and writing. They bear witness to
55
The Life Story of John Kikang from Papua New Guinea
a mimetic practice. Kikang appropriated this ‘technology’ because he saw he
could fashion from it an autobiographical tool. Reading and writing let him
actualise in himself his idea of a modern self.
So I have opted for two forms of representation. First, I shall combine a
selection of journal entries with Kikang’s own oral accounts. I have decided to
place the latter at points in the text where journal entry and oral narrative
directly bear on each other. Translated entries from the journal have been placed
in grey-shaded boxes to set them off from the rest of the text. Thus the reader
will be able to see that these entries are not part of the interview transcripts.
Journal entries and oral representations thus run on parallel tracks, yet
interrelate. This modus operandi however requires a number of passages from
the journals to be relocated within the chronological framework of Kikang’s
narratives. Second, so as to compensate for the dislocation of the original journal
material, I have decided to give readers access to the two journals in an appendix.
There the edited Tok Pisin versions of Kikang’s notes may be inspected in the
original arrangement—albeit without the tables listing personal income and
expenditures and without personal data from the village register about the
inhabitants of Sibog.
In my account of Kikang’s story, I want his life to be told as far as possible in
his own words, therfore my account most resembles books such as Ongka by
Andrew Strathern12 or Elota’s Story by Roger Keesing.13 If I insert journal
entries into the narrative flow, it is not only because I deem this necessary, but
also because nothing less will bring out the fragmentary and protean nature of
his story.14
Chronology
When I first tried to conceptualise a framework to accommodate Kikang’s life
story, several questions were foremost in my mind: Where should I begin my
account? Which of Kikang’s episodes should go first? And how would that shape
the rest of the story’s structure?
I have already pointed out that Kikang wanted his life story to be told
chronologically. We agreed that I would re-arrange his testimonies in
chronological order. Several entries in the first journal show that, long before
our encounter, Kikang had himself attempted to work out an accurate timeline
for his life and career:
56
Telling Pacific Lives
STORY BOOK SIBOG YEAR 1946
COMMUNICATION FROM MR. J. KIKANG. HE CAME TO THE
VILLAGE OF SIBOG. HE BECAME LULUAI IN 1947 AND HE
RESIGNED IN 1964 HE LAID DOWN HIS WORK AS LULUAI. AND
IN 1970 HE BECAME COUNCILLOR.
 
‘Sibog Year 1946’—this entry exhibits the typical features of a retrospective.
Kikang has his life story commence in the post-war era. In 1946 after a long
absence he had finally returned to his village of birth. But this note apparently
did not satisfy him. Immediately below it, Kikang wrote a new version. There
he was at pains to extend the timeline, and dated the beginning of his story from
the time of his departure from home.
 
STORY OF J. KIKANG WHEN HE LEFT HIS VILLAGE AND IN 1917
WENT TO THE WHITES. HE WORKED WITH THE WHITES AND
HE CAME BACK TO SIBOG IN 1946. IN 1947 HE BECAME
LULUAI.HE WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE VILLAGE AND IN 1964
HE CEASED HIS WORK. IN 1970 HE BECAME COUNCILLOR,
COUNCILLOR OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT FOR SIBOG IN 1970.
THE PARENTS OF KIKANG SAY HE WAS BORN IN THE YEAR
 
At this point the entry breaks off. His exact date of birth was something that
clearly weighed with Kikang. In some sense, to be a full person required the
year of birth. One of the pre-printed headings in Sibog’s village register was
‘Estimated or known year of birth’. Under this heading, an Australian
administrative officer had placed after Kikang’s name his (estimated) year of
birth: 1917. Yet, in the above entry, Kikang dates his departure for work with
the whites to that year. As related to me, this act of leaving home marked the
beginning of his life story:
I was no more than a child when I left my village and set off. In what
year that was I can no longer say. Apart from the mission and a few
government officers, by the time of my departure not very many whites
had ever been to see us. My mother had died and father was now looking
after us. A friend of my father’s had come up from the coast.
Accompanying him was a firm that was hiring workers. They were
looking for a couple of young men to work in some plantations. I took
57
The Life Story of John Kikang from Papua New Guinea
a liking to this man. After all, he was a friend of my father’s. I took a
good look at him and liked what I saw. Why? He was wearing pants—and
the loincloths, you know what I mean? I took a look at them, and then
I wanted one for myself. That’s why I went away. Father said: ‘No way!
You’re not going.’ I said: ‘But I want to go!’ And so the man took me
with him, together with a friend of mine. They paid for us. They gave
my father an axe and a knife. That was the price. At the time I was still
quite young. I didn’t even have a real bark loin-covering. So I went to
the coast. That was where the firm was located. Here they gave me a
loincloth. I was very glad when I could put it on.
Kikang then narrated how he had arrived with other recruited workers in
Madang, the nearest colonial centre. There he met a doctor from England whose
job was to examine the new arrivals. Kikang was, the doctor decided, far too
young for plantation labour. That was why the Englishman finally took the boy
home with him. There Kikang fell in with the indigenous housekeeper, who ran
the European-style household, and she became his foster mother.
This episode about the young Kikang leaving his village shows how I take
my bearings from Kikang’s autobiographical testimonies. His written notes
supply me with important indications as to how best to construct Kikang’s life
story. Hence his life story does not commence with his birth or early childhood.
Instead, he chooses to begin it with his departure from home—a phase of
transition. In his narrative, he actively brings about this transition against his
father’s will. In so doing, he positions himself in an interstice, evoking a liminal
zone between his home region and the world of the whites. Kikang sees himself
as mediating between different worlds—and this image of the mediator will run
through his whole life story.
Turning over a few more pages in Kikang’s first journal, we arrive at a third
entry that further attempts to order his life temporally.15 Again Kikang chooses
to begin with his departure for the colonial settlements of the whites. But then
the entry takes new turns. One novelty is that he now numbers (in the left-hand
margin) the different phases of his journey through life. Another is that the text
is broken into two blocks. In the first, Kikang describes his secular career. The
second (and new) block is devoted to Kikang’s spiritual experiences and messages.
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Telling Pacific Lives
Rai Coast No 1 MOT AREA SIBOG
No 1 John Kikang left his village in 1917, he went to the white station.
And in 1919 he began school at Kavieng. He was the
first person from Sibog to go to school. And in 1946 he went
back to his village. Sibog was given a Luluai in 1946 and he
became Luluai in the YEAR 1947.
No 2 John Kikang became Luluai in 1947. And in 1964 he stopped
No 3 In July 10/7/70 he became councillor.
No 6 On 10/11/77 John Kikang went and was given a message by
Christ.
No 1 ON THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT A GREAT FIRE WILL COME
DOWN AND ALL PLACES ON EARTH WILL BURN ALONG
WITHTHE ONESWHO ARE BURDENEDWITH GREAT SINS.
No 2 TO KILL PEOPLE and TO STEAL MONEY and GREAT OFFENCES,
TO DISOBEY THE WORD OF GOD.
No 3 and he taught a new prayer with a song from Sibog itself he
named ATAT.
No 4 And all songs from Sibog itself and also the praying, you shall
not only address to the Almighty.
No 5 if you want something, you must let Him know and HOLY
MARY too. You want something.
No 6 You must turn to me, so I can send you something. I died on
the CROSS.
No 7 Through my blood I have taken all sins on myself. And J.
Kikang asked about the Day of Judgement and he
No 8 said, when ALL YOUR TEETH have fallen out, then he will
come; take this message DOWN to your people.
No 9 You shall not be afraid of dying. It is a good thing. The body
knows many pains. The SOUL knows no pain, everyone is
well, without disease and wounds. Then he STUNG each of
the eyes of J. Kikang. And he sent him back to EARTH. On
SATURDAY IN THE NIGHT. Day 10. Nov. 1977.
Kikang wrote this
59
The Life Story of John Kikang from Papua New Guinea
Here we see Kikang tightening his story’s chronology by means of enumeration.
This entry indicates, in my view, that Kikang associated a modern life story with
linking together in linear sequence the various stations of his life.
Of special note is that the spiritual part of the entry is given a greater share
of space than the secular. This weighting reflects a significant shift in Kikang’s
own life. After returning home in 1946 he became active above all in the economic
and political sector, a role he continued to play up to the 1970s. At the end of
the 1970s, however, he began increasingly to identify with the office and
functions of a Christian missionary/priest. With his usual application, he took
to studying Christian discourses and practices, the End of Days, death and dying,
time and space in the Beyond. Kikang’s second journal, the ‘Holy Book 1983’ is
not the only evidence for this; in the second half of our interviews he spoke at
length on Christian projects as well as on messages and visions. He was now
intently anticipating the life that follows death. The closing sequence of the
entry above demonstrates this new preoccupation, though the statement that
Christ sent Kikang back to earth with a message on death and the Beyond shows
how even in this late phase of his life, Kikang continued to present himself as a
mediator. Whereas in the early postwar decades he mediated with colonial
officers and mission representatives to promote modernisation in his home region,
in later years, he increasingly mediated between the worlds of the living and
the dead.
Dialogue
In addition to articulating Kikang’s written entries with his oral accounts and
ordering these chronologically, I have found dialogue indispensable in
constructing Kikang’s life story. Although I foreground Kikang’s
self-representations as continuous text, I have inserted selected excerpts from
our conversations. These dialogues serve to remind readers that they are dealing
with a co-construction—one that has emerged from the interaction of two
variously aged men of different cultural backgrounds.16
By including passages of dialogue, I can better analyse two core aspects of
our cooperation. First, Kikang would often appeal to me explicitly, include me
in the flow of his narrative, ask me questions or refer back to previous interviews
and statements. To illustrate, let me take Kikang’s account of how he came to
learn his date of birth. I was most surprised when he raised this matter at our
very first interview:
Kikang: By the way, I know too when my mother gave birth to me. That
I can tell you right now. See for yourself. I have written it down [showing
me his small notebook]. That’s when I was born [pointing to the note
‘Mar 3/31/1902’]. Wrote it down myself, I did. Just like that.
Wolfgang: Good. And how did you come across this date?
60
Telling Pacific Lives
Kikang: Well, we’re able to dream. You know what I mean, dream?
Wolfgang: Yes. And so you found that out in a dream?
Kikang: Yes. I fell asleep. I used to think a lot about my [deceased]
mother. And one day she appeared to me [in a dream]. By then I was
already a young man. Mother came and said to me: ‘The day on which
I gave birth to you is this one’ [Kikang pointed to the date in his
notebook]. So what do you think? Do you think I’m right about this?
Wolfgang: Well, it’s your story. If you look at it like that, it could well be
true.
Kikang: So I immediately got up and wrote it down. Later on I thought:
‘That’s my day now.’ Ever since then I take that day off and rest up a
little.
Wolfgang: Yes, that’s what we do too—on a birthday.
Kikang: At first I wasn’t sure if my mother wasn’t playing tricks with
me. But later, on another occasion, she came to me again in the night.
That was during the war.
Kikang then described how he first journeyed to the Beyond in a dream and
talked of his experiences during World War II. But the exchange above shows,
in my view, just how much having a date of birth to call his own mattered to
Kikang. He saw this as a prerequisite for having a modern life story. What he
hoped to get from me was more than just recognition of his chosen path, along
which he had found his birthday. He was also signalling his equal status with
whites generally and with their European notions of personhood. He wanted
my confirmation, too, that by possessing his own birthday he qualified as having
a modern life story.
My second reason for retaining various dialogues within Kikang’s otherwise
continuous narrative is because long sequences of it are only there, at least in
that form, because of questions I had put. These were due, first, to my interest
in local history, prompting me to seek insights into events that had shaped the
region. But I also questioned Kikang about entries that I could make no sense
of. To illustrate, I reproduce below a page from the second journal. Its entries
date from between May and July 1984. The topmost (and the first for May) tells
of a fight between Christians and non-Christians in a neighbouring village. The
next refers to the Pope’s visit to Papua New Guinea in May 1984. Then follows
a note on holy men in the same neighbouring village, whom Kikang had seen
while he was dreaming. Next, he notes a (dream-)encounter with dead persons
from the Chimbu region of Papua New Guinea. The last entry names the places
where the souls of the dead may abide; Kikang has also included a small
explanatory sketch.
61
The Life Story of John Kikang from Papua New Guinea
May 4/84 Message from the catechist at Sisagel. The heathen are
fighting, says the Church. The people. The villages of Umboldi,
Guyarak, Namga, Amun, Sor, Sibog and Silaling met
up. Then there was a fight with the Catholics. And the heathens
struck one of the Christians and one remained unharmed,
but another was hurt. He later got better though.
May 8/5/84 The Holy Father Pope John Paul is coming to Papua
New Guinea.
May 17/5/84 Holy Church message. In Sisagel, there are two groups
of holy men, one wearing blue clothing and the other black.
These two groups are the holy men in Sisagel.
Jun 13/6/84 J. Kikang saw men from Chimbu, dead men who
greeted him.
Jul 2.7.84 John K. saw (1) klinpaia and (2) limbo and (3) pullkatori
and (4) heaven. Four places where the souls go to. It is the
story of the dead and where their souls abide.
The commandments
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
T N S P K S S G M K
O 4
O 3
O 2
O 1
The four places of God the Father
Church meeting on the 1st of May 84
10 commandments, taught to the people as the 10 Commandments
of Moses.
I asked Kikang about the last of these entries, dated 2 July 1984:
Wolfgang: You have already spoken a couple of times now about journeying
to Paradise or Heaven or Purgatory. Now in these notes of yours you write
at one point: ‘John K. saw (1) klinpaia and (2) limbo and (3) pullkatori and
(4) heaven. Four places where the souls go to. It is the story of the dead and
where their souls abide.’ And you’ve made a little sketch as well. And
underneath you’ve written: ‘The four places of God the Father.’ Can you say
a little bit more about what these places are like?’
Kikang: … Look at it this way, hell is where we are now—here on our
land … So you have someone here on the land. Then he dies. And he
62
Telling Pacific Lives
has saddled himself down with guilt. So then he can’t just get up and
go. First he has to stay here a while. He can’t just leave. First he’s going
to have to stay here on this land. And then the people that’s us [the
living] we have to pray. Yes, pray! It goes something like this: ‘O God
our Father, help, help, help.’ And you just keep doing that, let’s say, for
10 years or even more than that. Good, so the exact number of years is
laid down in advance. Now, when he’s got the last year behind him,
now he’ll be able to leave the place. So now he leaves the place and on
he goes to the next one. Now if he’s not a good person—[that means for
him] first of all [a stint in] Klinpaia [i.e. station 1] … That’s a bit like
Madang. A small town. So [he] stays in Klinpaia for, let’s say, 12 to 20
years. And once again it’s pray, pray, pray. Well then, so eventually
he’s done with Klinpaia. He gets the day behind him that was laid down
for him. It’s time now for him to go on to limbo [i.e. station 2]. So limbo
is a good place. It’s a good place. It is beautiful. Everything is laid on …
So there he stays. Then [what happens is that] he sets off from limbo.
From there he now goes on to Pullkatori [i.e. station 3]. This is a perfectly
holy place. As for paradise [i.e. station 4], that is the place of the tiny
children. We adults never go there. That is for the tiny children—[who
are] without sin. They do not know guilt. They were still too little when
they died … So I was in contact with the dead people, and I asked them:
‘Where are you now?’ And they said: ‘We are in Klinpaia.’ Well, I knew
that is just a place like Madang. Nothing special about it … Later—it
was in another year—I prayed and then I asked them: ‘And where are
you now?’ I was told: ‘I am in Moresby [i.e. Limbo].’ So I said to myself:
‘Ah, I see, so it’s Moresby now you’ve got to.’ Still later I repeated my
question—and all the while the praying was going on and on—‘When
are you going to leave Moresby?’ And then I was told: ‘I’ve already left
Moresby. Now I’m in Australia.’ Then I said: ‘So he’s finally arrived in
the city. Now he’s in Australia. That is Pullkatori. That is where
Pullkatori is. Very close to heaven. There it’s just like being in Australia.
The places are like cities.’ … Madang is a small town and that’s how you
have to imagine Klinpaia. Lovely houses. People filled with joy. Now if
you leave Madang behind you and go on to Port Moresby, then it’s like
you’re in a big town. Lots of wonderful houses. Good roads. And after
that comes Australia. Well you know how it is there, a real city. All of
the time you just see machines working. Houses with lots of levels. Well,
that’s how you’ve got to imagine this place Pullkatori. All the people
living there are happy. They are well-off. No hard work anymore …
Those are the messages the dead pass on to me. Well, that’s what I ask
all of them. All those who have died, I ask them [the same question], and
they give me the answer … But if one of them tells me ‘I’ve gone to
63
The Life Story of John Kikang from Papua New Guinea
Australia’, then I don’t pray for him anymore. Then I’m through [with
praying]. He has already arrived. He’s come home … Well, that’s how
things stand with us humans after we die.
Kikang’s cosmological imaginations of the Beyond depicted a moral trajectory
from country to city, blackness to whiteness, sinfulness to redemption. The
route to be travelled by the dead was clearly prefigured, leading out of the world
of rural villages on the Rai Coast, passing through Papua New Guinea’s urban
centers, and ending in a land inhabited by white people. Thus the first station
on the route was the so-called Klinpaia, a place marked by minor tribulations,
which for Kikang was very like the provincial capital of Madang. Limbo, the
next station, was something of an improvement, being a major town with many
tall buildings; Kikang likened it to Port Moresby—Papua New Guinea’s capital
and largest city. The third station, which Kikang described as Pullkatori, was a
‘holy place’ (ples santu)—a city located in Australia.17 The fourth and last
place—‘Heaven’ in this hierarchy of levels—Kikang referred to, finally, as
‘Paradise’. To this Garden of Eden, a landscape where all was pure and pristine,
only small children, who had died young and so were free from all sin, could
have access, according to Kikang. His primary focus, however, was on the
sequence of urban landscapes in the Beyond that finally leads into the land of
the whites and the heavenly city. This he conceived as a European-style city,
at once holy place and epitome of modernity.18
Kikang once showed me a revealing
photograph from his personal
documents. Probably taken by a
Catholic missionary at the beginning
of the 1950s, it pictures one of the
earliest Catholic churches in Kikang’s
home village. In front stands the man
who designed and built it, John Kikang
himself. The building, resembling a
pagoda, is in a style not usual for this
region of Papua New Guinea. But to
eyes informed by Kikang’s imaginings
of the respective abodes of the dead,
its stack of four storeys is clearly an
architectonic parallel of his four-tiered
model of the Beyond.
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Telling Pacific Lives
Final Remarks
A central feature of Kikang’s autobiographical writings and oral narratives is
the linkage between the two worlds of the living and the dead. Dream-journeys
are, therefore, no less significantly implicated in how he constitutes his modern
self than are his real-world journeys to, and identifications with, the world of
the whites in a colonial and post-colonial Papua New Guinea. Kikang would cite
both kinds of mobility when claiming for himself authority and agency as a
pioneer of modernity. Travelling provided him with the opportunity to tap into
novel power-knowledge from the other world, whether it came from the whites
or from the dead. In his writings and narratives, Kikang made the other world
of the whites and the dead the central reference-point of his mimetic practice.
By taking his bearings from discourses and practices from the other world, he
was able to constitute whiteness, power-knowledge and modernity as core
components of the local world and the indigenous self.19 Rural home region
and urban centres of modernity, blackness and whiteness, the world of the living
and the world of the dead—instead of treating these as mutually exclusive
domains, Kikang chose to ‘infold’ them, by which I mean that he construed each
as containing traces of the other. What Kikang’s writings and oral narratives
make clear is that he constituted his personal identity as a process in which
difference and sameness constrain, even as they pervade, each other.
So when we focus on (auto-)biographies in the Pacific region, what value,
then, should we ascribe to constructions and experiences of sameness and
difference? In terms of the role played by otherness in articulating identity, are
idiosyncratic features discernible in Oceania? Might it not be that alterity—in
its historically and culturally specific modes of articulation—is a distinctive
characteristic of biographies in the Pacific region?
I construe Kikang’s representations of his life as products of mimetic processes
of transculturation embodied in his person. The account given here of his life
is an attempt to comprehend these. His writings and what he told me himself
have been my primary sources. Three principles have guided me in constructing
Kikang’s life story. First, I articulate his written notes with his oral narratives
so as to set up reciprocal points of reference, all the while preserving each
format’s autonomy. In other words, they should be recognisable in their
difference, despite being referenced to each other. Second, Kikang’s efforts to
create for himself a chronologically ordered, individual life story struck me as
noteworthy. If I dwell on his initiatives in this direction, it is because they
correspond, in my opinion, to his mimetic practice and his notions of modernity.
At the same time, Kikang invariably links this chronological order to parallel
time-spaces. In Kikang’s imaginative world, the borders between spaces and
times are rather more porous than is the case in the dominant Western discourse.
It is interesting to note how he evades, at least in part, the modern idea of time
65
The Life Story of John Kikang from Papua New Guinea
with its radical separation of past, present and future20 —as when he receives
messages from Christ, or commutes between the worlds of the living and the
dead, or reconstructs his date of birth via his dream-journeys. In particular, it
was Kikang’s explanations of the exchanges between the time-spaces of the
living and the dead that persuaded me to incorporate dialogue as a third principle
in attempting to construe his life story. His representations concerning these
matters were largely prompted by the questions I put to him. It therefore
occurred to me that reproducing our dialogues was an excellent way to recall
our co-construction of his life story; further, that I could render it comprehensible
with the help of selected passages. At the start of this chapter, I stated my
conviction that reflection on how we tell Pacific lives and change these in the
telling should be seen as reflection on mimetic processes. The literary critic Arne
Melberg has pointed out that ‘Mimesis is never a homogeneous term, and if its
basic movement is towards similarity it is always open to the opposite’.21 Thus
mimesis designates a way of articulating similarity and difference.
ENDNOTES
1 J.L. Peacock and D.C. Holland, ‘The narrated self: life stories in process’, review article, Ethos, 21: 3
(1993), 367-383.
2 Ibid., 373.
3 G. Gebauer and Ch. Wulf , Mimesis: culture – art – society (Berkeley 1995), 2-4; Spiel - Ritual – Geste.
Mimetisches Handeln in der sozialen Welt (Hamburg 1998); Mimetische Weltzugänge. Soziales Handeln –
Rituale und Spiele – ästhetische Produktion (Stuttgart 2003), 102-26.
4 Gebauer and Wulf , Mimesis, 317.
5 W. Kempf, ‘Mobilität und der Traum vom besseren Leben: Routen und Visionen eines Wegbereiters
der Modernität in Papua-Neuguinea’, in E. Hermann und B. Röttger-Rössler (eds), Lebenswege im
Spannungsfeld lokaler und globaler Prozesse: Person, Selbst und Emotion in der ethnologischen
Biografieforschung (Münster 2003), 43-63.
6 W. Kempf and E. Hermann, ‘Dreamscapes: transcending the local in initiation rites among the Ngaing
of Papua New Guinea’, in R.I. Lohmann (ed.), Dream Travelers: sleep experiences and culture in the western
Pacific (New York 2003), 60-85; E. Hermann, Emotionen und Historizität. Der emotionale Diskurs über
die Yali-Bewegung in einer Dorfgemeinschaft der Ngaing, Papua New Guinea (Berlin 1995), 56-59.
7 M. Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity: a particular history of the senses (London and New York 1993),
131-133.
8 D. Holland, ‘Selves as cultured: as told by an anthropologist who lacks a soul’, in R.D. Ashmore and
L. Jussim (eds), Self and Identity: fundamental issues (Oxford 1997), 171-179; B.M. Knauft, From Primitive
to Postcolonial in Melanesia and Anthropology (Ann Arbor 1999), 169-180: G.M. White, ‘Afterword: lives
and histories’, in P.J. Stewart and A. Strathern (eds), Identity Work: constructing Pacific lives (Pittsburgh
2000), 172-187.
9 E.V. Smith, Portion Mot C.S.D. Patrol Report No. 8 (A) 60/61. National Archives of Papua New Guinea
(Waigani 1960/61).
10 J.K. McCarthy, Saidor, Department of Native Affairs, Konedobu, Papua, 20th February, 1963, Patrol
Report No. 6-62/63, 1. National Archives of Papua New Guinea (Waigani,1963).
11 F. Mihalic, The Jacaranda Dictionary and Grammar of Melanesian Pidgin (Milton 1986 [1971]).
12 A. Strathern (trans. and ed.), Ongka: a self-account by a New Guinea big-man (London 1979).
13 R.M. Keesing, Elota’s Story: the life and times of a Solomon Islands big man (Fort Worth 1983 [1978]);
J. Fifi‘i, From Pig-Theft to Parliament: my life between two worlds, trans. and ed. R.M. Keesing (Honiara
1989); A. Strathern and P.J. Stewart, Collaborations and Conflicts: a leader through time (Fort Worth
2000); M. Kwa‘ioloa, Living Traditions: a changing life in Solomon Islands as told by Michael Kwa‘ioloa
to Ben Burt (Honolulu 1997).
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Telling Pacific Lives
14 P. Hempenstall, ‘Sniffing the person: writing lives in Pacific history’, in B.V. Lal and P. Hempenstall
(eds), Pacific Lives, Pacific Places: bursting boundaries in Pacific history (Canberra 2001), 34-46; M.
Goldsmith and D. Munro, The Accidental Missionary: tales of Elekana (Christchurch 2002), xiii-xv, 2.
15 Kikang sometimes writes in lower case and sometimes in upper case, the latter presumably to highlight
points of importance. I have reproduced his practice.
16 V. Crapanzano, ‘Life-histories’, American Anthropologist, 86:4 (1984), 953-960; Peacock and Holland,
‘The Narrated Self’.
17 W. Kempf, ‘Cosmologies, cities and cultural constructions of space: Oceanic enlargements of the
world’, Pacific Studies, 22:2 (1999), 107.
18 A similar conception was documented some time back by the anthropologist Peter Lawrence, who
at the end of the 1940s and again in the 1950s did fieldwork in the Madang region with, among others,
the Ngaing in the vicinity of the Rai coast. The Heaven to which the dead went, according to Lawrence,
was in a part of Sydney or, in another version, it was in the clouds over Sydney. Peter Lawrence, Road
Belong Cargo (Melbourne 1964), 77-78.
19 W. Kempf, ‘The politics of incorporation: masculinity, spatiality and modernity among the Ngaing
of Papua New Guinea’, Oceania, 73: 1 (2002), 56-77.
20 M.R. Trouillot, ‘The otherwise modern: Caribbean lessons from the savage slot’, in B.M. Knauft (ed.),
Critically Modern: alternatives, alterities, anthropologies (Bloomington and Indianapolis 2002), 220-37.
21 A. Melberg, Theories of Mimesis (Cambridge 1995), 3.
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The Life Story of John Kikang from Papua New Guinea
Chapter 5
Surrogacy and the Simulacra of Desire
in Heian Japanese Women’s Life
Writing
Christina Houen
My contribution enquires into how a woman who is born and raised in a
patriarchal society where desire is defined by men can become a desiring person
in her own right. My argument is based on two propositions. First, that I am a
palimpsest, a text that has been erased and re-inscribed by others; I read their
inscriptions and try to discern the traces of what is lost. Secondly, that I can
rewrite myself through reading texts of other women’s lives; in doing so, I make
a looking-glass journey into another world, where desire and the self are
different, yet strangely familiar. Through the looking glass, I see myself
differently and return to rewrite my self.
My working definition of desire is that it is a universal force that produces
life in all its different forms. Desire is immanent, productive, impersonal and
asocial. Human culture and sexuality are codifications or stratifications of desire.1
Society seeks to regulate desire, to control its force; part of this regulation has
been the attempt to extinguish woman as a desiring subject. Gilles Deleuze and
Félix Guattari have criticised the Oedipal family structure, analysed and endorsed
by psychoanalysis, as ‘one of the primary modes of restricting desire in capitalist
societies’.2 The Oedipus complex has corralled desire within the nuclear family
structure, thus individualising it and removing all but residual and commodified
traces from the wider social domain, where capitalism regulates relations between
groups of people.3 Jacques Lacan has re-read Sigmund Freud’s writings in the
light of Ferdinand de Saussure’s and Claude Lévi-Strauss’s interpretations of
semiotics. Lacan sees the subject as defined in terms of lack and loss, through
the stages of sexual reproduction, birth, separation from the mother, sexualisation
as male or female, and the final and radical alienation from the real with the
infant’s entry into the symbolic order of language.4
Within the male symbolic order, the subject is cut off from the real through
language, which mediates all other sources of signifiers.5 The subject is both
opposed to, and constituted by, the other. As an alternative to this oppositional
structure for subjectivity and relations, in which desire is a secondary function
69
of language and culture, Deleuze and Guattari propose the connective flow of
desire as a primary, free-floating, unconscious and productive force which is
immanent to the ‘plane of consistency’, that is, of ‘unformed matter and
anonymous forces from which the various strata of expression and content are
formed’.6 Instead of the world of Platonic reality, with its dualism of essence
and appearance, idea and image, original and copy, model and simulacrum,
Deleuze posits a world where there is no original, only simulacra; no hierarchy
of production, only simultaneity and multiplicity.7 A simulacrum is ‘not a
degraded copy. It harbours a positive power which denies the original and the
copy, the model and the reproduction’.8 Simulation is an effect, in the sense of ‘a
“costume,” or rather a mask, expressing a process of disguising, where, behind
each mask, there is yet another …’9
Lacan, Freud and others tell only part of the story about desire and
subjectivity, but have made it the whole story, for all cultures and times. I have
critiqued their interpretation of the dominant Western discourse of desire and
subjectivity elsewhere.10 In this paper, I will use the ideas of desire and
simulation that emerge from the writing of Deleuze and Guattari to interpret
some texts written by court women in the mid-Heian period of Japan (late 10th
through the 11th
centuries AD). I am interested in comparing the writing of court
women in a polygamous medieval Asian society with my own story of living as
a bourgeois wife, mother and divorcee in a monogamous 20th
-century Western
society. I find it fascinating that such a different culture, apparently opposite
to my own in many respects, could generate writings that speak to me with such
power of myself, of my own life. The women whose lives are described in these
texts are objects of desire that are dressed to conceal and suppress their
individuality and embodied selves, and manipulated to remain hidden from
men’s eyes except in strictly defined circumstances.Yet, beneath the mask, there
is an inner life that can be, variously, passionate, playful, jealous, vengeful,
power-seeking, resistant, nostalgic, lamenting, world-weary, desirous of
enlightenment. Although the Lacanian construction of desire as the search for
the ideal lost object does explain the surrogacy of subjectivity in the Heian
world, it does not explain the powerful richness and intensity of life behind the
mask, for both men and women, and the remarkable achievement of Heian
women’s literature, which has stood the test of one thousand years and still
speaks vividly to readers today. Such a phenomenon needs a more open-ended,
multifaceted and complex interpretation than the binary and totalising view
that Lacanian and other poststructuralist and postmodernist theories offer.
As the much-awarded English novelist, A.S. Byatt says: ‘It isn’t nice not to
be writing a book. It isn’t nice not to have a more real world than the real world
we inhabit’.11 Speaking of her desire to create more fictional worlds, Byatt
claims that the imaginary world created by the author is more real than the
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Telling Pacific Lives
world she or he inhabits; by implication, this is also true for the reader who
‘inhabits’ the imaginary world of the book. The claim can be extended to any
literary or artistic work, since all representation involves not only imitation,
but invention, in varying degrees. As I read Byatt’s statement, fiction is not
merely an escape into an imaginary world. There are many reasons why a fictional
world can be more satisfying than the world we inhabit, and escapism is only
one of them. The permeable borders and points of exchange between fiction and
reality are some of the lines of enquiry into the desiring self that this paper will
pursue.
Is the mask more real than the inner life it hides? Certainly it does not hide
absence, as Jean Baudrillard has told us contemporary culture does.12 Must we
have only two ways of seeing, realistic and disillusioned, or fictional and escapist?
Or is there, as Brian Massumi argues, a third way—a way of seeing to which
Deleuze and Guattari, in a theory of simulation that emerges from the corpus of
their writing, open the door?13 Like Michel de Certeau, they see mimicry as
strategic: ‘[t]here is a power inherent in the false; the positive power of ruse,
the power to gain a strategic advantage by masking one’s life force’.14 Deleuze
and Guattari do not, according to Massumi, address the question of
whether simulation replaces a real that did indeed exist, or if simulation
is all there has ever been. Deleuze and Guattari say yes to both. The
alternative is a false one because simulation is a process that produces
the real, or more precisely, more real (a more-than-real) on the basis of
the real.15
In a regular world of apparently stable identities or territories, simulation finds
points of departure to create new forms that are more real than the real. ‘Reality
is nothing but a well-tempered harmony of simulation.’16 There are two modes
of simulation, the regular, normal world of surface resemblances, and the world
of art, that multiplies potentials. Reproving Baudrillard for whining—‘The work
of Baudrillard is one long lament’—for his nostalgia for the old reality that was,
in fact, made up of simulacra, Massumi offers us Deleuze and Guattari’s liberating
vision that celebrates the simulacrum as ‘a proliferating play of differences and
galactic distances’ and that opens the possibility of ‘becoming realer than real’.17
The Heian period in Japan takes its name from the capital, Heian-kyo, now
the city of Kyoto. My first acquaintance with women’s writing in this period
was through The Tale of Genji, a gift from my daughter, who was living in Japan
with the Japanese man who became her husband. It sat on my shelves unread
for some years, while I was doing my Master of Creative Arts degree, but when
I picked it up, not expecting to be very interested, I was surprised and delighted
by what I found. It became the inspiration for an anthology of contemporary
Australian women’s writing that I have collected and edited, titled Hidden
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Desire in Heian Japanese Women’s Life Writing
Desires. In the invitation that I sent out in 2003 to writers’ associations and
creative writing students, I said:
Do you have a story to tell? Murasaki Shikibu, a Japanese noblewoman
of the eleventh century, escaped from the stifling conditions of a
high-born woman’s life by writing stories of desire and circulating them
amongst her friends and acquaintances. Across the centuries, and across
cultures, her tales speak of repressed desire, of the superior power of
men, of the wayward nature of passion, and of the beauties of nature,
poetry and music. Let us, Murasakis of the twenty-first century in the
western world, tell our own tales of desire.
I received about 250 submissions, from which a selection was made; the
anthology, co-edited by Jena Woodhouse, was published by Ginninderra Press
in 2006. The attraction that I felt then to the remarkable work, The Tale of Genji,
has become an obsession. I am reading it for the fourth time, and each time I
read it, I find more subtle expressions of desire. In this paper, I will draw
examples from it, as well as from the poetic diaries of Murasaki Shikibu and
other Heian court women. I am aware that the Tale, a psychological romance
that is recognised as having a strong claim to the status of the world’s first novel,
is not strictly life writing. However, I am using it as a mirror to my own life and
writing; my practice and research focus on the desiring female self as represented
in life writing across a spectrum from non-fiction to fiction. There is an element
of fiction in all life writing, whether this is declared by the author or not, for
the past is accessible only through memory, which is idiosyncratic and selective.
The Tale of Genji became widely known to the Western world through Arthur
Waley’s translation, 1925–1933. I first read this book of two volumes and 54
chapters in the 1976 translation by Edward G. Seidensticker. There has been
another translation since his, by Royall Tyler; the latter is the text I will refer
to here, as it is recognised as being, in many ways, closer to the spirit of the
original text than its predecessors. The Tale of Genji is regarded in Japan as a
masterpiece, as great as the works of Homer and Shakespeare in the Western
world. It has spawned an immense body of scholarly and popular publications
in Japan. As Tyler says: ‘Scholars build careers on it. It has been turned into
movies, plays, dance, modern novels, Kabuki, comic books (manga), musical
theatre, and opera. A scene from it appears on a current banknote’.18
Murasaki Shikibu was born in the mid-seventies of the 10th
century, the
daughter of a provincial governor, and a member of the Fujiwara family who
held power for over a century, from the mid-10th
century on. This was a period
in Japan of political stability, which allowed culture to flower at a time when,
as Ivan Morris says in The World of the Shining Prince, much of Western Europe
was in one of ‘the bleaker periods of cultural history’.19 It was the period of
transition in China from the T’ang to the Sung dynasty. Though Heian culture
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and political structure derived many forms from China, official embassies to
China had ceased in 894, and were not resumed till over four centuries later,
and so the Heian was a period of adaptation and cultural emancipation.20
Murasaki Shikibu is an interesting example of how women were involved in
this emancipation. In her diary, she reflects ruefully on her reputation for
learning, which was not an attractive attribute for an aristocratic woman:
When my brother … was a young boy learning the Chinese classics, I
was in the habit of listening with him and I became unusually proficient
at understanding those passages that he found too difficult to grasp and
memorize. Father, a most learned man, was always regretting the fact:
‘Just my luck!’ he would say. ‘What a pity she was not born a man!’ But
then I gradually realized that people were saying ‘It’s bad enough when
a man flaunts his Chinese learning: she will come to no good,’ and since
then I have avoided writing the simplest character.21
She goes on to confess that she gave the Empress secret lessons in reading the
collected works of Po Chü-I, a T’ang dynasty poet.22 Chinese language and
culture was the province of the ruling male class in Japan. A learned woman
was a contradiction in terms, and women who surreptitiously acquired learning
took care to conceal their knowledge. Yet women in the Heian period developed
their own form of writing in the vernacular. The Tale of Genji is written in Heian
Japanese (which is to modern Japanese as the language of Beowulf is to modern
English) in kana or phonetic script, derived from Chinese characters, as distinct
from kanbun, the official script of men, government and scholarship. Richard
Okada tells us that this mode of writing was gendered feminine and referred to
as onna-de, ‘woman’s hand’, although men also used it.23 Okada speculated that
this feminine art allowed women ‘a degree of freedom and confidence of
representation in contrast to the kanbun mode’.24 He goes on to point out that
the word kana derives from kari-na, ‘which means ‘temporary, provisional or
nonregular name’, and thus denotes the surrogate nature of this script, and
indeed, of writing itself.25 Women who write in Heian Japan, then, are using
a surrogate script to describe and express areas of experience that are themselves
surrogate for the real, regular world of Sino-Japanese (male) culture and politics.
It is conjectured that Murasaki wrote The Tale of Genji before and during her
period of court service, when she served the Empress; the book seems to be
unfinished, and there is some scholarly dispute as to whether she is the author
of all the chapters, or whether they were written in their present order. We
know that the tale existed in something like its present form in 1024, when a
young girl, returning to the capital from a distant province, received a complete
copy of over 50 bound chapters from her aunt. This same young girl wrote a
memoir, known as The Sarashina Diary. In it, she describes how obsessed she
was with the romance:
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Desire in Heian Japanese Women’s Life Writing
Although I was still ugly and undeveloped [I thought to myself] the time
would come when I should be beautiful beyond compare, with long,
long hair. I should be like the Lady Yugao [in the romance] loved by the
Shining Prince Genji, or like the Lady Ukifuné, the wife of the General
of Uji … Could such a man as the Shining Prince be living in this world?
How could General Kaoru … find such a beauty as Lady Ukifuné to
conceal in his secret villa at Uji? Oh! I was like a crazy girl.26
The diarist remembers herself as a young girl obsessed by the romance,
imagining herself as one of the heroines, loved and pursued by the hero Genji,
or by his lesser type, Kaoru. Compare this with the sad picture Murasaki paints
of her self in her diary, a disillusioned introvert in the court circle where
appearance is everything and gossip is rife; where learning is unwomanly, and
even the feminine art of writing in the vernacular is frowned on if it is practised
to excess. She describes a scene where the Empress and her handmaids are busy
binding the stories (presumably Murasaki’s) to send to people, when the
Empress’s father finds them and scolds his daughter for not resting; yet later he
brings her paper, brushes and ink, some of which she passes on to Murasaki.
Then, when Murasaki is attending the Empress, he sneaks into the author’s room
and steals her only fair copy of the Tale.27 His show of disapproval is a front
for secret collusion and appropriation of the artist’s work, suggesting the envy
and disguised admiration felt by a powerful male for the beauty and richness
of the woman’s writing, which he can only possess in a surrogate and illicit
manner. Murasaki follows this vignette, which shows us how influential and
yet how vulnerable both her position in court life and her status as a writer
were, with a sad passage of reflection:
As I watched the rather drab scene at home, I felt both depressed and
confused. For some years now I had existed from day to day in listless
fashion … doing little more than registering the passage of time. How
would it all turn out? The thought of my continuing loneliness was
unbearable, and yet I had managed to exchange sympathetic letters with
those of like mind—some contacted via fairly tenuous connections—who
would discuss my trifling tales and other matters with me; but I was
merely amusing myself with fictions, finding solace for my idleness in
foolish words. Aware of my own insignificance, I had at least managed
for the time being to avoid anything that might have been considered
shameful or unbecoming; yet here I was, tasting the bitterness of life to
the very full.28
Her complaint reflects a bad day, or few days, perhaps, in the life of an author;
one any of us who write for an audience beyond our intimate circle can relate
to! The loneliness, the introversion, the sensitivity to criticism, the comfort of
a few like minds, the anxiety that what one is doing is trivial, insignificant, of
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little worth in the real world. She expresses the sense that her writing, indeed
her very existence—lonely and idle—are surrogate, of inferior worth in
comparison with the ‘real’ world of courtly society. Yet she could not have felt
like this all the time, or she would not have managed to write a book that is
twice as long as Don Quixote, War and Peace, or The Brothers Karamazov,29 and
well over 1,000 years later, is still being read, enjoyed, and analysed by ordinary
people and scholars in Japanese and in translation. Perhaps Murasaki’s depression
is an effect of her genius; she was pushing the boundaries of identity for a court
woman by creating a work of fiction that was read by men and women in
aristocratic circles, in a time when, so far, only men had created works of fiction,
and other women were writing poetic diaries, but nothing as complex or
ambitious as the Tale.
‘Fictions and foolish words’ are all she has to give her life a deeper meaning;
the forms and rituals of the court occupy her daily life and give her a place in
the real world, but she feels like an outsider at court. She questions the value
of her writing: ‘I tried reading the Tale again, but it did not seem to be the same
as before and I was disappointed’.30 She loses confidence even in the support
of those with whom she has shared mutual interests: ‘Those in whose eyes I had
wished to be of some consequence undoubtedly thought of me now as no more
than a common lady-in-waiting who would treat their letters with scant
respect’.31 In her depressive state of mind, she feels ‘as if I had entered a different
world’.32 The world of court, in which she had found a kind of reality, seems
empty, and her private life at home is no better. Retirement from the court does
not relieve her depression and self-doubt. She misses her constant companions,
and receives letters from them, including the Empress, and so she returns.
Murasaki Shikibu is an outsider, an observer of the world she inhabits, one
of middle rank who, having lost her husband, has no official status other than
through her service to the Empress. She cannot live independently, as a modern
woman would have the opportunity to do; she is without a powerful man’s
favour, and her status as a writer is problematic. So she returns to court life, the
pettiness of which continues to annoy her.33 Later, in a long reflective passage,
she reveals more of her situation at court. Even at home, she feels unable to be
herself, aware of her servants’ prying eyes, and finds that it is worse at court:
‘where I have so many things I would like to say but always think the better of
it, because there would be no point in explaining to people who would never
understand’.34 ‘They’ would never understand because of the standards they
apply to other’s behaviour—standards Murasaki sees as narrow and petty—‘So
all they see of me is a façade’.35
It is that façade that interests me as the frontier or interface between the ‘real’
world of court and the aristocratic woman’s hidden life that is not revealed
because if it were, it would be dismissed as being of inferior worth, even
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Desire in Heian Japanese Women’s Life Writing
inauthentic. The façade allows Murasaki to move and be accepted in the Heian
court world. From Murasaki’s perspective, it is a frontier between the public
fiction that the outside world sees, and the inner reality of her private world.
A frontier is an articulation of the difference between the two things or states
it divides; though it does not unite them, it allows exchanges to take place.
Another way of putting it, perhaps a more culturally correct one, is to use the
Japanese terms, omote and ura. Takeo Doi, in his study of the relationship of the
Japanese individual to society, The Anatomy of Self, explains the pervasive
concept that underlies Japanese culture: the opposite yet complementary ideas
of omote and ura, ‘the two sides of everything’, which, in classical Japanese,
were synonymous with kao (face) and kokoro (mind, heart).36 He points out that
though the face usually expresses the mind, it can also hide it; so omote or face
both expresses and conceals ura or mind.37 The relationship is not binary and
divisive, but symbiotic and mutually constitutive.38
In Heian court life, the construction of appearance and reality is not a
mechanistic one where the surface is simply an abstract representation of the
qualities that are valorised in that society, hiding emptiness or an inferior level
of being. Rather, outer reality is both an outward and visible expression of, and
a mask for, inner heart/mind. It is what allows the individual to relate to others
while having an inner life that is at least partly hidden. Murasaki’s façade is a
simulacrum that is seen as authentic by others, but is a strategic device that
masks her inner life, which, to her, is more real than her persona and the outer
world she inhabits. The outer both discloses and protects the inner. Ambivalence
is a way of life. Murasaki moves uneasily between her outward persona,
constructed and constrained by her relationship to the powerful figures of the
Empress and her Fujiwara relatives, and her inner self, which both performs
and resists the life of a court lady, so highly regulated in behaviour and
appearance. It is this tension that makes Murasaki fascinating to a modern reader,
and allows us to enter and identify with the autobiographical consciousness of
a subjugated being; one who manages to escape, in her imaginative life, from
the limits imposed on her. The remarkable aspect of Murasaki’s diary and fictional
writing is that, in recording her sensitive and penetrating awareness of the
ambiguity of living as a woman in this society, she achieved so much. The living,
aching reality of leading a double life is revealed in her confessions, and in the
introspection of the fictional characters she creates. Murasaki’s court persona
has an extra layer, a mask that self-consciously performs the multi-layered reality
she inhabits. This is the mask of the writer, the teller of tales, who traverses
between the outer and the inner world, and brings both to life in a form that
outlives the author and her society.
De Certeau describes the individual in social life as determined by relations
with others and with the surrounding culture; he qualifies this by saying that
the individual is neither passive nor docile in his or her culture, but rather,
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practises everyday life by ‘poaching in countless ways on the property of
others’.39 Though he is describing contemporary culture, he sees such practices
as an evolution of ‘the age-old ruses of fishes and insects that disguise or
transform themselves in order to survive’.40 Individuals use the products of a
dominant economic order in subversive ways that are not intended; for instance,
the culture imposed by the Spanish colonisers on the indigenous Indians was
used ambiguously. The apparently submissive natives did not reject or alter the
rituals, representations and laws of the conquerors, but they used them ‘with
respect to ends and references foreign to the system they had no choice but to
accept’.41 The colonised people, unable to challenge the power of their
conquerors, ‘escaped it without leaving it’.42 In similar ways, the narratives,
both fictional and confessional, of Heian court women show the ambiguity of
the female desiring self as other within the culture of men, outwardly conforming
to rituals, representations and rules, yet inwardly resisting and escaping in
subtle ways. One of these ways, their reading and writing of monogatari and
poetic diaries, became, paradoxically, a flowering of cultural life that has
outshone and outlived the works and lives of the powerful men who ruled their
lives.
Rather than being artefacts masking an absence of reality, or bearing no
relation to any reality whatever, as Baudrillard describes the simulacra of the
contemporary world, the texts of Heian Japan dramatise a culture where the
images and surfaces of court life conceal and protect, as well as express, a rich
inner life that both complies with and resists the dominant codes of behaviour.
Murasaki is an artist who observes and mirrors the society she inhabits in a
fictional world that is, to the reader, ‘more real’ than the historical world of the
Heian court, which we can never know except through indirect and fragmented
reports. The Tale of Genji is a complex and many-layered world of the imagination
that we can enter as we turn the pages that number 1,120 in the Penguin edition
of Tyler’s translation. Though the court women’s diaries of the period give
fascinating glimpses of this world, they remain glimpses, written from one point
of view, discursive and sometimes fragmented.
One such diarist, who lived and wrote a generation before Murasaki, describes
the fictional romances that were popular in her time in disparaging terms. This
predecessor is known to us only as ‘The mother of Michitsuna’, and her diary,
Kagero Nikki (translated by Seidensticker as The Gossamer Years) is the record
of her unhappy marriage to a Fujiwara who became regent. In the prelude, she
describes herself in the third person as:
one who drifted uncertainly through [these past times], scarcely knowing
where she was … [A]s the days went by in monotonous succession, she
had occasion to look at the old romances, and found them masses of the
rankest fabrication. Perhaps, she said to herself, even the story of her
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Desire in Heian Japanese Women’s Life Writing
own dreary life, set down in a journal, might be of interest; and it might
also answer a question: had that life been one befitting a well-born lady?
But they must all be recounted, events of long ago, events of but
yesterday. She was by no means certain that she could bring them to
order.43
Of course, the diarist had not read The Tale of Genji, and perhaps if she had,
she would have revised her opinion as to the value of fiction as a surrogate
world. Nevertheless, she is making an interesting comparison here between the
artistic and therapeutic value of fiction and that of life writing proper. The claims
she stakes for life writing are that it may be interesting, even if it tells a life that
has been dreary and uneventful, and that it might question the way in which
she was born—indeed constrained—to live her life. The diary starts in 954, at
the beginning of Fujiwara Kaneie’s courtship of her. What develops is an intense
and bitter account of a woman who waits with unsatisfied longing for visits that
become less and less frequent.
This dilemma is a common one for Heian women, in a society where women’s
status is determined by the social rank of their parents, by their relationship to
the men who favour them, and, in the case of women in service at court, by
their position in relation to the emperor and his consorts. The most desirable
position for a woman is to be the official wife of the emperor. Imperial consorts
are chosen from daughters of the powerful Fujiwara family, thus insuring that
the head of their family will be the father-in-law or grandfather, or sometimes
both, of the reigning sovereign.44 Women are precious wombs, cultivated by
their parents to be objects of desire. For a woman to be desired in Heian Japan,
she must clothe her body in many layers of voluminous silken robes of blending
patterns and colours, have long uncut hair that sweeps the ground, plucked
eyebrows and blackened teeth; she must remain cloistered behind screens,
curtains and fans, and not be seen uncovered, certainly never seen naked; she
must be accomplished in the arts of poetry, poetic conversation, calligraphy,
music and preparation of incense. Taste, good birth and artistic sensibility are
the primary values by which women and men are judged.45 It is a polygamous
society, which means that even the most favoured women are insecure, since
men constantly seek new conquests, and an official wife may be supplanted in
her husband’s attentions by an ‘unofficial’ wife, concubine or mistress. There
are many degrees of favour, and the only formal way in which a marriage is
recognised is for a man to visit a woman for three nights running, sending a
poetic letter each morning, and celebrating the union on the third morning with
a gift of special rice cakes.
Just as secrecy and concealment are essential strategies for the arousal and
expression of desire in the Heian world, so is surrogacy. A surrogate or substitute
is sought when the original object of desire is inaccessible. The machinery of
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desire in Heian Japan is driven by surrogacy. By cloistering their women and
rendering them virtually inaccessible, Heian men fuel the desire to penetrate
the covers, to unveil the hidden, and if the object is persistently elusive or out
of reach, to seek substitutes. In The Tale of Genji, desire is imagined through a
bewildering range of surrogates, most of them women, whose disguises,
substitutions and evasions drive the erotic pursuits of the hero.46 Lady Murasaki,
the central female protagonist in The Tale of Genji, is Genji’s favourite wife and
his ‘live-in lover’, yet she has lesser status than his principal wife, and is subject
to the ambiguity of her status and the errant nature of his passions, just as his
other less favoured women are. Murasaki has to suffer the torture of watching
Genji, now middle-aged, marry the young Third Princess, not because he wants
to, but because his brother, the retired Emperor, pleads with him to take her
under his protection (which is, in Heian Japan, usually synonymous with
marriage). The Third Princess has higher status than Murasaki, for though the
latter is the granddaughter of an emperor, the unceremonious manner of her
entry into Genji’s life, as a 10-year-old child whom he abducts, marks her status
as secondary or unofficial for the rest of her life.47 She is, in fact, a surrogate
for Fujitsubo, her aunt and consort to Genji’s father, the Kiritsubo Emperor.
Genji had an illicit passion for Fujitsubo, his stepmother, (who was only five
years older than him), and fathered a child by her; Murasaki bears a striking
resemblance to Fujitsubo, who was herself chosen by the emperor because she
resembled the Kiritsubo Lady, Genji’s dead mother. So there is a series of
substitutions: Fujitsubo substitutes for the Kiritsubo Lady both as favourite
consort of the emperor and as mother/mistress to Genji, and Murasaki substitutes
for Fujitsubo as Genji’s child/lover/secondary wife.
Though Genji has no intention of leaving Murasaki, she is the domestic spouse
who has to perfume his robes for his obligatory visit three nights running to
the Princess, and urge him to overcome his reluctance to go and do the
honourable thing. Genji is caught between his desire for a succession of lovers
and his great love and devotion to Murasaki. This tension becomes stronger as
he ages, and apart from the Third Princess, who does not meet his expectations,
and with whom he is a reluctant lover, he does not follow through with his
erotic fantasies as he did when he was younger. On a plot level, the author creates
narrative suspense through the dramatisation of Genji’s inner conflicts when he
courts other women, and of Murasaki’s private suffering over his errant fancy.
There is tension between the two plot lines, that of the romantic hero pursuing
a string of women, some more desirable than others, and that of the shining
prince who meets his match in the surrogate wife, whose beauty and grace
outshine the attractions of all her rivals. This tension is played out in a minor
key, that of the surrogate wife or mistress who wants to be ‘the one’, who wants
to escape from the straitjacket of surrogacy. This theme and variations on it in
the Tale are echoed in the diaries of other Heian women, such as the mother of
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Michitsuna, who recorded that she wanted her lover 30 days and 30 nights a
month, not just on the irregular and infrequent occasions that he visited her.48
The tension of the major theme of the Tale—the Genji-Murasaki
romance—sustains the narrative for more than half the novel, and is only resolved
by Murasaki’s death, and that of Genji not long after. It is, for this reader, this
tension, and its reflections in the sub-plots of secondary heroes and heroines,
which lifts The Tale of Genji out of the genre of medieval romance into that of
the modern psychological novel, with its chiaroscuro of light and dark, comic
and tragic, hope and despair, love and loss.
Though their domestic life continues when Genji takes the Third Princess
into his entourage, it is complicated by Genji’s obligations to the young wife
who is of higher status in the eyes of the world than is Murasaki, and by other
wanderings of his fancy. Murasaki believes her only release from the suffering
of watching what she sees as the inevitable decline of Genji’s affection for her
lies in withdrawal from her worldly state into a religious life. Genji, however,
refuses to allow her to renounce her sexual being and to cease social intercourse,
which is what the religious life demands.49 For Murasaki and other heroines in
the story, ‘becoming a nun is an act of self-expression that can only take the
form of denial’.50 She lives on another three years in her secular state, much
diminished, and dies ‘with the coming of the day’ despite Genji’s efforts
throughout the night to restore her with scripture readings by monks.51 As
Field comments, ‘in Murasaki we see that to be a surrogate is to be not only
homeless but imprisoned in this world’.52 The magnificent home that Genji has
created for her and bound her to with his love is insecure and becomes a
comfortless prison because it houses, in separate wings, not only the Third
Princess, but other women who are under his protection. Her worldly state as
a surrogate or secondary wife is, by its nature, temporary and subject to loss
and rejection. The tragic irony of the Tale is that Genji himself suffers deeply
because of the fragile and surrogate nature of his bond with Murasaki, and the
transient nature of worldly pleasure, and does not survive long after her death,
because he has no wish to live:
Very little in this life has really satisfied me, and despite my high birth
I always think how much less fortunate my destiny has been than other
people’s. The Buddha must have wanted me to know that the world slips
away from us and plays us false. I, who long set myself to ignore this
truth, have suffered in the twilight of my life so awful and so final a
blow that I have at last seen the extent of my failings …53
His death is a hiatus in the text; he dies between chapters. This may be an
accident of the fragmented and corrupted state of the text that survived into
the 13th
century, when two scholars set out to restore it.54 However, the fact
that the reader is denied the tale of Genji’s last days has a strangely poetic and
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haunting effect; his absence casts a shadow over the other characters: ‘His light
was gone, and none among his many descendants could compare to what he had
been’, and over the rest of the narrative.55
What is the relevance of this story and the poetic diaries of Heian court ladies
to my quest for a desiring female self? The third way of seeing finds abundant
and fertile play of differences within a rigid social system, such as that
represented in the literature of cloistered women like those of the Heian court.
The searcher expects to find similar patterns in the literature of other women
who have lived and written within patriarchal cultures. And having seen with
their eyes, freed from bondage to patriarchal patterns, from the belief that she
is determined by them, she will be encouraged, like the replicant in Blade Runner,
to return to the culture that has created her, and to seek to change the terms of
her subjectivity that were her birth legacy, to live a desiring life on her own
terms, to unmask the hidden and assume her full difference, and to create a
‘more real than real’ world of her own through art.
I commented at the beginning of this paper that my journey into the world
of Heian women is a looking-glass experience. The differences between their
lives and mine are many and obvious. Yet their voices speak to me of emotions
that are familiar. They speak of loss, longing, exclusion, separation, loneliness
and, above all, of repressed desire for emotional and material security and artistic
freedom. If I merely read these texts, I am, as de Certeau says, a nomadic traveller
poaching on other’s territory, unable to keep for my own what I enjoy.56 I want
a place of my own as a desiring woman writer. My desire as a modern woman
is for the freedom to live and love where I choose, to express myself emotionally
and artistically.
Born into an Australian rural family, I was brought up in isolation in outback
New South Wales by a mother whose values wereVictorian bourgeois. My father
left the family when I was eight years old, and I spent much of my childhood
mourning his loss and trying to support my mother in running the farm. I married
young to an older man, and found that security was not enough. My search for
love destroyed my marriage and resulted in the loss of my three children, who
were taken to America by my ex-husband without my consent. The process of
understanding this story of my life began in earnest in 1999 when I enrolled for
a Master of Creative Arts degree, and wrote an autobiographical novel and an
exegesis on the construction of female desire in the bourgeois family. Since then
I have continued to write and study desire, and have reached a point where I
feel able to move beyond the syntax of loss and surrogacy.
Part of this freedom comes from visiting a world where women writers have
created, in their diaries, poetry and fiction, a world that is more real than the
real world they inhabit, to repeat Byatt’s memorable phrase. To do this, Heian
women developed genres that already existed—the poetic diary and the
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monogatari or prose romance—to a level of complexity and richness unsurpassed
before or since. They also developed a script, ‘woman’s hand’, that, though it
was a surrogate for the official male script, became the vehicle for a literature
that dramatises Heian vernacular culture so powerfully that it has, as Okada
says, ‘come to be regarded as a great (if not the greatest) flowering of Japanese
culture’.57 It seems, to return to Byatt’s phrase again, that we have a circular
relationship between fiction and reality, for fiction is a surrogate for a reality
that is itself illusory or fictionally constructed, and the fiction becomes more
real than the reality within which it is created.
I am grateful to Heian women writers for showing me a world where, though
women’s embodied selves were concealed and their individuality suppressed,
they still managed to have hidden desires and to express them in surrogate and
indirect ways. I pass back through the looking glass, a contemporary woman
who can desire in her own right and can live and love without surrogacy or
subterfuge.
ENDNOTES
1 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: capitalism and schizophrenia, trans. R. Hurley, M.
Seem, and H.R. Lane (New York 1977).
2 Ronald Bogue, Deleuze and Guattari (London 1989), 88.
3 Ibid.
4 Kaja Silverman, The Subject of Semiotics (New York 1983), 149-64.
5 Ibid., 164-5.
6 Bogue, Deleuze and Guatari, 89, 148-9.
7 Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, ed. C.V. Boundas, trans. M. Lester with C. Stivale (London 1990), 226-63.
8 Ibid., 262.
9 Ibid., 263.
10 Anne Christina Houen, ‘A deserting wife: the construction of female desire in the bourgeois family’,
MA, Curtin University of Technology (Perth 2001).
11 A.S. Byatt, television program, ‘Scribbling’, ABC TV, Sydney, 10 August 2005.
12 Jean Baudrillard, ‘Simulacra and Simulations’ in Jean Baudrillard: selected writings, ed. Mark Poster
(Stanford 1988).
13 Brian Massumi, 1987, ‘Realer than real: the simulacrum according to Deleuze and Guattari’, Copyright,
viewed 26 May 2005, <http://www.anu.edu.au/HRC/ first_and_last/works.realer.htm>.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 Royall Tyler (trans.), The Tale of Genji, 2 vols (New York 2001), xii.
19 Ivan Morris, The World of the Shining Prince: court life in ancient Japan (Harmondsworth, UK 1979),
12.
20 Ibid., 25.
21 Murasaki Shikibu, The Diary of Lady Murasaki, trans. Richard Bowring (London 1996), 57-58.
22 Ibid., 58.
23 R.H. Okada, ‘Speaking for: surrogates and The Tale of Genji’ in B. Stevenson and C. Ho (eds), Crossing
the Bridge: comparative essays on medieval European and Heian Japanese women writers (NewYork 2000),
11.
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24 Ibid., 12.
25 Ibid.
26 A.S. Omori and K. Doi, ‘The Sarashina diary’, Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan (New York 1970),
20.
27 Murasaki, The Diary, 33.
28 Ibid., 33-34.
29 Morris, The World, 275.
30 Murasaki, The Diary, 34.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid., 35.
34 Ibid., 56.
35 Ibid.
36 Takeo Doi, The Anatomy of Self: the individual against society, trans. M.A. Harbison (New York 1986),
23-24.
37 Ibid., 26.
38 Ibid., 152.
39 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. S. Rendall (Berkeley 1984), xii.
40 Ibid., xi.
41 Ibid., xiii.
42 Ibid.
43 E.G. Seidensticker (trans.), The Gossamer Years (Kagero Nikki): the diary of a noblewoman of Japan
(Tokyo 1973), 33.
44 Ivan Morris, The World, 63.
45 Ibid., 206-07.
46 Professor Royall Tyler, in a conversation on Wednesday, 7 December 2005, indicated that he thought
the device of surrogacy in The Tale of Genji can be explained in terms of the author’s desire to keep her
readers entertained. I agree that on the plot level, this is sufficient cause. However, though this accounts
for conscious authorial intention, it does not address the unconscious dynamic of surrogacy, which
operates on so many levels in the Heian world, not just in The Tale of Genji, but in all the literature that
I have read from that period.
47 Norma Field, The Splendor of Longing in The Tale of Genji (Princeton 1987), 168.
48 Seidensticker, The Gossamer Years, 95.
49 Field, The Splendor, 189.
50 Ibid., 190.
51 Tyler, The Tale of Genji, 760.
52 Field, The Splendor, 198.
53 Tyler, The Tale of Genji, 768.
54 Ibid., xviii-xix.
55 Ibid., 785.
56 De Certeau, The Practice, 174.
57 Okada, ‘Speaking for’, 23.
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Desire in Heian Japanese Women’s Life Writing
Chapter 6
‘The Story that Came to Me’: Gender,
Power and Life History
Narratives—Reflections on the Ethics
of Ethnography in Fiji
Pauline McKenzie Aucoin
I was well into my fieldwork in Fiji when Vasi, a young Fijian woman, came to
visit me. My research into the social construction of gender in Fijian society had
been going well. I had travelled to several of Fiji’s larger islands, including Koro,
Vanua Levu, and Viti Levu, and established a wide network of contacts with
men and women in many of their villages. I had conducted interviews with a
number of women involved in Na Soqosoqo Vakamarama, the National Fijian
Women’s Organisation, and helped with the organisation of a village women’s
co-operative store. I had acquired a sound understanding of the routines of daily
village life, and attended weddings in several coastal villages and the interior.
My trips to the capital, Suva, to conduct archival work had been successful. I
was nearing completion of a kinship survey and had identified a preferential
marriage rule: when a woman of one generation from Clan A marries into Clan
B, then one of her daughters or classificatory daughters in the descending
generation from Clan B would then marry, in turn, into her natal Clan A. A
marriage rule. Exchange relations. My notebooks were filling up.
Vasi first approached me in a village store where I had occasion to volunteer,
and asked shyly if I would teach her to sew. I had offered to teach sewing to
women in the local women’s organisation, so it wasn’t an unusual request. Vasi
(a pseudonym) was a young married woman with a small child in tow. Yes, I
knew of her; she had married into the patrilocal clan located nearest the store
and came from a village in an adjacent district along the coast. Yes, I could place
her. I could see her sitting in the doorway of her mother-in-law’s kitchen, peeling
cassava. She smiled warmly and waved whenever I passed by. I knew who her
mother-in-law was—an energetic woman who walked briskly past my house
on the way to her gardens in the morning, machete over her shoulder. I could
place Vasi socially. Well, yes, I could teach her to sew, I told her, but not this
week. I was off to the coast on Friday, the busiest day for the markets. I could
buy some cloth for her there. Maybe later next week, we agreed. Impatient I
85
was, still so much research to do. This paper is about this woman’s visit; about
the story that came to me.
We busied ourselves when Vasi arrived at my house, this time without her
children. I threaded the sewing machine I had borrowed from a neighbour; she
smoothed the crinkled tissue paper pattern with her hands and spread it out on
the floor. I had sent my husband off earlier that morning to the men’s house,
through the pouring rain. The clan’s ceremonial field was deserted and houses
around its perimeter were closed up against the rain. Water splashed over my
door sill onto the floor and onto our fabric. I shut the door, a normally
unacceptable thing to do in a Fijian village. Unsociable, draws suspicions.
Passers-by couldn’t call in their greetings, glancing in and about as they passed.
People performed witchcraft behind closed doors, mixed and drank yagona, or
kava, alone—directing invocations to their ancestral spirits, na nitu, against
their enemies. I spread out Vasi’s fabric, carefully smoothing the edges. ‘I came
to talk to you’, she said, in a quiet tone. ‘Yes’, I thought to myself without
looking up. ‘I know who Vasi is, married in from a nearby village, small child,
robust mother-in-law’, I recalled. ‘I came to talk to you’, Vasi repeated, and this
time I stopped, something in her voice, mentally noting her clearly spoken
English for the first time. I looked over at Vasi. She began to talk.
Rain pounding on the corrugated tin roof of my small house set up a sound
barrier, a deafening protective frame within which a story of forced marriage
was told. Noise silenced this narrative to all but one. But one who by trade was
compelled to tell. And one who, in listening, was able to see—see both the
invisible self and the invisible force applied upon this self. To retell a story
delivered in silence is to cast a voice outside its protective frame … possibly to
invite the visibility of force. This paper explores ethical issues underlying the
ethnography of narrative, self, voice, gender and power.
Vasi told me that when she was younger, she had worked in a town on the
coast in a restaurant catering to tourists. She had talked to many visitors to Fiji
and had learned to speak English quite well. And she had a few years of
secondary education. She had had a boyfriend, and they intended to marry. On
one occasion she had gone to visit him, and was staying with him overnight at
his garden house. And that is when they came to get her. Her uncles, as she
described them, using the English kin term to describe their relationship to her.
These men were, in genealogical terms, her father’s older and younger brothers
and his parallel same sex cousins, all same generation members of his patrilineal
clan. According to the Fijian kinship system, these men—her father, father’s
brothers, and classificatory father’s brothers—were all classed together and
referred to using the same kin term, momo, meaning father. Her father’s brothers,
she explained, were men she had grown up with, close kin who had raised her.
They came to the garden house and called out for her. She was to marry her
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mother’s brother’s son, or cross cousin: when a woman of one generation from
Clan A marries into Clan B, then one of her daughters or classificatory daughters
from Clan B would then marry, in turn, into her natal Clan A. A marriage rule.
It had been decided by her fathers and ritually confirmed by the presentation
of tabua, or whale’s teeth, which had passed from the groom’s family to the
bride’s kin. Tabua are highly prized as traditional Fijian exchange objects: they
allow men to do what Micaela di Leonardo has described for women as ‘social
work’—connect kin groups, make alliances, and confirm political pledges.1
They are coveted, and someone who receives a whale’s tooth will not readily
give it back, I have been told.
Vasi had not wanted this marriage. She had not thought they would really
force her, she explained. She was going to marry her boyfriend. From outside,
they called out to her. ‘We were afraid’, she said. ‘What were you afraid of?’ I
asked. ‘We were afraid of the men outside’, she said. After some time, her
boyfriend left—she used the word tuba to describe his actions, meaning to flee
or run away, to escape. ‘They stayed outside the house a long time’, she
explained. ‘I was alone, and I was very afraid. I was afraid of them. It became
dark and I was alone in the house. They yelled out; they called out to me. They
waited. Finally, I left the house. I was afraid. I went with them.’ There was a
pause. ‘Why?’ she asked plaintively in a soft voice, tears falling. ‘Why did my
uncles do this to me?’ I heard in her voice fear, and I saw on her face sadness.
This is the story that came to me.
Did anyone know she had come to talk with me? She had asked if I would
teach her to sew. No suspicions. We were sewing. We cut and pieced as we
talked. The sound of the rains enclosed Vasi’s narrative in secrecy. We were
only sewing.
Her story was one through which Vasi related her traumatic experiences as
a narrative and revealed to me as only she could her understanding of self and
her social position, her narrative serving as what Riessman terms a ‘text of
identity’.2 And yet, as Vasi had asked for a sewing lesson, it appeared to me
that she had set up a ruse. This spoke to me, the academic, of agency. This was
not so much a story to be told as a story to be heard. The story of a life, a
sequence of events, to be heard by someone who was, in this village, understood
to be inquiring into and interested in learning about the lives of women. This
struck me, even at the time, as ironic, for I was the ethnographer after all; the
one who actively sought out women to interview and work with. Yet this story
had been brought to me. And this woman, who prior to her visit had represented
to me only one of many possible informants, this woman had interjected her
voice in my ethnographic enterprise; hers was an experience she wanted
included. There was a certain strategy in her telling. By bringing her story to
me, her tale would help to construct what it was that I was to understand as her
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‘The Story that Came to Me’
culture and what it was I knew about the lives of women in Fiji. I hadn’t
anticipated this collaboration.
Vasi’s story had moved me. Her narrative conferred upon the events of her
life and the male kin involved in the forcing of this marriage a meaning:
conveying unequivocally that relationship of power within which she was
caught. Her story revealed the trust she had had for those close kin whom she
assumed would provide for her as a woman as they had when she was a child.
This was a meaning she asserted; it was critical to my understanding of who she
was, how she was socially and politically situated as a woman and emotionally
constituted as an individual. Through this narrative, I had been drawn into her
social world and her point of view,3 sharing through the course of her narrative
in the lived experience of her fear, betrayal, despair, and sadness. Vasi related
what Riessman has described as a truly ‘moral drama’,4 or in this case a
countering drama, one in which she set her male kin and their expectations for
her obedience—her acquiescence and emotional denial—as the immoral cast.
This re-orientation of value was immediately apparent, but her motives were
not so clear. What did she hope to accomplish in bringing me this story? ‘Why
had she come?’ I wondered. How was I to understand this visit and her goals?
Why did she want me to know about her life? How did she understand my
project? Why did she trust me? What was her intent: did she offer this as a
representation of self, a voicing of the life she has been forced to live? Or as a
representation of collectivity: as a single example of the multifarious exertions
of power that women are subjected to, through which men control and dominate
their lives? What motive underlay her narrative strategy? Was it revenge? Yet
her voice relayed only sadness and resignation, and spoke of anger defused.
Was it therapeutic? To lift and throw off the weight of silence? Was it to find
solace? To seek out a community of comfort, even if only a community of one?
And if, as it certainly appeared to me, we had to speak in private, that she
still lived her life in fear, what was I to do with this story and what would the
consequences be for her if I wrote about her life—if I represented her as it seemed
she intended me to do? To represent her would be to expose her. Or should I
even be bothered by the consequences? Who in the village would ever know
that I had written up her story? And should I even care? Publish or perish.
The story Vasi offered had moved me and it also disturbed me intellectually
for I had already inquired about this. The women themselves had told me that
they were free to marry whomsoever they pleased. Young women had told me
this. Perhaps they spoke only of themselves and I had assumed they spoke for
others, though I had asked the question directly. And my kinship charts had
certainly not spoken to me of forced marriage, of fathers’ betrayals, of fear.
Although, on reflection, I did wonder at the perfect alignment of all those
circles—what had it taken to put each in its place, to put each woman in her
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place? Rather than providing a story which simply set out ‘one’s life within its
social context’, as narrative has been described as doing,5 this story actively
challenged that context and engaged me in its reexamination, interfacing not
only ‘self and society’,6 but also self and social analysis.7
Vasi’s narrative has expanded substantially my understanding of what I had
taken to be, in the anthropological sense, the nature of marriage and the lives
of women. I would no longer read with detachment about sister exchange,
preferential marriage, generational marriage exchange, marriage rules or
compensatory exchange. Not only did this story ‘reconstitute’ the person I
thought I knew as Vasi; the meaning of kinship had also been remade for me by
its telling. I could now envision the people who put into practice these
inter-generational alliances: I could hear them calling out in the night. This
narrative became for me not only a story about self, but also a story about power,
about how it is that those in power insert young people into the relationally
appropriate places of their kinship systems.
In the course of further research, I learned of two other cases of forced,
‘preferential’ marriage for young women, though I was unable to record, in
these individual cases, how these marriages were realised or what pressures
were applied; which is to say, the social contexts within which force, or the
immediate threat of force, had become visible. And I heard the story of Sura (a
pseudonym), a woman from an inland village who, some years ago, had married
a man from another island. She had been killed by her husband in a domestic
dispute. To resolve her murder, one of the murderer’s sisters had been required
to marry into the dead woman’s clan in return, as compensation, and her young
daughter had been returned to her now deceased mother’s clan. There appeared
to be a cultural patterning in all this: women exchanged, lives and stories within
a matrix of power. The story of Sura’s death was related to me by her then
11-year-old daughter.
Vasi’s story stands as one of a number of narratives I recorded which have
contributed to the ongoing record of truth that I, as an ethnographer, have been
engaged in collecting in my pursuit of an understanding of the culture of Fiji,
recognising that any recorded truth emerges from the compilation of numerous
truth claims. Other forms of narrative I have collected reflect a range of genres:
life stories, mythology, and performance. In their various forms, they constitute
attempts to make sense of experience—making sense or creating meaning being
a transformative process by which meaning is given to, that is asserted and
attached to, experience. Life stories such as Vasi’s may seemingly be individually
cast, reflecting more on a narrator’s personal and unique circumstances than on
cultural practice. But given the broader range of narrative I met with in this
Fijian context, I came to comprehend that collectively they present a discourse,
a running collective commentary on gender and power which speaks to the
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‘The Story that Came to Me’
nature of gender ideologies in this hierarchical context.8 Narratives such as
Vasi’s life story, along with women’s mythology and dance performances, which
I have analysed in other contexts, constitute forms of stories that are
counter-posed in relation to dominant culture, a variety of what have come to
be called countering narratives. In dominant representations of gender in this
culture, authoritative images of male power and superiority are presented, a
spatial order that symbolically—and in real terms physically—elevates men
above women is instituted, and a dominant system of ritual knowledge that
excludes women through the institution of the men’s house is practised. Women’s
representations stand as narratives that people ‘tell and live which offer
resistance, either implicitly or explicitly, to dominant cultural narratives by
going against the grain’9 and resisting prevailing hegemonic understandings.
In this sense, narrative represents a site of discourse for both the circulation and
contestation of ideas regarding the nature of society, about lives lived, about
subjectivity as the experience of positioning within a stratified society, and
about power practised. I consider the various narratives of Fijian women I have
collected to be forms of counter discourse: some of these simply describe the
conditions under which women’s obedience is extracted, while others record
the subjective experience, the feelings and tensions engaged in the construction
of self in the context of political domination. Some of these form part of what
has come to be known in anthropology as a subordinate discourse,10 while
others of these constitute forms of what I have called ‘insubordinate discourse’—a
term which captures the subversive quality that certain women’s narratives and
performances carry. All express disaffect; all find their place along what Ari
Sitas has called the ‘continuum’ of resistance.11
As ethnographers, we must ask where and how dominant meanings are
formulated within culture. We must show how they are inscribed, validated
and upheld, and alternatively, how they are contested and debated. This brings
us to consider the role women play in cultural production, either as consumers
of certain versions of reality or as ‘generators of signs’,12 asking in precisely
what arenas do women contest, contradict or resist dominant ideologies of
gender? And we must also ask how and why certain versions are silenced.
How can we understand the significance of a contemporary life story such
as Vasi’s to history, and Pacific history in particular? How do they intersect?
Vasi’s story seems removed from the course of historical events we know from
our reading of Fiji’s colonial past. Or does it? What of the colonial regulations
forbidding Fijian women from leaving their villages to visit coastal towns that
were being established at the turn of the century? What of petitions that were
made by Fijian men to have their kinswomen brought back to the village? Could
this seemingly isolated narrative of Vasi’s forced marriage relate to a wider and
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ongoing discourse on the social control of women? On the politics of gender,
space and movement?
As an ethnologist, where do I go with a story such as this, recognising as I
do the continued vulnerability of this woman and the circumstances that allowed
only enough privacy to let her tell her story to me. Do I deny this risk to my
informant—I have collected records that tell of women having been killed—how
do I gauge this risk, the risk posed to her by her exposure, her potential
identification? Villagers would certainly know who she is; they would know
who told me this story. The relating of this narrative is an act which at once
recognises the structures of power that surrounded us as Vasi told her story in
the privacy of my house, while also revealing the fear she had for her kin, and
potential consequences of her telling. Yet this story also spoke to me of her
initiative in engaging me as an audience. I have come to appreciate that my
ethnographic understanding of how lives are lived within this culture would
have been incomplete without this woman’s tale, I humbly admit, no matter
how thorough my kinship charts and surveys might have been. Elinor Ochs and
Lisa Capps,13 in their review article ‘Narrating the self’, have argued that a
narrative, in its telling of the experiences of one life lived, provides ‘an
opportunity’ [for the narrator] to insert and ‘impose order on [what might
otherwise appear to be] disconnected events’. In the course of hearing and trying
to understand the significance of Vasi’s story, it has become evident to me that
it was her narrative that inserted reality into the events surrounding this case of
preferential marriage, into what came to be my understanding of this society’s
‘imposed’ kinship order.
In trying to understand Vasi’s story as a narrative of self, constituted within
relations of power, I have reflected on this woman’s initiative in bringing me
her story, as well as my responsibility in both recording it and relating it, which,
as a feminist anthropologist, is problematic any way I look at it. Would it be
unethical, or ethical, to leave her story in her village? This is a question which
must be posed as we collect our narratives: what are the consequences of telling
Pacific lives?
ENDNOTES
1 Micaela di Leonardo, ‘The female world of cards and holidays: women, families, and the work of
kinship’, Signs, 12: 3 (1987), 440-453.
2 Catherine Kohler Riessman, ‘Strategic uses of narrative in the presentation of self and illness: a research
note’, Social Science and Medicine, 30:11 (1990), 1195-200.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid., 1197.
5 Deborah Reed-Danahay, ‘Introduction’, Auto/Ethnography: rewriting the self and the social, ed. idem
(Oxford and New York 1997), 10.
6 Elinor Ochs and Lisa Capps, ‘Narrating the self’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 25 (1996), 19-43.
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‘The Story that Came to Me’
7 On the topic of gender, self and society, see Martine Brownley and Allison B. Kimmich (eds), Women
and Autobiography (Wilmington 2000); Peter L. Callero, ‘The sociology of the self’, Annual Review of
Sociology, 29 (2003), 115-33.
8 Glynis George, ‘Contested meanings and controversial memories: narratives of sexual abuse in Western
Newfoundland’, in Michael Lambek and Paul Antze (eds) Tense Past: cultural essays in trauma and
memory (Toronto 1998), 45-64. See also Sally Cole, Ruth Landes: a life in anthropology (Lincoln 2003).
9 Molly Andrews, ‘Introduction: counter-narratives and the power to oppose’, special issue, ‘Culture
and Counter-Narratives’, Narrative Inquiry, 12:1 (August 2002), 1-6. See also Liz Stanley, ‘On
auto/biography in sociology’, Sociology, 27:1 (1993), 41-52; and Julia Swindells, ‘Hanging up on Mum
or questions of everyday life in the writing of history’, Gender and History, 2 (1990), 68-78.
10 Brinkley Messick, ‘Subordinate discourse: women, weaving and gender relations in North Africa’,
American Ethnologist, 14:2 (1987), 210-25; Janice Boddy, Wombs and Alien Spirits: women, men and the
Zar Cult in Northern Sudan (Madison 1989), 158.
11 Ari Sitas, ‘From resistance to co-operative alterity: South Africa’s labour movement and the negotiated
revolution’, plenary paper presented at the International Sociological Association’s (ISA) Research
Council Conference, Ottawa, 29 May 2004.
12 Claude Levi-Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship (Boston 1969), 496.
13 Ochs and Capps, ‘Narrating the self ’, 19.
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Chapter 7
A Tartan Clan in Fiji: Narrating the
Coloniser ‘Within’ the Colonised
Lucy de Bruce
People continue to think of contemporary Fiji as belonging to natives who look
and behave in anticipated ways. The popular notion of a Fijian thus becomes
someone who is a considerably different creature to the rest of the people living
in Fiji. In most peoples’ minds, a Fijian is someone who is friendly and lives in
a village; whose menfolk play superb rugby and participate in kava ceremonies
and tribal dances; whose womenfolk sing, dance and weave mats and baskets
in their villages. Above all, a Fijian is someone who speaks the Fijian language
and is a smiling, God-fearing Christian with big hair and dark skin.
As a light-skinned, English-speaking Fijian who does not fit this profile, it
is my view that people inside and outside Fiji find it difficult to accept anyone
claiming to be a Fijian who falls outside this strict ethno-biological profile. In
Fiji, anyone who lives and looks like me is relegated to the realm of otherness
and prompts those familiar questions, ‘what are you?’ and ‘to which side do you
belong?’ I am certain that changing this mindset is a tall order in a land where
colonial racial thinking is an inherited part of life that few have bothered to
interrogate or challenge.
The antithesis to the ‘Fijian realm’ is the ‘Indian realm’, those folk whose
ancestors arrived on our shores more than a century ago to work the sugarcane
plantations as indentured labourers, and whose descendants must tolerate a
reputation as land/money-hungry dissidents locked in perpetual turmoil with
their ennobled landowning hosts, the indigenous Fijians. The landscape is thus
dominated by two contrasting cultures that reinforce the image of Fiji as a
xenophobic backwater, lacking in human diversity and cultural complexity.
Persons born of this landscape who do not belong to the Fijian or Indian realms
have a tough time getting a hearing and are doomed to irrelevance and
invisibility.
A Culture of Forgetting
Where do I begin to tell the story of an invisible people who simultaneously
claim a European and Fijian heritage that gives an alternative history of Fiji? I
shall begin by acknowledging invisibility and describing what it means to come
93
from an invisible people. By invisible I do not mean that we are a ghostlike
people with transparent skins. No. We are invisible by virtue of how others
react to us. They do not accept our reality and act as though they do not see
us—because the system we live in has been created this way.
Take for example Fijian kailoma—known also as ‘Part-Europeans’ or still in
some circles ‘half-castes’, many who live in villages and towns across Fiji and
whose presence and histories go mostly unnoticed owing to their ambiguous
looks, language(s) and lifestyles that defy racial pigeonholing. This paper seeks
to overcome a ‘culture of forgetting’ that many Fijian kailoma have learned to
internalise in their own homeland.
In the colonial environment, the prevailing thinking was that Fijian
mixed-bloods were a fragmented identity and therefore were neither authentic
Fijians nor Europeans. Yet as the fine grain in my story reveals, Fijian
mixed-bloods by virtue of their racially-mixed heritage have routinely crossed
all barriers of their mixed heritage that were designed to determine race, culture
and place of belonging. Nevertheless, in such an ecology one of the dilemmas
for most Fijian mixed-bloods was that human diversity could not be
comprehended by colonial administrators schooled in black/white thinking; so
when they were confronted with the human evidence of the fusion of the
European ‘within’ the native child, that truth was not easily grasped nor
accepted.
Background to a Colonial ‘Problem’
The colonial obsession with herding citizens into separate, tidy, racial boxes
meant that the separation and management of Fijian mixed-bloods in relation to
their natural families was often a haphazard operation and a bizarre, sometimes
harsh experience. It is something that is seldom discussed among those who
were ‘ethnically’ at the receiving end of such treatment.
The management of ‘ambiguous’ Fijians was conducted in ways that involved
the systematic carving-up of Fijian society into elites, commoners, half-castes
or Part-Europeans. For example under certain colonial conditions a half-caste
child born of a Fijian chiefly mother and a European or half-caste father could
be deemed a Fijian chiefly ‘elite’ with land rights and colonial privileges; another
child from the same family could be deemed a commoner with no land rights
and a village-bound existence; while yet another could be judged to be a
Part-European and allowed to live in town with rights to private property and
a Western way of life. At certain points in a mixed-blood’s life it was not
uncommon to receive different treatment (sometimes different race classification)
to another member of the same family since physical appearance played a major
role in determining racial belonging, with those most resembling Europeans
having the greater privileges.
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Some kailoma who were reared as Fijian children in their maternal villages
later ‘progressed’ to a half-caste status after being encouraged away from their
families by missionaries and given a missionary or Western education. Some
‘progressed’ even further to the status of quasi-whites (Part-European) who
could be employed in the government or private sector and allowed to live in
the towns. A select few became ‘sponsored’ whites and were sent abroad for
schooling, sometimes returning home as strangers to a villager mother and an
extended clan of full-descent and mixed-descent clan members. The legacy of
such social engineering has had far-reaching effects among Fijians divided in
this way to determine a child’s life chances. The major difference was the way
that the system determined place of residence (village or town); participation in
the colonial economy; and significantly, eligibility for inclusion in the native
land register or Vola ni Kawa Bula (VKB)1 and recognition as a ‘real’ Fijian.
Much of this activity was conducted in a spirit of goodwill that separated
family members along the lines of skin colour, geography, rank, education and
cultural competence. This mechanism followed imperial England’s patriarchal
system that ignored the legitimate status of a Fijian woman in her tribe; her right
to inherit and bequeath land; and her right to raise her children as full members
of her clan. Thus, at every point in our history the lives of kailoma Fijian
mixed-bloods were scrutinised and carefully managed in the ordering of colonial
society.
European Assimilation
Spearheading the mustering of ‘stray’ half-castes into central observable locations
were the state-approved Christian missions which in the early 19th
century
established themselves doing God’s work among the Fijian chiefs and their
people. Of greatest influence were the Wesleyans and Roman Catholics Marist
missionaries who, as agents of the state, were given a virtual free rein to
evangelise. Missionaries were charged with the elevation and management of
half-caste children from plantations and squatter settlements in rural pockets
into centralised day and boarding schools.
Europeans widely regarded mixed-bloods as debased, contaminated or
immoral. To many whites, half-castes were the products of a regrettable union
and the confronting evidence of white men’s weakness towards native women.
Half-caste children were thus inculcated with Christian values at an early age
and taught English in a highly disciplined environment at church-run native
mission boarding schools great distances from a child’s home. The intensification
of this mission increased from 1936 to 1970 following a government report that
recommended closer supervision and training of half-castes at the earliest possible
age and preferably away from their native mothers and natural families.2 This
drive coincided with colonial alarm at the steady increase of the half-caste
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A Tartan Clan in Fiji
population that threatened to swamp European interests in their own colony.
A schizophrenic relationship thus developed where half-castes came under the
direct control of whites in an authoritarian atmosphere that variously tolerated,
ostracised and assimilated half-castes into European schools. Controlled
habitation, family monitoring and regular home visits were part of this
state/religious campaign to instill white ways in half-castes and assimilate them
towards accepting European domination.
Race Mixing and the Blended Child in a Colonial State
In much of Fiji’s colonial literature, the perilous lives of the early European
settlers and their mixed-blooded/kailoma offspring have sadly escaped the
history books in the recording of frontier history. Typically, the main players
in Fijian history have been European administrators, Fijian elites and Fiji-Indian
leaders, a prevalent theme to this day.
As many kailoma will attest, our lives have been remarkably altered by the
fickle hand of time. We know that both culture and the negotiation of a cultural
identity are ongoing processes that can dramatically alter a life at different times
and places. We know that as we move back and forth among other cultures and
worldviews, we adjust our values and behaviours accordingly. We know that
deep inside we are the same person of yesteryear, yet we have been permanently
affected by this fluctuation of an identity that makes us quite different people
from before. For instance, we see this change occurring in our European forebears
who arrived in Fiji in the early 19th
century, who took Fijian wives, who gave
birth to a different-looking individual from themselves and their husbands, and
this child being the inheritor of cultural and linguistic influences from both
parents.
Because the fabric of our present is stitched deeply into our past, it is critical
to view history as a two-way channel that can explain things about the way
people lived and the rules that governed their lives. So it is worth reflecting on
the neglected history of those who hail from Fiji’s kailoma community in order
to assess the powerful legacy bequeathed by our Fijian and European forebears
during early white settlement and into the colonial era.
Narrating the Coloniser ‘Within’ the Colonised
At this point, I wish to provide a brief outline of my family history as a way of
explaining human interaction and diversity in the Fijian landscape. In this short
story of my father, William Henry de Bruce and his European and Fijian
forebears, I seek to illustrate how the mechanism of racial thinking operated in
a colonial state and how certain individuals challenged, and continue to challenge,
the very rules upon which the concept of ‘race’ depended. This ‘sociography’
depicts the quality of life of a Fijian kailoma/mixed-blood born in 1917 during
British colonialism.
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Telling Pacific Lives
Little is known about this period between 1881 and 1911 when miscegenation
between whites and non-whites was at its peak, and subsequently when this
population began to interbreed and steadily outnumber Europeans between
1921-1946 to the present day. The story of this racially-mixed
Part-European/Fijian born in 1917 tells us about ‘life on the border’ for someone
who recounts what it was like to live ambiguously under a system that could
not account for a person’s racial hybridity nor their routine interactions with
members of their natural families.
It shows how the mechanism of race functioned across colonial Fiji and how
the lives of half-castes were closely monitored and manipulated in the ordering
of Fiji society. The outstanding feature of this narrative is the creativity and
fluidity of racially mixed/kailoma Fijians as border-crossers between all aspects
of their racially mixed heritage and between other ethnic groups. This chapter
shows the great difficulty in creating single races and maintaining them within
tightly controlled ethnic borders when the very large presence of racially mixed
people like William Henry de Bruce continue to defy racial thinking in Fiji. This
begs an important constitutional question: are such persons at risk of having
‘no race’ in a land obsessed with ‘race’?
The following narrative highlights the quality of relationships between two
distinct cultures, Fijians and Europeans who, for whatever reason (food, sex,
guns, concubines) found mutual benefit and intimacy at a certain place and time.
Inspirationally, it shows that the life of an ordinary Fijian citizen can be as
compelling as that of a prominent citizen. I especially seek to fill a wide gap in
Fijian-European interactions and to provide a fresh look at the peopling of the
South Pacific.
An American Tartan Clan in Fiji
The original William Henry Bruce, my great grandfather, came to Fiji from
Portland, Maine. My father said he had fought in the American Civil War as a
private and was in the 16th
Maine Infantry Volunteer Regiment, Company B,
mustered in 1862-1865. His regiment fought in many of the major Civil War
battles including Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg and Petersburg. No one
knows exactly how Bruce came to Fiji, but his occupation as a shipwright was
a needed skill in 19th
century Fiji. Bruce settled in Levuka, the old capital of Fiji,
and is listed in the Fiji Planters and Commercial Directory of 1879. Another
person listed in the same directory was a Miss Sarah Watts. On 18 May, 1881 at
the Church of England in Levuka, Bruce married Sarah, an Australian spinster
15 years his junior, who came from the Melbourne suburb of Collingwood. Some
say she was a schoolteacher, others say she arrived with the ‘Fiji rush’ of
Australian women looking for husbands in the 1870s. Like many of Fiji’s first
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A Tartan Clan in Fiji
white settlers, Bruce was a shipbuilder, island trader, and landowner who served
as the American Commercial Agent in Fiji during the 1880s.
Still, he became dispossessed of 2,000 acres of his land in 1892. Bruce’s
land-claim battle against the British in 1892 along with several other American
citizens in Fiji proved fruitless. Nonetheless, he retained possession of 705 acres
of freehold land. Following his wife’s death in 1892, Bruce had transferred his
estate to the Roman Catholic Marist Missionary Fathers of Levuka, Fiji, whom
he appointed as trustees and potential guardians of his estate and his three
children upon his death. In 1909, the Mission transferred the land to Bruce’s
two eldest children when his son Donald attained the age of 21. Bruce had four
children in Fiji but not all of them survived him. They were Essie Atalanta
Callerhoe, Cora-Mona, Douglas William Washington and Donald William Henry
Bruce (my grandfather). Bruce was considered independent, hardworking,
respectable and comparatively prosperous considering he belonged to the
unstable planter class of his day.
Despite being an American, W.H. Bruce and my Fiji-born grandfather still
identified with Scotland, the land of their forefathers. Following in his American
father’s footsteps, my Fiji-born Grandpa Donald Henry Bruce took up a similar
line of work in planting and boat-building, receiving his early education in Fiji
at Levuka Public School, then at Marist Brothers Fiji, and later at St Patrick’s
College inWellington, New Zealand. Upon the death of their pioneering American
father in 1897, Grandfather Bruce and his older sister Essie jointly inherited 705
acres of sugar cane plantations in the Ba province of northwestern Viti Levu,
that were held in trust for them by the Marist Fathers of Fiji which they received
in 1909. The untimely death of their Australian-born mother Sarah, in 1892, at
the relatively young age of 40, had brought the Bruce children and their
American father under the pastoral care of the Marist Catholic Missionary fathers
of Levuka, Fiji, who saw to their spiritual and educational needs.
It is thought that the children were given to the Mission when their widowed
American father could not cope following his Australian wife’s death (a pattern
that was to follow in his son’s generation). Bruce nevertheless remained in touch
with his children through the mission and in close friendship and counsel with
the Marist fathers. It is clear from family correspondence that his children
benefited from their American father’s wisdom and foresight. Bruce’s second
child, Donald, my Grandpa, had an older brother, Douglas, who died as a baby
and in whose grave Grandpa’s Australian mother was also buried.
Family correspondence reveals that Grandfather was most unhappy during
his schooling years at St. Patrick’s College in Wellington, New Zealand. He
seemed like an oddball to the New Zealand Marists and he did not get along with
the school’s superintendent, Father ‘K’. Letters between him and the Marist
Fathers in Fiji reveal that Grandpa was anxious to return to Fiji to work the land
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Telling Pacific Lives
he had inherited. New Zealand during 1905-1907 was experiencing a downturn
in the economy with an oversupply of immigrants from England and Europe.
New Zealand was a dismal place to live and find work. Consequently, Grandpa
followed his dream back to Fiji in the footsteps of his American
planter/shipwright father. In Fiji, Grandpa was a loner who shunned the company
of other white men, preferring to live alone among the natives, being his own
man, and always with his guns close at hand.
My father remembers my gun-toting Grandpa roaming the beach spraying
the air with bullets to remind the natives he was armed. (More than a few
discovered he was serious as they abandoned Grandpa’s boats and fled for their
life.) Paybacks were frequent, but Grandpa didn’t seem to care since he was
brought up among Fijians and knew their ways well. In some ways he was a
Fijian in a white man’s skin, coming and going between both races. He seemed
happy with his lot living at the edge of both societies, operating as a shipwright,
copra planter and trader. Unlike his Fijian neighbours, Grandpa was a reserved
and fiercely independent man, some say mean and unfriendly. Despite this he
was tolerated by the Fijians and to some extent befriended by a nearby village
chief, whose daughter he later married—my grandmother, Marica Kenona.
Like many white men of his day, Grandpa Bruce spoke Fijian as well as a
native and kept company with native women. He had grown up among them
and felt comfortable in their presence. The piano-playing white girls of his old
Levuka Public School were not for him. After a previous de-facto marriage and
three children to a Fijian woman from another island who had died young,
Grandpa took up with Adi Marica Kenona, my chiefly grandmother, from the
Navitabua tribe on the neighbouring island of Nacula. Her father was Ratu
Taitusi Bebe, the chief of Nacula Island; her mother was Adi Senimili, also a
chiefly daughter from the neighbouring island of Malakati. (This de facto union,
discussed below, took place before my father’s birth in 1917 who was registered
and raised by his white father, Grandpa Bruce.) Grandpa Bruce and Marica, my
Fijian Grandma, made their home on the idyllic island of Nanuya Lailai which
Grandpa had purchased by leasehold from the Burns Philps South Seas Trading
Company. Six half-caste children followed this union, my father William Henry
Bruce being the eldest (Bill, the central character of this narrative). Bill’s siblings
were Sarah, David, Henry, Sophie, Joseph. The island was a copra plantation,
a shipbuilding works and a happy home where Grandfather traded in
bêche-de-mer, trocus shells and copra. The following story is based on my father
Bill’s life.
Bill grew up in a warm and close-knit family in modest but comfortable
surroundings. Nevertheless his natural environment was pleasant and abundantly
luxurious. The ocean was his playground where he learned from his Fijian uncles
how to spearfish and dive for octopus at a young age. He was named after his
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A Tartan Clan in Fiji
chiefly grandfather, Ratu Viliame Taitusi Bebe, but was known by his tribal
name, Bebe—pronounced ‘Bembeh’, meaning butterfly in Fijian. Both Fijian and
English were spoken in the home. The family homestead was a large grass hut
(bure) built by the menfolk of his mother’s clan. There was no electricity and
water was brought in from a nearby stream that trickled down from the lush
tropical hills. At night kerosene lamps lit up the bure that gave a hushed and
cosy atmosphere under the stars. With his guns and Bible at his bedside, Grandpa
slept with his family amid the breakers of the vast South Pacific Ocean. The bure
had Fijian and European furnishings and native mats covered the floor. There
was a high wooden bed for his parents with its firm coconut mattress and soft
Fijian mats for covers. The embroidered pillowcases were the work of Grandma
and her sisters. The children slept huddled together on the floor on a pile of
soft-hand woven mats with China blankets. A curtain divided them from their
parents. Bill remembered the Blue Willow crockery on the top shelf of their cosy
outdoor kitchen that also had a food cupboard made of timber and wire gauze.
In the far end was a fireplace housing Grandma’s big clay pots and a collection
of Indian tin pots. In the corner of the living room stood a colossal His Master’s
Voice gramophone, Grandpa’s prized possession that blared out his favourite
tunes, ‘Swannee’, ‘Mammy’ and ‘Yes sir, that’s my baby’. On the wall of the
homestead hung Grandpa’s faithful barometer, the most precious symbol of the
planter class that told him it was light showers, a passing blow or a gigantic
hurricane and to bring the boats in and batten down.
The family’s daily diet was fish, crab and kuita (octopus), eaten with cassava,
taro, yams, bele (island spinach), rou rou (taro leaves cooked in coconut milk).
Cooking was done on an open fire in clay pots, and on Sundays in a ground oven
(lovo). When trading times were good, stewed beef made it onto the menu, and
maybe a cake or pudding (purini). Grandma’s colourful dresses and shiny
adornments were also subject to the whims of the copra trade. The family’s
breakfast was the same each day: cabin crackers from a shiny tin box, or giant
dumplings (doughboys or topoi) spread with CSR golden syrup and washed
down with ‘Bushells Tea’ or draunimoli (lemon leaf tea). Sometimes there was
jam, but butter was scarce. Bill’s upbringing was almost totally bi-cultural with
a slight leaning towards his mother’s people owing to their proximity and her
own strong influence as the daughter of a chief.
Within our Fijian mataqali (clan) my grandmother was from a line of
kingmakers and communicators whose role to this day is to relay community
news, preside at clan meetings and formally appoint tribal chiefs. At a young
age Bill was initiated into his mother’s clan and became familiar with tribal songs,
storytelling, dance and rituals. Fishing, planting, and learning the ways of his
mother’s people were his normal childhood pursuits. My grandmother took her
tribal duties seriously and despite living with a kai valagi (European), remained
active in her clan attending frequent ceremonies and rites of passage. Bill
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inherited from his father (my grandfather) an appreciation of his Scottish heritage
and was fed regular reminders as to the family’s links to the Scottish Crown.
‘Never forget you are a blue blooded Scot and a descendant of the great Robert
the Bruce, King of Scots!’, Grandfather Bruce would exhort. These narratives
were absorbed by the half-caste boy and interwoven with the elaborate tales of
his Fijian people who had once chased the beleaguered Captain Bligh from the
cannibal-infested waters of his own islands.
Bill’s timeless island life in his South Pacific cocoon did not prepare him for
the events that would follow. Things turned bad when his mother began a love
affair with a Fijian chief from a neighbouring island and ran away to live with
him, abandoning her husband and their five children. The runaway chief’s
daughter was pregnant with Grandpa’s sixth child when she ran away. She later
confirmed that the light-skinned boy with soft wavy hair was in fact
Grandfather’s son, not the chief’s, however the boy now belonged to the chief.
When a desperate and grief-stricken Bill swam out in pursuit of his deserting
mother, the angry chief struck the boy’s fingers with his oars as the crying,
screaming boy struggled in vain to climb aboard the chief’s wildly rocking boat.
A decisive jerk of the chief’s oar finally sent Bill flying backwards, submerged
into the depths of the Pacific Ocean, to the startled stare from a worried octopus
swaying there among the seaweed. Grandpa Bruce, it seems, had paid the ultimate
price for his contempt towards Fijians.
Life quickly deteriorated for the shattered white planter whose self-reliance
and wealth had dwindled accordingly. After a month or two alone, he struck
up a deal with an unmarried half-caste girl half his age to come and live with
him and look after his family. She turned out to be a ‘wicked witch’ who was
cruel to his children and soon became pregnant with her own brood for Grandpa
to feed. One morning while Bill and his two younger sisters were playing at the
back of the house, they were called to come inside by their solemn-faced father
who was in the company of two strange men, one of them in a long black robe.
Before the children could ask questions, they were bundled aboard the stranger’s
boat and transported across rough, dangerous green waters on a terrifying
journey to an unknown destination on the other side of Fiji. Their captor was a
tiny-framed Catholic priest, an Indian I was told. His silent oarsman was a large
Fijian battling a dodgy engine in gigantic waves that sprayed the boat incessantly
as the terrified children clung to each other. Bill and his sisters’ journey took
them five days.
Their first landing was at Lautoka wharf where they were taken to a small
convent during its school holidays. There the white nuns gave them a bath and
a meal and they slept in an empty dormitory before heading off with the priest
in a public bus through the dusty canefields of Ba and Raki Raki and to the
wharf at Londoni where they boarded another boat for Levuka the old capital
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A Tartan Clan in Fiji
on the faraway island of Ovalau. Their final destination was a remote Catholic
mission on Ovalau where Bill, then 14, was handed over to the brothers of St
John’s College, Cawaci, while his two sisters, Sarah and Sophie, aged nine and
four, became wards of the European sisters at the nearby Loreto Convent where
they were housed behind the main school building in a barrack called ‘Sola’.3
The mission was a native residential school that trained Fijian boys and girls
for agricultural work and domestic duties. A handful of half-castes were among
them and European nuns and brothers gave instruction in Fijian and English.
Some were not competent Fijian speakers and often made comical errors, much
to the childrens’ amusement. The syllabus was rudimentary reading, writing
and arithmetic with most of the time spent in the fields planting staple food
crops such as dalo (taro), tavioka (cassava) and bele. Standard English was taught
only as a foreign language, otherwise Fijian was the main language of instruction.
Life on the mission was physically demanding and the discipline harsh. The
nuns and brothers at the mission station were understood to be French, English,
Irish and Australian who often used the cane as a teaching tool, yet mischievous
Fijians children retained their humour, never fully cowering to white authority.
My father told me a light story about a cane-wielding nun who once whipped
a ‘class clown’ (a Fijian chief’s son). Feigning pain, he fell to the floor, gripping
his stomach and writhing in agony, but who suddenly leapt up and sought
refuge under the nun’s long black robe in his mischievous clowning way. The
jumping, shrieking nun had to dismiss her class because the children were
collapsing with laughter. Nevertheless, the children learned to pray morning,
noon and night and the school bell was a constant reminder of calling them to
prayer. Although supervised in the dorms and in the fields by Fijian lay teachers
(vukevuke), the children learned to plant their own crops, cook their own meals
and look after one another.
The older children took care of the young ones, showing them how to bath,
dress and comb their hair. Aunt Sarah has poignant memories of Bill, her older
brother, turning up at the convent gates on Christmas Day clutching a tin of
corned beef that he had brought for his two sisters’ Christmas lunch. This he
got from the money he had earned selling his coconuts and vegetables in the
town markets. No food was provided by the mission and the children’s
garden-grown meals were the same each day—boiled tavioka and bele. Whenever
he could, Bill would go spear fishing, returning with his catch to throw on the
fire and share with his friends. Apart from that, life’s luxuries were paw-paws,
bananas and mangos grown in the school gardens. ‘We were vegetarian’, Bill
said.
Yet Bill often spied sumptuous meals on the tables of the missionaries who
kept cows and chickens and made their own milk, butter and cheese. ‘You could
smell those bacon and eggs coming from the refectory’, he would say. They even
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had cornflakes, porridge,4 and roast meat on Sundays. Since no letters or money
came from their father, some of the European nuns took pity on the three Bruce
orphans and sewed them clothing made from scraps of material. Bill remembered
his round-necked tapestry ‘blouse’ and his blue baggy shorts made from old
convent curtains. When the homesick Bruce children inquired after their parents
and the possibility of going home, they were told by the nuns that their parents
were dead and that the mission was now their home. The hardest times were
during school holidays when the mission would close and the other children
would go home for their holidays. Only the Bruce orphans remained behind at
the mission.
Bill did not consider himself a promising pupil. He was unable to understand
the lessons in the classroom and he found school life confusing and irrelevant.
It is now a family legend that one night he prayed to God to make him understand
what was going on. God heard his prayer. Suddenly he began to read, write,
and add up numbers. His mind opened up to his studies and he began to shine
in the classroom and on the track field. Every night he prayed and began to find
great comfort in God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. This man called
Jesus, the apostles, and all the saints that the brothers and nuns had been
teaching him about became his new family. As an orphan with now a keen
interest in his school work, Bill gained access to the brothers who gave him the
special attention he needed to succeed. The brothers responded to his missionary
values and it also helped that he had a religious air about him and a maturity
beyond his years. Bill’s prowess as an athlete and track star in the 880-yard run
led him to become a national champion who ran from the mid-1930s and in the
war years. He retired unbeaten after the war. Unfortunately we will never know
how fast he ran because in his day races were not timed in Fiji. Bill’s identity
had now shifted from a ‘native-half-caste’ to a ‘de-tribalised’ ‘Part-European’.
He became somewhat like the ‘marginal man’ of social theory straddling two
cultures but alienated from both. His journey into a shifting and changing
colonial identity had begun.
Bill became Fiji’s youngest qualified school teacher at the age of 17. The
Marists encouraged him to join the brotherhood and train in New Zealand, but
a teaching career in Fiji appealed more. He taught at a number of Catholic missions
across Fiji, learning all the regional dialects in the course of his work.5 At the
outbreak of World War II, and like many of his Fijian compatriots, he enlisted
in the Fijian army to fight the Japanese in the Pacific War. He joined the 1st
Battalion attached to the New Zealand contingent that fought with the Americans
in Guadalcanal and Bougainville during 1943-1945. Enlisting in the army proved
an interesting exercise with regard to Bill’s identity.
At first, recruiters processed him as a Fijian, issuing him with his uniform
and allocating him to his barracks where he was delighted to join many of his
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A Tartan Clan in Fiji
old schoolmates and former pupils, some of them the sons of Fijian chiefs. But
after a couple of days he was moved to the European barracks after a recruiter
who knew his father pointed out that Bill was in fact ‘Part-European’, not Fijian.
Such was the colonial attitude that rendered the mixed-race identity fluid while
the war also enabled Part-Europeans to become token whites, regardless of skin
colour. On 13 April, 1943, the 1st
Battalion and the 1st
Commando marched
through the streets of Suva among sobbing crowds of relatives and friends.
Among them was Don Bruce, the old planter, who had journeyed all the way
from the islands to be there. That was the first time Bill had laid eyes on his
teary-eyed father since he was taken away from his island paradise as boy. The
two men managed a brief embrace before Bill boarded the USS President Hayes
to join in one of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific conflict, Guadalcanal.
On his first rest and recuperation leave in 1945 Bill met Andie, my mother,
in Lautoka, Fiji, where they were introduced by mutual friends. It was the
proverbial love at first sight for the two mulattos who lost no time in getting
married. In his choice of bride it seems Bill was staring at himself in the mirror
as their ethnic and social backgrounds were remarkably similar. Permission to
marry Andie first had to be obtained from the European Marist sisters who were
intimately involved in her upbringing—their ‘little Rose’, as she was often called.
Bill’s wife (my mother), was the daughter of a British district commissioner, Jack
Charles Barley, and a Fijian woman, Nakesa Luisa Naite, from the west coast of
the main island. The wedding-ring Bill bought my mother was earned from the
prize money he had won at a showdown 880-yard race in Lautoka in 1945. Being
already familiar with Andie’s English father and Bill’s reputation as a good
missionary boy and an outstanding local athlete, the Marist nuns gave them
their eternal blessings and sang at their wedding in Lautoka on April 7, 1945.
And so ends this narrative of a changing identity of a colonial Fijian child as
played out in the hybridised life of William Henry de Bruce and his European
and Fijian forebears. The outstanding features of such a narrative are the creative
identities that mixed-bloods were compelled to construct in order to justify their
existence in a race-conscious and artificial milieu. Contemporarily, it provides
food for thought on how an evolving Fiji might manage its multi-ethnic,
interracial population in its coming years when the issue of ‘race’, racial
categorisation and place of belonging will be a far more complex determinant
in the distribution of wealth and resources in Fiji.
ENDNOTES
1 ‘The VKB is a register of names of the members of each mataqali, or land-owning unit, maintained
by the Native Lands Commission (NLC) since 1914. The registry is the product of evidence-taking by
the NLC staff since the early days of colonisation. A person is usually registered in the VKB as a member
of a particular mataqali at birth, by the filing of an application with the NLC. The VKB is highly
confidential, and the names of the members of any mataqali are available only to other members of that
mataqali. The NLC is a government body under the authority of the Great Council of Chiefs’. Annelise
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Telling Pacific Lives
Riles, ‘Part-Europeans and Fijian’, in Brij V. Lal and Tomasi R. Vakatora (eds), Fiji in Transition: research
papers of the Fiji Constitution Review Commission, vol. 1 (Suva 1997), 128, note 15.
2 CO83/215 and C083/214; Arthur Mayhew Report on Education in Fiji (Suva 1937), prepared after a
visit to Fiji in September, 1936. On Christian indoctrination in Fiji, Narayan noted that Fiji was not a
conquered country in the sense of invasion by physical force but that Fijians were a people conquered
at the level of beliefs and values. Jay Narayan, The Political Economy of Fiji (Suva 1986), 81-2.
3 ‘Sola’—Latin, solo, only, alone, possibly orphan…of the ‘Five Solas’ or the ‘Five Onlys’ of Christian
doctrine that teaches (1) Scripture/the Bible ‘alone’ teaches the authoritative word of God, not traditions;
(2) Christ ‘alone’; (3) Grace ‘alone’; (4) Faith ‘alone’; (5) Glory to God ‘only’.
http://www.monerg-ism.com/thethreshold/articles/topic/fivesolas.html
4 This probably explains why porridge and cornflakes were Bill’s cherished foods in his later, more
prosperous years.
5 Bill even spoke the Nadroga lingo that was much like his own Yasawa language, and are two of the
most difficult dialects to master.
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A Tartan Clan in Fiji
Chapter 8
Telling Lives in Tuvalu
Michael Goldsmith
Tuvalu is an independent low-island microstate of 9,500 people in the central
Pacific. It used to be the Ellice Islands component of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands
Colony (GEIC) before separation in 1975 from the Micronesian Gilbertese, or
i-Kiribati. Its inhabitants, who are mainly Polynesian and mainly Protestant, do
not have a long tradition of ‘life writing’ and one could argue that such practices
are inconsistent with Tuvaluan culture. My response to this suggestion is that
the relationship between Tuvaluans and other Polynesians to their life histories
is more complex; but there is a school of thought concerning Pacific conceptions
of personhood that supposedly lends weight to the argument. I will return to
this problem briefly later.
Whether or not the practice of life writing ‘fits’ their culture, a small number
of Pacific Islanders who were either Tuvaluan or had a profound influence on
Tuvaluan history have been the subjects of published biographies or
autobiographies. The following three persons almost certainly comprise the sum
total so far.1 One is the subject of a biography that I co-authored, one wrote his
own autobiography, and the last appeared in that hybrid kind of auto/biography,
a life history dictated by him but written up by his interlocutor.
First in order of appearance was Elekana, the Cook Island London Missionary
Society deacon credited with having introduced Christianity to the archipelago
in 1861. As the survivor of a so-called miraculous drift voyage to Nukulaelae,
Elekana cropped up in many missionary narratives illustrating the workings of
divine providence but also appeared in scientific accounts of voyaging and tales
of seafaring. I became interested in Elekana during the course of my doctoral
research, as his story (or rather stories) seemed to shed light on how Christianity
took root in Tuvalu as the first great institutional transfer of the mid-19th
century
central Pacific. After some preliminary published interpretations,2 the magnum
opus of this research so far has been a book by Doug Munro and me entitled
The Accidental Missionary: tales of Elekana.3 Because so much has been written
already on this historical figure, in this paper I will refer to him less than I do
to the other two.
107
The second subject is Frank Pasefika, a former civil servant in the Gilbert
and Ellice Islands Colony administration, who published a short autobiography
under the aegis of the University of the South Pacific in 1990.4
The last subject is Neli Lifuka, the self-proclaimed leader of Kioa, a Tuvaluan
colony island in Fiji purchased through the good offices of the GEIC
administration after World War II for the use of people from Vaitupu. His story
was compiled by an anthropologist, Klaus-Friedrich Koch, and published as Logs
in the Current of the Sea in 1978.5 This was the result of Koch deciding to switch
from an ethnography of the displaced community of Tuvaluans on Kioa to ‘an
ethnohistorical biography’ of its most charismatic leader. The biographer first
came into contact with his subject on Kioa in July 1968 and returned to record
the story in June 1969. They secluded themselves for a week in a crude shelter
on the other side of the island from the main village and talked, interrupted only
by sleeping, eating and the daily visits of Neli’s son or daughters to bring more
provisions. By the end of that time, Koch had recorded 48 hours worth of
reminiscences (some eight reels of taped conversation). Not all of that material,
by the way, figures in the published version.
The first very obvious pattern of note is that these three subjects are all men
(as are all the subjects of the briefer pieces or passages referred to in footnote
1). Call it a wild hunch, but I don’t think that this particular inclusion/exclusion
is a coincidence. The dominant pattern of personhood in the Pacific reflects the
domination of male persons in the vast majority of societies.
The common gender of their central figures aside, however, the stories do
vary in other respects. The biography of Elekana, The Accidental Missionary,6
was written well after the life it attempted to portray was over. It was also based
exclusively on documentary sources, both primary and secondary (though these
did include the transcript of a face-to-face interview with a knowledgeable elder
conducted by another ethnographer, Niko Besnier, on Nukulaelae). Although
he has been the most recent of the three men to receive extended biographical
treatment, Elekana’s life of course was much the earliest in a chronological sense,
preceding the other two by several decades. Neli Lifuka (b. 1909) and Frank
Pasefika (b. 1914) were more recent historical actors and their lives overlapped
not only with each other’s but also with many people still alive.
They also both participated actively in the recounting of their lives—Frank
by writing it down and Neli by telling it into a tape-recorder. On this score,
nevertheless, any apparent difference from Elekana is somewhat illusory. True,
he never authorised a biography but it’s my guess that he wouldn’t have resisted
one being written and he was happy enough to be turned into a legendary
character in missionary folklore (though less happy to be made an example of
in other respects). He also wrote an extended account of the drift voyage that
established his status as one of God’s chosen.
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Telling Pacific Lives
An important part of the framework for understanding all three is that their
biographies have appeared only in English, not in Tuvaluan. That has a great
deal to do with the exclusions and disciplines of missionisation and colonialism
(and of present-day publishing) but in a complex kind of way.
Elekana almost certainly did not speak, read or write English fluently though
he may have acquired some of the language through contact with the LMS’s
British missionaries. In fact he didn’t even know the language of Tuvalu until
he drifted there and the language he was probably most comfortable with was
Cook Island Maori (both the Manihiki dialect of his home island and the southern
dialect, which had become the official church language of the Cooks group
through the spread of the Church). Residence in Tuvalu—on Nukulaelae after
the drift voyage and later on Nukufetaeu after being stationed there as a native
teacher—probably forced him to acquire oral fluency in the vernacular but at
that time it was not a written language. Rather, Samoan became the LMS central
Pacific language of instruction, of the written scriptures and of preaching.
Consequently, it was Samoan that Elekana would have had to learn when he
went for missionary training at Malua.
After his first sojourn in Tuvalu, Elekana did write a couple of brief accounts
of his exploits but Doug Munro and I were only able to find translated versions
that the LMS had commissioned for the edification of its members, especially
the juvenile ones. The language of the originals was probably Cook Islands Maori
but we just don’t know for sure. Virtually all the material we consulted to write
his story was available only in English. It is also the language that Doug Munro
and I have done most of our publishing in, though he is one of the few Pacific
historians to have had some of his works translated into the vernacular.7
Neli Lifuka and Frank Pasefika both knew English pretty well, partly through
their involvement in the elitist male secondary education system of the British-run
GEIC. Neli, however, left school early after he rebelled against the regime of the
dictatorial headmaster of Elisefou, D.G. Kennedy,8 and seems to have been
mostly self-taught. From internal evidence, I suspect English was the main
language of Neli’s life history interviews but Koch left that point implicit, perhaps
because he thought it was obvious. (He died not long after the book came out
so I’ve never been able to get an absolute confirmation.) Neli himself attributed
his command of English to the help of the fourth engineer of the second ship he
worked on: ‘He gave me newspapers to read and gave me paper and pencil to
practice my writing. When I didn’t know a word, I asked him, and he explained
it to me’.9
Frank lasted longer in the formal education system and states that the choice
of language for his account was deliberate: ‘I have written this story in simple
English because I thought that by the time this story was published everybody
in Tuvalu may be able to read and write in English’.10 He’s probably right
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Telling Lives in Tuvalu
because, at least since independence in 1978, Tuvaluan children have learned
English from an early age. This contrasts with their 19th
century counterparts,
for whom written language consisted mostly of scriptures and religious tracts
in Samoan, which was the first language of most of the native teachers and
missionaries posted to the Ellice Islands until well into the 20th
century. There
were, of course, a few important exceptions like Elekana, whose singularity
confirms the rule because of having to learn Samoan as an adult.
Elekana was different in other respects as well. Like his biographers, his
biography is unreliable at the best of times. That was actually one of our main
interpretive points. But The Accidental Missionary is also radically ‘incomplete’
for a biography. We don’t know exactly when Elekana was born or when he
died; in fact we don’t know much about his early life or his later career at all.
We focused on the years when he was most famous to missionary audiences and
most useful to missionary bodies. This, and the fact that our approach was
deliberately Tuvalu-centric, was not just because of our research blinkers but
also because that was virtually all we could find in the records. As a result,
Elekana’s written life is much more fragmentary and partial than Neli’s and
Frank’s. In our defence, it may be that all such lives are partial from this distance.
The shape of the other two life stories is more conventionally rounded. Neli
begins with his childhood and rather turbulent schooldays at Elisefou onVaitupu,
his early employment on freighters and on phosphate boats at Ocean
Island/Banaba, and his promotion up the ranks to engineer. At other times he
worked on a government boat and a missionary vessel but argued with his
commanding officers over pay and conditions and resigned in each case.
Interestingly, he then found employment blasting reef passages with his old
headmasterly nemesis, Kennedy (who had morphed into a resident District Officer
(DO)). Later he even went back to Vaitupu to work as a caretaker at Kennedy’s
former school. Eventually he returned to Ocean Island to work on the phosphate
boats but gained a foothold in the Colony administration by being appointed as
a hospital dresser and Ellice community liaison person. True to form, he also led
a strike of Ellice Island workers against the British Phosphate Commission.
Kennedy turned up again and, resistant to the idea of a posting to the
Solomons, suggested to Neli that they sail a canoe back to Tuvalu. (Given
Elekana’s prior example, it’s probably fortunate that they didn’t.) The two old
antagonists were now firm friends, according to Neli, and he waxed lyrical over
Kennedy’s contribution to development in Tuvalu.
Frank, meanwhile, endured the school regime more successfully than Neli
but seems to have enjoyed it even less. When Elisefou was shut down on
Kennedy’s appointment as DO in 1931, Frank was one of five boys selected to
go to King George V School at Tarawa in the Gilberts, the headquarters of the
GEIC. There he found life ‘a bit easier and more independent’.11 He joined the
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Telling Pacific Lives
civil service on Funafuti (the headquarters of the Ellice district) as a clerk and
interpreter in 1933. This appointment entailed a wide variety of tasks (which
he recounts in great detail) and also required him to work alongside Kennedy a
lot of the time, which was not to his taste. Though a student and colleague of
Kennedy for 16 years, he always found him ‘difficult to like’.12
For both Neli and Frank, the Pacific War was a pivotal experience. From
1941, Neli was involved on Vaitupu in coast-watching and, later, in choosing
labourers whom he accompanied to work at Funafuti helping to build the
American base there. This became the headquarters for the assault on the
Japanese bastion of Tarawa in November 1943. Neli was astonished by the
number and size of the warships at Funafuti and, in a trope familiar from other
parts of the Pacific, marvelled at the Americans’ material wealth and enjoyed
their egalitarianism.13 ‘We always ate together, we had the same food.’ Unloading
ships ‘was hard work but the Americans looked after us very well. The only
trouble was with the British. They didn’t want the Americans to give us the
wages they wanted to pay. … The Americans were very kind to us. They used
their dive bombers to drop our mail and parcels at Vaitupu and the other Ellice
Islands. … The Americans were really very good to us’. And so on.
In one revealing deviation from the nativist ideologies that the Americans
and their largesse inspired in places like Vanuatu, however, Neli was not
impressed by the presence of black troops: ‘After the Americans had taken
Tarawa, other marines came from the United States. They were all Negroes, only
the captain was a European. … They always said bad things about the [white]
Americans, and that they would get back at them sometime in the future. They
reckoned that they were not treated like the European Americans. I think they
were wrong because they were educated by the Europeans; they didn’t know
anything by themselves. How can I go against a person who teaches me things?
That’s bad. The Negroes were natives just like us, but they always talked
smart’.14 I have had students who, in assuming a retrospective ideological
alliance among all non-white Pacific Islanders, attribute Neli’s views to having
internalised the self-hate of the colonised subject. In my opinion, he was much
more likely to have been reflecting the standard racial hierarchies of the time,
which placed blacks (including Melanesians) lower on the great chain of being
than Polynesians.
For Frank, the war meant that his duties increased and for extended periods
he was often left to operate without the direct supervision of a palagi (white)
official. But, like Neli, what he remembered most vividly was the American
‘invasion’ in September 1942. In fact, he was on board a ship in the massive
convoy from Suva when it anchored in Funafuti lagoon.
After the battle for Tarawa, Frank was put in charge of travelling around the
Colony to repay government officers their salary arrears. This temporary transfer
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Telling Lives in Tuvalu
to the Treasury became permanent and he spent the rest of his career in that
branch of government, mainly at Tarawa, retiring once at the age of 50, then
operating the government hotel on Funafuti for a few years until required for
short-term redeployments back in Treasury and as part of the team for the 1973
Colony census. When those duties came to an end, he settled on Funafuti as head
of a large extended family and worked voluntarily for the Ellice Islands/Tuvalu
Church until he finally retired for health reasons in 1984 at the age of 70.15 Of
the three subjects of this essay, he is the only one I have met personally. That
was in the late 1970s when he was working, as I recall, on the church
newsletter—but I have to confess he didn’t leave a strong impression on me.
Neli was appointed magistrate on his home island of Vaitupu soon after the
war came to an end. Almost inevitably, he alienated many of the elders (for
being too young), the pastor (for questioning his authority and privileges), and
some palagi members of the administration (for not enforcing laws where he felt
no wrong had been committed). But he had enough allies to remain in power
for a while and claims that he restored Vaitupu to its favoured position with the
government.16 His lively period of rule survived numerous complaints and
inquiries until 1951. The final straw was being caught in flagrante delicto with
the pastor’s young wife—in church, no less. There followed successful stints
working for the Colony Cooperative Society and as an officer on one of the
inter-island boats. After five years he even received an invitation to return to
the magistrate’s position on Vaitupu, an offer that he clearly relished being able
to turn down.17 In the end, having been instrumental in the purchase of Kioa
in 1946, he joined the community and quickly became chairman of its council
(thereby annoying yet more people).
Lack of time precludes my continuing a detailed narrative of the lives of Neli
and Frank and I have provided hardly any information on the life of Elekana.
In the rest of this chapter, I wish to use the historical and ethnographic snippets
of information provided so far to address some more general points concerning
the issue I mentioned at the beginning of this paper—the question of whether
or not (auto)biography, in a Western sense, conflicts with Pacific cultural
frameworks.
The question arises because of a theory, popular in some circles, that Pacific
conceptions of personhood are at odds with the standard ‘Western’ model of
atomistic individualism. One variant of this approach postulates an image of
heroic personhood, especially in relation to political leaders such as Polynesian
chiefs; another variant prefers the more egalitarian image of consocial personhood.
On this latter view, Pacific Islanders are generally less interested in ‘inner’
motivations than their ‘Western’ counterparts, their sense of individual agency
is inseparable from wider social or group relationships, and their sense of selfhood
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Telling Pacific Lives
is changeable across different contexts (perhaps even ‘partible’, which I
understand to mean as distributed fractionally across those different contexts).
Consocial personhood has its clearest expression in a collection of
anthropological essays edited by Jocelyn Linnekin and Lin Poyer, Cultural
Identity and Ethnicity in the Pacific.18 But its advocacy is by no means restricted
to anthropologists. Tongan educator Konai Helu Thaman supports the idea of
consocial personhood and has found it persuasive for explaining the importance
of cultural rights—which are collective, she claims, unlike the individual human
rights of Western modernity.19
The concepts of heroic and consocial personhood at first glance seem rather
opposed to each other but they can be seen as mutually reinforcing. Thus the
theory of heroic personhood proposes a view of leaders as emerging integrally
from the group. Canonically, the group is named after its founding individual
whose repeated incarnation through succession means an unbroken sense of the
leader’s self. This endlessly reconstituted chief may be said to represent the
whole group in an almost physical sense. Just as there is no individual without
a group, there can be no chief without a people. Ruminating on Hawai‘ian
mythology, Marshall Sahlins puts it thus: ‘The king assumes, and in his own
person lives, the life of the collectivity’;20 and, the ‘king encompasses the people
in his own person, as projection of his own being’.21
However, if one applies the overall frame of heroic/consocial personhood to
the few contemporary published examples of political biography or memoir in
the Pacific, including those addressed in this paper, the picture becomes murky.
The men I have discussed arguably saw themselves as heroes but in an
individualistic manner quite recognisable to palagi; and their views of personhood
do not strike me as particularly ‘consocial’. I can cite many instances where each
of them (but especially Neli) prided himself on going against the grain, claimed
to be right when everyone else was wrong, and took great satisfaction in being
able to say ‘I told you so’. Consocial? More like anti-social.
In any event, I hope I have presented enough pertinent material on these
three men in this brief account to suggest that they are not obedient and
unthinking bearers of group identity. They strike me all as clear-cut individuals.
Frank Pasefika’s passive-aggressive style contrasts with both the self-belief and
self-righteousness of Elekana and the gleeful nonconformity of Neli Lifuka.
At the same time, not only were they rarely in control of their own destinies,
they could never have been the unalloyed creators of their own subjectivities.
As an aging survivor of the Foucauldian revolution in social thought, I am
continually struck by the relevance of Michel Foucault’s work to the
historiography of the Pacific. The most influential of these ideas stem from his
histories of the rise of modernity in Europe, an era that established new
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Telling Lives in Tuvalu
boundaries between reason and madness22 and concomitant procedures of
exclusion and confinement.23 While Foucault never turned his attention directly
to this region of the world, his writings shed light on the subjugated knowledges
and forms of personhood produced, for example, by the forces of religion and
colonialism—partly, of course, because Europe exported them. I also remain
convinced of the theoretical grasp offered by his analysis of the productivity of
subjectification in relation to how lives may be constructed. While people are
subjects of a kind, the very notion of the bounded autonomous subject is an
effect of power. Narratives that emphasise the free agency of individual lives
are themselves examples of technologies of the self.24
Studies of the Pacific and elsewhere demonstrate the major role played by
literacy in relation to such technologies. For Tuvalu, this topic has been most
intensively studied by Niko Besnier by means of some insightful analyses of
connections between religion, personhood and literacy on Nukulaelae, one of
the more isolated Tuvaluan atolls.25 Besnier’s work represents a major
contribution not only to Tuvaluan ethnography but also to studies of the cultural
shaping of literacy in general. In some ways, however, it seems tangential to the
processes that led to the more individualised life stories that concern me here.
For example, the only kind of literacy practice in his work that has a sense of
‘authority’ similar to the authorship of the accounts I address is the Nukulaelae
tradition of writing down sermons for delivery in church. Such occasions,
underpinned by the putative authority of the scriptures and the word of God,
turn the sermonisers (who are not just pastors but a substantial body of lay
preachers as well) into much more forceful and even authoritarian figures than
the usual codes of interpersonal conduct on the island allow. Besnier convincingly
argues that this culturally sanctioned ‘deviation’, rather than evidence for
transgressive individuality, is actually support for the view that on Nukulaelae,
as elsewhere in the Pacific, notions of personhood are highly
context-dependent.26 I am not persuaded, however, that such an explanation
is pertinent to the idiosyncratic case-studies I have outlined, with their intricate
connections between individual personality and the technology of literacy that
helps to create that sense of individuality in the first place.
There is no time to pursue these points in any detail here but my brief sketch
does suggest that disciplinary regimes, exclusions, prohibitions, displacements
and colonial subjectifications played a major role in shaping these Tuvaluan life
stories and the very possibility of their publication.
Ian Burkitt recently bemoaned the fragmentation of everyday life and its
deleterious effects on the ability of people to shape meaningful life narratives.27
I take a different view. A decade ago, in one of my first attempts at understanding
Elekana, I argued that ‘ethnographic life histories and cross-cultural biographies
actually emanate most richly from marginality’. I went on to say:
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Telling Pacific Lives
Biography as a genre is marked by the traces of people crossing cultural
and physical boundaries, transitions from one state to another (often
literally). … In part this pattern occurs because the crossing of
geopolitical boundaries throws up administrative and bureaucratic
information… by springing the subtle and not-so-subtle tripwires of
governmentality. … Lastly, it may come about because crossing cultural
boundaries makes received assumptions about what constitutes a life
more problematic as well as easier to structure as a sequence.28
Elekana’s famous drift voyage, his involvement in converting a whole culture,
his rise and fall in the missionary pantheon, and his appearances in the margins
of many of the documents recording his restless career; Neli’s constant troubles,
disputes and nomadic escapades; the upheaval of his and Frank’s world by a
war between huge powers that saw Pacific islands serve merely as
stepping-stones, their fears of Japanese bombardment and occupation (albeit a
less terrifying ordeal than life under Kennedy at Elisefou); and their episodic
registration in the bureaucratic affairs of the GEIC—all of these lend support to
a view of biography that, whatever the vernacular cultural plausibility of the
genre, sees dispersal, interruption and exclusion as central to the exercise
involved in telling lives in Tuvalu.
ENDNOTES
1 Others have featured in memoirs (Michael Goldsmith, ‘Alovaka Maui: defender of the faith’, in Doug
Munro and Andrew Thornley (eds), The Covenant Makers: Islander missionaries in the Pacific (Suva
1996)), in briefer pieces on various pastors and traders (Doug Munro, ‘Kirisome and Tema: Samoan
pastors in the Ellice Islands’, in Deryck Scarr (ed.), More Pacific Islands Portraits (Canberra 1978); ‘The
Lagoon Islands: a history of Tuvalu 1820-1908‘, PhD thesis, Macquarie University (Sydney 1982); ‘The
lives and times of resident traders in Tuvalu: an exercise in history from below’, Pacific Studies, 10:2
(1987), 73-106; ‘Samoan pastors in Tuvalu, 1865-1899’, in Munro and Thornley, The Covenant Makers;
‘The humble Ieremia: a Samoman [sc. Samoan] pastor in Tuvalu, 1880-1890 [sc. 1895]’, Pacific Journal
of Theology, Series II, 23: 40-48 (2000) and as bit players in longer works (Munro, ‘The Lagoon Islands’,
Michael Goldsmith, ‘Church and society in Tuvalu’, PhD thesis, University of Illinois (Urbana, IL 1989);
see too Nicholas Thomas and Richard Eves, Bad Colonists: the South Seas letters of Vernon Lee Walker
and Louis Becke (Durham, NC 1999) on Louis Becke’s sojourn in Tuvalu.
2 Michael Goldsmith and Doug Munro, ‘Encountering Elekana encountering Tuvalu’, in Donald H.
Rubinstein (ed.), Pacific History: papers from the 8th Pacific History Association Conference (Mangilao
1992); Michael Goldsmith, ‘Decentering Pacific Biographies’, in Alaima Talu and Max Quanchi (eds),
Messy Entanglements: the papers of the 10th Pacific History Association Conference, Tarawa, Kiribati
(Brisbane 1995).
3 Michael Goldsmith and Doug Munro, The Accidental Missionary (Christchurch 2002).
4 Frank Pasefika, The Autobiography of Frank Pasefika (Suva 1990).
5 Klaus-Friedrich Koch, Logs in the Current of the Sea: Neli Lifuka's story of Kioa and the Vaitupu Colonists
(Canberra 1978), xi; Michael Goldsmith, Review of Klaus-Friedrich Koch, Logs in the Current of the Sea,
Journal of the Polynesian Society, 87:4 (1978), 361-62.
6 Goldsmith and Munro, The Accidental Missionary.
Tito Isala and Doug Munro, Te Aso Fiafia: Te Tala o te Kamupane Vaitupu, 1877-1887 (Suva 1987).
8 Klaus-Friedrich Koch, Logs in the Current of the Sea, 9.
9 Ibid., 12; see too 32.
10 Pasefika, The Autobiography of Frank Pasefika, 7; see also 54.
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Telling Lives in Tuvalu
11 Ibid., 22.
12 Ibid., 21.
13 Klaus-Friedrich Koch, Logs in the Current of the Sea, 28-29.
14 Ibid., 29-30.
15 Pasefika, The Autobiography of Frank Pasefika, 42.
16 Klaus-Friedrich Koch, Logs in the Current of the Sea, 33-44.
17 Ibid.
18 Jocelyn Linnekin, and Lin Poyer (eds), Cultural Identity and Ethnicity in the Pacific (Honolulu 1990).
19 Konai Helu Thaman, ‘Cultural Rights: a personal perspective’, in Margaret Wilson and Paul Hunt
(eds), Culture, Rights, and Cultural Rights: perspectives from the South Pacific (Wellington 2000).
20 Marshall Sahlins, ‘Hierarchy and humanity in Polynesia’, in Antony Hooper and Judith Huntsman
(eds), Transformations of Polynesian Culture (Auckland 1985), 207.
21 Ibid., 214-15.
22 Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: a history of insanity in the age of reason (New York 1965).
23 Michel Foucault, ‘Orders of discourse: inaugural lecture delivered at the Collège de France’, Social
Science Information, 10:2 (1971), 7-30.
24 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 3: The Care of Self (New York 1986).
25 Niko Besnier, ‘Literacy and the notion of person on Nukulaelae Atoll’, American Anthropologist, 93:
2 (1991), 570-87; ‘Christianity, authority, and personhood: sermonic discourse on Nukulaelae Atoll’,
Journal of the Polynesian Society, 103:4 (1994), 339-78; Literacy, Emotion, and Authority: reading and
writing on a Polynesian Atoll (Cambridge 1995).
26 Besnier, ‘Christianity, authority, and personhood’, 368-69; Literacy, Emotion, and Authority, 162-63.
27 Ian Burkitt, ‘Situating auto/biography: biography and narrative in the times and places of everyday
life’, Auto/Biography, 13:2 (2005), 93-110.
28 Goldsmith, ‘Decentering Pacific biographies’, 7-8.
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Chapter 9
My History: My Calling
Alaima Talu
I was born a Protestant on my home island, Nanumea, in Tuvalu, on 7 August
1948. I attended school in Tarawa, Kiribati, from January 1963-1968. On 12
January 1980, I made my final vows as a Catholic Nun in the Congregation of
the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, in the Cathedral, Tarawa, Kiribati.
In taking this step, I had chosen to serve as a Catholic missionary and Kiribati
to be my home.
Mission History
Kiribati and Tuvalu were evangelised by the American Board of Commissioners
for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) and the London Missionary Society (LMS) in the
mid- and late-19th
century. Reverend Hiram Bingham and a handful of Hawaiian
missionaries arrived on Abaiang on 17 November 1857 and from there evangelised
the northern islands as far south as central Kiribati.1 In the 1870s Protestantism
was brought to Tuvalu and the southern islands of Kiribati by the London
Missionary Society through Samoan pastors. Catholicism was brought to Nonouti,
in Kiribati, first by Betero Terawati and Tiroi in 1881. They had gone to work
on the coconut plantations in Tahiti during the labour trade era and had embraced
Catholicism. On returning to their home island of Nonouti in 1881, they sent a
request to Rome for priests. In response, the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart,
priests and brothers arrived in May 1888 and the Daughters of Our Lady of the
Sacred Heart in August 1895.2
Tuvalu and Kiribati became a British Protectorate in 1893. From 1916 until
1975, they formed the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony, when they separated
to prepare for independence.3 The Ellice Islands became independent on 1
October 1978 and took the name Tuvalu which literally means ‘a line of eight’
and the Gilberts changed to Kiribati, the local version of Gilberts, on 12 July
1979.
Tarawa with its good anchorage was the main island in the colony and the
centre of colonial administration and commerce. On each island there was a
Magistrate who presided over both the island and lands courts. He was assisted
by four other men, three Kaubure (Councillors) and a Secretary. All were elected
117
by the people and had to be approved by the Resident Commissioner, with the
help of the District Officers for each section.
Nanumea is the northernmost island in the Tuvalu group and, therefore, the
closest to the southern islands of Kiribati. In the 1960s, the LMS had one
secondary school for boys in the Ellice Islands on the island of Vaitupu. It had
two secondary schools—Rongorongo on Beru in the Southern Kiribati, Morikao
on Abaiang to the north of Tarawa—and a Theological College at Tangintebu
on South Tarawa. The Catholic Church had two secondary schools, St Joseph’s
College, Tabwiroa, Abaiang for boys and Immaculate Heart College, North
Tarawa, for girls. Both churches had been engaged in primary education since
the arrival of their early missionaries. By the 1960s, the LMS in Kiribati handed
over its primary schools to the colonial government. The Catholics continued
with primary education until just prior to independence in 1976. The Seventh
Day Adventist also ran one secondary school, established in 1949, and one
primary school on Kauma, Abemama, in central Kiribati. The colonial government
secondary schools for both boys and girls were located in Bikenibeu in South
Tarawa.
Family Background
The LMS school in Nanumea which I attended was run by a Samoan pastor,
Enoka Alesana and his wife, Usoali‘i. The other teachers were Taulu Teuo, who
had been a leper on Makogai in Fiji, and Tafaoata Pulusi, one of the few who
were educated in Papauta, Samoa, as well as a few young women and men who
had completed their studies under the pastor himself. Classes were from Standards
1-6 and the subjects were: Bible Study, English, Arithmetic, Social Studies and
Hygiene.
My father was the eldest in a family of eight: four boys and four girls. Of the
boys, one died in his teens and the other in an accident in Suva. My mother was
the youngest in a family of four. There were three girls and their only brother
was killed on Banaba during the Japanese occupation. My father was the local
government warden at the time when he sent me to school. He looked after the
government station, prisoners if there were any, and attended the Nanumea
council meetings. He also looked after colonial government guests on the island.
Before this, he had been a policeman and chief of police on Nanumea, after he
and my mother had spent 1949-1956 working on the phosphate mine for the
British Phosphate Company on Banaba.
It is amazing how memory stores so much history. As part of keeping
Nanumea clean, all the pig-sties were located in one area outside the village. It
was here that my father met Viane Tabuanaba, the Kiribati Catholic catechist on
Nanumea. Viane must have spent around 12 years as a catechist on Nanumea
where he learnt the Nanumean dialect. My father also spoke Kiribati from having
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grown up on Nui (one of the islands in Tuvalu where the people speak a mixture
of Tuvaluan and Kiribati dialect) and from his years in Banaba. From Viane my
father learnt that the Australian and Irish Sisters in Kiribati ran schools and took
care of girls in schools. Viane’s eldest daughter was in school in Tarawa.
One day in 1962, after evening prayer and meal, I was preparing for bed. My
father called, ‘Alaima, come here for a minute’. As I sat in front of him, he asked
me, ‘Do you like school?’
I said, ‘Yes, I like school’.
He continued, ‘Would you like to go to school in Tarawa?’
I said, ‘No, I do not want to go to school there’.
My father went on as if he had not heard me, ‘In Catholic schools on Tarawa,
the Sisters look after the girls well. Think about it’.
I repeated, ‘No, I do not want to go to Tarawa’. I thought that was the end
of that and returned to my bed.
I was just settling down to sleep when my mother called me. She was surprised
I could go to sleep without giving my father a positive answer. She told me to
apologise to him. I told her I had nothing to apologise for as I had not done
anything wrong. She said I was disobedient. I got up and went to tell my father
that I was sorry. In my mind I was apologising for disagreeing with him, not for
what I said. I continued to attend the pastor’s school as usual. But to my surprise
he took my apology as a ‘yes, I would go to school in Tarawa’, for one evening
my father took me to have classes with Viane in preparation for the school on
Tarawa. That was a very dark period in my life. I was sad at the idea of leaving
home. Tarawa seemed so far away!
I am the eldest in a family of 11: two girls and nine boys. The boy immediately
after me was born deaf and dumb. He spoke a language of his own, and the third
child died in infancy. He had been adopted by one of my aunts. She took him
from Banaba to Betio where she lived with her Kiribati husband and the fourth
one was too small at the time to go to school. Nine years separated my sister and
me. She was also adopted by another aunt. Today it is still a mystery to me why
my parents sent me to school in Kiribati. At that time, I could not bring myself
to ask them, nor did it occur to me to ask. Perhaps, this is due to the fact that I
was given to my grandparents when I was about 14 months old and returned
to my parents when I was eight. I learned this story in 1994 from my father.
They left me with my grandparents when my parents were employed in the
phosphate mine in Banaba. My mother said, ’Your grandparents wanted us to
leave you behind with them’. That was why I could relate to my grandparents
better. For this reason I could ask my grandparents anything since I grew up
with them. However, it did not stop my feeling of being unloved. I always felt
I was being passed around like a parcel—as if I was an object. This created a
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My History: My Calling
kind of resentment within me. It is a burden I have carried during my religious
life. I generally react strongly to anyone who tries to make decisions for me. It
is also one of the reasons why I have not been open to share the ‘real me’. When
I first wrote my story, I gave it to one of the Sisters to read. At the end of the
first draft she commented: ‘There is no soul in your story’. I was avoiding having
to deal with the hurts I have buried for many years.
My father probably envisaged I might be an asset to the family by earning
an income. Since I was the eldest, I could help with the education of my young
siblings. I can only speculate. I never plucked up enough courage to discuss this
issue with my parents. Thus the insatiable quest for the unknown has remained
in my heart. This has caused me much pain over the years. In retrospect, it shows
how important it is to have good communication skills. This has perhaps been
the most regrettable part of my life since the event has left a deep void within
me. It has worsened over the years because, with my parents’ passing, I cannot
know for certain what was in their hearts for me.
However, those were difficult days for me and only the close members of my
family knew I was being prepared to go to school. I was not even sure if the
pastor knew about it. The pastor knew my grandfather very well. My paternal
grandparents lived on the islet of Lakena. For years my grandfather was the
caretaker for the pastor when he visited the islet for the Sunday services. My
grandfather also beat the lali for Sunday services, as well as for the daily evening
prayers.
My father knew how I loved my grandparents and it seems he exploited this
too. He went to fetch them to live with us. When I appealed to my grandmother
to help me get my father to change his mind about sending me to school in
Tarawa, my grandmother said: ‘It would be alright if we could live together and
die together; but since we’re getting old, we will die soon. We would have to
leave you behind anyway, so it is better for you to go to school’. I knew then
that I was going and there would be no turning back. While these were indeed
visionary words, I did not appreciate it then. For I was only a child and I thought
like a child. Again, communication failed. Nothing was said to comfort me or to
make my journey more bearable and meaningful.
For the purpose of finding meaning in my life, I have chosen to look at this
topic. I read somewhere that life is encyclical and not linear. In order to become
complete or whole, one has to take into account one’s past or learn from one’s
history and experiences. Some have even gone as far as stating that ‘history is
therapeutic’. And it is this that I hope to gain from writing my story. It would
be impossible to do justice to all that could be remembered, so what I have
written is but a slice of that short period of time.
Looking through the list of autobiographies in the library for directions in
writing my own story, I was hesitant. I felt insignificant and feared that my
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story might not be interesting enough. In fact, it was the titles of the books that
determined my choice. I like Sidney Poitier from his films and Mahatma Gandhi
from history. Now having read their stories I found that threads of their
experiences resonate with my own.
In his Memoir (2000), Poitier’s preoccupation was to write about ‘life itself’.4
He had dealt with his Hollywood life in his first book. Now at 70 he had the
compelling desire to put into writing how he had lived all those years. He
explored his childhood memories on Cat Island and the values he had acquired
at that formative period from his family and environment. For instance, failure
in tomato farming caused his family to move from Cat Island in the Bahamas to
the capital city of Nassau. At the age of 15, Poitier again left for Miami, Florida
and then New York to follow his dream. His dream was to get into the film
industry. Again in the evening of life, he wished to take stock by closely
examining how he had fared in living up to the values he had set for himself
especially in the areas of ‘integrity’ and ‘commitment’, ‘faith’ and ‘forgiveness’,
‘simplicity’ and ‘joy’. I can identify with Poitier’s growing up in an island
environment. He left home to follow his dream. I had to leave home to follow
the dream of my parents and in doing so I had unexpectedly found my own. As
he grew he took stock of how he had lived up to his values. Now at this time in
my life I am looking back to assess where I have been and what I have done in
order to deepen my understanding of the call I have received and readily
embraced.
The second autobiography that caught my attention was Gandhi’s.5 He
wanted it to be called The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1927). Since India
was still under the British at the time, Gandhi did his law studies in England
and then worked in South Africa before returning to India. He was encouraged
by his friends to write his story but Gandhi’s primary aim was to tell the story
of his many experiments with truth. From his spiritual path he gained the
strength to carry out his work in the political arena. Like great men and women
in the history of humankind who had lived life to the full through service of
others, Gandhi did not credit these experiments to himself only. For this reason
he hoped that all who read his story would find something useful for their own
life’s journeys.
He echoed St Paul, that great apostle to the Gentiles, in his striving to capture
Christ. All aspects of his life—speech, writing, ‘non-violence’, ‘celibacy’ and
other forms of conduct—were aimed at ‘self-realisation’ or winning salvation.
Gandhi’s deep reverence of God made him realise his own unworthiness. To
Gandhi the chief principle is truth which involves truthfulness in words and
thought. Like Poitier, Gandhi was aware of the vulnerability of the human
condition. Just as Gandhi left India to complete his studies in London, so I went
to study in Kiribati when the Gilbert and Ellice Islands were a British colony
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My History: My Calling
and stayed to work there. Like Gandhi who experimented with truth, so I am
carrying out research, to search for truth, my truth. As Gandhi strove to win
salvation through the practice of non-violence, celibacy and other forms of good
conduct, so I value celibacy and other forms of good conduct because I have
faith in God and I believe there is an after-life.
Beloved Infidel (1959), is the autobiography of Sheila Graham (Lily Sheil),6
who came from the slums of East London. Raised in an orphanage, at 14 she had
to go home to care for her mother who was suffering from cancer. Lily had an
ambition to be wealthy and well connected. To every man who showed interest
in her she told a made-up story about her family background. She could not
retract the family she had made up for herself, even the phony photos on the
wall. She married a man 20 years older than herself and enlisted as a show girl.
Young and beautiful, she was pursued by many men from high society. The
couple’s financial difficulties led to Lily’s departure for Hollywood to try her
luck as a newspaper writer. There she met F. Scott Fitzgerald whom she grew
to love deeply. He became the only one who knew about her and her pretences.
They were not able to marry since Fitzgerald’s ‘wife was in an institution and
[he had] a daughter who still needed him’. Among the many things Lily learnt
from Fitzgerald was ‘an appreciation of literature’. It was he who encouraged
her to write her own story and after his death she did.
Lily was so grief-stricken after Fitzgerald’s sudden death that she returned
to England. At the time she co-authored her own autobiography with George
Frank, she was married with two grown-up children. Her fear of public opinion
had prevented her from writing her story earlier; and then there had been her
children to consider. Gradually as her children grew up, she found the courage
to tell them the truth about her background. Fitzgerald’s struggle with his dark
side, his drinking, which he conquered towards the end of his life, gave Lily
the courage to write her story. I can say I share Lily’s fear of public opinion. In
this seemingly promiscuous character, Lily, with her outrageous lies about her
background, feared being found out. I feared sharing my desire to become a
Catholic and further a nun because of my Protestant background. I feared my
parents and public opinion because in those days there was much bigotry among
the members of these two churches.
The Autobiography of Mother Jones (1980) is the story of a brave and
courageous woman of action, fired with zeal to champion the cause of miners.7
Mary Harris Jones was of Irish origin and a teacher and dressmaker by trade.
She lost her husband and son in the yellow fever plague of 1867 in New York.
Her memoires tell of her trade union activities. She lived in Chicago but her
work took her all round the United States and West Indies. She supported various
efforts to build labour solidarity among railroad workers and miners. She worked
for the abolition of child labour, especially for miners’ daughters who were
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employed in the mill for 10 hours every day. She gave talks and supported
miners’ strikes for better wages and to cut down daily working hours to eight.
She wrote her story at the request of friends when she was a very old woman.
These same friends who knew her from her work helped put the events in
chronological order. But her personal story was very much bound up with the
national history of trade unions in the United States from 1868-1924. She made
history and her story is an inspiration. I admire this brave woman. I found in
her story a woman who was totally selfless. I share in the element of being for
others through a particular and unique way of life, the religious life. Through
my vow of chastity I have given up the power of having a family of my own so
that I may be totally available for the mission of the Congregation within the
Catholic Church; through Obedience the power to direct my own life, and
through Poverty I own nothing and have to ask for what I need.
Kanaka Boy (1985) is an autobiography by Sir Frederick Osefilo, published
by the Institute of Pacific Studies, Suva, and the University of the South Pacific
Centre, Honiara, the Solomon Islands.8 Beginning with the author’s childhood,
the story moved from school, to World War II in the Solomons, his work in the
colonial service and Independence, ending with his discovery of faith. I enjoyed
reading about Osefilo’s culture, which was very different from my own.
I found it fascinating to see how these five people in their autobiographies
were so engrossed with life. Their stories made me question myself. Did I make
conscious choices in my life or did I just float with the tide? I like the way Sidney
Poitier reflected on his life as a little boy on Cat Island; he had all the time in the
world to explore, to think his own thoughts and to observe his family, the people
around him and his environment. To him this was the very ‘first part of his
education’. Here on Cat Island and Nassau where he learned his values, the very
values that steadied his course in the excitement and storms of life and against
the adverse racial winds of the United States. Even in religious life, one cannot
escape racial discrimination. Living very closely together sometimes the very
diversity of backgrounds can become a huge cross. I share these authors’ search
for truth. I admire their humility and courage in facing their truth.
While Poitier, Gandhi and Osefilo were decisive from the outset, Lily was
fearful at first. Being able to share her truth with Fitzgerald liberated her from
her fears of being found out. On the other hand Fitzgerald, though he was well
known and had no reason to hide his family background, had a dark side that
not everyone knew. This was his drinking—his ‘demon’. From this Lily learnt
that her pretences, her made-up family background and false family photos were
her ‘demons’. Just as Fitzgerald conquered his drinking for her friendship, so
did she write her story for him. By contrast we have in Mother Jones, who
reached 100, someone who always lived her truth in fighting the cause of the
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My History: My Calling
downtrodden. She was the picture of total availability and selflessness in the
service of others.
In writing my story, I speculated a great deal on why my parents and
grandparents sent me to school. For me this question is basic. I can remember
thinking that my grandparents could get me out of it, but that did not happen.
It seemed to me I was being ‘ganged-up’ against. Today, in retrospect, I can say
that they must have wanted me to make a ‘better life’, one that would be different
from their own. Having come from a Protestant island where church services
and prayer times were regulated and very much part of the fabric of daily
existence, I chose another religious life when the time came for me to decide.
1963-1968 Te Po o Tefolaha — Departure Day!
I left Nanumea on 8 January 1963, Te Po o Tefolaha (the day of Tefolaha). Tefolaha
was the ancestor the Nanumeans regarded as the founder of the island. This
great Tongan warrior drove out two women, Pai and Vau, who were the first
settlers on Nanumea. Tefolaha is believed to have left behind three sons to whom
all the inhabitants of Nanumea trace their descent. The church term for Te Po
oTefolaha is Asopati. This day is commemorated every year because it was the
day Nanumea embraced Christianity brought by the London Missionary Society
through the Samoan pastors. It is celebrated on 7-8 January. In significance it
equals Christmas Day and New Year. The people assemble in the ahiga (public
hall), feasting and having games and, in the evening, dancing and contributing
money throughout the night. The church welcomes those who wish to receive
the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ in a special service held every month after
the usual Sunday service. Looking back I cannot remember what happened on
these big days of that last year of 1962. I remember deciding to dance (local
dancing) the night out; it is the decision that I can remember, but whether I
actually did dance or not, I cannot. Towards the morning, I remember going
home to sleep hoping to miss the Santa Teresa, the Catholic Mission ship, from
the Gilberts. Our house was full, there were people coming and going all the
time. I was woken to get ready for the ship. Departure time had come and I was
too sad even to think. How I wished I did not have to leave behind those I loved.
Since it was my first time to leave home, I was heartbroken; and going to Kiribati
was like going to the end of the earth! I was crying, my mother was crying and
my grandmother was crying. Though there were others there, I do not remember
the faces even of those who kissed me goodbye. My father took me to the ship
on his canoe with three other men. I did not shed a tear when I said goodbye to
my father. I held him responsible for my going away so I had no tear for him.
He had explained that no one would accompany me to Tarawa because Viane
had arranged that his two brothers on the ship, one the captain, the other a crew
member, would look after his three children—his eldest daughter Taeaniti,
Ioane, Teresa—and myself.
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The Trip to Tarawa
The trip to Tarawa took a whole week. We arrived on Beru on our third day at
sea. I was as sick as a dog. I vomited all the way there. We went ashore and were
welcomed by a number of families. I took for granted that they were Viane’s
relatives because Beru was his home island. We were back on the boat before
dark and arrived at Tabiteuea where the ship stayed for two days. We were
taken to Buota village by a woman whose husband was away in Nauru. On
Tabiteuea, I noticed that young girls of my age were going round with grass
skirts only. Our caretaker wore the same grass skirt and tibuta every day. Because
there were four of us the woman came with us to sleep in the maneaba. It seemed
other people sleeping there all the time. We used mosquito nets because the
mosquitoes were bad. The woman was very kind: she made us new clothes. I
realised then that people were wearing grass skirts not because of lack of clothing
or money, but because that was the ordinary daily wear.
Before boarding the ship Ioane, Viane’s son, and I were standing outside the
church in Tanaeang, the Catholic centre on Tabiteuea North. He was trying to
show me the church. It was made of thick cement walls with its white paint
wearing off. While looking at the sanctuary, a Sister entered and she seemed to
be fixing something around the altar and then disappeared to the back. Ioane
said, ‘See that’s what the Sisters do. They pray every day and look after the
church’. I did not have anything to say.
Nonouti was our next stop. Here the Sisters were on the beach to meet the
new arrivals. Taeaniti could not make me approach the Sisters to say hello. I
walked in the other direction. They were dressed in white long dresses that
reached to their ankles, with long sleeves, and veils which seemed like hats
showing only their eyes to their chins. Their ears were well hidden away. Here,
too, in Nonouti I attended my first Mass. The Sisters ran a primary school in the
Catholic station and had girl boarders with them. These girls took good care of
us. We only spent a day here. By evening we were back on the ship and left for
Abemama. We went ashore at Manoku only for the day. It was a relief to be able
to go ashore because I was so sick on the ship. Though the ship spent the night
in Abemama, the four of us had to return to the ship for the night by order of
the Captain. The last stop was Kuria. Viane had another brother living there
with his family. They were very kind to us. We finally reached Tarawa on 16
January. We stayed in the Captain’s home in Teaoraereke, the headquarters of
the Catholic Mission.
First School
When school started, I went in as a boarder and was put in Standard 4. There
were quite a number of Sisters in Teaoraereke, but Sister Ursula Begley, Irish,
and Sister Callistus Flynn, an Australian, were the only two involved with the
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school. Boarders came from other villages on Tarawa and from the outer islands.
The day students were from Teaoraereke village. Classes were Standards 1-4 and
three classes in the Infants’ Section. In Standard 4 the girls sat the entrance
exams at the end of the year to Immaculate Heart College, Taborio, and the boys
to St Joseph’s College, Tabwiroa, Abaiang and the government secondary schools:
Elaine Bernacchi School for girls and King George V for boys, both in Bikenibeu.
I found the girls very kind, and we communicated in English as I could not
speak a word of Kiribati. The radio had just arrived and every Sunday afternoon
Sister Callistus sent for me to listen to the news in the Ellice language. I would
be the only one in the parlour because the other three Ellice Island girls could
speak Kiribati and they joined the others for the news in the Gilbertese language.
One day we were called to see the first bus on Tarawa. The causeway between
Nanikai and Teaoraereke had just been completed and the bus was on its first
trip up to Bikenibeu. It was a big truck that had been furnished with long seats
painted white, and had support posts along the sides to hold up the top as shelter
from the sun and rain. I was still in Teaoraereke when I received my first letter
from my parents. I took my letter and went off on my own to sit under the trees.
To this day I do not remember what I read in that letter, but I was crying my
eyes out. The Sisters came to hear of it and sent for me.
‘Did you receive any bad news?’ Sister asked.
I replied, ‘No Sister’.
Sitting down with me she said, ‘If there is no bad news, why so much tears?’
I said, ‘I am just sad and very homesick, Sister. This is my first letter from
my parents’. She spent some time talking to me and then called one of the big
girls and sent me off with her.
The Nuns and Te Buaka
Because Teaoraereke was the headquarters of the Catholic Mission, there were
many comings and goings during that first term. Sisters and priests from the
outer islands came in on business and then disappeared back to their stations.
Sister Ursula had to leave to take up responsibilities of the school in Marakei
because Sister Dennis O’Shea was going on leave and Sister Ursula was replaced
by Sister John Bosco Donnelly from Immaculate Heart, Taborio. One day Sister
Oliva Glynn visited from Taborio. The girls were all calling her ‘Mother’. To me
she looked ancient and forbidding. When I finally got close enough to hear her
talk she talked in a quiet way and did not waste words but she had the most
beautiful smile. What I remember most about my term in Teaoraereke was the
salt fish I had to eat, the long singing practice and the kind Sisters and girls.
Every Saturday we went to the movie in the school field.
‘What is the movie tonight?’ I asked my friends.
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They answered in the Kiribati language, te buaka.
I was thrilled because te puaka in my language is a pig. I went off to the movie
eager to see a pig or pigs. Sitting there with my eyes glued on the screen I saw
people being shot dead or people shooting at each other and killing going on
non-stop. I closed my eyes because I could not stomach watching people being
killed in the film. Crossly, I asked my friends, ‘Where is te puaka?
They said, ‘Open your eyes and see—what is going on’.
So it dawned on me then that te buaka meant war. During Holy Week Sister
Christine Clark took me shopping with her since I was a non-Catholic and Holy
Thursday and Good Friday did not mean much to me. We travelled on the
Mission launch from Teaoraereke to Betio. I found Betio hot and we had to walk
from place to place as there were hardly any cars. After Easter I was told to get
my things ready to leave for Taborio. The Sisters said to me, ‘Taborio is better
for you. There are more Ellice girls there and the girls speak English in school.
You do not need to learn Kiribati’.
I travelled with Sister John Bosco who was going back to Taborio for a week’s
holiday.
Immaculate Heart College, Taborio
That was where I was going when I left home. Taborio is situated on three and
a half hectares of land surrounded by sea on all sides or reef-mud at low tide
except where it is joined onto Nootoue village on its southern end. It was a girls’
school of just over a hundred boarders, and conducted by the Sisters of the
Congregation of the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. There was
nothing spectacular about the place except for its timetable. Girls spoke English
at all times except for one hour after afternoon work. When I arrived in Taborio
there were Forms 1-4 but in the following year Form 4 was phased out and the
Colonial Form 3 examination was introduced. This examination was taken by
Form 3 in the five secondary schools in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.
The subjects included: English, Arithmetic, History, Geography and Health
Science. The girls also learnt needlework, typing, singing, music (musical
instruments, recorders, mouth organ and others). A primary section was attached
to the school with just three Classes 2, 3 and 4 for limited numbers only. The
primary section was phased out in 1965, the year I left. Drama and
figure-marching were very much part of Taborio in those days: drama for the
College’s prize-giving at the end of the year and figure-marching for its annual
sports day in early August. Extracurricular activities in a school depended on
the talents and generosity of staff. There were only four Sisters, and didn’t they
work hard!
The girls in Taborio came from all over the Colony, the majority from the
Catholic islands of Butaritari, Abaiang, Tabiteuea and Tarawa. The Ellice girls
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were mostly daughters of government workers from South Tarawa or those
whose parents were working on the phosphate mines on Ocean Island and Nauru.
The day began with a ‘call’, a prayer and then Mass. Charges were followed
by breakfast and then school. After lunch, there was a break of an hour and
then study and the afternoon lesson. There was work followed by drama and
music. After charges were the evening meal, prayer, study and bed. The lights
went out at 9.30. The weekend programme was slightly different. Saturday
morning was general cleaning, and the midday meal was held outside in the
open as the dining room was still wet after the scrub. There was personal washing
and sports. The school’s four teams competed against each other: Fatima, Lourdes,
Carmel and Issoudun. The games were basketball, volleyball, tennis, other ball
games, and races. The afternoon charges were usually weeding and watering
the gardens, serving the meals, and getting firewood from the bush. After the
evening meal were prayers and the movie. The movie was the highlight of the
week. For this reason the girls tried to speak English because one would get bad
marks for speaking Kiribati. With more than three bad marks one would stay
in the classroom to do homework while the rest enjoyed the movie. The Sunday
programme was more relaxed. After Mass at nine in the morning was singing
with Father Hirsch, a French MSC, the parish priest for North Tarawa and the
College, who taught us hymns. After lunch there were sports for those interested,
reading for the bookworms and letter-writing to parents and penfriends.
Conversion—First Signs
In the school there was what we called an ‘Honour Roll’. Each girl received ten
points every week. Marks were deducted for not speaking English, arriving late
for or disturbing study. Good marks were awarded for extra efforts at speaking
English, being helpful and generous around the place. This was done every
Friday evening at a meeting with the principal. The girl with the highest points
on the Honour Roll was crowned Our Lady at her feast on 31 May. She received
the prize for conduct at the end of the year. Also every year, a visiting priest
gave us a weekend retreat.
The Sisters usually put out many religious books for us to read during the
retreat. For the first time I encountered the riches of the Catholic Church in the
lives of these young girl martyrs. I enjoyed reading their lives, especially that
of St Barbara, whose father secluded her in a tower. Barbara studied and prayed
and was rewarded with the gift of faith. Secretly she received baptism from a
Catholic priest. When her father learnt of it he was indignant and had her handed
over to the magistrate for torture and execution.9 St Cecilia had consecrated her
life to God before she was given to Valerian in marriage. Through prayers she
won her husband over to God; and because of this she was thrown into a fire
that did not burn her and in the end her head was cut off.10 St Agnes refused
an offer of marriage and was subjected to ill-treatment until she was put to the
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sword.11 St Philomena, because of a vow she had made to belong to God alone
refused the marriage proposal of a prince from another area in Italy. Her father
disowned her and she was tortured to death.12 These are but a few of the many
martyrs whose lives I read. I admired their courage, their love of God and the
manifestation of their faith. It was from these courageous young women that I
received the inspiration to go against my parents in my ‘fight’ to become a
Catholic. It was at this time, too, that I began to think about religious life. I was
not yet a Catholic and I also knew the problems I would have to face. In one of
his talks during the retreat, Father Rinn, MSC, was trying to explain the parable
of the wedding feast where the bridegroom found one of his guests not dressed
in a wedding garment.13 Father kept repeating, ‘No one can do it for you; you
have to do it yourself’. The message for me then was the way to heaven is not
automatic. I had to respond to God’s grace in working out my own salvation.
The life of the ‘Little Flower’, St Therese of Lisieux truly inspired me to give
my life to God.14 That was when I heard the call to religious life, but because
I was not a Catholic I felt silly in sharing this with anybody. Also I feared my
parents. St Therese’s little way of doing everything, small things for love of
God, touched me deeply. This was something I could do, so I thought to myself.
My mother’s words rang in my ears: ‘You are going to school and not to become
a Catholic’. During religion class, Sister was reading to us a passage from the
Gospel: ‘… what would profit a man if he gains the whole world and suffers the
loss of his soul?’15 This further confirmed for me that I had to follow my call.
In trying to help me decide about a career, this Sister advised me that I would
go further and obtain a higher salary if I worked for the government. After
hearing that passage from the Gospel, I could not. I had already decided in my
heart to stay in the Catholic Church. I had good friends in school who taught
me to say certain prayers besides praying with me. I found the principal very
approachable, firm but caring and interested in every student. She was an
excellent teacher.
Changes in the Church
The 1960s saw a number of changes in the Catholic Church in Kiribati. When I
first arrived, the Mass was still said in Latin. With the death of Pope John XXIII
and his successor, Paul VI, there followed a number of visible changes. The Mass
was translated into English and the Kiribati languages and the priests started to
say it in the vernacular. The Sisters’ habits also became simplified. We began
to learn the hymns normally sung in Latin in the vernacular. This was Father
Hirsch’s domain. He was very musical and fluent in the Kiribati language. He
was a kindly person who was patient with us during choir practice.
I settled down in Taborio and began to enjoy school life. In August 1963 my
father signed up for indenture on the phosphate mine on Nauru. In the few talks
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we had before I left, my father had said, ‘Alaima, when you have gone to school
in Tarawa, I shall leave this job in the same year for Nauru. What I earn here is
just enough for us here; but not enough for you in school and us here as well’.
My father kept his word and I was not in any kind of need in school. I did very
well in school and chose not to continue to do Forms 4 and 5 at the government
secondary school in Bikenibeu. Instead, I went to the Tarawa Teachers’ College
(TTC). When I was accepted, I had to make up my mind whether I would teach
for the Catholic Mission or for the government. I decided to teach for the Catholic
Mission.
Tarawa Teachers’ College
I found the Teachers’ College challenging in many ways. Our group was made
up of students from Taborio, Tabwiroa, King George V and Elaine Bernacchi
and Hiram Bingham, Rongorongo, Beru. Since we were admitted from Form 3,
ours was a three-year course. Those students who were admitted from Form 5
and those who had been abroad on scholarships in New Zealand or Australia
followed a two year course and therefore joined whatever group was in their
second year at the time of their entrance. We entered in 1966, the year after the
main building was completed and opened. Members of staff were mostly English
and two locals for the vernacular, the Kiribati and Tuvalu languages. In all, there
were 60 students: 30 boys and 30 girls. In TTC I kept company with the Taborio
girls and continued to attend Mass and religious instruction for Catholic students.
Gradually I began to enjoy life and made new friends. I still wanted to become
a religious.
In the Christmas holidays of 1966, the Santa Teresa went to Nauru, and
Takenrerei Taukoriri, Bwebwenteiti Tebwebwe, Ioanna Ben Kum Kee and I took
the trip to visit our parents who worked there. The trip to Banaba took three
days and we stopped there for several days before setting off for Nauru. Banaba
and Nauru are raised coral islands, and from the ship it appeared we were looking
up at them. On Banaba we met some ex-Taborio students who were working as
typists for the British Phosphate Company, and as nurses in the hospital. We
were also able to catch up with our relations from our home islands. We stayed
for Christmas and the New Year in Nauru.
In my second year in TTC, Sister Berness Claxton joined the staff. Her fields
were maths and education. We met over a boyfriend I had whom she thought
was too old for me and too much of a playboy. She even told him to leave me
alone. She became someone I could trust. She was the very first person with
whom I shared my desire to be a religious. She listened attentively and offered
encouragement every now and then but did not push me. From then on, we
began a friendship that lasted till her death in 1990. In my last year at TTC, Air
Nauru began flights to Tarawa. My parents invited me over for the Christmas
holidays. I was apprehensive about going because I was finishing from TTC and
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my parents could keep me in Nauru. Sister Berness advised me to go and see my
parents and I must trust God to get me out of Nauru. Consoled by such words,
I had my first trip by plane at the end of 1968 after graduation from the Tarawa
Teachers’ College.
Just as I had feared, my parents wished me to stay and work in Nauru. They
had already approached the principal of the location school for a teaching position
for me, but my father’s boss had advised him not to keep me in Nauru but to
let me return to work in Kiribati. My father wanted me to go and see his boss,
an Australian, to ask him to let me stay. I told my father that I could not do it.
One day my father asked me who was writing to me from Australia and Hong
Kong. My little brothers just loved going through my things, my bag and my
suitcase and they had shown him my letters. Because the letters were in English
he could not really understand the content. I told my father who my
correspondent was. He was from Nanumea but at that time was studying abroad.
My father expressed his displeasure at the thought of having him as my future
husband. He had nothing against him as a person but he preferred I did not
marry into that family. To me he was a good friend but there was nothing serious.
Then he said, ‘You do not have to get married if you do not want to’. I was
surprised to hear that from him.
On New Year’s celebration some cousins of my father were at our house. In
front of my parents one of them said to me: ‘You can stay in Kiribati to work for
as long as you wish. When you have had enough you come home to Nanumea.
We shall choose a husband for you. We will make sure that you settle down
well into your new home. If not, we shall take you back’. This I found disturbing
for I was not ready to have anyone choose a husband for me but I also knew
they could. This confirmed for me that it would be better to become a nun.
When they had gone and my parents said no more about the matter, I assumed
they agreed with them. One evening the Kiribati catechist on Nauru saw my
name in the Catholic Itoi ni Kiribati (Catholic quarterly newsletter) among the
Catholic teachers for the New Year 1969. In joy he poured out his heart to my
father saying how happy he was that I was going to teach for the Catholic Mission
even though I was not yet a Catholic. My father listened but was shocked as he
was not aware of this. At home he quietly told me to change from the Catholic
Mission to the government school. On this note I returned to Tarawa. It was not
a pretty scene. In their displeasure my father cried and my mother was furious.
Back in Kiribati, I went to see the Chief Education Officer, Mr Urqhart. I
thought he could make the change for me so I would not have to bother the
Catholic Education Office. He was the principal of TTC in my first year and he
used to give us oral English lessons. In fact he was not pleased with my visit
nor the subject I discussed with him. He told me so. I sought the Catholic Director
of Education, Sister Mary John Bosco Donnelly and Sister Berness. After much
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discussion Sister John Bosco and I went to see Bishop Peter Guichet, MSC. Sister
tried to explain my problem with my parents to the Bishop. After listening to
Sister, the Bishop simply asked me, ‘Do you want to teach for the Mission or for
the government?’ I replied from my heart, ‘For the Mission’. That was the end
of our interview. He turned to Sister and stated: ‘She stays in the Mission’.
1969-1972—First Teaching Experience
My first teaching post was Immaculate Heart, Taborio! I was thrilled even though
my training was for the primary level. Among the Sisters, four were for the
College and the fifth one was for St Dominic’s primary school in the village. The
principal, Sister Veronica Hollis, taught me in my last year as well as the principal
when I was in school. Among the other three Sisters was Sister Mary Gormley
who had also taught me. I really enjoyed my three years in Taborio. I enjoyed
working with the Sisters as well as the students. In mid 1971 we said goodbye
to Sister Veronica and Sister Nora Hanrahan who had won scholarships to study
in Nova Scotia. Also at this time we had the sad tragic loss at sea of Sister John
Bosco Donnelly and Sister Rita Mary Skinner and the boatmen who were
travelling with them.
Conversion to the Catholic Church
In 1970 I asked to be admitted into the Catholic Church. The present Bishop,
Paul Mea, MSC, was the parish priest of North Tarawa. He gave me catechism
lessons to prepare me for admission into the Catholic Church. That memorable
day fell on 22 October 1970 and I was confirmed on the Sunday of that same
week. I did not ask my parents but informed them when they again invited me
to go over to Nauru for the Christmas holidays. I must have shocked them
tremendously because they stopped writing. The following year brought me a
letter from my mother. She just wanted me to know she was very disappointed
and displeased with what I had done. I wrote back apologising and then told
them that what I was doing was not a bad thing and would they please trust
me.
Why I Became a Catholic
As a young girl far from home, far from parental guidance, I found the Sisters’
teaching substantial, genuine and meaningful. They did not only teach in the
classroom but they were personally involved with us outside class. I felt they
were interested in my life and nurtured me as best they could. For instance,
they made me listen to the radio in my language. When they discovered I felt
isolated they sent me to Taborio where there were other Ellice Island girls. All
these efforts gave me a sense of belonging and identity. There was a strong
tendency within me to identify with what I was learning since the desire for
identity and a sense of belonging is strong at that age. I found this identity in
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the Sisters and in the lives of those early martyrs I read about during my school
days. They say that ‘God can write on crooked lines’. It certainly was true in
my case. Amidst all my adversities, loneliness and emptiness and the longing to
be loved by my parents, somehow I sensed that God was watching over me and
drawing me to a call I wanted to embrace. The call had a dual dimension. It was
primarily the call to embrace the Catholic faith, and secondly the call to the
religious life. These two calls were no small challenge particularly for one with
a Protestant background like myself. It meant going against my parents. This
brought a lot of unhappiness to me because I knew that my parents strongly
disapproved of my ‘conversion’. However, like the simple girl that I was with
a simple faith, I plucked up courage and took the necessary steps for my own
inner peace of mind and heart. I felt my call was a very personal response to
God’s personal love for me and my desire to follow a way of life that would
enable me to serve others, fulfill my aspirations, and enrich my purpose in this
life.
The following year I asked to become a nun, a Carmelite. Sister Oliva Glynn
kindly informed me that if I wanted to become a Carmelite I should go to Samoa
instead of Papua New Guinea. One of the Kiribati Sisters of the local Order, the
Sisters of St Teresa, had gone to Papua and New Guinea to join the Carmelites
there. She had returned and rejoined the Sisters of St Teresa. Samoa would be
better for me. To me at that time Samoa was too far away and I could not imagine
it. Then she said, ‘Why don’t you join us?’ I said, ‘Oh, no. You work too hard’.
She laughed and said, ‘But you are doing it’. I did not take long to think about
it because in that same year I wrote to Sister Marie Timbs, who was in charge
of aspirants in Sydney, to be admitted into the Novitiate. There were two of us,
Witake Tawita and myself. We left for Sydney on Easter Monday of 1972.
The Novitiate: 1972-1975
Five of us entered on that same date. Anne Ihlein, Anne Searson and Catherine
Howard were Australians, Witake Tawita and myself from Kiribati and Tuvalu.
After the feast of the Sacred Heart in June 1972, we were joined by an American
girl, Dale Maxwell. All of us had been teaching with the exception of Cathy
Howard who had come straight from Year 12. Five Sisters made up the Novitiate
staff—the Novice mistress, her assistant, the Music and Sewing mistress, the
Sister in the kitchen and the Sister who gave us Theology. There are two parts
in the Novitiate, the first one is the postulancy where we were gradually
introduced into religious life. We learnt about the Order, its spirit, charism,
prayer and lectio-divina and mission. Work consisted of cleaning, laundry,
gardening and cooking. Once a week we went to Mater Dei in North Sydney to
attend talks on Scriptures, Prayer and the Vows with Postulants and Novices
from other Congregations. The Novitiate also invited speakers from other
Congregations to give talks especially on Scripture, Theology and Church history.
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Since we were to make our vows to live religious life according to the
Constitutions of the Order, we had to learn the Constitutions by heart. That was
a time of learning about the Congregation and discerning if religious life was for
me. On the other hand, the Congregation tested and discerned if I was suitable
for religious life.
After six months in the postulancy we were accepted into the Novitiate
programme. The first year in the Novitiate is also called the canonical year when
the Novice starts on the religious path, as it were. As an external sign we wore
a simple religious dress with a veil which we received on our reception day. We
studied in some depth the constitutions of the Daughters of Our Lady of the
Sacred Heart and tried to apply it in our daily lives. It is during the canonical
year that a novice is confined to the Novitiate and is not allowed to leave the
Novitiate for any length of time. In the Novitiate I used to think that we were
always praying and working. Silence was to be observed at all times except at
recreation after the evening meal and sometimes in the afternoon when we were
out in the garden. Also on big feast days we would be given extra recreation
time. This silence does not mean that we could not talk if we had to. There was
the monthly retreat on the first Friday of every month as well as the annual
eight-day retreat before and after Christmas. Usually when we came off retreat
we would go to visit the old people at Harbison Home in Bowral. It did not take
long to walk there.
In the three years I was in the Novitiate we used to prepare the place for the
Sisters coming in from the missions—from PNG, Kiribati, the Philippines, Port
Keats, Thursday Island, and Darwin where they worked as teachers, nurses or
social workers. They usually came to Hartzer Park Novitiate to make the
eight-day retreat. I used to look forward to seeing those great missionaries at
the end of the year. When Hartzer had calmed down and all the retreatants had
left we all went to Austinmer in early February on the coast of Woollongong for
10 days’ holiday. There we slept, swam, ate, wrote letters and went for long
walks. That was our holiday for the year before plunging into the new year’s
programme. Sometimes the Novice mistress gave us some quiet days to catch up
with unfinished homework and to write home. I wrote to my parents every
month, trying to share with them as best as I could what I was doing in the
Novitiate. I tried to tell them about the application of the vows in my life after
the Novitiate. My father wrote to me but not my mother. He did not say much
beyond keeping me posted with family news.
The second year of the Novitiate is spent preparing for first profession, when
the Novice makes a public profession of the simple vows of chastity, poverty
and obedience. So I was in the Novitiate from 9 April 1972 to 12 January 1975,
when I made my first profession. Dale left the Novitiate for good at the end of
1973 and Anne Searson in March 1974 due to illness. After she recuperated she
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re-entered the Novitiate when it moved to Manila in 1982. Again her sickness
returned and she was able to make her vows just before she died in 1984. Sister
Anne Ihlein’s and Sister Catherine Howard’s families came for their profession.
For Sister Rotia Tawita and me, some Sisters from Kiribati came. A few days after
that memorable day, Sister Rotia and I left for Melbourne by train to catch Air
Nauru back to Kiribati.
One setback in the joy of ‘coming home’ was that the Gilberts and Ellice
Islands were separating. I had heard talk of separation before leaving for
Australia, but I did not realise it would be so soon. I was glad I was able to see
some of my relatives before they left, but the impact of the separation stayed
with me. It was something that I thought long and hard about in deciding
whether to make final vows. In the Novitiate, the novelty of learning about
religious life and the knowledge that I was there only for a short time did not
make missing home too bad. I knew if I made final vows I would be going home
for holidays only. And then how could I practise my faith in Tuvalu? Around
September the M.V. Nivanga left the Betio wharf for the Ellice Islands, never to
return.
Once in Kiribati the two of us were stationed in Teaoraereke, our headquarters.
Though we had been professed we were ‘the babies’ of the Kiribati region and
had to be around headquarters at least for our first year in the field. It was my
very first year too to teach in primary school and I was given the senior
classes—7, 8 and a handful of supposedly Class 9. Our Lady of the Sacred Heart
Primary School at the time was a selected school and the teachers were paid by
government. Since I had not taught for the government before, my salary was
that of a new graduate teacher from the Tarawa Teachers’ College. I enjoyed
teaching these students as well as my extracurricular duties. I collected the 20c
that all the students paid every month for the building of the teachers’ houses.
Some of the teachers were Mission-trained and had not yet been to the TTC so
they were paid by the Church. Their salaries did not amount to much. Whatever
funds we raised through extracurricular activities went to the teachers and the
construction of houses for them. The school bought a deep-freezer and one of
these teachers’ wives helped me make ice blocks and sandwiches to sell to
students and teachers. Once a year the school raised funds in their teams by
selling food they had made. For the Open Day at the end of the school year, the
students learnt dancing for the entertainment of their guests and parents. The
year went very quickly and after Christmas, New Year and the annual retreat I
was assigned to Catholic Junior College, Tabwiroa, Abaiang.
Abaiang is the outer island to the north of Tarawa where I had spent time
before. In Tabwiroa there were five Sisters—three Australians, an I-Kiribati and
myself. The principal was Sister Veronica Hollis. She had returned from Nova
Scotia where she had studied Theology for three years. The other two I also had
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worked with in Taborio. I was new to Tabwiroa which is far bigger than Taborio.
There were four other I-Kiribati teachers and three VSOs. Tabwiroa at that time
was a co-ed and catered for Forms 1-3 with two classes for each form. Those who
passed the Form 3 examinations would continue either to Catholic Senior College,
Taborio or Elaine Bernacchi and King George V, Bikenibeu, to do Forms 4 and
5. In the Christmas holiday of 1977 Sister Rotia and I went back to the Novitiate
in Bowral to prepare for renewal of vows early in the following year. We met
up with Sister Catherine Howard and Sister Anne Ihlein. The latter made her
final vows while the three of us made renewal.
In the Provincial visitation of 1979, Sister Berness, who was then on the
Provincial Council in Australia, was part of the team that came to Kiribati. Since
I had not been home at all she advised me to go home to see my parents. I was
due for final vows the following year. I had come to a point where I could no
longer postpone seeing my parents. I went, but in my heart I was scared. I was
afraid of my parents. I did not know how they would receive me. My
grandparents had passed away. Were I going home to see them, I would have
had no fear. Even if I had committed the worst crime on God’s earth, I still would
fear nothing from my grandparents. Such was my certainty of their love and
acceptance of me. But I had always seen my parents as forbidding and formidable.
I was never sure of myself when with them. Had I grown up with them or had
they not given me away to my grandparents when I was small, perhaps I would
have felt differently. Perhaps I would have been assured of their love.
When I got to Funafuti, the main island in Tuvalu, I waited for the country’s
only ship to go on its trip to the northern islands. I had a month’s holiday and
it was almost two weeks before Nivanga left. Because it had to call on two other
islands to drop passengers and cargo, as well as pick up those bound for Funafuti,
the whole trip to Nanumea would take almost a week. To wait on Nanumea for
the next trip was another two weeks. Perhaps I could have taken the time to
give myself one month at home, but I did not think of it. I meticulously counted
the month from the day I left Tarawa to the day when I should get back. For
the life of me I do not know why I thought like that. I did not give myself time
nor did I give my parents time. I did this on each of my trips home every four
years. Yet the first time I went home after they had both left this world, I took
three months. Looking back now I do not know who I was punishing, my parents
or myself.
I did not let them know I was coming for a holiday. Members of the extended
family on Funafuti sent many messages from the time I arrived on Funafuti to
let my parents know I was on my way. Tuvalu is a Protestant country and on
achieving independence in 1978 had called its church, the Church of Tuvalu.
In a small place like that, a nun, even if she is a Tuvaluan, became something of
a curiosity to the people. I regarded the stares rude and I preferred to stay in
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the house all the time. When I finally reached Nanumea, my parents had prepared
for my arrival and this is why looking back I am sad I did not stay, even if it
had meant going over the normal holiday time. The ship arrived during the
night and the captain let me go ashore with the Minister in the Tuvalu House
of Parliament, Maheu Naniseni, my mother’s cousin. With the familiar smell of
food I knew then all was well. My parents had been preparing for my arrival.
They had just turned down the lantern to go to sleep thinking passengers would
be coming ashore in the morning. It was a happy reunion and after telling stories
for awhile, we slept. Little did I know, that was my only time with my parents.
The next morning I wanted to go everywhere. I wanted to see
everything—even Lakena, the islet where I had lived with my grandparents.
When I returned to the house it was noon and the extended family had gathered.
I wanted very much to see my parents alone but I realised there was no time.
Then from among the people sitting there, a lady cousin of my father spoke up.
From the many things she said I could remember only one. ‘You go back to
Tarawa and when your vows are expired in January, we shall meet here when
you return.’ I knew then I could not tell my parents my news. When I left in
my heart I said goodbye because I was not sure if my parents would want to see
my face again. I had meant to tell my parents that I wanted to make final
profession.
Final profession in Kiribati is a big event because it involves the Sisters’
families. I wrote to my parents explaining that I was making my final vows and
I did not invite them. Because I did not invite my parents I could not bring
myself to invite anyone of my relations either. Sister Rotia’s family came from
Abaiang and because they had known me from there they included me in their
preparations. They were very kind. Somehow my relatives on South Tarawa
must have heard because they got together and prepared food for the feast after
Mass. Some of them even came to the Mass, participated in the liturgy and the
feast in the maneaba. I was very grateful for what they did. Their presence made
me feel good. I was not alone after all. I was home!
ENDNOTES
1 Barrie Macdonald, Cindarellas of the Empire: towards a history of Kiribati and Tuvalu (Canberra 1982),
31.
2 Ibid., 50; U.F. Neemia, ‘Tuvaluans in Kiribati’, Research Paper (mimeo).
3 Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony, Memorandum on Post-War Reorganisation Administrative Policy.
4 Sidney Poitier, The Measure of a Man: a memoir (London 2000).
5 M. K. Gandhi, An Autobiography or the Story of My Experiments with Truth (Ahmedabad 1927).
6 Sheila Graham and Gerald Frank, Beloved Infidel: the education of a woman (London 1959).
7 Mary Field Parton (ed.) The Autobiography of Mother Jones (Chicago 1980).
8 Sir Frederick Osifelo, Kanaka Boy: an autobiography of Sir Frederick Osefilo (Suva 1985).
9 Henry Sebastian Bowden of the Oratory (comp.), Miniature Lives of the Saints (with Reflections for
Every Day in the Year), ed. and rev. by Donald Attwater (London 1960), 559.
10 Ibid., 529.
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My History: My Calling
11 Ibid., 31.
12 Ibid.
13 Mtt 22.12.
14 Bowden, Miniature Lives of the Saints, 447.
15 Mtt.16.26.
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Telling Pacific Lives
Chapter 10
Researching, (W)riting, Releasing, and
Responses to a Biography of Queen
Salote of Tonga
Elizabeth Wood-Ellem
Researching Queen Salote was not my first foray into biography. I was employed
as a book editor for five years in Sydney and then nine years in London. In 1969
Macmillan London decided to move the editorial department from Little Essex
Street—just about equidistant between the Thames, the Law Courts, Fleet Street,
and the Middle Temple (and only 20 minutes walk from the National Gallery
and other delights)—to Basingstoke. Not the Basingstoke of Gilbert and Sullivan
(a ‘word that teems with hidden meaning’), but a factory town. After the brass
handshake from Macmillan, my friend Nick Furbank asked me if I would be his
research assistant, as he was writing the biography of the novelist E.M. Forster.
The research was fruitful. After I had spent some time in the British Museum
Library (now the British Library), the London Library, and the Colindale
Newspaper Library, Forster obligingly died in June 1970. I was then asked to
go to King’s College in Cambridge and catalogue all Forster’s papers, which were
to be found in his set of four rooms at King’s.
After that initial catalogue for the Forster estate, King’s College, the main
beneficiary of Forster’s will, asked me to do a more detailed catalogue and arrange
for the binding of many of the papers. Thus I became the first Archivist of the
Modern Manuscripts at King’s. I returned to Australia after 15 years abroad just
in time to take advantage of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s abolition of
university fees. I was tempted to do something to make up for my lacklustre
undergraduate degree, and the idea of doing a postgraduate degree on the late
Queen Salote of Tonga came to me in a flash while I was having my hair cut.
Well, not quite. My father had written the chapter on Queen Salote for Noel
Rutherford’s book Friendly Islands: a history of Tonga, and asked me if I would
do some checking of the dates. So it was a kind of pre-destined flash.
That was the only part of the whole experience that happened with any
speed. After a year, my candidature for an MA being converted to a PhD, I felt
liberated—able to undertake something I hoped would be significant and
139
fulfilling. I had by then realised that my research was something of a ‘roots’
exercise, as I had been born in Tonga to missionary parents.
When I submitted my topic to the History Department at the University of
Melbourne, I broke many of the rules I now endeavour to impress on students
(if any ask my advice): to know your archives before you begin, or at least their
locations; whether they have been catalogued of not; whether permission is
required; and last but not least what languages the papers are written in. I had
an unfounded conviction that my first language (Tongan) would just come back
to me once I encountered it again. It didn’t.
It came as somewhat of a shock (a) to find very little in any library or archive
in Australia about Queen Salote, who had been a mythical figure of my childhood;
(b) neither Tongans nor Australians who had lived in Tonga for many years
seemed to know very much about anything connected with Tonga.
I had already discovered in a game that some people have astoundingly poor
memories of anything that happened more than a week earlier. Others,
particularly former missionaries, had acquired a loyalty to the kingdom of Tonga
that prevented analysis or criticism. So the myth of the Friendly Islands lives
on.
Once in 1974 and twice in 1976, I visited the Western Pacific High Commission
Archives in Suva to read their papers. The British High Commissioner (also
Governor of Fiji) had oversight over Tonga, the British Solomon Islands
Protectorate, the New Hebrides, Pitcairn Island, and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands.
The Archives were located in the Suva Botanical Gardens, and as I sat waiting
for files to be delivered, I could watch the prison inmates labouring in the
Botanical Gardens and listen to the intermittent drumming of tropical rain on
the roof—a sound reminiscent of my childhood.
The procedure at the Archives was to look in large registers that listed the
inward and outward correspondence of the Western Pacific High Commission
(WPHC). There were also the British Consul Tonga (BCT) files, relating specifically
to Tonga. And registers for the correspondence between the High Commissioner
of the Western Pacific and the Secretary of State for the Colonies in London.
Each item of correspondence in the main WPHC registers, which could be to
or from any one of the WPHC territories, had a brief (about four words)
description of the contents. Using these registers I requested those files that
looked as though they might be relevant and interesting. I ignored files about
exports and imports (these were summarised in the Tonga Government Gazette,
another useful source) and ordered any to do with religion, as I knew these
would really be about politics. A few files had nothing, or referred to attachments
that had been removed. I assumed that the missing attachments had been
forwarded to the Colonial Office in London.
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In the late 1970s, the Western Pacific Archives papers went to Milton Keynes
in the United Kingdom. Since 2002, they have been in the care of the Library of
the University of Auckland. In January 2005, in Auckland, I requested some
files from the 1950s and found they had been removed in the UK because they
were considered too ‘sensitive’ for us colonials to read.
Alas, nothing like the Western Pacific Archives existed in Tonga, and still
does not. When the late King became Minister for Education in 1943 or when
he became Premier in 1949, he decided to make a big bonfire of most of the
papers lying around in the ‘Stone Building’—which then housed several
government departments—in order to make space for his own records.
The papers of the Free Wesleyan Church are now being well looked after
(although requiring more detailed cataloguing). In the 1970s the large registers
of baptisms, marriages and deaths, and the minutes of District and Quarterly
meetings were stored in cupboards and odds and ends in the old stables. Some
of the letters and other loose papers I read and copied in the Mission House in
1974 and 1976 I never saw again, although a sighting of some letter books was
reported to me in 2005.
The Catholic Bishop Finau was most helpful, but the ancient French priest
who looked after the Catholic Archives assured me that the only relevant papers
in the Catholic Archives were some surviving diaries of 1912-1934 of Bishop
Blanc, which were in French. I borrowed a French-English dictionary from the
nuns and spent a number of weeks at the Catholic office (Toutaimana) translating
Bishop Blanc’s diaries and sharing morning tea with the nuns and young priests.
The real goldmine in Tonga was the collection of papers then stored in the
Palace Office. When I first arrived to make inquiries, the Acting Private Secretary
to the King was the noble and musician Fielakepa, who had been a student of
my father’s many years before. Each morning I borrowed his keys and went
into a back room, climbing over bicycles, boxes full of bottles of champagne,
and rolls of wire to reach the top shelf of the book-case on which there were
boxes labelled by decades. Someone had started this sorting venture some time
before, but after an inch or so of the designated decade, other papers had just
been dumped in on top. I took one box at a time and retired to the Privy Council
room to read them.
As there was nothing much to do in the evenings, I studied Churchward’s
Grammar, and learned lists of Tongan words off by heart. The latter was not a
particularly useful exercise, as there are many homonyms in Tongan, and the
meaning is determined by the pronoun and context. The outcome of these
evenings and keeping Churchward’s Tongan-English Dictionary always at hand
was that I was able to do quite a lot of translation on my own—especially when
the Tonga Government Gazette also included a summary in English, a practice
abolished by the late King.
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Biography of Queen Salote of Tonga
For my purposes, the most valuable of the documents then in the Palace Office
and now in the Tongan Traditions Committee Archives were the diaries kept
by Queen Salote’s Private Secretary (Sione Filipe Tongilava), which gave me
some idea of the daily comings and goings at the Palace. Presentations of food
were listed in great detail, also lists of koloa (mats, barkcloth, etc.) presented to
Queen Salote, but alas no details of dances beyond a bare number, such as 37
lakalaka. He noted when the Queen presided over a kava circle or mavae kava—a
kava root was presented, but was not immediately used. Tongilava was also
Clerk to the Privy Council Minutes and kept the Privy Council Minutes, but I
did not have the time to read all of these, nor the Hansard of the Parliament of
Tonga. The last would have been beyond me, as Tongan speeches are allusive,
using metaphors abundantly.
An unknown person had already translated the diary Queen Salote had kept
of her visit to England in 1953. When Tongan friends offered to help with the
translation of letters, I found they could not understand the documents, partly
because of the allusive language and partly because the would-be translators
did not have the context. Tongan history as taught in schools was bland,
respectful of the royal family, and tended to ignore the 20th
century. I had to
explain why the documents were interesting to me before they could attempt
translation. Another difficulty is that the Tongan language is not gender specific.
In a letter to Rev. J.B. Watkin did Queen Salote reproach him for trampling on
‘me’—i.e. the Queen—or on ‘it’ (her plan)? No one will ever know.
My father had read papers in 1972 that were no longer there, and on later
visits I could not find papers I had read earlier. But it was worth asking on the
next visit whether the papers had reappeared. I cannot remember the number
of times I asked about photographs, and was told there were none. After my
book was published I was shown a photograph album bursting with pictures
of Queen Salote and her family. The denial of the album’s existence was not
malicious, it was just easier to say no than to actually go and look!
After my three visits to the Western Pacific Archives in Suva and two visits
to Tonga (one for three months and one for a year) I put the papers I had copied
in those countries and in Australian libraries and private papers into date order.
The 5 x 3 cards on which I had made notes I put into alphabetical order,
indicating the date and source of each of the notes. It was only then that I got
any sense of sequence, and hence of cause and effect. I would phone a friend
and say, ‘Guess what! If A and C happened then B must have been the link!’
By this time, having written and thrown away a number of chapters, I realised
that the focus of my thesis was the partnership between Queen Salote and her
consort, the great chief Tungi Mailefihi and their dual leadership, which was
derived from the traditional relationship between ‘eldest sister’ and ‘eldest
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brother’ as leaders of their clan; and in the case of the highest titles, as sacred
and secular ruler.
Traditionally the ‘eldest sister’ was the keeper of genealogies and provider
of koloa (wealth) in the form on barkcloth, mats, and other durable goods, and
the ‘eldest brother’ was the keeper of the land and distributor of the food that
grew on it. Salote and Tungi were fourth cousins. Thus, in political terms, they
took on the traditional roles of ‘eldest sister’ and ‘eldest brother’ and made their
goal the unification of the whole kingdom. Salote had married Tungi (the choice
of her father, Tupou II, and much loved by her) when she was 17 years of age
and he was 29. Seven months after the wedding she was proclaimed Queen, and
was pregnant with the first of three sons.
Salote alone was installed in the pre-eminent title of Tu‘i Kanokupolu. Salote
alone was addressed in the sacred language, although both she and Tungi were
descended from the ancient line of sacred rulers. Tungi was addressed in the
language appropriate for chiefs. Salote appointed him as her Prime Minister; but
his real influence was exercised through his role as a very high-ranking chief,
especially in matters relating to land. ‘He was a farmer’, people told me. He
initiated the annual agricultural show and won many prizes there. He made lists
of local fish. He planted as many species of yam as he could find and kept cattle.
He encouraged people to grow for export, not only copra, but good quality
bananas and other fruits: a frustrating enterprise since the inspectors employed
to ensure the fruits were of good quality were often relatives of the farmers.
There was always a line of people outside his office waiting to ask for money:
to pay for taxes, a wedding or funeral or special birthday.
Oral history in the 1970s was quite a problem. ‘If we knew we would tell
you, Besi’, was the cry of my Tongan friends, friends bequeathed to me by my
parents and my sister and brother-in-law, who had also been missionaries in
Tonga. Reflecting on this later, I realised they thought I was seeking really
‘important’ information, rather than the humdrum insights that mean so much
to a biographer. These insights came to me in casual conversation, not by my
sitting with a tape recorder or notebook—both of which caused Tongans to clam
up. The cup of tea was, in my case, mightier than the pencil.
Part of the reason for the almost universal silence was that, even in the 1970s
and 1980s (Salote died in 1965), Salote’s mana was so great that she might reach
out from the grave and punish someone for being fie‘eiki (presuming to know
matters reserved for chiefs).
What surprised me even more was that Queen Salote’s sons did not have
much to say. Both had been students of my father, and so there was no difficulty
in getting audiences. The youngest son held back, I think, also because of the
great mana of his mother.
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Biography of Queen Salote of Tonga
This was not the case with the late King. It took some years for me to realise
that although he had kindly provided me with a letter giving me permission to
do research, he was simply not interested in what I was doing, or in anything
about the past. He was sure he was more intelligent, better educated,
higher-ranking, more interesting, and altogether had more of everything than
the late Queen, and he could not understand why people were interested in her
when he was there to be admired. Was he jealous of the love and respect people
had for her?
I was fortunate that when I suffered ‘culture shock’ in 1976, Epeli Hau‘ofa,
who had just returned to Tonga from Canberra and was being very bolshie
(wearing a black beard and a kaftan made of mattress ticking), was writing his
best short stories, and would read them to his wife, Barbara, and me and other
friends in the evenings. Another guide along the way was a Danish man known
as Tavi, who had lived in Tonga since 1953 and had privileged access to the
Palace. His cynical view of Tonga, which had been the paradise of my childhood,
was a great corrective.
Best of all was being introduced by Tonga’s best-known fakaleiti to his
grandmother, a woman of high rank, who loved talking about the old days.
Twice a week I visited her and (without my taking notes) we had wide-ranging
conversations. As soon as I returned to my place, I would type out everything
I could remember her saying. I could check some omissions on my next visit.
Alas, as a postgraduate student, I did not have the money to have her wonderful
collection of photographs copied.
After the PhD thesis was submitted and approved, I was really burnt out,
and wanted to do something else for a while. That was possibly a mistake, but
at the time I was happy to become a freelance book editor and indexer and write
occasional papers on Tonga for conferences and publication.
At last, in 1994 and 1995, I was awarded two fellowships in New Zealand,
which enabled me to do further research and writing. My thesis had covered
only the years 1918-41. Although I had incidentally researched much of the
remainder of her life and times, I had many gaps to fill, which was possible
through papers, books, and theses in the University of Auckland Library, and
the archives in Auckland and Christchurch of the New Zealand Methodist Church.
Queen Salote was, and her grandson now is, the only Methodist monarch in the
world.
In an early draft of the book, the first two chapters had described the
hierarchical structure of Tongan society in much detail. Then I thought: ‘The
papalangis won’t be interested in all this detail, and the Tongans know it already’.
Then I remembered the question people in Australia always asked me: ‘Where
is Tonga?’ So I started the book by answering that question. Salote was born in
a palace beside the sea, within a town about a mile square. Beyond the town
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Telling Pacific Lives
were the villages and allotments and the chiefs and people who lived there. Then
there were all the other islands of Tonga, then Samoa and Fiji, and the rest of
the Pacific, until I reached the ends of the earth.
I believe in following a chronological line as far as is reasonable, so once the
scene was set, past history summarised, and a brief account of the social ranking
systems given, I was able to structure the book so that chronologically the
narrative moved on while each chapter dealt with a different theme. Fixing the
structure of the book was the most satisfying experience.
At the end of 1995, I returned home to Melbourne with a complete book:
long and somewhat doughy. In the next 18 months I rewrote the whole book,
keeping the structure, but with a lighter tone, bearing in mind my audience:
the Tongans themselves and anyone who knew enough about Tonga to be
interested. I deliberately avoided academic jargon (a decision made also, but
independently, by two of my colleagues: Helen Morton Lee and Cathy Small)
in favour of simple language.
Many times people told me how they had been in the crowd in London when
this wonderful Queen Salote rode by in a carriage with the hood down in spite
of the rain so she could share the excitement of the people who had waited all
night and all day to see the procession. A man in Rotorua, New Zealand, gave
me a cutting about Queen Salote at the coronation that he had kept for 40 years.
As the Queen had attracted attention before Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation by
her obvious enjoyment of everything she witnessed and her friendliness to all
she met, it was not surprising that the coronation edition of the Daily Express
included a diagram of Westminster Abbey, showing the seat allocated to Queen
Salote (only a few of the invited guests were so distinguished). Salote had been
18 years old when she had been crowned in the royal chapel in Tonga, so it is
not surprising that she empathised with the young Queen of England then
making her coronation vows.
My major ‘conclusions’ were (1) that Salote was a very intelligent person,
very shrewd, and very good with people; (2) that Salote had not always been
beloved and secure in her position as Queen; (3) that her allies (both Tongan and
papalangi), especially her consort, were totally committed in their loyalty to her.
I was concerned about some things that were common knowledge, but I could
not decide how to handle. I consulted a high-ranking chiefly woman who
encouraged me by saying, ‘It is time to tell the truth’.
One example of a truth that needed to be told related to the Queen’s half-sister,
Princess Fusipala, daughter of Tupou II’s second marriage (Salote’s mother having
died when Salote was only two years old). Princess Fusipala’s mother’s family
set up a rival court in Tonga, and did everything they could to enhance the
status of Fusipala and diminish that of Salote. Eventually the half-sister died, in
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Biography of Queen Salote of Tonga
Sydney, in 1933. I was told by Tongans (a) that Fusipala had died from a broken
heart because the Queen would not allow her to marry the commoner she loved;
(b) that Fusipala had committed suicide because she had been engaged to four
high chiefs and angered all four and their families by breaking the engagements;
(c) that Tungi (who was in Sydney at the time) had poisoned Fusipala. The truth
was that she had died of tubercular peritonitis. Did my account stop the romantic
stories being told? Probably not.
Although Fusipala was related to Tungi in a way that required his loyalty
(her mother’s mother’s mother was sister of his father’s father), Salote’s consort
was totally loyal to the Queen. When Tungi and his most trusted ministers were
impeached by his enemies in 1939-40, the Queen was solid in her loyalty to him,
while (to papalangi eyes) appearing to be calm and impartial. The attempted
impeachment failed. In the following year, 1941, the Queen was devastated by
the death of Tungi when she was only 41 and he was 53.
When the late King Tupou IV (then Crown Prince) returned from Sydney
University with both a BA and an LLB (the first Tongan to take a university
degree) in December 1942, he assumed he would take over from the Queen. As
Prime Minister, he relieved Salote of many onerous duties, particularly the
bureaucracy and tedious government matters, so that she could get on with the
real governing, with influencing the people. Her mana increased each year, and
she was much loved and admired for what were her genuine qualities.
The time eventually comes when one must stop writing a book (even when
one has not finished) and start looking for a publisher. New Zealand had given
me the space to write the book, and it was Auckland University Press (AUP)
that accepted it for publication. Fortunately, AUP did not ask me to cut the text,
as another publisher might have done, since the book is around 110,000 words.
And they accepted almost all of the 130 photographs I offered, and chose someone
who designed a most wonderful cover. (‘Is yours the book with the blue cover?’
I am sometimes asked.)
One very good thing that AUP did was to offer a 40 per cent discount for
any direct order of at least 10 books. Many Tongans in Melbourne and
Auckland—and perhaps other places—were able to order boxes of books, and
sell them to their fellow church members or friends at considerably less than
retail price.
I visited Tonga after the first printing in 1999. The first 500 copies ordered
by the Friendly Islands Bookshop had sold out and another 700 copies had
arrived. One Tongan lady bought six copies, one for each of her granddaughters.
There was a signing session. I paid the late King a courtesy call.
Tongans and non-Tongans alike have thanked me for writing the book, as it
covers a period in Tongan history that no one else has written about. Reviews
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Telling Pacific Lives
were many. I had omitted the story about Noel Coward at the coronation for my
own reasons, and the index to my book has the entry ‘Coward, Noel, not
mentioned’ with no page references. Nevertheless some reviewers insisted upon
telling the story. Chagrin.
One criticism (repeated to me ‘anonymously’) was that I had written about
the illnesses and causes of death of members of the royal family and of other
high-ranking people. No one in the royal family commented on or reproached
me for this. However, in a subsequent book, Songs and Poems of Queen Salote,
our translator insisted that all reference to such matters were taken out of the
notes that headed each section of poetry. As editor, I complied with her request,
but put the information into my essay that introduced the book.
An Australian lady, Rosary, had lived for many years in Tonga, and in the
year 2000 she was living in Fairfield, Victoria, the suburb next to mine. She read
Queen Salote and phoned the History Department of the University of Melbourne
to ask how she could get in touch with me, as she would like to meet me. She
was told I was dead. Rosary showed the book to her next-door neighbour, Pat,
and told her how sorry she was that I was dead. ‘She is not dead’, said Pat. ‘I
see her every Sunday. She is a member of our Uniting Church congregation here
in Fairfield.’
The most recent response was unexpected. A contract has been signed for
Queen Salote of Tonga: the story of an era 1900-1965 to become part of the History
E-Book Project, so it is in cyberspace courtesy of the American Council of Learned
Societies.
Financially, of course, the PhD and the writing of Queen Salote were a total
disaster, costing me immeasurably more than I shall ever recover from minuscule
royalties. I am glad I did not realise that relative poverty would be the outcome,
or I might not have proceeded. I learned not only about the paradise of my
childhood (which is no paradise, but I cannot help being loving and wanting
the best for Tonga), but my mind was stretched, and I made many friends, both
Tongan and papalangi, in the course of researching, writing, releasing, and
listening to responses about Queen Salote of Tonga: the story of an era 1900-1965
(first published in 1999) and, subsequently, to the Songs and Poems of Queen
Salote (first published in 2004).
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Biography of Queen Salote of Tonga
Chapter 11
On Being a Participant Biographer: The
Search for J.W. Davidson
Doug Munro
Books do not write themselves, unfortunately. There is always a
behind-the-scenes story of research, writing and getting published that is
sometimes more interesting than the story related in the book itself. This is
especially the case with biography. What might seem the straightforward task
of writing the life of an individual is often fraught with difficulty; and the
biographical enterprise has engendered some particularly bitter disputes. For
every encourager, there can be an ill-wisher. Friends and family can be
obstructive. Unwilling prospective subjects of a biography have been known
to take pre-emptive legal action; John Le Carré, for example, has deterred two
would-be biographers by such means.1 Literary estates can nip a project in the
bud by refusing access to personal papers and denial of quotation rights.2 Such
obstruction is serious, precisely because biographies have to be ‘produced’ and
a precondition of that production is more often than not access to archival
sources. My own work towards a biography of J.W. Davidson has not landed
me in court. But it has taken me to archival repositories in the search for anything
and everything on Davidson as well as in locating documents in private
possession and in securing access to personal papers that were decreed off limits
to me (but not to others). It is all part and parcel of the business of ‘producing’
biography and a tale worth telling.
Jim Davidson (1915-1973) was the New Zealand expatriate and Cambridge
don who became Professor of Pacific History at The Australian National
University. He emerged as the founding father of modern Pacific Islands
historiography as well as constitutional adviser to a succession of Island territories
in the throes of decolonisation. Far from being a run-of-the mill academic in his
ivory tower, Davidson prided himself on being unconventional, notably for his
promotion of ‘participant history’ and his advocacy of the advantages of personal
experience.3 As well as writing history, he helped to make it, and he combined
the two in his major book, Samoa mo Samoa, large parts of which detail his role
in the making of the independent state of Western Samoa.4 All things considered,
Davidson is an attractive biographical subject. He was significant and influential
within his profession. He was a man of affairs as well as a scholar. He was
149
controversial and there are certain mysteries about his life. He had a singular
and complex personality in which the elements were strangely mixed—patrician
yet egalitarian; gentle yet abrasive; the soul of discretion when confidences were
involved yet outrageously indiscrete when it suited him; respectful of authority
figures in other cultures yet disparaging of those in his own; and apt to be an
outright pain to strait-laced colleagues to the extent that they were apt to doubt
his seriousness of purpose.5
I knew Jim Davidson in the last years of his life and now find myself writing
his biography. If someone said that biographers choose their subject by selecting
and idealising a hero figure, I could respond with mock-dismissiveness that this
is a very Freudian interpretation. But Freud did hold that view,6 and in my case
it happens to be true because Jim Davidson meant a great deal to me personally
and he had an influence on the course of my life. Also, I feel a sense of connection
with the person about whom I am writing, and not simply because I once knew
him as a person. We were both brought up in Wellington, where I have returned
to live. As well as archival research, I was then able to engage in ‘optical research’
the term coined by a biographer of Mary Queen of Scots who ‘visited every
conceivable castle, quagmire, byre or whatever associated with the Queen in
three countries’.7 There was a time when I daily walked past the house where
Davidson was born and the church in which he was baptised (both in Upland
Road). There was the occasion, in the manner of Richard Holmes’ Footsteps,
when I traced his daily trek from the family home in Tinakore Road, via the
Botanical Gardens, to the (then) Victoria University College. There was the
occasion when I went to see that same house to discover that it had been
demolished for freeway development. The feelings of loss and emptiness on that
afternoon are part and parcel of the biographer’s journey, where the thrills and
spills intermesh.
I did not initially intend to commit myself to a book-length biography but,
rather, an ‘intellectual biography’ in article form: an assessment of Davidson the
Pacific historian—the type of Pacific history he promoted and practised, notably
his advocacy of ‘participant history’; the formative influences; his academic
legacy. Davidson’s published corpus provided the basis for the investigation,
but was not sufficient in itself.8 It is impossible to deconstruct adequately a
historian’s writings on the basis of the writings alone. Detailed biographical
material is also required; and I needed to consult personal papers. It seemed
simple and straightforward enough. But I was to find, as most biographers do,
that there were surprises in store, not all of them agreeable.
I cannot recall the moment I decided upon this course of research. A distant
influence was the impact of a couple of superb books on the American historical
profession, which showed what could be achieved through the use of historians’
personal papers.9 The immediate impetus was probably writing a couple of
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Telling Pacific Lives
journal articles on Pacific Islands historiography in the early 1990s in which the
Davidson legacy was mentioned.10 In July 1994, at the Pacific History
Association Conference at Tarawa, I spoke about planned research on Davidson
with David Hanlon of the University of Hawai‘i; and David remarked that I was
well qualified, having known Davidson personally and been his student. But
any such intentions were relegated to the backburner because I was midway
through other research. Also, I was then working at the University of the South
Pacific in Fiji, remote from both archival sources and people whom I could
interview about Davidson.
The project began in September 1996 on a fortnight visit to Canberra during
a mid-semester break from teaching to consult the Davidson Papers. There are
two sets of Davidson Papers, the main body at the National Library of Australia
and a smaller miscellaneous collection at the ANU Archives. I understood that
both collections were on open access but the smaller collection was restricted,
and continued to be so for a further three years.11 The fact that Davidson died
without issue, and had no literary executor, contributed to the difficulties
concerning access and the reproduction of archives. Finally, I gained access. I
discovered there was nothing untoward or of a sensitive nature in those papers,
and they proved valuable in answering a number of questions about Davidson’s
academic life, including the completion of Samoa mo Samoa.12
Most of my time during that fortnight in Canberra was spent consulting the
National Library of Australia’s collection of Davidson Papers. That larger
collection is disorganised. Davidson himself was never particularly careful in
keeping his papers in much order, and when he died suddenly in 1973 his
muddled papers were transferred to the National Library and have never been
properly sorted. There were 63 archival boxes of papers, according to the finder
aid, and the single largest category comprised a miscellany of official printed
papers relating to Davidson’s constitutional advising. The first three boxes
contained scattered correspondence from the 1950s and I concentrated on these,
making handwritten notes because there was seemingly no one able to grant
permission to photocopy. The note-taking was time consuming and the
information fragmentary and inconclusive. There were plenty of leads but few
‘answers’ to my questions. But I did manage to purchase a recent official history
of The Australian National University by Stephen Foster and Margaret Varghese,
who were accused by an admiring reviewer of being ‘in serious danger of giving
commissioned history a good name’.13 Although the authors made a couple of
factual errors about Davidson, they provide a remarkably frank and engaging
account of the ANU’s first 50 years. Both in terms of specific information and
background material, Foster and Varghese saved me an enormous amount of
legwork.
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The Search for J.W. Davidson
My next archival foray was the visit, in December 1996, to St John’s College,
Cambridge, where Davidson was a PhD student (1938-1942) and Fellow
(1944-1951) and for which he maintained a lifelong affection. Through the good
offices of Malcolm Underwood, the College Archivist, I consulted what he could
find. The bulk of these records were in the Tutorial File, containing the records
kept on Davidson by his tutors. There was also a smaller bundle of papers, on
the cover of which was written ‘Found while cleaning up’—a chilling reminder
that archives can be at risk even in well-appointed institutions. There was not
as much material as I had expected—nothing, for example, on Davidson
relinquishing his fellowship upon being appointed to a professorship at ANU
or the arrangements regarding affiliation during his 1956 study leave. But the
records I saw were in more concentrated form that I had hitherto encountered;
and I was fascinated to see resonances of the Davidson I knew as an older man
jumping out at me from the pages: a love of travel; leaving things to the last
minute; always having a plausible excuse for a seemingly habitual pattern of
not having done something quite on time; and an equal facility at knowing how
to work the system. Again, I came across a secondary source that was important
to my work, although in a different way to the ANU official history. The book
in question was Bryan Palmer’s memoir of the English historian E.P. Thompson
(1924-1993), famous for The Making of the English Working Class and notable
for his wholehearted involvement in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.14
In its attempts to connect Thompson’s personality to his writing, and
sympathetically written by someone who knew Thompson, whose activism
informed his scholarship, Palmer’s book suggested how I might approach my
work on Davidson.
But I still did not have enough material for an intellectual biography, even
in article form, and I was still immersed in other projects. As part of a
long-delayed study leave, in 1997, I consulted some of the papers of H.E. Maude
(1906-2006), who had been Davidson’s loyal lieutenant at ANU. I had toyed with
the idea of doing a full-scale biography of Harry Maude, but Susan Woodburn,
the librarian in charge of the Special Collection at the Barr Smith Library,
University of Adelaide, where the Maude Papers were housed, had beaten me
to it.15 I told Susan that I had abandoned any intention of a biography but
would still like to write a historiographic paper about Harry Maude, whom I
had known since 1972. Also, I was working on Davidson and would it be possible
to see relevant material among the Maude Papers? Susan was completely unfazed
at the prospect of a potential rival and facilitated my research. It is difficult to
suggest anyone else to be as obliging in the circumstances. And Harry Maude,
despite initial unease, gave permission to consult his papers, with the exception
of the general correspondence. It was a win-win situation. Over the next few
years, Susan and I enjoyed a rewarding professional relationship as we shared
our findings and gave each other every assistance.16
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Still, my work on Davidson was proceeding slowly. From Fiji, I could make
only occasional visits to archival sources in Australia and New Zealand. There
was also the distraction of my other research commitments. But I did begin what
has become a large correspondence with former friends and associates of
Davidson. I got away to Canberra again in September 1997 during a week-long
mid-semester break from teaching. It wasn’t nearly enough time to make an
impact on National Library’s collection of Davidson Papers, but I did on this
occasion locate material among the papers of the Australian historian Brian
Fitzpatrick, on whose behalf Davidson unsuccessfully attempted to secure an
academic position.17 Events then started to take another trajectory. Shortly
after returning to Fiji I wrote to the social anthropologist Sir Raymond Firth
(1901-2002), who had worked with Davidson during the Second World War in
the Naval Intelligence Division18 and who, as one of the ANU’s Academic
Advisers in the late-1940s, had recommended Davidson for the position of
Professor of Pacific History. He responded enthusiastically, but voiced concern
when I later mentioned that the scope of my work was limited to an intellectual
biography. He wrote back:
You say you are only ‘incidentally’ concerned with Jim’s constitutional
advising. Indeed to deal fully with it would need a big book. But I do
hope you can give it fair space, since it was an integral part of his
intellectual life. It was a fusion of the scholar and the man of affairs,
concerned directly with people, which I think he loved and which let
him express himself most fully. I should stress that it also allowed him
a sense of power, of the kind which [the social anthropologist] Audrey
Richards once described in quite another context as ‘Let me just plan
your life for you!’
The ‘sense of power’ to which Firth refers is apposite—not power for its own
sake but the opportunity to be centrally involved in the process of decolonisation
and not simply to comment from the sidelines.
At that point I started to consider writing a full-scale biography. Not only
did Davidson lead a varied and eventful life but it was evident that his reputation
was on the wane, as a shadowy and not very relevant ancestral figure. A
comparable example is that of W.K. Hancock who is making a comeback on the
basis of publications on his life and work.19 Yet in his time, Davidson had clout
and was well known: he pioneered the study of Pacific history as a specialisation
in its own right; his department trained nearly all the practitioners; and he
founded The Journal of Pacific History, which influenced the research agenda.
These in themselves would probably not justify Davidson being the subject of
a full-scale biography; and it is noticeable that historians usually only rate
chapter-length biographical treatment. While there is no firm pattern, usually
historians who combine public affairs with academic work, or at least have a
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The Search for J.W. Davidson
multi-faceted career, are more likely to attract a biographer20 —and Davidson’s
constitutional advising, not to mention his advocacy of participant history, put
him in this category.
I was mulling over this possible change of plan in December 1998 during a
two-month tenure as a Visiting Scholar within the newly created Centre for the
Contemporary Pacific, to work both on Davidson and on a book on the collapse
of the National Bank of Fiji.21 My time was spent interviewing former associates
of Davidson, and to my astonishment I discovered that his younger sister Ruth
was alive and still living in the house that Jim had built for her in the Canberra
suburb of Garran. I had not seen her in over 25 years. A feeble and immobile
old lady in her early-80s, we instantly recognised each other. Although eager
to help, she tired easily in interviews. She then brought out some memorabilia
(photo albums, offprints of early publications), including a marvellous
photograph of Davidson in his early 20s walking along a city street in Wellington.
Taken in the days when street photographers were plying their trade, the
photograph was quintessential Davidson—the tall, gangly, uncoordinated figure
accentuated by an ill-fitting suit, and the sunny smile. She also agreed that I
could photocopy archival material authored by her brother, which would save
hours of transcribing at a later stage. I went away heartened by Ruth’s
endorsement of my work and kept in touch until her death in 2000.22 I
interviewed numerous other people in Canberra. On the archival front I started
consulting material from the ANU Archives, notably Davidson’s personal file.
The major story to emerge from this was the sheer difficulty that Davidson had
in persuading the ANU for extended leaves-of-absence to engage as the Samoans’
constitutional adviser between 1959 and 1961. This was new and subsequent
enquiries revealed that Davidson was largely successful in keeping this facet of
his constitutional advising under wraps. Fortunately, Davidson was sufficiently
senior for his ANU personal file to have been retained. Those of many junior
and middle-ranking academics have been culled.
At the end of my Visiting Fellowship, in late-January 1999, I encountered a
rather unexpected difficulty when I presented a seminar on Davidson. Members
of the audience included people who were opposed to my work on Davidson
and I am under no illusions that I was not considered a fit and proper person
for the task, despite Ruth Davidson’s support. I am uncertain what went on
behind the scenes directly afterwards but about an hour later I was more or less
warned off. This reaction was at odds with my notion of cooperative collegiality;
and fellow biographers will attest that I routinely pass on relevant material from
my own researches. It was an unpleasant experience, and in such contrast to
the support I was receiving from complete strangers, who were enthusiastic
about my project. I readily recall the unaffected delight of Ian Fairbairn over
the telephone, whose PhD thesis was supervised by Davidson.23 I was later to
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learn that bumpy rides are the biographer’s frequent lot, something I wish I had
known earlier because it might have given a measure of grim comfort.24 Matters
have since been smoothed over, but I felt aggrieved for months afterwards.
Back in Fiji, and again remote from archival sources, I continued tracking
down and corresponding with Davidson’s former associates. Locating informants
has certain similarities to locating archival sources: systematic searching is a
necessary but not sufficient condition. Luck and serendipity are just as crucial,
although good researchers often make their own luck. My single most important
stroke of good fortune was mentioning my biography-in-progress in a footnote
to an article published in the journal History in Africa.25 My footnote caught
the eye of a student of Davidson’s at Cambridge during the late 1940s, Paul Hair
(1926-2001), who went on to become a history professor at the University of
Liverpool. He in turn put me on to another of Davidson’s Cambridge
undergraduate students, George Shepperson, who had likewise gone on to a full
professorship. Their written reminiscences, which attested to Davidson’s pivotal
role in channelling them into academic life, were so compelling that I cobbled
them together, with my own commentary, and published the resulting
manuscript—again in History in Africa.26 As well as having high regard for
Davidson’s intellect, both Hair and Shepperson had a profound affection for
their old teacher. Although Davidson was an indifferent lecturer, he had the
ability to inspire and enthuse on a one-to-one basis, and above all to instil the
self-confidence in a student to realise his potential. I was aware of these qualities,
including the poor lecturing style, but had no idea that they had resulted in the
‘making’ of two distinguished Africanists.
Even when things go wrong, luck and lady fortune still find time to smile
on you. I put a notice in the 1999 issue of The Eagle (the magazine of St John’s
College, Cambridge), asking former students and associates of Davidson to contact
me. Disastrously, I gave an incorrect e-mail address. Even then, another former
Cambridge student of Davidson, Michael Wolff (Emeritus Professor of English
at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst) managed to track me down. He
too owed a great deal to Davidson, who had helped him through severe personal
difficulties. Wolff had even written a poem for Davidson (‘I Have Sat at the Feet
of Gamaliel’), composed directly after their first meeting, but had lost the copy.
From these former students, I obtained much helpful information. But I was
nevertheless uncomfortably aware that my overall knowledge of Davidson’s
years at Cambridge was thin.
During 1999, my last year in Fiji, I made further short visits to Wellington
and Canberra. On the former occasion, I obtained material in private hands—from
Colin Aikman (1919-2002), who had served as a Constitutional Adviser with
Davidson in both Western Samoa and the Cook Islands, and from Mary Boyd,
herself a historian of Western Samoa. This information helped in the writing of
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The Search for J.W. Davidson
a paper on Davidson’s covered-up difficulties getting leave from ANU to be
involved in Western Samoa’s final stages of decolonisation.27 On the visit to
Canberra, I learned that I had been awarded Harold White Fellowship at the
National Library of Australia, tenable during 2000, to continue working on
Davidson. I took up my Fellowship in November and experienced over the next
three months the nearest thing to heaven on earth. I had many privileges, and
I enjoyed enormous support from Graeme Powell and his staff in the Manuscripts
Section. In return I was asked to present a staff seminar at an early stage of my
fellowship, a formal lecture towards the end, and to make the most of my
opportunities.
I consulted the papers of several of Davidson’s former colleagues, and at last
I had the time and leisure to thoroughly go through those 63 archival boxes of
Davidson Papers. Because they were, organisationally, such a dog’s breakfast,
I never knew what I would find next, and I found things I never expected to
be there. The original copy of Michael Wolff’s poem ‘I Have Sat at the Feet of
Gamaliel’ materialised after all these years (and is reproduced at the end of this
chapter). George Shepperson had told me that Davidson supported his application
for a lectureship at Edinburgh, and Davidson’s referee’s report also turned up.
Such was the clutter that it was generally pointless to go looking for something
among the Davidson Papers. During those heady days of discovery, I was tripping
over one unexpected find after another, not daring to wonder what serendipitous
delights the next archival box might have in store.
The real treasure of the collection is a story in itself. Back in early 1999, I
asked Ruth Davidson if she had any correspondence from her brother. Ruth said
that Davidson was a dutiful son who wrote long, regular letters from Cambridge
to his family in New Zealand, and that these had been deposited in the National
Library. I couldn’t tell Ruth that she had to be mistaken, for neither the National
Library’s on-line catalogue nor its finder aid to the Davidson Papers indicated
the presence of any such letters. Before taking up my fellowship, I raised the
matter with Graeme Powell. Back came the astonishing reply that there were
indeed such letters, some 250 between 1938 and 1942. The reason I had not
known about these additions to the Davidson Papers was because the original
finder’s aid had not been updated. Another surprise was in store. I had only
asked Graeme whether letters existed between 1938 and 1942 (the years of
Davidson’s PhD candidature), and he had replied in the affirmative. Upon arrival,
I discovered that the letters went up to 1956 on a regular basis, with a few more
until the early 1960s. They occupied three archival boxes. Davidson’s mother
had kept all his letters. Upon her death they had passed into Ruth’s keeping and
from there, unheralded, to the National Library of Australia. Because I had Ruth’s
written permission to have copies made of archival material created by Jim, I
was able to photocopy the whole lot, free of charge. Unhappily, the other side
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Telling Pacific Lives
of the correspondence is almost entirely lacking because Davidson seldom kept
personal letters.
Davidson’s long letters home provide a running commentary of his life and
cover a wide range of subjects. He assumed that his mother shared and
understood his academic interests. This regular supply of information over 18
years, from his departure as a postgraduate student through to first seven years
at ANU, has been invaluable, especially for the 1940s. That decade had been
something of a blank. Now there was an abundance of the very material I so
badly needed. Also, it finally made possible my initial, more limited, objective
of an ‘intellectual biography’. With these letters as my main source, I have been
able to trace the various strands of Davidson’s academic outlook to their origins.
This was the subject of my Harold White Fellow Lecture in late January 2001,
on ‘The Prehistory of J.W. Davidson’, where I argued that the real Jim Davidson
and the elements that made up his thinking were intact before his arrival at
ANU.28
Davidson’s letters contain no major surprises; they reveal nothing that would
fundamentally alter my view of a person whom I got to know reasonably well
in the last years of his life. Rather, the letters provide detailed basic information.
At several points they confirm exactly what I remember Davidson telling me—for
example, his distress that his father died before the two had patched up their
differences and his intense disappointment at the failure of his first attempt at
election to a Fellowship at St John’s College. Other things that Davidson told me
in the early 1970s have also been confirmed from the written record, notably
his negative views on the office of Director for ANU’s Research Schools and the
reasons for Oskar Spate joining the (then) Department of Pacific History after
relinquishing the role of Director of the Research School of Pacific Studies.29
That confirms that Davidson’s honesty and memory are not matters over which
to exercise undue skepticism. He was not above representing an event in a false
light (the letter to his mother about the termination of his residency at
‘Gungahlin’ in 1951 being a case in point30 ) but he avoided telling deliberate
and outright untruths and his account of events is remarkably precise both in
expression and in accuracy.
One aspect of Davidson’s life that is absent from the letters home concerns
his broader artistic interests (music, painting, literature, theatre). These were
mentioned but summarily. The actual mainsprings of Davidson’s artistic tastes
go unrevealed in his letters to his mother. I was not much interested in such
higher matters when I knew Davidson, so they were seldom topics for
discussion—although he once berated my willful ignorance of contemporary
fiction. My indifference was unfortunate for the future biographer because
Davidson’s broader artistic interests and aesthetic senses were integral to his
personality, and I much regretted that my eventual biography was likely to be
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The Search for J.W. Davidson
lacking a whole dimension. The salvation was one of those events that every
biographer can only dream come true.
In 2004 I was trying to locate members of the Natusch family, a name that
crops up in Davidson’s correspondence, who might be able to help me to find
out more about Davidson’s earlier life. It was suggested that I contact Sheila
Natusch in Wellington, who referred me to Guy Natusch in Napier. It turned
out that he had gone to Hereworth School in Havelock North (Hawkes Bay) with
Davidson in the 1920s and had fond memories of the slightly older boy. Guy
mentioned my name to Caroline Greenwood of Kahuranaki Station, some half
hour’s drive from Havelock North, and shortly afterwards I received a voice
mail message from Caroline. She had located 41 letters from Jim Davidson to her
uncle Miles Greenwood as well as his diary of a bicycle tour of Ireland with
Davidson in 1939. That not only cleared up the identity of the mysterious ‘Miles’
who regularly crops up in Davidson’s letters home. It also transpired that Miles,
and his English wife Cecilia (‘Pipps’ to family and close friends), shared
Davidson’s artistic interests and these were a recurring subject in his letters to
them. During the late-1930s to mid-1940s, Miles Greenwood was a drama student
at the Old Vic in London. Realizing that he was never going to get lead parts on
English stages, Miles returned to farming in Hawkes Bay and painting water
colours in his spare time. Caroline told me that the only way he could face
weeding a row of lettuces was to imagine that they were heads in a theatre
audience. The letters themselves were survivors of several boxes of papers that
Miles destroyed shortly before his death in the early 1990s. I easily persuaded
Caroline to deposit the letters in the National Library of Australia. Sadly, Pipps,
who was very fond of Davidson and who could have told me much about him,
passed away only in 2002.31
Soon after reading the letters to Greenwood, I consulted Davidson’s letters
to the composer Douglas Lilburn (1915-2001). They were students together at
Waitaki Boys’ High School and their studies in England overlapped. Again,
Davidson reveals much about his broader artistic interests; and he unexpectedly
dropped a concrete clue about his sexuality. The general feeling at ANU was
that Davidson, who never married, was a closet homosexual in inclination if not
in practice; but I had been unable to establish—and not through lack of
trying—whether or not this was the case. The topic frequently arose during
interviews and conversations, but I had no concrete evidence. Davidson loved
youth and he was definitely homoerotic. I also suspect that he was bisexual. But
I got fed up with people insisting, with no evidence, that he ‘had to be gay’. In
Davidson’s time, homosexuality was a criminal offence and one that incurred
tremendous social disapproval. So it is highly unlikely, if Davidson indeed had
homosexual tendencies, that he would have advertised them or left a paper
trail.32 Yet the matter is important to establish, if possible, because it could have
been an influence on his creativity.
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There is a clue in a letter to Lilburn, who himself was gay. Lilburn’s and
Davidson’s fathers died in successive years (1940 and 1941, respectively). Four
months after George Davidson’s death, Jim Davidson wrote to Lilburn: ‘You
will know how I felt on getting the news of Dad’s death. You have know[n] more
than I have of such sorrows. It was bad—I got over things by going to bed with
you: it reduced the tension. Thank you for your sympathy’.33 When I read this
letter, I had a strange feeling of anti-climax that I cannot explain. I should have
been shouting ‘Eureka!’, but was seized by no such impulse. What did amaze
me was the letter being sent in the same envelope along with another letter to
Davidson’s sister Ruth. The letter for Lilburn was duly forwarded and in a fresh
envelope and addressed in Mrs Davidson’s handwriting to ‘Mr. D. Lilburn’. It
seems an extraordinarily careless slip on Davidson’s part to send a letter of that
nature which might be read by third parties, no less his mother and sister. Did
Mabel Davidson read the letter before passing it on? If so, did she choose to
ignore it? Or did she miss the incriminating part? That is a possibility: the part
just quoted begins on the bottom of the last page of the letter and continues
around the margins of the first page. There is no way of knowing what Mabel
Davidson might or might not have read. But that letter does provide something
concrete on Davidson’s sexuality, although how much to read into a single
statement is problematic. What makes this letter even more problematic is that
events could not have unfolded the way they are recounted—because Lilburn
was already back in New Zealand at the time of George Davidson’s death in
February 1941 and Davidson was still in England.34 I simply do not know what
to make of such a mistake on Davidson’s part, because it is so out of character.
A biography of a recently deceased individual does not rely on archival
evidence alone. There is also the question of how to obtain and use interviews
from living witnesses, and in this particular case how far I should rely on my
own memory of events.35 Discussion of these matters will have to await another
occasion, but I will say now that people who disliked Davidson are generally
reluctant to talk. In the meanwhile, I trust that I have conveyed a sense of what
it can be like for a biographer to conduct archival research. In some respects, it
is a very different type of research to ‘straight’ history—especially in the need
to develop a different mind set, one that is not easy to define but palpable none
the less. But there are eternals, one of them being following up every clue. I am
horrified at the prospect of incomplete research resulting in ‘some unforgivably
elementary error to be picked up and waved around by the reviewer in
triumph’.36 At the same time, I am not prepared to accept responsibility for
mistakes or omissions resulting from being denied access to archival material.
There have been some dispiriting moments to be sure, but the highs far outweigh
the lows. All the same, a biographer’s archival adventures can be bizarre. In
order to find out how Daniel Defoe got out of gaol, Paula Backscheider consulted
the hitherto unexamined records of the King’s Bench Courts, which were rolled
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tightly and in a filthy condition; she emerged from the archives each day looking
like a coalminer.37 I have had no experiences of that nature, and neither have
I completed my biography of Jim Davidson. In my various papers on Davidson,
I have fulfilled the original objective of an intellectual biography;38 and it is
fortunate that I started when I did because in excess of 20 of the people with
whom I corresponded or interviewed have since died.39 So bear with me and
one day my biography of the late, great Jim Davidson will appear.
[Untitled]
I have sat at the feet of Gamaliel,
I have learned in one brief hour
What one soul means to another,
What water means to the flower.
I have marked, with a panting of wonder,
How purely a man can see
Through form and shape and deception
What a friend is meant to be.
And then, lost in the depths of my thinking
And crossed without power of thought,
I have felt in my heart that now never
My fight shall alone be fought.
I have seen with unwanted perception
The morrow is weak and small;
That now and what now is passing
Is ever and always all.
With gratitude,
Michael Wolff
(republished with the author’s permission)
ENDNOTES
1 This is a modified version of a paper originally published in the October 2004 issue of Archifacts
(Journal of the Archives and Records Association of New Zealand). I am grateful to Dr Kevin Molloy,
the editor of Archifacts, for permission to republish. The revisions benefited from comments by Graeme
Whimp.
Carl Rollyson, A Higher Form of Cannibalism? Adventures in the Art and Politics of Biography (Chicago
2005), 27-28, 72.
2 Ian Hamilton, Keepers of the Flame: literary estates and the rise of biography (London 1992); Michael
Millgate, Testamentary Acts: Browning, Tennyson, James, Hardy (Oxford 1992).
3 J.W. Davidson, ‘Understanding Pacific history: the participant as historian’, in Peter Munz (ed.), The
Feel of Truth (Wellington 1969), 25-40; Niel Gunson, ‘An introduction to Pacific history’, in Brij V. Lal
(ed.), Pacific Islands History: journeys and transformations (Canberra 1992), 4-6.
4 J.W. Davidson, Samoa mo Samoa: the emergence of the independent state of Western Samoa (Melbourne
1967).
5 O.H.K. Spate, ‘And now there will be a void: an appreciation of J.W. Davidson, 1915-1973’, Journal
of Pacific Studies, 20 (1996), 21-22.
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6 See Peter Hempenstall, The Meddlesome Priest: a life of Ernest Burgmann (Sydney 1993), xii.
7 Antonia Fraser, ‘Optical research’, in Mark Bostridge (ed.), Lives for Sale: biographers’ tales (London
2004), 113.
8 Honore Forster, ‘Bibliography—James Wightman Davidson’, Journal of Pacific History, 28:2 (1993),
278-81 is reasonably comprehensive.
9 August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, Black History and the Historical Profession, 1915-1980
(Urbana/Chicago 1986); Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: the ‘objectivity’ question and the American
historical profession (Chicago/London 1988).
10 Doug Munro, ‘Who “owns” Pacific history? Reflections on the insider/outside dichotomy’, Journal
of Pacific History, 29:2 (1994), 232-37; ‘Pacific Islands history in the vernacular: practical and ethical
considerations’, New Zealand Journal of History, 29:1 (1995), 83-96. Both articles were submitted for
publication in 1993.
11 Sir Isaiah Berlin’s biographer eloquently rebuked All Souls College, Oxford, for denying him access
to their records relating to his subject: ‘It is regrettable that a community of scholars who depend for
their work on accepted conventions of access to archival material should deny a biographer access to
papers on a fellow who was a credit to their institution for over 60 years’. Michael Ignatieff, Isaiah
Berlin: a life (London 2000), 304.
12 Without the latter material I would have been severely hampered in writing ‘Disentangling Samoan
history: the contributions of Gilson and Davidson’, in Doug Munro and Brij V. Lal (eds), Texts and
Contexts: reflections in Pacific Islands historiography (Honolulu 2006), 225-37.
13 S.G. Foster and Margaret M. Varghese, The Making of the Australian National University, 1946-1996
(Sydney 1996). The reviewer is Eric Richards (Professor of History at Flinders University), The Australian,
2 Oct. 1996, 31.
14 Bryan D. Palmer, E.P. Thompson: objections and oppositions (London/New York, 1994).
15 Susan Woodburn, Journeys through Pacific History: a guide to the Pacific Islands library and papers
of H.E. and H.C. Maude (Adelaide 1995).
16 Susan Woodburn, Where Our Hearts Still Lie: a life of Harry and Honor Maude in the Pacific Islands
(Adelaide 2003). See my review in the Journal of Pacific History, 40:1 (2005), 124-5.
17 Fitzpatrick’s biographer does not bring out that Davidson was Fitzpatrick’s strongest supporter in
his quest for an academic position. Don Watson, Brian Fitzpatrick: a radical life (Sydney 1979), 273.
This has been rectified by Stuart Macintyre, ‘The radical and the mystic: Brian Fitzpatrick, Manning
Clark and Australian history’, in Stuart Macintyre and Sheila Fitzpatrick (eds), Against the Grain: Brian
Fitzpatrick and Manning Clark in Australian history and politics (Melbourne 2007), 12-36. Fitzpatrick’s
children went on to become distinguished professors of history—Sheila at the University of Chicago
and David at Trinity College, Dublin.
18 R. Gerard Ward, ‘Davidson’s contribution to the “Admiralty Handbooks”’, Journal of Pacific History,
29: 2 (1996), 238-40; Hugh Clout and Cyril Gosme, ‘The naval intelligence handbooks: a monument to
geographical writing’, Progress in Human Geography, 27:2 (2003), 153-73.
19 D.A. Low (ed.), Keith Hancock: the legacies of an historian (Melbourne 2001).
20 E.g., Carole Fink, Marc Bloch: a life in history (Cambridge 1989); David Cannadine, G.M. Trevelyan:
a life in history (London 1992); Fay Anderson, An Historian’s Life: Max Crawford and the politics of
academic freedom (Melbourne 2005); David S. Brown, Richard Hofstadter: an intellectual biography
(Chicago 2006); Tim Beaglehole, A Life of J.C. Beaglehole: New Zealand scholar (Wellington 2006).
21 Roman Grynberg, Doug Munro and Michael White, Crisis: the collapse of the National Bank of Fiji
(Adelaide 2002).
22 But there was an unhappy sequel. In July 2000, I received an email from the caregiver who tended
Ruth during her last months when, unbeknown to me, she had been moved to a nursing home. Ruth
had passed away in early March and the caregiver, who found my letters and Christmas card to Ruth,
had been trying to locate me ever since. I enquired about the memorabilia, and especially the photograph.
It transpired that Ruth was unable to take many of her belongings to the smaller quarters of the nursing
home and the memorabilia had been ‘disposed of’. See the obituary in Reflections [Quarterly Journal of
the NSW Branch of the National Trust], October-January (2001), 37.
23 Published as The National Income of Western Samoa (Melbourne 1973).
24 My experiences pale by comparison with the treatment dished out by Sonia Orwell to her late
husband’s prospective biographers. Gordon Bowker, ‘Nuts about St Cyps: lessons and quarrels in the
lives of George Orwell’, Times Literary Supplement, 15 Sept. 2006, 13-15.
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The Search for J.W. Davidson
25 Doug Munro, ‘The Vaitupu Company revisited: reflections and second thoughts on methodology
and mindset’, History in Africa, 24 (1997), 235 note 10.
26 George Shepperson, P.E.H. Hair and Doug Munro, ‘J.W. Davidson at Cambridge University: some
student evaluations’, History in Africa (2000), 215-27. Davidson’s work at Cambridge, especially his
key role in mounting the famous Expansion of Europe course, is recounted in Ronald Hyam, ‘The study
of Imperial and Commonwealth History at Cambridge, 1881-1981: founding fathers and pioneer research
students’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 29:3 (2001), 81-84, 98-99.
27 Doug Munro, ‘J.W. Davidson and Western Samoa: university politics and the travails of a
constitutional adviser’, Journal of Pacific History, 35: 2 (2000), 195-211.
28 The revised version of the lecture is intended as the opening chapter to a book of biographical essays
on Pacific historians which I am working on.
29 O.H.K. Spate, ‘The history of a history: reflections on the ending of a Pacific voyage’, Journal of
Pacific History, 13: 1 (1988), 5-6.
30 Davidson to his mother, 14 Sept. 1951, Davidson Papers, National Library of Australia, MS 5105,
Box 66; Foster and Varghese, The Making of the Australian National University, 149-50.
31 It also turned out that my father, a professional singer, has fond memories of the vibrant Pipps. As
Secretary of the British Music Society (Hastings Branch), she was able to give my father much-needed
recital work in the 1950s. She was also the regional representative for the New Zealand Opera Company,
which my father founded, and facilitated the Company’s touring throughout the Hawkes Bay area.
Doug Munro, ‘The early years of the New Zealand Opera Company, 1954-1957’, History Now, 11:1-2
(2005), 19-23.
32 The evidential difficulties are illustrated in other ways by Davidson’s friend, Eric McCormick (the
biographer of Omai, among other books), who hid his sexual preferences in the face of societal prejudice
and legal repression and ‘came out’ in a more tolerant climate. McCormick’s later insistence that his
homosexuality must no longer be concealed created problems for the editor of his autobiography. First,
McCormick’s scattered autobiographical writings, which were written in the age of intolerance, contain
few explicit references to his sexuality. Second, while McCormick was eventually frank about his own
sexuality, ‘he felt he had no licence to be so about his partners, many of whom later married and had
children’. E.H. McCormick, An Absurd Ambition: autobiographical writings, ed. Dennis McEldowney
(Auckland 1996), x-xi.
33 Davidson to Lilburn, 5 Jun. 1941, Papers of Douglas Lilburn, Wellington, Alexander Turnbull
Library, MS-Papers-2483-052.
34 The matter is also discussed in Philip Norman, Douglas Lilburn: his life and work (Christchurch 2006),
80, 429 note 34.
35 An illuminating account of a biographer’s excursions into oral history is Andrew Roberts, ‘La-Di-Da’,
in Bostridge, Lives for Sale, 124-33.
36 Michael King, Tread Softly For You Tread On My Life (Auckland 2001), 43. An exemplary example
of the primacy of research over ‘style’ is Bernard Crick, George Orwell: a life (London 1980). Crick once
said, ‘Damn the ring of truth, give me the footnotes’.
37 Paula Backscheider, Reflections on Biography (Oxford 1999), xvi-xvii.
38 My publications on Davidson, in addition to those already itemised are: ‘Davidson, James Wightman,
1915-1973’, in Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, vol. 5 (Auckland and Wellington 2000), 135-6;
‘J.W. Davidson: the making of a participant historian’, in Brij V. Lal and Peter Hempenstall (eds), Pacific
Lives, Pacific Places: bursting boundaries in Pacific history (Canberra 2001), 98-116; ‘Becoming an
expatriate: J.W. Davidson and the brain drain’, Journal of New Zealand Studies, 2-3 (2003-2004), 19-43;
‘J.W. Davidson’s Contribution to New Zealand Historiography’, Treaty of Waitangi Research Unit
Occasional Paper, no. 9 (Wellington 2005), 49; ‘J.W. Davidson and W.K. Hancock: patronage, preferment,
privilege’, under consideration for publication.
39 This bears comparison with the biography of the New Zealand Prime Minister, Peter Fraser, who
sent Davidson on his first tour of duty in Western Samoa in 1947. See Michael Bassett with Michael
King, Tomorrow Comes the Song: a life of Peter Fraser (Auckland 2000), 11-12. Sir Alister McIntosh (the
long-serving permanent head of the Prime Minister’s Department, who suggested to Fraser in 1947 that
Davidson go to Western Samoa) intended to write Fraser’s biography as a retirement project, but by
then his health was not up to the task. He enlisted Michael King’s collaboration in the late 1970s but a
few years later King suffered a lengthy illness and the project went into abeyance. In 1996, Michael
Bassett was asked to take over and the biography was duly published in 2000. The book took a while
to complete but the early start did mean that King was able to interview at length not only McIntosh
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(one of the few people in whom Fraser confided), but Fraser’s surviving contemporaries and members
of the family. Most of these interviews would not have been possible by the time Bassett entered the
picture. Moreover, the almost complete absence of personal papers meant that these interviews were
crucial to the eventual biography. In like fashion, starting work on Davidson when I did has resulted
in oral testimony and written reminiscences that are no longer available.
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The Search for J.W. Davidson
Chapter 12
‘You Did What, Mr President!?!?’
Trying to Write a Biography of Tosiwo
Nakayama
David Hanlon
At the time of this writing in March, 2006, Tosiwo Nakayama lies gravely ill in
Waipahu, a former plantation town on the island of O‘ahu flattened, paved over
and built upon with shopping malls and track houses. Japanese and later Filipino
immigrants once worked the sugar cane fields of Waipahu. More recently, the
town has become home to an increasing number of people from Micronesia; most
notably those from Chuuk and the Marshall Islands. Their presence is the result
of provisions within the Compact of Free Association between the United States
and the governments of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) and the Republic
of the Marshall Islands that allow for the free movement of Micronesians into
the United States and its territories. Tosiwo Nakayama, the first president of the
FSM, helped negotiate that compact.
There is considerable unease surrounding his present situation in Hawai‘i;
those who tend to him in that two-story townhouse in Waipahu are his most
immediate family members: his daughter Sydiniha, his youngest son Masami,
and other female members of his extended family resident on the island. The
United States government has extended no recognition to this former head of
state lying ill within its borders, and members of the FSM consulate in Honolulu
struggle with the lack of established protocol for his presence. Nakayama’s
current circumstances seem a less than dignified or respectful culmination to a
distinguished life. Perhaps the uneasiness surrounding his situation suggests
something of the ways in which the nation-state he helped build is regarded by
those who reside within its borders and by those who are bound by diplomatic
treaty to respect its sovereignty. Or do the restrained responses to his weakened
condition remind us of how belittling the prefix ‘micro’ is? Micro as in
‘Micronesian’, meaning tiny or small, and not terribly important to those for
whom size matters. That is the way Micronesia has been viewed historically and
historiographically; that is the way Micronesian immigrants tend to be viewed
now in Hawai‘i. Tosiwo Nakayama, then, dies as a ‘micro’ man whose
contributions to the founding of the Federated States of Micronesia do not allow
him to escape the belittling, still colonising gaze cast upon people from small,
165
distant islands to the west of Hawai‘i. I am interested in the meanings of Tosiwo
Nakayama’s life that precede, include and transcend his current condition.
Born to a Japanese father and a local woman in 1931 on Piserach, a part of
the atoll complex of Onon in the Namonuito group of islands that lies some 200
miles to the northwest of the main Chuuk Lagoon group, Nakayama grew up
during Japan’s colonial administration of greater Micronesia. Perhaps, the skills
he developed negotiating the different worlds from which his father and mother
came help explain his success in later forging a national government from a
collection of disparate island groups. Before he reached the age of 15, Nakayama
had lived through a world war and a subsequent change in colonial
administrations. Nakayama proved adept at adjusting to life in post-war Chuuk,
then known as Truk, and under the United States Trust Territory of the Pacific
Islands. He learned English and graduated from the Pacific Islands Central School
(PICS) on Weno Island, also called Moen and the administrative center for Chuuk
during the Trust Territory period. Nakayama later went on to spend time
studying at the University of Hawai‘i’s Mānoa campus.
Returning to Chuuk in 1958, Nakayama advanced quickly through a series
of administrative positions to become assistant district director for Public Affairs.
Most notable in this time period are his efforts on behalf of autonomy and
self-government at both the local and trust territory-wide levels. He served first
as a representative from Namonuito and then as president in the Truk District
Congress. In 1965, Nakayama won election to the House of Delegates of the
Congress of Micronesia. In 1968, he succeeded Amata Kabua of the Marshalls as
president of that legislative body. More than any other individual, Tosiwo
Nakayama is credited with managing the complex, sensitive political negotiations
on Saipan in 1975 that resulted in a draft national constitution for the different
Micronesian states or districts seeking political autonomy from the United States.
A proponent of independence for Micronesia since his student days at the
University of Hawai‘i, Nakayama served as an early member of the Congress of
Micronesia’s Future Political Status Commission, and was a key player in the
long difficult negotiations with the United States government that culminated
in the Compact of Free Association. Nakayama worked aggressively on behalf
of the compact, arguing for its passage throughout the islands and against strong
opposition in the Northern Marianas, the Marshalls, and Palau where sentiment
for separate political negotiations with the United States ultimately prevailed.
Despite this separation, the Federated States of Micronesia came into being as a
result of the constitution’s ratification in 1978 by the remaining island states of
Chuuk, Kosrae, Pohnpei, and Yap. These same four states later approved the
draft Compact of Free Association with the United States in a 1983 plebiscite.
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By vote of his congressional colleagues, Tosiwo Nakayama was chosen as the
first president of the FSM. His inauguration took place on 15 May 1979. More
than seven years would pass before the United States Congress completed its
review and approval of the compact. In the interim, Nakayama concerned himself
with matters of government. During his first four-year term in office, Nakayama
focused on transition issues, nation building, economic development, and the
distribution of power and responsibilities between the national and four state
governments. He worked in his second term to establish the FSM’s regional and
international credibility.
A study of the life of Tosiwo Nakayama, however, involves much more than
a narrative of political events. From a small atoll complex whose survival
depended upon voyaging and navigation, Nakayama’s career parallels the current
regional reemergence of these nautical abilities as powerful testaments to cultural
pride and dignity. Similarly, Nakayama’s personal and professional travels
foreshadowed the current migration of Micronesian peoples; as previously noted,
his efforts on behalf of the Compact of Free Association have enabled Micronesian
migration to the United States and its territories. Nakayama’s rise to prominence
in Chuuk constitutes a remarkable story given the physical, political, and cultural
distance that separates the Namonuitos from the main Lagoon group. Put another
way, he was an outer islander.
Complex engagements with colonialism, decolonisation, and nation-making
were central to Nakayama’s career; these encounters place him squarely in the
middle of some of the most complex, important issues in 20th
-century Pacific
Islands history. Nakayama’s career also affords the opportunity to examine the
gap between political theory and practice. While anthropologists, historians,
and social science researchers debate modernisation, development and the
appropriateness of the term ‘Micronesia’, Nakayama had to call upon historical
linkages, common experiences, and shared aspirations among varied and diverse
groups of island people. Tosiwo Nakayama’s life, then, offers a critical focal lens
through which to examine a host of key themes that link Micronesia to the larger
Pacific region and beyond.
I first met Tosiwo Nakayama on Pohnpei in 1973. My wife and I were Peace
Corps volunteers preparing to leave the island after three years of teaching
English and social studies at a Catholic mission school in the south of the island.
We were in Kolonia at the time, the aptly named capitol of the island. The
Congress of Micronesia was holding a session on the island, one in a series of
visits designed to better connect this still fledgling representative body with its
widely dispersed constituency of atoll and island dwellers spread across an area
about the size of the continental United States. Negotiations with the United
States over a new political status had already begun, and members of the
congress’s Future Political Status Commission were also seeking the input of
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Biography of Tosiwo Nakayama
elected and traditional leaders in the different island districts. There was a
reception for the congress near the Catholic Mission in Kolonia to which my wife
and I were invited. I remember sitting in one of the chairs that lined the walls
of the long, rectangular meeting room with tiled floor, thinly panelled walls and
a corrugated tin roof. Nakayama, then president of the Congress of Micronesia’s
Senate, came up to us, extended his hand, and said simply ‘Tos Nakayama’. I
remember being struck by his modesty and good looks. Twenty-seven years
later, I met him again, this time in the restaurant of the Honolulu Airport’s Best
Western Hotel where I agreed to work with him on the story of his life.
Why? Living for almost eight years on the island of Pohnpei had taught us
to look beyond labels such as ‘underdeveloped’. I learned something of how
rich life could be amidst communities bound together by a strong sense of kin,
clan, family, and church relationships. I remember marvelling at how in control
people seemed to be of their lives—of how focused they were on their social
relationships—despite a succession of colonial regimes in the region. In more
academic environments of the early 1980s, the word ‘agency’ spoke to the
realisation of peoples’ roles in the making of their own worlds and in their
encounters with others. I wrote a general history of the island of Pohnpei that
sought above all else to portray a rich and dynamic island world that persevered
against an array of external threats, not the least of which was epidemic disease.
I authored a later book entitled Remaking Micronesia that took a larger regional
view of the way people engaged with both the discourses and forces of
development. While the balance of power in this engagement was decidedly
asymmetrical, I saw agency too in different peoples’ efforts to make a better
world that was still their world. I saw agency in the person of Tosiwo Nakayama
in 1973.
I used to teach a course in World Civilisations at the University of Hawai‘i;
it was an impossible course that sought to acquaint students with the variety of
human experiences over time. I subverted the conventions of that course by
including a section on the peopling of the Pacific and by advertising that
settlement as being one of humankind’s greatest historical accomplishments. I
would describe the creation of the Federated States of Micronesia in less effusive
terms, perhaps, but nonetheless as a remarkable achievement.
A study of Tosiwo Nakayama’s life also offers the opportunity to glimpse
local engagements with the American colonial presence, and the creation of a
nation state against a formidable array of local and external forces, not the least
of which were the divisions among Micronesians themselves. The approval of
the constitution of the FSM was but the beginning of a difficult foundational
period. There were the complex negotiations with the Trust Territory government
over separation and transition; the physical and political difficulties of
establishing a capitol for the new government on a reserved, not always
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appreciative Pohnpei; and the intense debates over states rights, powers, and
revenue entitlements. Within the FSM, there was concern over the possible
domination of Chuuk at the expense of the smaller states, most notably Kosrae
and Yap. Nakayama was at the center of all this, and his mediation skills were
sometimes required in the settlement of more immediate, personal and ethnic
crises such as the stabbing of a Pohnpeian by Chuukese youth in 1983 on
Pohnpei.
Nakayama committed himself early on to independence. He said, in the course
of a week-long series of interviews at his home on Weno in early January of
2001, that his early work for the Trust Territory government in Truk had
convinced him that Americans could not administer the islands effectively or
prepare them for self-government. He thought Micronesians needed to govern
their own islands. There is more than a little irony in Nakayama’s call for unity
and independence. To be sure, it was the Chuukese or Trukese delegation in the
Congress of Micronesia that was most critical of the American administration in
the late 1960s and early 1970s. Members of the Chuukese delegation in this
period were also quite adamant in their insistence on independence for the future
Micronesian state. Nonetheless, Chuuk is considered the most divided and
contentious of the Micronesian island groups. It’s a description with a historical
pedigree that goes back almost to first contact between the islands and the larger
world. ‘Dreaded Hogelau’ is the term used by some historians to describe the
factionalism and rivalry that seemed to characterise the lagoon group then. It’s
a characterisation that in the minds of many still fits in the first years of the 21st
century.
Chuuk’s alleged backwardness was a concern of the Trust Territory
government. More recent assessments, such as the United States Government
Accounting Office’s report on the use of compact monies in the FSM, have
stressed the corruption that has impeded Chuuk’s development, making it a
major drain on the struggling government. The prejudice is not necessarily a
colonial construction or artifact. Distrust of Chuukese is acute among other
Micronesian peoples and is pointed too as a potential cause for the dissolution
of the FSM.
Nakayama, however, dismissed criticisms of the region as too diverse and
divided. He believed differences among Micronesians were exaggerated by
outsiders whose own interests, prejudices and world views were served by the
presumption of divisiveness. He did not share understandings of Micronesia as
a colonial construct. He saw links, connections and commonalities that the name
‘Micronesia’ spoke well enough too. He articulated his belief on numerous
occasions during the ratification campaign for the FSM constitution that the
resources of the surrounding seas could easily provide the revenues to sustain
a unified government. During his trip to various islands during the ratification
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Biography of Tosiwo Nakayama
campaign, he often told the story of a previously dismembered ocean deity made
whole again by those who believed in him.
If there are reasons enough to justify a life history of Tosiwo Nakayama, what
then are the themes, patterns, or interpretive lens through which Nakayama’s
life might be understood? Voyaging is an often used (perhaps too often) metaphor
in Pacific studies. Voyaging, however, is a metaphor that might serve us well
in understanding something of Nakayama’s lineage. I’m thinking here of
Nakayama not so much as the navigator for the FSM ship of state or of the
extensive travel that was a feature of his public life. Rather, I have in mind
something more immediate and personal. Nakayama hails from Onon in the
Namonuito group of islands. One of Nakayama’s uncles was a respected navigator
who sailed the seas around the Namonuito group. Nakayama himself once thought
about leaving his public career to return to Onon to learn the navigator’s craft.
He was certainly competent and comfortable on the ocean. Fishing was a passion
of his, especially during his days as FSM president on Pohnpei. There are stories
of him putting his ear to the boat floor to listen for fish. Another account speaks
of an earlier incident when he successfully took over as navigator for a field trip
ship whose radar system had broken down on the way to the islands of Yap.
We might think of him, then, as a would-have-been navigator had his life been
less affected by colonialism and war.
Tosiwo Nakayama is quite literally a child of the Japanese colonial presence
in Micronesia. His father was an employee of the Nan‘yō Kabushikigaisha
(Nambō) trading company that was so commercially prominent in the islands
during Japan’s tenure. Nakayama and his family accompanied their father on
different assignments that included extended stays on Lukunor in the nearby
Mortlocks, and on Tol and Tolawas in the Faichuk area of the Chuuk lagoon.
Nakayama describes his father as being quite adept in English and with a sense
of the importance of that language for the islands’ future. Nakayama never
mentioned learning any English from his father; he may, however, have had his
father’s ear for language as he developed over his career a good ability in English
despite his limited formal schooling.
The American repatriation of all Japanese nationals from Micronesia following
the end of hostilities separated father from family. One of the more intriguing
anecdotes from Nakayama’s personal history involves the search for his father
during a trip to Japan in the late 1960s. The Chuukese son eventually brought
his Japanese father back to Weno to live with him in the family home by the
shore. Nakayama’s father now lies buried just outside of that home in a marked
grave surrounded by a modest wooden fence and covered by a small tin roof.
Towards the end of his life, Nakayama’s father, somewhat senile it seems, tended
the family’s small retail store. He was a popular sales clerk as he often returned
people’s money with their purchases.
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One of the more remarkable aspects of Tosiwo Nakayama’s life is the network
of relationships throughout the Chuuk group and further west that would later
translate into political support. Prejudice within the Chuuk lagoon group against
people from the outer islands remains pronounced. Nakayama’s birth on Onon
gave him no advantage on Weno or in the surrounding lagoon area, and by itself
could have been a very limiting factor for anyone with ambition. The personal
relationships established on those islands where his father resided for extended
periods of time as a commercial agent of Nambō came strongly into play in his
election to the Congress of Micronesia and later to the Congress of the Federated
States of Micronesia where popular electoral success was a condition of eligibility
for the presidency.
Nakayama claims to have had no ambition, certainly no plan for a political
career. But his travels, multiple residences, and close personal ties with the
people among whom he lived as a boy and young man go a long way toward
explaining his electoral success. His ability to garner support from the many
island areas that made up Truk district, later Chuuk state, allowed him to
overcome the disadvantages of a candidate not from Weno or the lagoon proper.
There is also Nakayama’s paternal ancestry. It linked him to a group of people
who became quite prominent in Chuuk during the Trust Territory period. These
island men, born of Japanese fathers and Chuukese women, were known for
their energy, drive, and entrepreneurial ability. They were often called upon
to serve as representatives or go-betweens in matters involving governance or
economy with the Trust Territory government. Nakayama’s association with
this prominent, commercially successful network of individuals proved a decided
asset. Perhaps, the most politically strategic of relationships was his marriage to
Mihter, a member of the Sopwunipi clan that was dominant on Weno and
prominent in the larger lagoon area. The geographical distribution of Nakayama’s
own clan stretched from Nomonuito west into Yap. This link to Yap would
provide him with strong support at critical times during his career in the Congress
of Micronesia and as president of the FSM.
Nakayama was a facilitator, a consensus seeker not given to confrontations
or public posturing. He showed little emotion and was a quiet man who preferred
private conversations and small social gatherings. As president of the Congress
of Micronesia’s Senate from 1968 to 1979, he rarely spoke for the congressional
record on key matters affecting policy or legislation; he confined himself instead
to procedural matters, and left the more public speeches for others. Nakayama
was also a self-effacing leader; he voted for his opponent, Amata Kabua of the
Marshalls, in the 1968 election that brought him the presidency of the Congress
of Micronesia’s Senate. He was a pragmatic man as well. When I asked him why
he settled for free association with the United States rather than the independence
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Biography of Tosiwo Nakayama
he had initially and vigorously championed, he replied simply that free
association was the best deal that could be gotten.
Those closest to him note that he grew quieter when angry. Emotions and
the threat of violence swirled about him nonetheless. He responded to threats
of violence against his person in one election by travelling to Tolowas in the
Faichuk area to meet with then congressman Kalisto Refalopei, the source of
those threats. At the end of the 1975 Micronesian constitutional convention, he
brokered a last minute deal that made possible the approval of a draft constitution
despite deep dissatisfaction within the Palau, Marshalls, and Mariana delegations.
At that closed door session, Nakayama sat between John Ngiraked of Palau and
Leo Falcam of Pohnpei. Tensions ran high between the two men on either side
of Nakayama. Words, gestures, glances, and body posture, reported those
present, conveyed the two men’s deep unease with one another. Falcam, himself
a future president of the FSM, spoke for unity and the draft constitution;
Ngiraked was committed to a separate government for Palau. Nakayama,
personally closer to the Pohnpeian than the Palauan, would sometimes step on
Falcam’s foot when exchanges became particularly heated. Ultimately, the
convention delegates approved the draft constitution but with the tacit
understanding that not all of the districts would join the Federated States of
Micronesia.
Violence would become associated with the careers of both Falcam and
Ngiraked. Falcam in 1986 promised that blood would run through the streets of
Pohnpei should the Faichuk area of Chuuk be recognised as a separate and second
Chuukese state within the FSM, a development that threatened the very tenuous
and fragile balance of power among the four existing states of Chuuk, Kosrae,
Pohnpei, and Yap. Ngiraked would be arrested, tried, convicted, and jailed for
masterminding the assassination of the Republic of Palau’s second president,
Haruo Remelik.
The pressures on Nakayama were many and constant throughout his public
life. There were threats against his life, and intense surveillance on his movements
and activities especially during negotiations with the United States over the
Compact of Free Association. His absence from home placed considerable pressure
and hardship on his family, most especially his wife and two eldest sons.
Nakayama, however, did not use his position for private gain. His own public
career is remarkably free of controversy or scandal. The same cannot be said for
family members. His brother-in-law was impeached as governor of Chuuk State
in the early 1980s for misuse of public funds. More recently, Nakayama’s
daughter and son-in law were indicted, again for the misuse of public funds and
as part of a wider investigation into fraud and corruption in Chuuk state carried
out by the attorney general's office of the FSM government.
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It would be a mistake to see Nakayama as more than he actually was. He
brought people together and through dialogue, reassurance, and persuasion.
His most important political asset may well have been his patience. Nakayama
did not act alone, but rather in consort with others who shared his belief that
Micronesians were best able to govern themselves. A life history of Tosiwo
Nakayama will need careful attention to his friend and colleague Andohn
Amaraich, now chief justice of the Federated States of Micronesia. Amaraich,
like Nakayama, was a largely self-educated man who served in the Congress of
Micronesia and later headed the Congress of Micronesia’s Future Political Status
Commission in its negotiations with representatives of the United States. Amaraich
shared Nakayama’s vision for independence.There are those who view Amaraich,
more than Nakayama, as the visionary and architect for what became the
Federated States of Micronesia.
Betwel Henry from the outlying island of Mokil or Mwoakilloa in Pohnpei
state served as the speaker of the Congress of Micronesia’s House of
Representatives for many years. Henry is credited with being the tactician who
actually brokered many of the compromises that made possible the emergence
of the FSM. The three—Amaraich, Henry, and Nakayama—are often spoken of
as a triumvirate. Other prominent names from this period of state formation
include Petrus Tun and John Mangafel of Yap, Lazarus Sali and Roman Tmetuchl
of Palau, and Ambilos Iieshi and Bailey Olter of Pohnpei. One of the reasons
behind Nakayama’s cooperation in this biography project is the belief that the
story of these early formative years of the FSM is being forgotten and that current
leaders have lost a sense of vision and commitment to the nation in favour of
more immediate parochial and personal interests.
The issues surrounding and even confounding a biography of Tosiwo
Nakayama are many and considerable. This is a project that I was asked to do
by those close to Nakayama personally and professionally. They perhaps seek
a life history that celebrates a man and his many accomplishments. It would be
easy enough to make this biography a hagiography. Among the more than 35
formal interviews I have recorded with Nakayama’s colleagues and associates,
only one individual ventured comments that were substantively critical of
Nakayama and on grounds that he was far more a politician than a leader. The
vast majority of individuals I have interviewed across Micronesia over the last
few years have spoken glowingly of Nakayama, including those in the Marshalls
and Palau who opposed him in his efforts to promote Micronesian unity. It would
be naive, perhaps, to expect that I as a stranger to most of these men could elicit
within a single meeting comments that were other than positive.
The artificiality of formal interviews is but a part of the larger problem of
doing a life history of a Micronesian. Biography can certainly be an alien,
intrusive venture into lives whose parameters are defined, even subsumed, by
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Biography of Tosiwo Nakayama
a complex, interlocking network of kin, clan and family. There is the fact too
that we are dealing with multiple identities and inter-subjectivities. Nakayma
was a man whose life involved numerous relationships and accompanying
responsibilities; he was a son, brother, nephew, husband, father, uncle, friend,
clan mate, student, church member, government worker, elected official, national
leader, and president of his country. Depending upon circumstances, he would
identify himself by home island, clan membership, family affiliation, and as
Trukese, Chuukese, or Micronesian. At different times in his life, he dealt with
people who called themselves Chamorros, Guamanians, Kosraeans, Marshallese,
Palauans, Pohnpeians,Yapese, Americans, Australians, Fijians, Israelis, Japanese,
and Samoans to list a few. And there is the very fundamental question as to what
kind of man Tosiwo Nakayama was. The anthropological literature suggests that
modernisation has had a highly disruptive effect on Chuukese masculinity. This
does not seem to be a prominent issue in Nakayama’s life. If so, then the question
is why. What is it that allowed Nakayama to be secure, assured and confident
in his identity?
It would be a mistake to speak or write of Tosiwo Nakayama only in his more
political and leadership roles. He was much more than the public descriptions
and accounts provided by Trust Territory officials, diplomats, compact
negotiators, American negotiators, and academic observers that constitute the
written archive on his life. It would be wrong as well to frame his life solely
against the discourses of governance and development with which he engaged.
But how to do it? How to tell his life story in a way that captures his complexity,
his humanity, his significance, and in a way that he and his people would
recognise?
I have already indicated in this essay something of the issues around sources.
Let me expand. Soon after agreeing to take on this project, I asked Tosiwo
Nakayama if I could have access to his personal papers. He replied that had he
any, he would most certainly make them available to me. Unfortunately, he
continued, he had thrown them all away shortly after leaving the presidency in
1986. I was dismayed. My inner voice cried out: ‘You did what, Mr. President!?!?’
The public records of the Federated States of Micronesia for the Nakayama
presidency pose another kind of problem. I have been told they exist, but have
yet to locate them or identify anyone who knows where exactly they are stored.
Given the climatic conditions in Micronesia, the often erratic power supply
there, and the generally low priority accorded the preservation of government
records, my fear of what I might find sometimes approaches my fear of finding
nothing.
Nakayama’s life is certainly not without documentation. There are the
microfilmed records of the Trust Territory administration housed at the
University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa, and other selective sites throughout the region.
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This rather extensive collection includes over 2,500 reels of microfilmed reports,
correspondence, minutes of meetings, and government publications, much of it
concerned with matters of governance and future political status. This will help.
The secondary and periodical literature is also considerable; Nakayama’s name
figures prominently in studies of politics, governance, constitutionalism, and
the Compact of Free Association. Official American records from Nakayama's
time are more difficult to access; many are still classified. Those that are available
can be accessed only though a time consuming and costly application process
as specified in the United States Congress’s Freedom of Information Act. There
are too the highly sensitive psychological profiles of Chuukese leaders
commissioned by Trust Territory government officials and done by the American
anthropologist Jack Fischer in the early 1950s. The Pacific Collection on the fifth
floor of the University of Hawai‘i’s Hamilton Library holds the university’s
international student records on Micronesians from the 1950s and 1960s; these
include quite detailed, even intimate reports on the many future political leaders
of Micronesia who studied in Hawai‘i during this period. Finally, I did spend
considerable time with Nakayama himself in late December of 2000 and early
January of 2001. I visited his home on Weno where I conducted 13 hours of
recorded and since transcribed interviews with him. These, of course, are
invaluable but nonetheless are affected by Nakayama’s self-admitted memory
loss and poor health.
To be honest, I think Nakayama was also careful, selective and even evasive
at times in these interviews. His stated reason for cooperating in this biography
project is the belief that the story of the FSM’s formative years has been forgotten
by those local leaders desperately in need of remembering it. It is, then, a political
biography he would have me write and for contemporary political purposes.
While I understand Nakayama’s life as being about much more than politics,
this biography project may well end up concentrating on his public life. If so,
I still have many questions to ask. I want to know more about his Japanese
ancestry, about his father’s forced repatriation to Japan, and about how growing
up during Japanese colonial times may have influenced his later political views.
I have questions too about what strikes me as Nakayama’s denial of the very
real divisions within the FSM. Tosiwo Nakayama is unable to answer these
questions, however. He is desperately ill in Waipahu, conscious and alert but
no longer able to speak.
I return to the circumstances surrounding Nakayama’s current presence in
Hawai‘i. It may be that they reflect his noble but flawed vision of an autonomous
government not much believed in by some of its citizens and not much respected
by the United States with which it is associated. Still, I contend that a biography
of this individual is important for what he tried to do, for the historical and
contemporary issues with which his life engages, and for the ways in which he
sought to redefine the boundaries of a Micronesia and reconfigure the
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Biography of Tosiwo Nakayama
self-imaging of Micronesians. This is what makes trying to do a biography of
Tosiwo Nakayama a worthy and important project.
Postscript:
Tosiwo Nakayama passed away on March 29, 2007 in Hawai‘i.
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Chapter 13
Telling the Life of A.D. Patel
Brij V. Lal
Ambalal Dahyabhai Patel, or ‘AD’, as he was universally known, was the greatest
leader of the Indo-Fijian community in colonial Fiji and, arguably, one of the
country’s most brilliant public intellectuals. Steeped in the Gandhian tradition
of politics, at whose dawn he came of age, possessing astute political skills,
widely read and far-sighted, at home in several languages, the most outstanding
criminal lawyer of his day, he strode the public stage like none other. Often at
the centre of the most momentous events in Fiji’s post-war history, he was
nevertheless unable, in his own lifetime, to realise the vision of a non-racial
political culture based on the principle of the common roll. Born in Gujarat in
1905, Patel came to Fiji in 1928 and died there in 1969, a year before the colony
became independent.
The most ardent advocate of Fiji’s independence is now a forgotten figure in
Fiji, remembered, if remembered at all, in a few primary and secondary schools
which bear his name and among the fading generation of National Federation
Party supporters, the party he founded in 1963. On the other hand, Patel’s
counterpart among Fijians, Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna, is honoured in public memorials
and a national holiday named after him, his legacy of chiefly leadership
commemorated in an authorised biography.1 In recent years, Sukuna has become
somewhat of a national public icon while the public knowledge of Patel’s
enormous contribution to the political life of his adopted country, and the
inclusive non-racial vision he espoused all his life, has receded, a result, no
doubt, of a deliberate policy of manicuring reputations and accentuating things
Fijian in the broader scheme of things. However great or worthy a non-Fijian,
it is unlikely that he or she will be allowed to compete for national limelight
with the stars of the Fijian establishment.2 Fiji’s icons will always remain Fijian.
In 1997, after a decade of interrupted research, I published my biography of
A.D. Patel, A Vision for Change: A.D. Patel and the politics of Fiji.3 I reflect here
on how I came to write the biography, the sources I used and how these helped
or hindered my research effort. Ten years on, new sources of information,
principally the Colonial Office records at the Public Record Office (PRO) in Kew
Gardens, have became available on the most crucial decade of Fiji’s political
evolution—the 1960s—in which Patel had a major role to play.4 Does the new
177
archival material require revision of the conclusions I reached in the book? Does
it fundamentally alter the terms of the debate about Fiji’s decolonisation? These
and related questions form the substance of this chapter.
I do not quite know when I first heard A.D. Patel’s name. There was our
neighbour, Mr Ram Dayal Singh, an illiterate but wealthy cane farmer and
bus-owner, whom we grew up calling Patel. He was nicknamed after A.D.,
apparently for his ingenious, irrefutable arguments in village meetings to sway
decisions in his favour, as A.D. Patel, the canny criminal lawyer, did in the court
room. But this connection came to me much later. I must have heard Patel’s name
during the 1959 strike, prolonged and devastating, causing a shortage of sugar
at home and often making us go without it. Patel was the leader of the strike.
His name, mentioned in disapproving tones on the radio which had just arrived
in our settlement, was at the outer edges of our political consciousness during
the 1960s as Fiji hurtled towards independence. Labasa was a rural, isolated
backwater then, and politics was never discussed at school except perfunctorily
and surreptitiously among teachers and then, too, away from the earshot of
students.
It was at university that I first became aware of Patel’s role in Fiji’s public
life. I soon discovered that most official records and recollections, oral and
written, either deified or demonised him; frequently the latter among the urban
elite who sought to shore up not shake the colonial establishment. The Fiji Times,
the only local daily then, portrayed Patel always as a dangerous man bent on
wreaking havoc on the country to gain political power at any cost. I realised the
full range and scope of Patel’s contribution after I had finished my postgraduate
studies at The Australian National University, published my dissertation, and,
getting interested in the more recent history of Fiji, was on the lookout for a
new topic. It was then that A.D. Patel’s life suggested itself. Existing references
to Patel’s ambition and his dubious commitment to Fiji simply whetted my
appetite.5 There was, on reflection, another reason for my interest in the man.
Soon after returning to Fiji, I began to take scholarly interest in contemporary
national politics.6 The National Federation Party was tearing itself apart over
leadership in the 1970s. As I sought to understand why, I got more and more
interested in its early history and, as an extension, in the charismatic leadership
of its founder. By the 1970s, Patel had become, in the eyes of his supporters, a
mythic figure, similar in influence and stature to Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna.
Having resolved to work on Patel, I wrote to his widow, Leela, expressing
my wish and seeking her permission to consult Patel’s papers (if they existed).
The reply never came: people in Fiji do not generally write letters, but permission
was generously given when I began the project and approached the family in
person. The family cooperated fully, but not once did they ask to see the
manuscript when it was completed or seek to know about my lines of enquiry.
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I was welcomed with open arms and allowed to consult whatever papers I
wanted, including Patel’s private letters and his diary, his official
correspondence.7 His children, especially Patel’s two daughters, Pratibha and
Vasantika, placed at my disposal letters their father wrote, and Leela answered
questions about the family scene: the long car rides, the Sunday picnics, the late
night games of bridge, the music and singing, the personal quirks of her late
husband, his occasional absent-mindedness as he became absorbed in preparing
for important court cases, his incessant appetite for reading. In these
conversations, Patel came through as a warm, caring father to whom the
happiness of his family was paramount. But the timing was wrong. Soon after
writing to Leela, I left Suva for Honolulu where I turned my attention to other
topics, the coups of 1987 and the modern history of Fiji. For a while Patel faded
from my research radar. A heavy teaching load took its own toll on my time and
energy. But upon returning to Australia in 1990, and with books on the coup
and 20th
century history of Fiji written, I returned to Patel, now with purpose
and determination to finish a project I had first contemplated a decade ago.8
In Canberra, I was fortunate to have two major sources which were to prove
highly relevant to my research. One was the Colonial Sugar Refining (CSR)
Company archives at the Noel Butlin Archives of Business and Labour. Patel
had been at the centre stage of the sugar industry disputes in 1943 and 1960,
and the key advocate for the cane growers before the Denning Arbitration in
1969. His role in the disputes was the cause of much controversy, some of it
continuing to this day.9 The CSR papers, I hoped, would enable a deeper probing
of a controversial subject, which they did but not to the degree I had expected.
They were useful in providing an insight into the CSR view of things and how
the company sought to influence people and events to its advantage. But apart
from the strike papers, I did not find much of direct value to me. The bulk of
the archival material deals with the day-to-day operations of the company,
correspondence between various mills in Fiji and the CSR headquarters in Sydney.
Like the Patel family, the CSR, too, gave me unconditional access to its papers
and placed no restriction on what I might or might not see. Clearly, as far as the
company was concerned, its days in Fiji were a part of a receding history. It
could be magnanimous because for it, the past was truly past.
The other major source in Canberra was the complete set of the weekly journal
Pacific Review which Patel started in 1949. In its early years, the Review was
remarkably liberal and informative, bringing to Fiji news from around the world
that was critical of imperial and colonial practices, news which the Fiji Times
would never publish. The weekly died with Patel. Past employees and
correspondents of the Pacific Review had told me that in the 1950s, when Patel
was out of active politics and to a lesser extent in the 1960s, when he was the
centre of it, he wrote most of the editorials. The Pacific Review proved
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Telling the Life of A.D. Patel
indispensable for my research, providing me access to material, sometimes
confidential, that I could not find in the archives. Pacific Review’s Hindi
counterpart, Jagriti, was less informative but important in gauging the pulse of
the Indo-Fijian farming community. Both these newspapers were effective
counterweights to the Fiji Times and the Fiji Broadcasting Commission. In 1989
and 1990, I wrote to several former colonial officials who knew Patel and worked
closely with him, especially when he was Member of Social Services between
1964 and 1967. I also wrote to former governor Sir Kenneth Maddocks and Lord
Denning, whose responses are discussed later on.10
By the time I went to Fiji in 1992, I had gathered much material of direct
relevance to the project. In Fiji, I was keen to pursue three sources. The first
was archival. Much of the material before 1947 I had already seen when
researching my Broken Waves. Unfortunately for the 1960s, the critical period
in Fiji’s transition to independence, the files were not available under the 30-year
rule. They were available now, but were not of much value. The substance of
the most important policy papers was already available in the newspapers or in
private collections. I was told by a very senior colonial official about five years
ago that much of the sensitive, personal material about prominent leaders had
actually been destroyed just before independence, apparently a fairly standard
practice at the close of colonial rule. Besides unpublished files, I systematically
read all the Hansard for the years Patel was a member of the Legislative Council
(1944-1950 and 1963-1969) to gauge his views on controversial public issues of
the day. The second mission I had to accomplish in Fiji was to consult Patel’s
private papers, and the third was to interview people who knew Patel or were
in some way associated with him.
By 1994, I began writing the book, and by 1995 had managed to produce a
substantial draft. But I was then called to serve on the Fiji Constitution
Commission from 1995-1996. The disruption was prolonged and intense.
Nevertheless, I used whatever free time I had to write and revise chapters. In
one important sense, the timing was fortuitous. Writing and reflecting on Patel’s
life, often deep into the night, kept the forgotten struggle for a just and fair
constitution for Fiji and all its people at the forefront of my mind. I was acutely
aware of the missteps and failures of past efforts and keen to move beyond Fiji’s
constitutional cul-de-sac. An awareness of the past weighed heavily on my mind
during these two critical years when we ourselves were charting a new course
for Fiji. I had written in my Broken Waves that Fiji’s modern history was a history
of missed opportunities, and I hoped very much that our work would not take
that route.
I will not revisit the central arguments of the biography here. The reception
has been warm, both in published reviews as well as in private correspondence.
I particularly cherish a private, unsolicited, letter from Peter France, sometime
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Secretary for Fijian Affairs and the author of the great Charter of the Land: custom
and colonisation in Fiji. He wrote on 19 March 1998: ‘[Y]our book made me feel
at the same time a regret that I had not got to know AD better and a satisfaction
that I had been able to live, for a time, inside his head.You demonstrate superbly
that AD often spoke and acted, from a position not only of intellectual, but of
moral superiority. This was emphatically not widely recognised during his
lifetime and we are all in your debt for pointing it out’. But privately, some
individuals, usually former politicians bitterly opposed to Patel but who had
now joined the National Federation Party after leaving the Alliance Party for a
variety of reasons, wrote to me to say that I had grossly exaggerated Patel’s role,
elevated him to the level of statesman when he was nothing more than a common
garden variety politician, a grasping Gujarati feeding off the ignorance of cane
growers whose case he claimed to champion. But negative responses were few.
Some pointed out, gleefully or helpfully, minor errors which will be corrected
in any future edition.
This leads me to the value of private correspondence for my research. Most
of these were from British colonial officials who had served in Fiji on lengthy
tours of duty, most of them in departments directly dealing with the Fijians.
They elucidated points, clarified doubts and suggested other contacts or lines
of enquiry. Their value is immeasurable, not least because they provided a
counterweight to the Patel papers. I shall illustrate this with a small sample of
responses I received. The first is from Sir Kenneth Maddocks, governor of Fiji
between 1958 and 1964, a critical time for the colony, coinciding with the
industrial disturbance in Suva in 1959 and a strike in the sugar industry in 1960
and the first official move, after nearly 30 years, towards constitutional change
preparing the way for greater internal self-government. Patel was pilloried in
the press and by his critics for his vaulting ambition, his heartless attitude to
the suffering of the cane growers he was representing. The Fiji Times wrote
about Patel and his followers as ‘cowards who hide in cane fields to destroy by
fire the fruits of other men’s labour … self-seeking, politically ambitious,
emotionally twisted grabbers of power by lies and intimidation’.11
Maddocks, who had come to Fiji from Tanganyika where he had been
governor, saw Patel as a ‘very capable, quick-witted and experienced advocate,
determined to press his case forcefully and inflexibly’. The strike had antagonised
some Fijian cane growers, caused violence and necessitated the declaration of
emergency in the sugar belts of Fiji to protect farmers who wanted to harvest
or, in effect, break the strike. All that was on the debit side. ‘On the other hand’,
Maddocks continued, ‘there is no doubt that he had a case’. But this is not what
the governor said at the time or in his correspondence with London. Throughout
the ’60s, everyone denied that Patel had a case. For its part, the CSR viewed cane
growers as a lazy, profligate lot whose sorry fate was entirely their own doing.
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Telling the Life of A.D. Patel
The strike was broken, and a commission of enquiry under Sir Malcolm
Trustram Eve instituted. The Eve report criticised Patel as an intelligent but
misguided man who could, if he wanted to, provide leadership of the ‘right
kind’. Eve accused Patel and his colleagues of causing disruption in the sugar
industry ‘in the hope of gaining advantages for themselves and of trying to drive
the millers out of Fiji’. The sugar industry had become a vehicle for ‘ambitious
politicians’.12 Ambitious politicians: these are almost exactly the same words
used to describe the strike leaders in 1943. Privately, Eve respected Patel’s
integrity, according to Robert Sanders, a senior colonial civil servant who served
as Secretary to Cabinet for many years after Fiji became independent and who
ghosted Ratu Mara’s memoirs. Whatever the differences between himself and
Patel, Eve said to Sanders, ‘one loyalty he was convinced Mr Patel had was his
loyalty to his Inn [Middle Temple]’ and ‘whatever other misgivings he might
have he could rely on this’. Patel’s opponents seized on Eve’s public
condemnation in his report to excoriate him. But in truth, as Patel had divined,
the contract based on the Eve report broke many farmers and sent them into
bankruptcy. Vijay R. Singh, who had led the anti-Patel faction during the strike,
later called Patel the greatest leader the growers had ever had, as did N. S.
Chalmers of the rival cane growers’ group. Interestingly, when Patel went to
London for the 1965 conference, Eve, by then Lord Silsoe, invited Patel for tea
at his house, the man he had condemned four years back.
After a decade of grief in the sugar cane growing community, when the Eve
contract expired, Lord Denning, Master of the Rolls in the United Kingdom and
a highly respected judge in the Commonwealth, was appointed to arbitrate a
new contract.13 The atmosphere was charged. In 1969, Fiji was just a year away
from independence. The war was on for the vote for the Indo-Fijian community
in the cane belts of Viti Levu and Vanua Levu. Ratu Mara, keen to bolster his
image as a multiracial leader, and encouraged by the members of the Indian
Alliance and the Alliance-oriented Kisan Sangh, courted the Indo-Fijian vote
assiduously. At the arbitration, the Alliance was represented by the lead counsel
Geoffrey Brennan QC, later the Chief Justice of Australia. The Federation of Cane
Growers, affiliated to the NFP, was represented by A.D. Patel (and Karam
Ramrakha and Siddiq Koya). In his report, Denning confirmed what Patel and
others had been saying throughout the ’60s about the Eve contract, that it was
heavily biased towards the millers and prejudiced against the growers. ‘[U]nder
the Eve formula’, Denning wrote, ‘the risk of loss is all on the growers. None at
all on the millers: or, at any rate, none to speak of’. Denning regretted Patel’s
death during the course of the arbitration and praised his advocacy skills: ‘He
was an accomplished advocate who presented admirably to me the case of the
Federation’. But the Alliance went out of its way to claim that Denning’s
pro-grower report was the result of its own representation before the
arbitration.14 It was a popular claim, effective in the 1972 election campaign
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when the Alliance managed for the first—and the last—time nearly to win a
quarter of the Indo-Fijian votes.
What was the truth? Did Patel’s advocacy have any effect at all on the
outcome of the arbitration? To find out, I wrote to Lord Denning himself, not
really expecting a reply, not knowing whether the good Lord was still alive and
active. To my great delight, I received a handwritten letter on House of Lord’s
stationery on 20 January 1990. ‘I remember A.D. Patel well’, Denning began.
‘Of all the lawyers who appeared before me, A.D. Patel was outstanding. He
even out-shone Mr Brennan (now of the High Court of Australia). He was a
master of all the facts and particularly of the sugar industry in Fiji. He presented
them with skill and understanding. It was his persuasive advocacy that led me
to my report which was in favour of the growers and against the millers’. And
what about Patel the man himself? ‘A.D. Patel was intellectually the most
brilliant, as a character the most honourable, and as an advocate, the most
persuasive. Quick in mind, fluent in speech, he stood out above all.’ But this
fact came to light only in 1990, 20 years after Patel’s opponents pilloried the
man and downplayed his enormous contribution to the sugar industry in Fiji.
Denning’s priceless letter sets the record straight once and for all on a matter of
great political moment in Indo-Fijian history: the beginning of the end of the
CSR in Fiji. The value of such private correspondence cannot be overemphasised,
nor the importance of luck. Parts of Denning’s letter have been quoted in
speeches in Fiji, but to no observable effect as far as I can tell.
Between 1964 and 1967, Patel was the Member for Social Services in the
colonial government. Ratu Mara was the Member for Natural Resources and
John Falvey the Member for Communication. The Membership System was an
intermediate step toward full internal self-government later. About this period
in Fiji’s history, no outsider was a closer observer of events than Leonard Usher,
then editor of the Fiji Times. Usher was an unapologetically, energetically,
pro-establishment journalist whose assumed air of objectivity was insufficient
camouflage for an intense dislike of Patel and his brand of politics. Acting
Governor P.D. Macdonald wrote to London on 6 August 1965, criticising Usher
who ‘slyly hints at the unreasonableness of the attitude of the Federation group,
and the rightness of the stand taken by the other groups; he stresses the
difficulties and deadlocks at the conference, hinting that these are all the fault
of the Federation group rather than encouraging the hope that statesmanship
and compromise will prevail’.15 The Fiji Intelligence Report for December 1965
reported of Usher having ‘developed an almost pathological dislike of the
Federation Party, and A.D. Patel in particular’. Trafford Smith, Assistant
Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, had a different opinion: ‘A charming
man to meet, not the bogey-man the Fiji Times makes him out to be’.16 I knew
of Usher’s political leanings and prejudices. The records in London confirmed
them in unambiguous terms. But I do not know if the government, knowing the
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facts about Usher’s mischievous role in fanning the anti-Indian flame, ever
cautioned him. Probably not, for the propaganda continued unabated.
The pages of the Fiji Times in the 1960s were full of anti-Federation invective.
In an interview early in 1990, I asked Usher of his views on A.D. Patel. He praised
Patel’s intelligence and learning, his mastery of the English language, his
rhetorical flourish (as virtually everyone I spoke did), but thought he was
stubborn, uncompromising, politically ambitious for himself and his community
and dangerous for Fiji. As Member of Social Services, Patel was a disaster, Usher
said, because he did not take his responsibilities seriously, coming in late to the
office, cursory with his administrative duties. The pattern was predictable. In
Usher’s mind, Patel was intent on wrecking the Membership System if only to
vindicate the view that complete independence was the only answer to Fiji’s
problems. I asked Gordon Roger about this. Roger, a New Zealander like Usher,
was a long-time Director of Education in Fiji, who had served directly under
Patel in the mid-1960s. Roger had a completely different story to tell. According
to him, Patel was an ideal mentor for senior civil servants. He differed from his
successors in two main ways, Roger said. First, ‘he had (or at least he gave the
impression of having) no axe to grind. This meant he was able to look at
educational ideas and problems in terms of education, not in terms of votes; and
because we (his senior staff in the Edn Dept) had been brought up to do likewise
there was in fact very little friction between us’. He goes on: ‘I doubt whether
we really appreciated at the time just what an easy introduction to the future
ministerial system A.D. was in fact giving us’. There were differences between
Patel and his staff in setting priorities, but Roger says that ‘once we started
looking at things through his eyes—he was a very persuasive teacher!—our
generally negative attitude became much more positive’.
Roger gives an example of the way in which Patel ‘handled’ his staff. When
he and his deputy Max Bay opposed an idea Patel had put up, he summoned
the two to a morning tea-time meeting to explain their opposition to his proposal
in person. ‘It was the first time he’d used this ploy, and it proved very effective,
because a hurriedly-convened staff meeting at 8am had shown me that the idea
wasn’t in fact nearly as impracticable as it had sounded 20 minutes earlier. When
I subsequently told him how near I’d been to saying “no” again, he smiled
engagingly and said, in the nicest possible way, “You know, Gordon, it’s good
for all of us to be made to think sometimes”’. Kenneth Bain, Patel’s Permanent
Secretary for Social Services, concurs. ‘The circumstances of our coming together
in this [the Membership System] were unusual and our relationship became one
of considerable interest and, I believe, trust.’ This, Bain, goes on to say, ‘in spite
of the fact that my wife stood for election to he Legislative Council as an
Alliance-endorsed candidate’. In the circumstances, one must give preference
to Roger’s and Bain’s version, based as it is on direct experience, over Usher’s
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based on hearsay and prejudiced evidence. The extent of harm to race relations
and to political negotiations by Usher’s jaundiced views is beyond measure.
A constant refrain throughout the 1960s was that Patel was anti-European,
which Patel denounced as a ‘wicked lie’. How could he be anti-European when
his first wife was an English woman? When his young children were attending
school in England? ‘If A.D. was anti-European’, Roger recalled, ‘I do not recall
his ever showing it in my presence. Personally, I doubt whether he was. But
even if he were, why not? There were plenty of Europeans around at the time
who made no secret of the fact that they were anti-Indian’. Ray Baker, District
Officer in the Fiji in the 1960s, did not think European colonial officials were
overtly or deliberately anti-Indian, but it was ‘probably true to say that most
expatriate administrators were at that time pro-Fijian in the sense that we felt
in sympathy with their perception of themselves as the taukei—the owners of
most of the land but economically backward and overtaken in population by
immigrant races’. On this aspect none other than Governor Derek Jakeway was
in complete agreement. He said on a visit to Australia in February 1965, just as
preparations were under way for the constitutional conference in London in
July, that ‘it was inconceivable that Britain would ever permit the Fijian people
to be placed politically under the heels of an immigrant community’. Jakeway
got it wrong. In truth, the Indo-Fijian leaders did not want any community to
be dominated; they wanted political equality, and equality of representation.
Patel was not anti-European: he was certainly anti-colonial. In the minds of
colonial officials the two were one and the same thing.
Those who relied solely on the reports and coverage in the Fiji Times would,
unsurprisingly, form a decidedly unpopular impression of Patel and his followers.
But A.C. Reid’s private recollection suggests another view. Reid was the trusted
Secretary of Fijian Affairs and member of the hugely influential Fijian Affairs
Board. In 1949, Patel, then a member of the Executive Council, visited Labasa
with Swami Rudrananda. Reid then was Commissioner Northern. The official
team was invited to the opening of a new school at Tuatua, on the outskirts of
the local township. As Reid was walking up from the main road with Patel and
Swamiji, they ‘were suddenly confronted by one of the guests—annoyed at the
flying of the Sangam flag over the gathering. As I remember, the management
was Sangam but the school would be expected, under the rules, to fly the Union
Jack on official occasions. There was an embarrassing pause until, bearing in
mind A.D.’s senior position in the government, I sought his assistance and he
turned to the Swami. While I did not know the precise content of what was said,
it was clear that A.D. was determined to adhere to the rules, notwithstanding
the Swami’s glum reaction. I may add that a very new-looking Union flag was
brought out of the school and hoisted up the flagpole’. Patel was, first and
foremost, a constitutionalist in the rather old-fashioned way, acutely aware of
the need to respect certain protocols and conventions.
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Telling the Life of A.D. Patel
Private recollections of the type I have quoted above, mostly from people
who, at the time, were on the opposite side to Patel, help to complicate a picture
of a man reviled in his time. My conversations with people in Fiji provided
further insights into how Patel approached politics. He was a born politician
who kept his finger squarely on the pulse of the community, finding time to
talk to ordinary people about their problems and concerns. Every Saturday,
without exception, he would go to the Nadi market to do the family’s vegetable
shopping—less to buy things than to mingle with the people. Whenever he
returned from Suva to his home in Nadi, he would stop his car and buy fruits
and vegetables Fijians sold by the roadside. When his wife protested at his
extravagance, he would say, ‘When that boy returns to his village, he will tell
his family and friends that he sold vegetables to Patela. That is free publicity
for us’. Whenever Patel addressed rallies, especially in western Viti Levu, he
would ask the local chairman of the party what was being said on the ground
so that he could adjust his speech accordingly. In 1963, Siddiq Koya, a Muslim,
stood for election in a predominantly Hindu constituency. His opponent was
James Shankar Singh, from a large and powerful Arya Samaj clan in Ba. His
supporters, so it was reported, were telling people to vote for Singh and not
Koya. When Patel was told this, he began his speech by saying ‘It is true that
Mr Koya is a Musalman, but at least he has remained true to his faith’. He did
not need to mention ‘James’ Shankar Singh’s name to drive home the point about
Singh’s conversion to Christianity. Religion never again surfaced in the campaign.
Stories like this abound in the fading memories of a passing older generation.
When I wrote the biography, I had seen all the records, both open and
confidential, under the 30-year rule at the National Archives of Fiji. But I had
not seen the enormous archives at the Public Record Office. These contain
dispatches from the governor in Fiji, records of deliberations in Whitehall about
the future directions of policy regarding Fiji’s independence, conference
proceedings, and petitions and letters from Fiji. Would I have written a different
book if I had seen the London records? At first, I was naturally nervous as any
researcher would be, writing a book without consulting a major repository!
What if I got the story all wrong? We historians pride ourselves on doing as
exhaustive research as possible before putting pen to paper. We all aspire to
some sort of definitiveness, a longer shelf life even though we know how utterly
impossible that goal can be. So I was nervous.
But now, having seen all the London records, I honestly do not believe that
I would substantially change anything I have written substantially: revisions
at the margins, yes; major amendments, no. To be sure, it would have been good
to have seen the records before I wrote the biography, if only because they
would have deepened and reinforced many of the conclusions I reached. All
important policy discussions found their way into print in one form or another,
although not always the thinking which led to a particular policy
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recommendation. I will give just a few examples to illustrate the point. It was
common knowledge, as Jakeway and Baker confirmed, that official sympathy
lay with the Fijians, and that the United Kingdom government would pay close
attention to Fijian aspirations and concerns when formulating policy. Nor was
there much sympathy for Patel’s advocacy of common roll. Fijians and Europeans
were opposed and so too was London. That was common knowledge; the London
records show just how pervasive that sentiment was.
The extent of London’s concern was stated by Julian Amery, the
parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, who visited Fiji in 1960
during the sugar cane strike. Upon returning to London, he penned a
memorandum whose central concerns echoed in all the major correspondence
and political negotiations between Suva and London throughout the 1960s.
Amery was a well connected, supremely self-confident and given to expressing
sharp, unequivocal opinion.17 ‘The Fijians and Indians are more distinct as
communities than Jews and Arabs in Palestine, Greeks and Turks in Cyprus or
even Europeans and Bantu in South and Central Africa.’ Fijians deeply feared
Indian domination, he said, and their confidence in the government had been
shaken by reports (Burns and Spate) calling for fundamental overhauling of
Fijian institutions and opening up the traditional society to greater individual
freedom. He reminded London that it was the Fijians who had been the loyal
community, a reference to enthusiastic Fijian participation in the Second World
War and in the Malaya campaign in the 1950s. The Fijians provided 75 per cent
of the colony’s armed forces. ‘The islands could hardly be governed without
them, let alone against them.’ In the circumstances, Amery advised London, it
was ‘impracticable to think if terms of a single Fijian nation of a common roll’.
Amery’s views were widely discussed in the Colonial Office. Many accepted
that his prognosis was probably correct though his rhetoric heated. Nonetheless,
everyone agreed to respect the Fijian position. Even when Fijians were
contemplating some minor concession to common roll, London was not keen to
nudge them along. As Jakeway put it, ‘some gentle selling of the attractions of
a limited common roll element in the next constitutional stage has been done
with all three (Ratu George Cakobau, Ratu Penaia Ganilau and Ratu Mara) and
does not appear to have fallen on entirely unreceptive ground’. In the 1965
conference, London actively sought to engineer an outcome that would put
Fijians in control, within the overarching ambit of Westminster-style
parliamentary democracy. The conference failed to reach consensus, and the
Colonial Office was quick to blame Patel and other members of the Federation
Party for the debacle. They started the conference on the ‘wrong foot’ and
spectacularly mishandled their case, as Trafford Smith put it in a confidential
letter to Jakeway.
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A close and careful reading of the Colonial Office records in fact leads to
another conclusion, one which becomes all too obvious when London’s thinking
is borne in mind. London was concerned to appease the Fijians, and Eireen
White, the parliamentary under-secretary and chair of the conference, held
private talks with both Ratu Mara and John Falvey, but not with the Indian
delegation, to impress upon them the need to meet others halfway. This
contradicted the Colonial Office advice that White hold private discussions with
all the three parties separately to gauge the extent of compromise each was
prepared to make. Trafford Smith was especially critical of the Federation group
bringing up the matter of common roll late in the conference proceedings. But
the Colonial Office itself had recommended the avoidance of the issue at an early
stage to prevent the ‘striking of attitudes’ which could conceivably lead to a
deadlock. To argue later that the Federation group should have declared their
hand earlier directly contradicts the Colonial Office advice. Patel told his
audiences in Fiji that the London conference was merely a ‘rubber stamp’ for a
constitution already decided by Her Majesty’s Government.18 He was condemned
for saying this, but as the records show, he had spoken the truth. He was also
right that London’s mind was focused elsewhere—on Aden—when the
conference took place.
The London records show clearly how personal chemistry between the
principal participants played a role in the way events unfolded. Sir Derek
Jakeway, coming from Sarawak as its chief secretary, had developed empathy
for the Fijian people, had seen them in action against Chinese communist
insurgents in Malaya, and in Fiji he was active behind the scenes trying to get
the Fijians and Europeans to organise politically.19 The Alliance Party was in
fact his brainchild. The Federation Party attacked Jakeway’s partisan statements
and even petitioned the Colonial Office for his recall. London denied any
impropriety in the governor’s behaviour, but once again, suspicions about the
governor’s bias were well founded.
Fijian leaders were chosen to attend specialised courses in London, and many
of them formed close friendships with officials in London. Officials from the
Colonial Office were assigned to the visitors, sometimes to help them find
accommodation and schools for the children, or take them on tours of London.
The closeness was reflected in private letters. During the course of an interview
with a visiting official from the Colonial Office, an Indian journalist,
Krishnamurthy, collapsed and died. In a handwritten letter, Ratu Mara asked
Harold Hall, Assistant Secretary and Head of Pacific and Indian Ocean Department
at the Colonial Office, to send more such officials. Humour in extremely bad
taste, you might say, but this was not uncommon.20 Richard Kearsley, a member
of the Alliance Party, felt socially close enough to the UK officials at the 1965
conference at Marlborough House to call Patel a ‘rat’. John Falvey chimed in ‘Of
course we all hate the Indians’. The English had a patronising, romantic, affinity
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for Fijians and things Fijian,21 but coolness and distance, perhaps even suspicion
and muted hostility, characterised their attitude to the Indo-Fijians, especially
their leaders and especially Patel. Many in London and Suva—from Trafford
Smith to Sir Robert Foster—expressed open respect for Patel’s intellect and
integrity, but personal rapport was absent. No Indo-Fijian politician enjoyed
the closeness with European officials that Fijians did.
It did not help matters that in one encounter with Jakeway, Patel humiliated
the governor and forced him to back down. Sketchy details are available in the
Fiji newspapers, but the full extent of the damage was revealed in the PRO
papers. As preparations for the 1965 conference intensified in Fiji, garbled
versions of private discussions began to appear in the media and on the Fiji
Broadcasting Commission (FBC).The latter came under Patel’s portfolio as Member
for Social Services. In one meeting, Patel said that, having studied at the London
School of Economics, he could call himself an ‘economist’ and he was an ‘optimist’
about Fiji’s future. The Public Relations Office reported that Patel had called
himself a ‘communist’ and an ‘opportunist’! The FBC called Federation leaders
‘badmash’, hooligans. When Patel attacked the Commission for its anti-Federation
bias, Jakeway rebuked him and forthrightly asked for his resignation if he could
not observe the rules of collective responsibility governing the Membership
System. ‘Anything other than a public dissociation from these attacks on the
Public Relations Office must bring into question your continued membership
of the Executive Council.’ Jakeway was determined to get the better of Patel,
determined to discipline him once and for all.
Patel replied that he could not be expected to ‘defend wrongful acts of civil
servants or defend them against public criticism’ when he himself, as Member
for Social Services, ‘had no power to hold officers in his portfolio to account’.
He pointedly reminded the governor of the terms and conditions upon which
he had accepted his appointment, saying that his present action did not breach
them. He had joined the government, he said, ‘to serve my people—not to forsake
them: and I am not prepared to sell my soul for a mess of pottage’. He offered
to resign if that was what the Secretary of State wanted. Jakeway had asked the
Colonial Office to take a hard line against Patel. Trafford Smith sympathised
with Jakeway, but warned him of the ‘serious and far reaching’ consequences
of not having Patel, the dominant leader of the Indo-Fijian community, in the
Executive Council. Expelling Patel would do the government more harm than
good. And, after all, Patel did have a case. There was nothing that Jakeway
could do but to bite his tongue, accept this advice, retract his ultimatum, and
keep Patel in government. London hoped that the ‘whole incident has not so
seriously undermined the confidence of the other communities in the Indians
as to make progress between now and the conference impossible’.22 It had, and
Jakeway had to share a part of the blame for the fiasco. I had an inkling of all
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this when I was going through the Patel papers and reading the Pacific Review:
the London records provided the details and clarified the picture.
The 1965 conference was a triumph for the Fijian and European delegation
and utter defeat for the Indo-Fijians. Soon after returning from London, some
within the Federation Party began questioning whether its constitutionalist
stance was appropriate to extract concessions from the British. I was told of a
rift between Siddiq Koya and A.D. Patel, indeed a private, potentially
party-splitting confrontation in Ba, when Koya threatened to leave the party.
Several people confirmed the episode but none knew precisely the cause of the
rift between the two men. I mention the episode in the book, but do not, could
not, elaborate. The monthly ‘Fiji Intelligence Reports’ provide one plausible
clue. Koya was ‘restless with Patel’s autocratic control of the party machine and
his apparently passive attitude to the outcome of the London conference’.23 He
told his colleagues that Patel’s approach had failed and that he wanted to form
a ‘Subhash Party’. This was after Subhash Chandra Bose, the leader of the Indian
National Army, who wanted to eject the British from India by force.
Apisai Tora, whom Koya had defended against the charge of arson in the
longest running criminal case in Fiji history (burning down the Korolevu Hotel
near Sigatoka) and who had converted to Islam (assuming the name of
Mohammed), reportedly told someone that he was twice offered 2,000 pounds
by Koya on behalf of the Federation Party if he would pledge his support for
‘certain courses of action’.24 What course of action, the police were unable to
ascertain, but ‘physical persuasion’ was mentioned to embarrass the government
and to force a commission of enquiry into the workings of the Native Land Trust
Board. I am not convinced that the Federation Party sanctioned the approach.
In fact, I doubt it. Patel, Gandhian at heart, the strict constitutionalist, the
follower of protocol and procedure, the loyal member of the Middle Temple,
would never countenance such a course of action.
The London records, as mentioned before, clarify and amplify, confirm
tentative conclusions and deepen understanding of official thinking. But they
do not, I think, substantially alter the picture I sought to draw in the book. On
many points, they simply confirm my line of enquiry. An important reason for
this is that on most matters of importance, Patel published his letters and
messages. He recalled conversations with both the governor and officials from
the Colonial Office in public, and these found their way into print, especially in
the pages of the Pacific Review, which Patel founded in 1949 and whose
intellectual inspiration he remained throughout. When the 1965 conference
broke down, Patel and his colleagues, ‘out of respect’ for the Secretary of State
for the Colonies, accepted the new constitution under protest, but not before
writing a lengthy letter to him outlining their reasons for dismay at the final
outcome, and promising to ‘oppose these proposals by peaceful and constitutional
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means’. The letter was published in the Pacific Review. So, too, was Greenwood’s
reply.
This exchange would not have been available to me under the 30-year rule
even if I had travelled to London to consult the records. The newspaper is full
of such disclosures. Patel’s case for the common roll, his views on the problems
in the sugar industry, his fraught relations with Ratu Mara,25 his condemnation
of colonialism, his speeches in national and international forums (such as at the
1965 conference in London), the substance of letters people wrote to him, all
found their way into the pages of the Pacific Review. Besides this journal, the
Hansard was also an important source of information. Patel first entered the
Legislative Council in 1944 and remained a member until 1950. He re-entered
the Council in 1963 and remained its member until his death in 1969. The words,
in cold print now, do not convey the passion and precision with which they
were spoken, but they display a mastery of the language and eloquent thoughts
on a range of issues of urgent importance to the country.
I was particularly lucky that Patel left behind a rich collection of private
papers. Some had been destroyed in the 1972 hurricane, but many survived.
Patel was decidedly old-fashioned in preserving his correspondence. He kept
personal letters (the oldest being his letter to Swami Avinashananda in 1939),
letters others sent him, drafts of speeches,26 confidential memoranda he received
both as the Member of Social Services and as the Leader of the Opposition,
newspaper clippings containing his addresses. Patel’s large library contained
well-thumbed books on many subjects, but there was a predilection towards
philosophy and religion.27 Patel was a Vaishnavite, a follower of Swami
Vivekananda and vice president of the Ramakrishna Mission in Fiji. Together
with Swami Rudrananda, his life-long spiritual confidante, he held regular
discourses on the Bhagvada Gita at the Mission ashram (lodge) in Nadi. His
political speeches were full of references to Indian philosophical texts. Perusing
his papers and his library, I came away with the firm impression that two of
Patel’s greatest attributes were his brilliant intellect and his deep faith which
sustained him in the many political failures and obstacles he encountered in his
career.
The personal letters to his children were the most useful and revealing about
the man. Much to his wife’s distress, Patel never phoned his children whom he
had sent to England for private education. Not that he could not afford it: he
was a wealthy lawyer and owner of large freehold properties. But, like the
English gentlemen of leisure in the late-19th
and early-20th
centuries, he preferred
to communicate with his children through letters. In these letters he advised his
children about their course of study, about the need to keep the company of
good people, meaning those who were determined to make something of
themselves. But he also discussed political developments in Fiji. In one letter to
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Telling the Life of A.D. Patel
his eldest son, Atul, he talked of Mara being the ‘blue-eyed boy of the British’,
and complained about the obtuseness of Indian officials towards political
developments in Fiji. In a 1967 letter from the Ocean Island to his tiny daughter
Vasantika, he wrote about the iniquity perpetrated by the British Phosphate
Commission on the Banaban people whose Chief Legal Counsel he was before
the United Nations Committee on Decolonisation. His mastery of the language
and fluency of his writing are impressive.
It is almost 10 years ago since I published my biography of A.D. Patel,
following a decade of interrupted research. Do I still stand by the words I wrote
then? Were there things I simply missed, gaps exposed by evidence and papers
which have since become available, such as the records at the Public Record
Office at Kew Gardens? Can I say with absolute confidence that the broad picture
I painted remains intact? Nothing that I have seen since I wrote the book would
cause me to change my mind, except on low level details. What the records,
which were not available to me when I wrote my book, do is to deepen the
picture and sometimes enter qualifications. I wish I had seen them when I wrote
the biography, but, fortunately for me, they confirm rather than derogate from
the picture I painted then.
Patel has had his critics, and been subject to carping comments from some
scholars. But these often say more about the prejudices and intellectual
predilections of these individuals than the man they wrote about. Patel was not
perfect, as I showed in my book. He could be—often was—stubborn,
uncompromising, and haughty towards opponents he considered unprincipled
or opportunistic.28 The worst that was said of Patel, his harshest criticism by
officials, was that he was a practitioner of Gandhian politics, but no one ever
spelt out precisely what was wrong with Gandhian politics. People told me that
Patel was a hard landlord, demanding full rent on time and requiring the highest
levels of husbandry of his tenants. That was probably true, but in this Patel was
following the example set by others, including the CSR. Many in Fiji will agree
that lack of professionalism in agriculture is one of the serious problems facing
the sugar cane growers of Fiji.
When all is said and done, what remains beyond doubt is that, 37 years after
his death, his vision for Fiji remains as relevant as it was when he was alive.
Racial compartmentalisation was no way to build a cohesive multiracial society,
Patel had argued all throughout his life. Long before it became fashionable, Patel
talked about the nation as an ‘imagined community’. Nationalism, for him, he
said in 1964, was ‘a question of the mind, it [was] not a question of the colour
[of skin]’. Patel received bad press during his life time because he questioned
the values and assumptions which underpinned the colonial order, although
privately, and much later after he was gone, his critics conceded ground. ‘A.D.
was a fine man’, Q.V.L. Weston wrote privately after Patel’s death in 1969,
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‘stubborn, sometimes too much for comfort’. Weston knew: he was Commissioner
Western, colonial officialdom’s principal representative, in the heart of the fiery
cane belt in western Viti Levu. But, he added, ‘it was through his stubbornness
that he got his way’. He continued: ‘Mixed societies such as Fiji contain a lot of
inborn prejudices, which get out of tune with the times and take the leader of
the quality and convictions of A.D. to shift. When the tale is told by historians,
it will be usually accepted that his way was right’.
ENDNOTES
1 See Deryck Scarr, Ratu Sukuna: soldier, statesman, man of two worlds (London 1980).
2 An authorised, partly taxpayer-funded biography of Ratu Mara is currently being written and
negotiations are under way for a Ratu Mara Chair in Fijian Studies at the University of Fiji.
3 Published in 1997 in the ‘History of Development Studies Series’ by the National Centre for
Development Studies, The Australian National University.
4 An extensive collection of documents covering the period 1960 to 1970 has been published in Brij V.
Lal (ed.), Fiji: British documents on the end of empire, Series B, vol. 10 (London 2006).
5 Thus Deryck Scarr, the historian of the Fijian establishment, in his Sukuna biography, writes
disparagingly about Patel’s role in the 1943 strike, commenting on his ‘new-found patriotism’ (Ratu
Sukuna, 133). K.L. Gillion, in his The Fiji Indians: challenge to European dominance, 1920-1946 (Canberra
1977), 172, provides an assessment of the strike that repeats almost verbatim the colonial government’s
view: ‘Once again in the history of the Fiji Indians, communalism, factionalism, pettiness and personal
political ambition had triumphed over unity and statesmanship’.
6 An early result of this interest was my edited collection Politics in Fiji: studies in contemporary history
(Sydney 1986) and articles on Fiji elections from 1982 onwards.
7 Patel’s papers have been microfilmed by the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau and will be made available
to bona fide scholars, with the permission of the family (for a limited period of time).
8 My book on the 1987 coup was Power and Prejudice: the making of the Fiji crisis (Wellington 1988,
1990), and my broader history was Broken Waves: a history of the Fiji Islands in the twentieth century
(Honolulu 1992).
9 See, for instance, the National Farmers Union publication Children of the Indus, 1879-2004: a history
of Indians in Fiji portraying the struggles of an immigrant community for justice, equality and acceptance
(Suva 2004).
10 These letters are in my papers which will be donated to the Pacific Manuscript Bureau in due course.
11 Fiji Times, 22 Aug. 1960. On 26 August, the newspaper wrote about political demagogues ‘who
would scramble, scuffle and skirmish for power as soon as the Colony came within the sight of substantial
measure of self-government’.
12 See Sir Malcolm Trustram Eve, Report of the Fiji Sugar Inquiry Commission (Suva 1961).
13 See The Award of the Rt. Hon. Lord Denning in the Fiji Sugar Cane Contract Dispute 1969 (Suva 1970).
14 See, for instance, ‘The Sugar Contract Scorecard’, The Fiji Nation, October 1969.
15 Acting Governor to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 6 August 1965 in CO 1036/1216, E83.
16 CO 1036/1551, no. 1, March 1965. The publisher of the Fiji Times was no less anti-Indian. Writing
in the Pacific Islands Monthly in February 1952, he said ‘I have little liking for the Indians. In the main,
they are arrogant and disloyal and are dishonest in so far as their evasion of taxation is concerned’.
17 His father Leopold Amery was Secretary of State for India in the 1940s.
18 CO 1036/1216/E91, Fiji Intelligence Report, 12 December 1965.
19 Jakeway told Nigel Fisher on 17 Jan. 1966 that ‘Behind the scenes I have encouraged the Alliance
leaders to look for professional advice on party organisation and running an election campaign, and it
was I who gave Falvey the name of Sir William Urton well as those of his counterparts in the other
occupants of South Square, the Labour and Liberal Offices. This was done with the knowledge and
agreement of Trafford Smith, and also Mrs White’. CO 1036/1586, Jakeway to Nigel Fisher, 17 Jan.
1966.
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Telling the Life of A.D. Patel
20 Sir Vijay R. Singh told me at a dinner with Praveen Chandra Vijendra Kumar in Brisbane in late 2005
another Mara story. As Patel’s funeral pyre was alight and as the plane taking Mara and Singh back to
Suva flew over the crematorium, Mara called Singh to his side and said, pointing to the fire, ‘Look
Vijay, give people what they want and they will flock to you’.
21 The feeling continued. A. Crosbie Walsh, who taught at the University of the South Pacific in the
late 1970s, wrote that ‘I had a dislike of Indians (a not uncommon attitude held by Europeans seeking
to protect Pacific indigenes from every race except their own) and I did not want to be like this’. See
his ‘A scatter of islands: reminiscences from Tonga, Rarotonga, Niue, and Fiji,’ in Eric Waddell and
Patrick Nunn (eds), The Margin Fades: geographical itineraries in a world of islands (Suva 1993), 106.
22 See CO 1036/1263 no. 26 and no. 27.
23 CO 1036/1216, E1/88, Fiji Intelligence Report for September 1965.
24 See CO 1036/1216, E/91 Fiji Intelligence Report for November 1965.
25 Mara recalled Patel as a ‘brilliant lawyer, an eloquent speaker, a charismatic leader of his party, and
a doughty opponent. But it has to be admitted that political negotiation with him had proved difficult,
and on occasion impossible. In particular he was irrevocably committed to the policy of common roll
as a first step, not as an aim for the future, which we were prepared to concede. Therefore, sad as his
death was, and a great loss to the Indian community, it did seem to open up for our negotiations a spirit
of compromise that might have been hard to achieve otherwise’. See his The Pacific Way: a memoir
(Honolulu 1997), 97.
26 People often told me how Patel could speak for hours scarcely glancing at his notes. The truth was
that he carefully composed his speeches, wrote them down and then committed them to memory. Patel
had astounding powers of recall.
27 Among the many philosophy books in the Patel library are several by Nicolas Berdyaev such as
Slavery and Freedom and the Destiny of Man.
28 As Sir Vijay R. Singh told me in early 2006.
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Telling Pacific Lives
Chapter 14
On Writing a Biography of William
Pritchard
Andrew E. Robson
Biography offers a unique opportunity to resist the generalisations and
stereotypes spawned by older, positivist historical schools of thought and more
recent theory-based postcolonial approaches. The relatively small scale and
specific nature of biographical inquiry avoids the grand themes and
pronouncements that lead to the propagation of radical generalisations, whether
conservative or liberal, on large-scale topics such as imperialism and colonialism.
It offers the opportunity to concentrate on historical specificities, local histories,
and individual stories. Such is the case in my study of the mid-19th
century
British Consul, William Pritchard, who was born in Tahiti in 1829 and served
in Samoa and Fiji before being fired, following a Commission of Inquiry that I
show to have been little more than a kangaroo court. In Culture and Imperialism,
Edward Said advocates ‘studying the map of interactions, the actual and often
productive traffic occurring on a day-by-day, and even minute-by-minute basis
among states, groups, identities’.1 Nineteenth-century archives can produce
(surprisingly, perhaps) this kind of excitement, for a careful reading of memos
and letters going to and from the Colonial Office, for example, gives one a sense
not only of the slowness of communications, but also of the immediacy of
discussion once a document arrived or was in preparation. Minutes scrawled on
letters, sometimes by more than one person, and dates attached as documents
passed from person-to-person, all evoke a sense of immediacy and sometimes of
the character of those involved. We don’t see the people, but we see their writing
and we read their observations and decisions. This is why I included not just
portraits of key people involved in Pritchard’s career, but also their signatures.
It is a gesture not just to them, but to the archives as well.
Many often-heard assumptions about imperialism, missionaries, and
relationships between Europeans and Pacific Islanders become more complicated
when seen in the context of Pritchard’s life. For example, among those with
imperial ambitions in the mid-century Pacific Islands was Tonga’s King George
Tupou; conversely, the British government, at the urging of the Colonial Office,
rejected offers of cession from Fiji and deflected requests for protection from
Tahiti and Samoa. In the Colonial Office, Permanent Under-Secretary Fredric
195
Rogers, remembering the lessons of the American Revolution, believed
independence, with its attendant loss of investments, to be inevitable, and he
was unenthusiastic about new colonial ventures. Pritchard brought samples of
high quality cotton from Fiji; this was of great interest to merchants in
Manchester, but it left Rogers unmoved. The on-going Maori Wars and his
personal resistance to the idea of European settlers moving into Fiji further
strengthened Rogers’ scepticism, despite vigorous support for the cession of Fiji
from high naval officers such as Admiralty Hydrographer Captain John
Washington who saw in cession the possibility of better defending the shipping
lanes between the goldfields of Australia and Britain.
Pritchard, backed by the authority of Cakobau, spent most of 1859 in London,
working in the Foreign Office (FO), and he had extensive written communication
with the Colonial Office (CO) over a still longer period. My archival work on
Pritchard’s interactions with the FO and CO over the proffered cession of Fiji
makes clear the paradoxical reality of Rogers as an anti-imperialist (or at least a
sceptical imperialist) in the Foreign and Colonial Offices. It also makes plain that
these government offices benefited from the large talents of a number of
permanent officials, including Rogers and his immediate predecessor, Herman
Merivale, who seemed inclined to recommend accepting the offer of cession
when a change in government and Merivale’s move to the India Office altered
the state of play. Both Merivale and Rogers won firsts at Oxford and were
impressive on many fronts. Rogers was one of the founders of the Manchester
Guardian newspaper. These were talented and able men who often worked for
ministers who spent little time on the job. On a lower level, some of the
‘dispatch-reading draft-writing heads of departments’ took their work seriously,
but others ‘were gay and frolicsome spirits who came late, strutted from room
to room, had brandy and cigars, flourished their crested sleeve-links, and left
early to dress for my Lady Angelina’s “at home”, or to dance at the Honorable
Miss Emily Evening’s ball’.2
For missionaries and Pacific Islanders too, the reality that emerges from
Pritchard’s story is one in which the stereotype of the missionary as a
cross-culturally inept imperialist is challenged time and time again. In the
post-colonial and secular world of many writers and critics, the motives and
impact of the missionaries are often dismissed with something like contempt,
but to understand this phase of history we must understand not only the
missionaries—who were diverse in background, education, commitment, and
effectiveness—but also the people of the Islands, who, with a few violent
exceptions, allowed the missionaries to stay and eventually decided to embrace
the new religion. The story becomes more interesting, not less, if we take both
missionaries and Islanders seriously and look at them with a critical but less
cynical eye. Several contemporary historians have made a similar point, including
Andrew Porter, Jane Samson, and Greg Dening.
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Telling Pacific Lives
If the Wesleyan missionaries in Fiji were blazing the trail for Empire, they
certainly went about it in a diffident and unconvincing way. The Anglican
Bishop of New Zealand, George Selwyn, influenced Commissioner Smythe to
oppose the Cakobau/Pritchard attempt at cession, and Smythe received the same
message from John Binner and other missionaries in Fiji itself. Even before he
reached New Zealand and Fiji, Smythe met Sir William Denison, the Governor
of New South Wales, who also expressed concern over attempts to attract settlers
to Fiji. Why was there such opposition? A desire to avoid disputes over land,
such as were wracking New Zealand; a desire to avoid too much government
(read ‘Anglican’) interference in Wesleyan and other nonconformist missionary
activities; and concern over the political influence and religious ecumenicalism
of Consul Pritchard each played their part, but, whatever the cause, the story
certainly complicates any stereotypical vision of the missionaries as stalking
horses for builders of Empire. Other questions also arise: we might well ask why
the missionaries persisted (of course, many didn’t) when in some cases—as in
Tahiti—for so long they enjoyed no success. Why did their Polynesian hosts
put up with them for all this time? And why did the missionaries ultimately
succeed in converting their hosts—or, to use Lamin Sanneh’s terms, how and
why did individual Polynesians discover Christianity and eventually embrace
it? Sanneh writes mostly about Africa, but when he says that he prefers to speak
of the ‘indigenous discovery of Christianity rather than the Christian discovery of
indigenous societies’,3 his words resonate powerfully in the context of Oceania
as well. Conversion did not come quickly in most cases, and it did not come
without serious deliberation among the local people.
For 40 years, the missionaries worked in a Fiji under the protection of chiefs
and their communities, and the eventual colonisation of the islands by Britain
in 1874 was certainly not the result of a long campaign by missionaries or London
civil servants to achieve this end. Throughout the South Pacific, the power of
the missionaries, traders, and other foreigners was limited, and their religious
and commercial messages to the people of Oceania were embraced with greater
or lesser enthusiasm depending on how useful they seemed to be to the latter.
In Tahiti, Pomare II embraced Christianity slowly and this hesitation was returned
by the missionaries, most of who continued to be appalled by Pomare’s private
behaviour and stalled on accepting him for baptism. Pomare was astute, however,
choosing his moment and using his alliance with Henry Nott and other
missionaries to his political and commercial advantage. For a few years after
1815, when Pomare triumphed in battle over his enemies and was baptised,
something akin to a ‘missionary kingdom’ prevailed in Tahiti, with Nott and
others helping to draft laws that were in some respects politically liberal but
socially oppressive; this situation persisted after a fashion, but when Pritchard
was growing up bilingual in Tahiti (he was born there in 1829) he was subject,
like other missionary children to Tahitian influences that were at least as strong
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Biography of William Pritchard
as his English ones; in his memoir he remembers thinking of himself as Tahitian
as well as English, and sometimes preferring the former.4 Neither the
vulnerability of traditional cultures nor the influence of Europeans should be
exaggerated in discussions of the social impact of the Pacific missionaries and
later colonial officers. Albert Wendt, the Samoan writer, has rejected the label
of Pacific Islanders being ‘hapless victims and losers’ in their contact with
imperial Europeans, instead celebrating the ‘marvelous endurance, survival and
dynamic adaptation’ that he sees around him.5
In Samoa and in Pacific histories, Malietoa Vainu‘upo6 is widely acclaimed
as the crucial first contact for John Williams in 1830 and thereafter the guarantor
of the safety of the Polynesian missionary teachers who stayed after Williams
left and the British missionaries who arrived some years later. Malietoa, however,
was always cautious and pragmatic about the new religion, and my most recent
research finds his role in the conversion of Samoa to be paradoxical and worthy
of reassessment. In each of these examples, it is clear that the chiefs, far from
being manipulated by the missionaries, were able to use the outsiders and the
lotu (church) to their own advantage. In Samoa, Malietoa’s monopoly on the
teachers was short-lived, partly because other matai would not tolerate such
exclusivity. No cynicism is implied here; as was suggested above, this was largely
a Samoan process, and today, it is interesting to note that Samoan theologians,
commonly seen as being traditionalist and conservative, are also drawing on
traditional fa‘a Samoa values to put the weight of Samoan religiosity behind a
push for ecological integrity, women’s rights, and more.7
Telling Pritchard’s story necessitated a lot of archival work, in part because
almost nothing was known about his personal life, even by family descendants,
and the only way to find him was through his personal writings and through
the archives—the National Archives, the School of Oriental and African Studies,
and British Library, all in London; the Turnbull Library and National Archives
in Wellington; the Mitchell Library in Sydney; the National Library and more
in Canberra; the Fiji Archives in Suva; and more in Samoa, the USA, and
elsewhere. Such research, of course, gives great pleasure and calls for appreciation
and gratitude for archives and archivists alike. In addition, I was able to draw
on the family knowledge of today’s Pritchard aiga, living in New Zealand, the
Samoas, Australia, England, and the USA. This contact was of enormous
importance, for I received nothing but encouragement from the family, and the
few private documents that exist relating to William Pritchard (including two
photographs) were made available to me. I’m grateful for this, as I am also for
the support of the Austrian South Pacific Society (and their sponsors in turn),
headed by Dr Hermann Mückler. Dr Mückler and his team did a splendid job,
and their Novara series, subtitled ‘Contributions to Research on the Pacific’, is
in itself a wonderful and much-needed contribution to Pacific research.
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Prior to the publication of my work, Pritchard’s personal life was the subject
of speculation in histories and even in one play, written for and performed at
the Pacific Arts Festival in Suva in 1972.8 Very little was known about Pritchard
at that time, and some widely-reported ‘facts’ turned out to be wrong, including
Pritchard’s purported death at the hands of American Indians in 1870, as reported
in a letter to an English newspaper from Pritchard’s friend, the naturalist Berthold
Seemann. My scepticism about Seemann’s account was based on nothing more
than a gut feeling, and so it was a moment of elation when, after several years
of searching, I found at Tulane University in New Orleans a 1907 copy of The
Mexican Herald that carried on its front page Pritchard’s obituary; this image,
of course, also appears in Prelude to Empire. This kind of basic information was
missing when I began this project, and so one vital line of research was aimed
at filling these gaps. Another breakthrough occurred in the National Archives
in Wellington, where I found certificates identifying Pritchard’s first wife, a
Samoan named Patisepa, and their two daughters, and giving birth dates,
marriage date, and Patisepa’s death certificate—a treasure trove! A few years
later, friends in Samoa were able to find and show me Patisepa’s burial place—an
emotional moment of a different kind. What I couldn’t do was describe what
Patisepa looked like or even why she died so young—the consular death
certificate reads ‘affection of the brain’, but medical experts tell me that this was
a generic term used in the 19th
century.
Pritchard himself was elusive too, but three images exist, including the two
photographs mentioned above and an engraving in Pritchard’s Polynesian
Reminiscences in which he is on board HMS Pelorus with Cakobau, Mata‘afa,
Captain Seymour and others. These figures are not identified in Pritchard’s book,
and so it gave considerable satisfaction to determine who they were—more
detective work! Pritchard writes virtually nothing about Patisepa in his memoir
and never even gives her name. What does the biographer do with such blanks,
and is speculation legitimate? Is Patisepa’s absence from Pritchard’s writing
evidence of a hard heart? It seems unlikely, as he had delayed taking up his
appointment to Fiji during her illness and, when Patisepa died, Pritchard took
their daughters with him to Fiji, first securing land for them in their Samoan
grandparents’ villages. I found the record of this land transaction at the National
Archives in Wellington, and it is worthy of note that the agreement states
explicitly that Pritchard himself was not a beneficiary; Patisepa’s family and
Pritchard were aware of the possibility of foreign involvement in Samoa and the
possible threat to land ownership, and this land was strictly for the daughters.
Perhaps Pritchard found it too painful to write about Patisepa—an opposite but
equally speculative suggestion. Curiously, Patisepa is not mentioned in the
Mexican obituary either. What we do know from Pritchard’s own accounts and
those of others is that he was ‘a tough guy’ (to quote a family source) who knew
how to use his fists, who loved to hunt and fish with his Samoan friends, who
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Biography of William Pritchard
was linguistically talented and politically adept, who studied and relished the
genealogical relationships and political intrigue of the Samoans and Fijians, who
tried to establish a reading room in Levuka, and who married three times— to
Patisepa, who was Samoan, to Ellen Fanny Glover, who was English, and to
Guadalupe Ramirez, who was Mexican. He was massively sociable and energetic,
and appears to have had a very wide range of friends and acquaintances from
all segments of society in Samoa and Fiji, and was familiar too with the more
transient or occasional visitors such as naval officers and their crews, whalers,
and traders. He travelled extensively, and we often get a taste of his exuberance,
as when he climbs the pyramid of Cheops in Egypt on his first journey to England
from Fiji, when he describes a fight in Samoa and in his excursions into the
interior of Viti Levu with his friend Seemann.
In writing Prelude to Empire, I found that an accumulation of fragments was
enough to reveal the person outlined above. Even those who contrived to bring
him down, such as James Calvert and Colonel Smythe, acknowledged Pritchard’s
political skills, and his religious tolerance infuriated the fiercely anti-Catholic
Calvert and other Wesleyans. The fact that the Fijian chiefs gave Pritchard ‘the
full, unreserved, entire, and supreme right, authority, and power to govern Fiji’
upon his return from England in 1859 surely reflects a remarkable level of trust
and confidence, perhaps even astonishing, given the fact that Pritchard at that
time had spent only a few weeks in Fiji. Of course, the acceptance of Cakobau’s
offer of cession was probably expected, and some have accused Pritchard of
bullying, but it is hard to imagine the chiefs acting as they did unless they had
decided that Pritchard could deliver things that they wanted, such as the
renunciation of Tongan claims in Fiji. In this, they were not disappointed.
Pritchard, with no force at his disposal unless the navy happened to be making
a visit, and with only the slowest of communications with London, decided to
act when he believed action was warranted, as in the Macuata War, when Ma‘afu
came close to achieving a Tongan-led triumph over Fijian forces allied with
Cakobau. His actions got him into trouble with London for ‘interfering in native
affairs’, and his behaviour was certainly unconventional and caused alarm in
London, but there can be no dispute over his political and intercultural skills
or his personal energy and efficacy. It is also worth stating again that the Fijians,
like other Pacific people, were not mere pawns in a game devised by the Colonial
Office, Pritchard, or the missionaries. Far from it; they made choices, and these
choices were made with their own best interests in mind.
I have not invented any ‘conversations’ in the biography, and I report only
those provided or alluded to by Pritchard or others in the archives and other
documents. The story is vivid enough without this, I believe, and it would have
introduced an element of fiction running counter to the intention of this
particular work. Instead, I have allowed Pritchard’s voice to be heard through
extensive quotation from his own writings. Sadly, no personal letters appear to
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Telling Pacific Lives
be extant, but there is plenty of official correspondence, a few articles written
in England and Mexico, and, of course, his book, Polynesian Reminiscences,
which was completed by Seemann from Pritchard’s notes after the latter left
England for Mexico. Frustratingly, I have not found these notes, despite my
approaches to Pritchard family members and archives in many places, including
Seemann’s native Germany.
More productively, the various archives provided detailed information about
Pritchard’s professional life. The National Archives at Kew (London)9 were, of
course, the principal source, and here I found not only the correspondence that
passed to-and-fro between the Pacific and London, but also the minutes of
Pritchard’s trial10 in Fiji. A close reading of these minutes revealed the flimsy,
sometimes farcical, nature of the evidence against him, and this, along with other
sources, led me to conclude that Pritchard was badly treated and that he was
the victim of a campaign against him. The machinations of the people involved
in London and Fiji are apparent in the documents that survive, and they
presented me with the evidence that achieves what Pritchard failed to achieve
in 1863, the restoration of his reputation; it is a long-delayed piece of justice.
The principal villains of the piece, if they can be so-called, were undoubtedly
Calvert and Smythe, but others also played their part. Some were traders who
had disputes with the consul, but in the complicated finances of the day, when
barter and exchange were common, commodities often substituted for money,
and money itself could be ‘Spanish’ dollars (actually Mexican), American dollars,
or pounds sterling, disputes were inevitable. More troubling were the decisions
by the government auditors, Arbuthnott and Davis, to disregard almost
everything that could have exonerated Pritchard, and the even more egregious
behaviour of the members of the Commission of Inquiry, who are revealed in
their own minutes to be unreliable. Illustrating the truth of Said’s remark, quoted
earlier, about the rewards of studying ‘day-by-day and even minute-by-minute’
interactions, is the clear evidence of a conspiracy against Pritchard, including
the passing along from Colonel Smythe to T.H. Farrer at the Board of Trade and
then to Sir James Murray at the Foreign Office of the idea that no correspondence
from the accused should be taken in evidence at the Commission of Inquiry
because Pritchard was ‘amazingly plausible on paper’.11 This phrase passes
verbatim from man to man.
On the other hand, naval officers such as Commodore Seymour; the American
Consul, Dr Isaac Brower; many Levuka traders, such as Frederick Hennings; and
some missionaries, including the Reverend William Moore, offered favourable
comments on the consul’s behavior and character, and, as noted above, even his
enemies, such as James Calvert, acknowledged Pritchard’s skills and impact in
the political sphere, especially with regard to Tongan involvement in Fiji. In
weighing such a range of commentary, one comes to some conclusions about the
man himself and also about the people and institutions around him. While the
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Biography of William Pritchard
actions of many were reprehensible, others, such as Sir Frederic Rogers (later
Lord Blachford), were intellectually and professionally impressive. The
multi-talented naturalist Berthold Seemann was, of course, Pritchard’s friend,
and he offered, belatedly, a ringing protest at the way the consul was treated.
Similarly, the literature on William Pritchard shows divisions between admirers
and critics, the strongest admirers including Ronald Derrick, who described
Pritchard as ‘a sincere friend of the Fijian people at a period when friends were
few’.12
I chose Pritchard as a subject because I liked his story in Polynesian
Reminiscences, and because, like him, I had worked in Samoa and Fiji and was
thus able to imagine what he and others described. I also found the period
endlessly surprising. It is post-contact but pre-colonial, and everything was in
a state of flux. The Europeans, through their illnesses, had inadvertently brought
demographic calamity in their wake, and trade, money, alcohol, firearms,
evangelism, and literacy all introduced, for better or worse, new realities into
the Pacific world. Rumours of imperial designs on Samoa and Fiji were not
uncommon, but the fact is that Samoa and Fiji were independent political entities
at this time, and in all matters of significance, including trade and religion, it
tended to be the chiefs, not the foreigners, who called the shots. In this context,
the career of William Pritchard in Fiji is perhaps even more interesting because
of its exceptionality, but his authority in some ways came from the chiefs more
than from London. This is what eventually led to his dismissal.
A close look at Pritchard’s life reveals that ending the Tongan threat to Fiji
was both Pritchard’s most important achievement and the immediate cause of
his downfall, for ‘interfering in native affairs’. It also reveals the influence of
the evangelical revival in England in the late 18th
and early 19th
centuries that
produced a successful anti-slavery movement and also a paternalistic but still
important desire to protect the Islanders from aggression, exploitation and, later,
‘blackbirding’ and other abuses. The evangelical belief in the common origins
of humankind complicated the missionary response to even the more egregious
realities of life in some of the islands, such as infanticide and cannibalism.
Revulsion pulled one way, but a sense of common humanity and their belief in
the universal possibility of redemption pulled the other. Naval officers, as Jane
Samson describes,13 while not always averse to shelling villages in retribution
for perceived ‘crimes’, did so rarely; they frequently sided with the local people
in disputes with European traders and other residents, and one of their tasks
was to deter the colonial ambitions of other powers who threatened the
independence of the various groups. The children of the early missionaries,
including Pritchard, grew up at home in Tahiti, Samoa, and elsewhere; many of
them married locally and their descendants remain there today, as is the case
with Prichard’s older brother, George, and his wife, Atalina. If Pritchard’s
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Telling Pacific Lives
daughters had lived, Pritchard might well have had direct descendants in Samoa
today, but, as young children, they drowned at sea in a hurricane, and his two
sons by his second wife appear to have no living descendants. Pritchard’s losses
make a mournful list: two daughters drowned as children; one wife dead from
‘affection of the brain’ and another from post-natal complications; and a career
that ended in public and unjust disgrace. But his life was also social, exuberant
and well-lived. It makes a good story.
My interest in Pritchard was reinforced, as noted above, by its parallels in
geographical terms with my own experience, but I soon discovered that the
realities of his life, and those of others in the political and social worlds of the
period, offered a stark and enticing challenge to widespread preconceptions
connected with race relations, imperial ambitions (and lack thereof), missionary
motives and behaviour, and the lives of Victorians. The stereotypical stuffy
colonel certainly bears a striking resemblance to William James Smythe, but
people such as Seemann and Pritchard are very different, as are the beachcombers
and traders. European residents liked to identify a ‘King’ or ‘Queen’ from among
the local chiefs, but strong parallels with European lineages and monarchs were
few and far between. In Samoa, for example, rivalries and a tradition of
decentralised authority soon dissipated Malietoa’s monopoly over the distribution
of missionary teachers (a decentralisation reinforced on his deathbed by Malietoa
himself, who forbade the future accumulation of certain titles by a single person).
Ironically, the more centralised monarchies, such as existed in Tahiti, proved
ultimately less successful than Samoa in resisting foreign occupation and securing
again their independence. One sees in stories such as Pritchard’s the emergence
of the modern world, where lives are lived in places of transition and
intermingling—‘on the beach’, so to speak. What could be more modern and
surprising than the three wives of the Victorian tearaway-turned-gentleman,
William Pritchard? There is a grand tradition of Victorian adventurers, male
and female, but the intercultural skills and openness of people such as Pritchard
are seldom heralded. Similarly, the subtlety and adaptability of Polynesian and
Melanesian leaders becomes apparent in this story. Ma‘afu had great skills, and
he and Cakobau both invested in naval power and were shrewd negotiators.
Each of these and other leaders in the Pacific were faced with shattering
circumstances, with dramatic population decline and social upheaval on a large
scale. Individuals, villages, and whole societies made decisions about profound
spiritual and material questions, and each created its own blend of change and
continuity. The Pritchard story complicates, and sometimes destroys, the
conventional wisdom, and it does this through an account that has the weight
of hard-won evidence from archival research and the pleasure and enlivening
quality of real-life experience.
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Biography of William Pritchard
ENDNOTES
1 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York 1993), 20.
2 William Pritchard, Polynesian Reminiscences (London 1866), quoted in Andrew Robson, Prelude to
Empire: consuls, missionary kingdoms, and the pre-colonial South Seas seen through the life of William
Thomas Pritchard (Vienna 2004), 89.
3 Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion is Christianity? The Gospel beyond the West (Michigan 2003), 10.
4 Pritchard, Polynesian Reminiscences, 1.
5 Albert Wendt (ed.), ‘Introduction’, Nuanua: Pacific writing in English since 1980 (Honolulu 1995), 3.
6 Other spellings are sometimes used, including ‘Vai‘inupo’.
7 Charles W. Forman, ‘Finding our own voices: the reinterpreting of Christianity by Oceanian
theologians,’ International Bulletin of Missionary Research, 29:3 (July 2005), 118.
8 Isobel Whippy, Pritchard, performed at the South Pacific Festival of Arts, Suva, May, 1972.
9 Formerly known as The Public Record Office.
10 Formally, a Commission of Inquiry.
11 See Robson, Prelude to Empire, 137.
12 R.A. Derrick, A History of Fiji (Suva 1968), 155.
13 Jane Samson, Imperial Benevolence: making British authority in the Pacific Islands (Honolulu 1998),
130ff.
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Chapter 15
Writing the Colony: Walter Edward
Gudgeon in the Cook Islands, 1898 to
1909
Graeme Whimp
In 1903, half way through his 11-year tenure as New Zealand’s principal colonial
administrator in the Cook Islands, Lieutenant Colonel Walter Edward Gudgeon
told an old military comrade:
I am here the absolute Governor of some 17 Islands, Chief Judge of the
High Court, do Land Court, Surveyor General, Treasurer, & Civil Engineer
to the Group. Encouraging the natives to plant when they think they
ought to be sleeping, slanging the lazy, repressing those with swelled
heads (a dangerous disease in the Islands) & flattering the vanity of those
who are a little better than their fellows. Such is my life, rather lonely
but full of interest for those who like myself love the Maori with all his
faults.1
Since as early as the 1860s, New Zealand governments’ intermittent desire for a
sub-empire in the South Pacific had been thwarted by the lack of interest and
imperial mistrust of the British Colonial Office. In 1888, however, British
protection was declared over the southern islands of the Cook group and, in
1890, Frederick Joseph Moss became the first New Zealand-appointed British
resident. Having installed a number of progressive measures for a considerable
degree of native self-government, Moss eventually fell foul of a variety of local
interests. Failure to implement new legislation setting up a Federal Court and a
consequent inquiry finding that his position had become untenable led to his
replacement by Gudgeon in September 1898. After annexation by New Zealand
in June 1901, Gudgeon became Resident Commissioner and remained in office
until August 1909.2
The last two decades have witnessed a variety of calls for a closer and more
complex reading of colonialism and of its texts by, among others, Frederick
Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, Nicholas B. Dirks, Gyan Prakash, Thomas Richards,
and Nicholas Thomas. There is general agreement that colonialism was neither
monolithic, nor omnipotent, nor unchanging and Richards has characterised as
‘fictive’ the illusion of imperial control. Thomas has pointed to a haunting sense
205
of insecurity on the part of colonisers, fear of an inaccessible ‘native mentality’,
and despair at their inability to reconcile an elusive reality with its accepted
representations. At the same time, he has questioned the validity of denying
complexity and agency to those accused of the same offence and Stoler has
appealed for the same degree of differentiation as would be extended, for
instance, to ruling elites of the colonised. In this terrain, it is clear that the
analysis of colonial autobiography has unrivalled potential to illuminate both
realities and representations and this essay will examine that potential in one
such autobiographical project.
Thomas has also observed that colonial projects are often and more precisely
projected than realised, their intent deflected or vitiated by opposition,
competition, or internal inconsistencies, a perspective summarised by Cooper
and Stoler as an ‘overarching tension between what colonialism was and what
colonial regimes did’. In considering the texts produced by those regimes, Prakash
has advocated making their ‘silences, contradictions, and ambiguities essential
elements in the colonial story’.3 My purpose in this essay, then, is to outline,
in the spirit of those observations and injunctions, a reading of Gudgeon’s private
Cook Islands journal and to identify some consequent questions for the present.4
First, however, it will be worthwhile briefly to mesh biography with the present
exploration of the imperial project and consider the range of experiences,
intellectual and political baggage and equipment, and mandate that Gudgeon
took with him to Rarotonga.
Arriving, by his own account, in New Zealand from London in 1849 at the
age of seven, he became a farm worker at 11 and later, largely self-educated, a
colonial soldier in the Land Wars, a resident magistrate, a controversial
landowner, acting under-secretary of defence, commissioner of police, and native
land court judge. Long interested in Maori language and history, this position
gave him the opportunity for deeper study; he participated in the vanguard
ethnography of the Polynesian Society, chaired the inaugural meeting in 1892,
and published prolifically in its Journal. 5 He was, apparently, fluent in Te Reo
Maori and held a strong opinion that ‘much as the manners and customs of the
Maoris may differ from ours, they may—so far as that people are concerned—be
equally right and salutary’.6 He equally strongly asserted, however, that the
missionaries had destroyed ‘the even balance of the Maori mind’ and ‘all that is
interesting in a Native race’.7
He would certainly have believed Maori a dying or diminishing race (a great
impetus to ethnographic inquiry); contradictorily, he would have accepted that
the close relationship between Maori and other Polynesians and New Zealand’s
‘success’ in dealing with ‘its own Maori people’ conveyed some right or
responsibility to govern all Polynesians. He expected that only major land
confiscation would achieve Maori industriousness.8 As a progressive, if
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somewhat sceptical and abrasive, small-‘l’, liberal then,9 Gudgeon would have
been comfortable with British Liberal J.A. Hobson’s endorsement of the validity
and virtues of imperialism, an idea with few European enemies, if many
perspectives, at this particular time.10 And he probably would have shared, at
least in theory, Hobson’s belief ‘that the progress of world-civilization is the
only valid moral ground for political interference with the “lower races”’ and
only if evidenced by their ‘political, industrial, and moral education’.11
His brief from the New Zealand government comprised little more than passage
through the Cook Islands parliament of the Federal Court Bill and achievement
of annexation to New Zealand.12 Beyond that there was a vague proposal for a
land court on the New Zealand model, a catalogue of largely illusory mutual
benefits set out by Premier Richard Seddon in his 1900 visit to the Cooks and
in the consequent parliamentary annexation debate,13 and a general intention
to ‘leave the Natives, as far as practicable, to manage their own affairs’.14 Far
from serving any major political, strategic, or commercial interests, New Zealand’s
first sub-imperial acquisition demonstrates Eric Hobsbawm’s observation that,
by this stage, ‘the acquisition of colonies itself became a status symbol,
irrespective of their value’.15
Gudgeon’s ‘A Journal of My Residence in the South Seas and of the Causes
that Led to that Residence’ is a remarkable combination of invective,
self-justification, perceptive insight, and passing ethnographic note. Foremost
is his predecessor, Moss, haunting both Gudgeon and his Journal, who, together
with his associates, is the excoriated object of the bulk of the Journal’s 68 pages.
In policy, the only criticisms of Moss are of the manner and fact of his
introduction of island councils for self-government, his failure to secure passage
of the Federal Court Bill, and the lack of increased revenue and the material
fabric of colonial government. Administratively, Moss is accused of a variety of
fraudulent activities, benefiting to the point of illegality one particular
commercial company, employing and favouring one ‘Jimmy te Pou’, and
committing a variety of minor peccadilloes. In character, however, Moss is, from
the first page, lacking in ‘temper, tact, and common sense’, vindictive,
swollen-headed, a fool, ‘a liberal of the carpet bagger type’, unwise and ‘an
Hysterical old woman’, arrogant, inebriated and ‘an infabulous liar’, insane and
idiotic, an absolute despot, absurd, crooked, rabid, a mere crawler behind Sir
George Grey’, ‘God in the Car’,16 secretive, obstinate, and a good deal more.
The Moss administration inquiry report (characterised by Gudgeon as
‘ingeniously colourless’) found him guilty of error, want of judgement, and
overbearing conduct but not of corruption, fraud, or dishonesty,17 and later
assessments of him and his regime generally find both benevolent. Although it
is true that Moss maintained an—often justified—critique of the successor regime
until his death in 1904, the intensity and duration of Gudgeon’s invective is
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Walter Edward Gudgeon in the Cook Islands
surprising. While he may be defining and establishing himself in opposition to
his predecessor, other undercurrents appear in both Autobiography and Journal.
In the former, Gudgeon’s origins include ‘Suffolk people of good social standing’
fallen on hard times;18 in the latter, there are innumerable references to the low
status and appearance of his many enemies.
Furthermore, there is a series of progressively intensifying anti-Semitic slurs,
beyond even the standards of the day, against Moss ‘the half bred jew’. In one
episode, stemming from the antipathy between Moss and Gudgeon’s later friends,
allies and, in one case, son-in-law, the Craig brothers, he asserts:
there are very few instances on record, of a member of the family of
Fagan, Shylock and Co, having told a Highland gentleman that he had
no use for him. half [sic] a century ago we [my emphasis] should have
settled matters by drawing the Resident’s teeth until he disgorged all
his ill gotten dollars, and annexed the island to Scotland.19
The contempt of the once-genteel, military (but not Highland) Gudgeon for the
Anglican (not Jewish) but once-commercial and parliamentary Moss calls to
mind H. John Field’s suggestion of the influence on ‘Imperial Man’ of the public
school values of Character and Duty as ‘the two magnetic values of the Victorian
that most represent the imperial need’ as well as his hypothesis that individual
commitment depended upon ‘the close association that empire came to have
with valued character traits’.20
Having conveyed the tone and texture of the Journal, I shall more summarily
complete the 360 degree view of Gudgeon’s colonial world. The second villain
is the mataiapo (major lineage chief) and senior public servant Makea Daniela
Vakatani, almost invariably referred to contemptuously as Jimmy te Pou, who
appears throughout the Journal and occupies more than a quarter of Gudgeon’s
final address.21 In eight minutely detailed pages, Gudgeon spells out defalcations,
misdemeanours, crimes, and perjuries, for which he succeeded in gaoling Daniela,
yet fails to mention an extravagant welcome and three weeks of feasting on his
return.22
The balance of Moss’s former associates, the Law and Order League or the
Piri Moti (Stick to Moss), fare little better. ‘In Appearance [sic] and manner the
friends of Mr Moss were of a lower type than his Enemies [sic]. the [sic] former
I find to be men of shady antecedents and many of them foreigners.’23 Among
that ‘gang of thieves’, the collector of customs is imbecile and must be replaced;
Sherman is ‘Mischievous … Conceited, Religious, andVindictive’; Henry Nicholas
an unblushing robber ‘as crooked in mind as he was in body’, a sly-grogger,
murderer, and, with Chas W. Banks alias Scard, an embezzler; Gelling a
disreputable young hanger-on; Garnier is incapable and faces prosecution; Henry
Ellis is loathsome, an embezzler who ‘fled to Rarotonga to avoid arrest’; Caldwell
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‘a fanatic but not a fool’, and Richard Exham a forger and thief. Thos Sherman
has the appearance ‘of a Houndsditch Jew’, an impediment to his relationship
‘with the better class people’; and the major trading company of Donald and
Edenborough is a corrupt and fraudulent manipulator of Moss and the entire
administration.
Gudgeon’s common attitude to the administration officials is revealed in his
exclamation, ‘Some of the men with whom I have to work are beneath contempt’.
Customs officer Albert Whitty is involved in ‘irregularities’ and dismissed; the
trusted Frederick Goodwin kills himself firing a rocket and is found, along with
Gudgeon’s nephew, Ralph Gosset (imprisoned for two years—Gudgeon wished
he had died too) to have been swindling the accounts and audit; a new customs
officer is an ‘incompetent fool’; his formerly favoured Mangaia island resident,
Large, is increasingly vindictive, excitable, vain, absurd, and quarrelsome,
constantly calling on Gudgeon for help; Miller, collector of customs, is Seddon’s
spy and a lunatic; and Panapa Vairuarangi, the best man in the north, embezzles
public money.
The mission and its missionaries, Papaa and Maori, are cruel, mischievous,
above all intolerant and tyrannical, guilty of supporting the ariki (high chiefs)
and the old ways, and ‘consistently opposed every european [sic]’. As early as
1899, Gudgeon had decided that ‘sooner or later [he] must put the Mission down’.
It ‘is at the bottom of and responsible for all Maori troubles’, ‘the decadence of
the race began with their evangelisation’, and ‘the L.M.S. Polynesian is a born
criminal’. In trying to ‘make a Maori into a third class Britisher’ and failing, it
ground ‘the very life of a happy laughter loving people … out of them’. As to
the lives of women, the mission is guilty of physical abuse, degrading women’s
originally fairly happy lot by putting ‘into their heads the modern idea of the
woman in the House and the man in the Field’, and ‘turning out the most lazy,
immoral and extravagant lot of drabs known to modern days’.24
The ariki have been feudal, despotic, greedy, and oppressive, and ‘the time
has come when the Crown must take up the duties of the Ariki’ in order to
protect the ‘little people’: ‘it will be good for the place when the present lot of
Arikis die out’. Under Gudgeon, an ariki has ‘no pull over her people’ in court
and is now subservient to the governor of New Zealand (in practice, the resident
commissioner). For the most part, ariki play a fleeting role; ‘Queen’ Makea Takau,
head of government who had made herself paramount chief not just of Rarotonga
but of the whole group, ‘is not a Makea at all, she is a mere mission fake’, and
her agency and enterprise are obscured in allegations of tyranny and greed.
Unfortunately, the unga (common people) are unable to see the need to curtail
or destroy ‘the irresponsible powers of the Arikis’. In 1902, Gudgeon observed
that ‘it has long been clear to me that a large majority of the present generation
prefer [the old] system with all of its oppressors, to european [sic] rule’. These,
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Walter Edward Gudgeon in the Cook Islands
however, ‘are the people whom I have to protect, and therefore it is advisable
that Rarotonga should be surveyed with the least possible delay’; this because
‘the Cook islanders are a dying race and the Govt their natural heirs’.25 As to
‘the Cook Islander’ in general, he ‘is at times described by his friends, as lazy,
sensual and thievish’, but is ‘not a lazy man when he perceives the necessity for
exertion’. Perhaps the relationship between Gudgeon and the Cook Islanders,
as far as it can be generalised, is best conveyed in 1902:
It is not easy to decide what policy ought to be pursued in this group,
for the Natives are peculiar, and the difficulty is to fing [sic] out what
policy they will accept and approve.26
Perhaps, however, the impact of the mission has, as in New Zealand, destroyed
‘all that is interesting in a Race’ as suggested by the infrequent, fragmentary,
and abrupt ethnographic observations that, eventually, peter out almost entirely.
Women, Maori and Papaa, including Gudgeon’s own wife and daughter, are
largely absent from the Journal and, except for ariki and an occasional and
incidental European, nameless. They most often appear in the context of domestic
conflict or sexual relationships in which Maori at least are, apart from mission
abuse, far from subservient.
The New Zealand governor, government, and parliament are mistrustful,
deceitful, got-at, uncomprehending, and pusillanimous, contributing nothing
to the Cooks’ prosperity, and, above all, very distant, the latter demonstrated
in Gudgeon’s plausible assertion that he himself formulated his objectives,
strategy, and tactics as resident commissioner. Only in this relationship with
New Zealand is he an ‘absolute Governor’.
Given the personalities and circumstances portrayed in his Journal, Gudgeon
must be admired for the restraint of his opinion ‘that this was not a pleasant
community to be connected with’. It is a matter of some interest, however, that
the handful of residents of whom he approves are never as carefully characterised
nor so vividly and visually presented as are his reprobates. Yet, alongside the
persona of the colonial administrator, his character and duty delineated in
contrast to the lack of character and derelictions of his opponents, there appears
the person, often vitriolic, but occasionally engaging, more rarely wistful or
even regretful. Enough of vitriol; the engaging quality, however vitiated
elsewhere, appears in his continuing validation of the Maori point of view, in
personally paying off his nephew’s misappropriations, in his observation of
changed gender roles, and in his refreshing acceptance of the sexual adventures
of young men and women; wistfulness in his desire to ‘see some regret in the
faces of the people when [he leaves] the Islands’; and something close to regret
in his observation after an absence ‘that the Maoris had persuaded themselves
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I was not coming back’ and ‘the Polynesian is unreliable but afraid of me when
I am here’.
Harking back to Gudgeon’s boast to his old comrade, the Journal illuminates
the contrast between the projection and the project, a contrast captured at
another level in Allen Curnow’s poem ‘The Unhistoric Story’:
Vogel and Seddon howling empire from an empty coast
A vast ocean laughter
Echoed unheard, and after
All it was different, something
Nobody counted on.27
Here is fertile material for a closer analysis of a colonial world. In this case,
however, I want to leap over that to consider some questions for the present
that arise from the reading. First, does such a marginal example add to our general
understanding of the nature of imperialism and colonisation? Although I am not
yet clear on that, the understanding of New Zealand’s marginal Cook Islands
sub-imperialism promises to make some contribution to the appreciation of the
complexity of the broader imperial webs.
Second, does this kind of work re-centre rather than decentre the coloniser,
or even provide support for new kinds of imperialisms? My provisional answer
is that it depends—depends on what is done with the work. And that, in turn,
opens up questions about the most productive relationships between insiders
and outsiders, however strained those terms—questions of the sort that have
been raised in the past by Donald Denoon and Doug Munro.28 For myself, I see
this work as one half of a project the other half of which, the re-centring of other
participants, may more sensitively and accurately be taken up by others.
Third, are New Zealand governments, just as much as in Gudgeon’s day,
more interested in being something in relation to the South Pacific than in doing
something? And that raises in turn the control of diplomats, aid and development
officials, and consultants in the region. Anyone who has travelled in the Pacific
in the last two decades will have witnessed New Zealand’s disciples of economic
fundamentalism operating quite as untrammelled as was Gudgeon in his imperial
day.
Fourth, might empty or even loaded calls for democracy (limited to the holding
of dubiously ‘free and fair’ elections and devoid of equity and economic and
social justice) result in ‘democracy’—another idea with few enemies but a number
of perspectives in the West—becoming as degraded a concept in the future as
was imperialism in the later 20th
century? A little less posturing and a little more
partnership might be of benefit to New Zealand, the countries of the Pacific, and
real democracy itself.
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Walter Edward Gudgeon in the Cook Islands
And last, for me personally, a realisation of how much an outsider I am to
my colonial predecessor (another interesting aspect of the insider/outsider debate)
and yet how much I must resemble him to an outsider of us both—an alarming
but salutary insight.
ENDNOTES
1 Gudgeon to unknown, 2 May 1903, W.E. Gudgeon Papers MS-Papers-3253, Alexander Turnbull
Library, Wellington (ATL).
2 This paragraph draws on Richard Gilson, The Cook Islands 1820-1950, ed. Ron Crocombe (Wellington
1980), 57-109; Angus Ross, New Zealand Aspirations in the Pacific in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford
1964), 234-44, 252-69.
3 Frederick Cooper and Ann L. Stoler, ‘Introduction—tensions of empire: colonial control and visions
of rule’, American Ethnologist, 16:4 (1989), 609-21 and particularly 609, 616; Nicholas B. Dirks,
‘Introduction: colonialism and culture’, in idem (ed.) Colonialism and Culture (Ann Arbor 1992), 1-25,
7-8; Gyan Prakash, ‘A view from afar (South Asia)—an interview with Gyan Prakash’, in Robert Borofsky
(ed.), Remembrance of Pacific Pasts: an invitation to remake history (Honolulu 2000), 296-302, 296; Thomas
Richards, The Imperial Archive: knowledge and the fantasy of empire (London and New York 1993), 2;
Ann Laura Stoler, ‘Rethinking Colonial Categories: European communities and the boundaries of rule’,
in Nicholas B. Dirks (ed.), Colonialism and Culture (Ann Arbor 1992), 319-52, 319-21; Ann Laura Stoler
and Frederick Cooper, ‘Between metropole and colony: rethinking a research agenda’, in Frederick
Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler (eds), Tensions of Empire: colonial cultures in a bourgeois world (Berkeley
1997), 1-54, 5-6, 9, 21-2, 29; Nicholas Thomas, ‘Partial texts: representation, colonialism and agency in
Pacific History’, Journal of Pacific History, 25:2 (1990), 139-58, 147-9; Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism’s
Culture: anthropology, travel and government (Cambridge 1994), 1-3, 13-16, 50-1, 105-6.
4 Brief quotations from the journal are generally not footnoted.
5 This biographical note draws on Walter Edward Gudgeon, Autobiography [1910], in Walter Gudgeon,
Autobiography and Related Materials fMS-079 ATL; E.W.G. (Elsdon) Craig, Destiny Well Sown: a
biography of Lt.-Col. W.E. Gudgeon, C.M.G. etc (Whakatane, NZ 1985); David Green, ‘Gudgeon, Walter
Edward 1841-1920’ (updated 7 April 2006), Dictionary of New Zealand Biography,
http://www.dnzb.govt.nz accessed 22 April 2006; and M.P.K. Sorrenson, Maori Origins and Migrations:
the genesis of some Pakeha myths and legends (Auckland 1979), 34-5.
6 Walter Edward Gudgeon, ‘The Maori People’, Journal of the Polynesian Society, 13:51 (1904), 177-92,
177.
7 Walter Edward Gudgeon ‘The toa taua or warrior’, Journal of the Polynesian Society, 13:52 (1904),
238-64, 239.
8 New Zealand Parliamentary Debates [NZPD] 114 (1900): 387-426; Gudgeon, Autobiography, 25.
9 Craig, Destiny Well Sown, 30, 32.
10 E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 1875-1914 (London 1987), 60.
11 J.A. Hobson, Imperialism: a study (3rd edn, London 1988 [1902]), 237.
12 Walter Edward Gudgeon, ‘A journal of my residence in the South Seas and of the causes that led to
that residence [1910]’, in Walter Gudgeon Autobiography and Related Materials fMS-079 ATL 1. The
Journal comprises 68 pages numbered 1 to 68 and lying immediately after page 73 of the Autobiography.
13 [Edward Tregear], The Right Hon. R.J. Seddon’s Visit to Tonga, Fiji, Savage Island, and the Cook
Islands, May, 1900 (Wellington 1900), 425-42; NZPD 114 (1900): 387-93.
14 Seddon to Ranfurly, Memo Urging Caution, 27 December 1898, G11 70.1 Box 4 Archives New Zealand,
Wellington (ANZ).
15 Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 67.
16 Gudgeon, Journal, 27, 62. A reference to the juggernaut character of Cecil Rhodes as portrayed
fictionally in Anthony Hope [pseudonym of Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins], The God in the Car (London
1895).
17 Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives, A3 (1898), 16.
18 Gudgeon, Autobiography, 1.
19 Gudgeon, Journal, 16.
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Telling Pacific Lives
20 H. John Field, Toward a Programme of Imperial Life: the British Empire at the turn of the century
(Westport, CT 1982), xii, 30.
21 Gudgeon, Autobiography, 173.
22 Scott 1991, 91-2.
23 Gudgeon, Journal, 2.
24 Gudgeon, Journal, 46-8.
25 Gudgeon, Journal, 40-41, 45.
26 Gudgeon, Journal 39.
27 Allen Curnow, ‘The Unhistoric Story’, in idem, Sailing or Drowning (Wellington 1941), 20-21.
28 Donald Denoon, ‘The right to misrepresent’, The Contemporary Pacific, 9:2 (1997): 400-18; Doug
Munro, ‘Who “owns” Pacific history: reflections on the insider/outsider dichotomy’, Journal of Pacific
History, 29:2 (1994): 232-37.
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Walter Edward Gudgeon in the Cook Islands
Chapter 16
An Accidental Biographer? On
Encountering, Yet Again, the Ideas and
Actions of J.W. Burton
Christine Weir
I have never set out to write a biography. I’m not sure that I know how to. But
early in work on my thesis—on race, work and Christian humanitarianism in
the southwest Pacific—I encountered the writing and activism of John Wear
Burton (1875-1971), Methodist missionary to the Indians in Fiji, 1902-1911, and
mission administrator in Sydney from the 1920s to the 1940s. My first encounter
was with the Burton written about by other Pacific historians such as Ken Gillion,
Brij Lal, Andrew Thornley and John Garrett: Burton the social campaigner, the
whistleblower on Indian indenture in Fiji.1 The story is well known. In 1901,
the Australian Methodists upgraded their mission to the Indians, originally
conducted by two lay people, John Williams and Hannah Dudley, by sending
ordained European missionaries: Cyril Bavin to Lautoka and John Burton to
Nausori. Initially they did not concern themselves with the indenture system;
Bavin never did. Burton was rather more interested, but in 1903/4, with as yet
limited experience of the conditions of indenture, he was moderately approving
of the system, following the usual official and mission line:
The whole system of Indenture is under Government control, and every
effort is made to eliminate anything like abuse. On the whole the Indians
are well cared for and their life here must be very much more tolerable
than what they have been accustomed to in their own country.2
Burton’s assumption that the girmityas were low-caste and from sordid, probably
criminal, backgrounds tallied with the views of other Methodists.
However by 1909 Burton’s neutral observation of indenture had turned to
condemnation. There were earlier hints of a change of opinion in Mrs Deane’s
account of a visit to Burton’s station in 1907. She went with Burton to the
indentured labourers’ ‘lines’, which she described as ‘simply dreadful’, to attend
a service. ‘I was much interested in the women’, she added, ‘for though they
seemed happy I am told that they lead most wretched lives’. Presumably it was
Burton who was doing the ‘telling’.3 By 1909 his views were clear. In a small
215
booklet circulated within the mission in Fiji and Australia, Our Indian Work in
Fiji, he began his chapter on indentured labourers in forthright tone:
The life on the plantation as an indentured labourer is not of a very
inviting character. The difference between this state and absolute slavery
is merely in the name and the term of years. The coolies themselves ...
frankly call it (narak) hell. The wages are low and the cost of living is
comparatively high … The accommodation appears to us very wretched
… there are some (lines) where the coolies are herded together like so
many penned cattle amid the most insanitary conditions and indescribable
filth.4
This was the most forthright condemnation of indenture ever to have come from
the Methodists. Moreover, it was not a complaint that the regulations were being
disregarded but a challenge to the system itself, as dehumanising and degrading.
Interestingly, there was very little adverse criticism from within church
circles to the publication of the 1909 booklet. Indeed, Small, as Chairman of the
Fiji District, thought it ‘should do much good’5 and the Methodist Missionary
Society sent a copy of the book to every Methodist minister in Australia,
recommending it for reading by study groups within churches.6 Burton repeated
his opinion in his 1910 book Fiji of Today, a handsome volume selling for seven
shillings and sixpence. Now others recognised the criticism for what it was. The
Colonial Sugar Refining Company complained to the colonial government, which
in turn complained to the Methodist mission—putting the Chairman of the
mission A.J. Small in a position of some embarrassment since he had written a
glowing forward to Burton’s book. In July 1910 Governor May wrote formally
to Small, rebutting Burton’s claims about the evils of the indenture system.7
Small tried to deny involvement.8 But Burton was impenitent and defensive,
claiming that he had ‘given the government credit for improvements’ but that
‘there is the CSR Co to contend against’.9 Burton was passionate. The regulations
introduced to ameliorate the system were not being observed, but they could
not mitigate the evils of the system in any case.
Burton’s criticism of the indenture system was influential in other quarters.
The Fiji of Today was read in India and formed part of the growing call there to
abolish the system. Burton’s role was acknowledged by others. Before leaving
India for Fiji in 1915, Gandhi’s emissary, the English Anglican clergyman C.F.
Andrews had read and been impressed by the book. Once it was clear that
indenture was to be abolished, he wrote to Burton:
I know what an intense joy to you it will be that the indenture system
is to be utterly abolished … I do feel very strongly that your book (the
‘Fiji of Today’) was the pioneer and did the pioneer work, and it is due
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to that book perhaps more than to any other single cause that the whole
indenture system was shown up in its proper light.10
In his unofficial 1916 report to the Indian government, Andrews praised the
actions of Burton and Hannah Dudley, who ‘saved the whole Indian community
from falling to the lowest level of ignorance and vice’.11 Pandit Totaram
Sanadhya, who wrote in his memoir of his time in Fiji, also acknowledged this:
Rev. Burton did a lot for our people. They used to flock to him and tell
him their tale of woe. He would plead on their behalf to their master …
(He) was the first person in Fiji to raise his voice against the indenture
system.12
This then is the relatively well-known heroic story: the writer who started,
or at least substantially contributed to, an international campaign against a
specific injustice. This is what Burton is remembered for, not his long years as
mission theorist and administrator. J.W. Burton does not figure otherwise in
histories of Fiji, and there is only one very short street named after him in Suva.
He has no biography. His entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography was
written by Andrew Thornley, who has concentrated his biographical efforts on
earlier missionaries within the Fiji Methodist mission.13 As I continued with
my doctoral research, however, I encountered Burton’s name and opinions again
and again; his role as campaigner against indenture was only the beginning of
a long and interesting career. He was also a missionary (though of limited
evangelistic success), photographer, writer, advocate for the League of Nations,
mission administrator for nearly 30 years, newspaper columnist (mainly in the
Sydney Morning Herald), preacher and member of the embryonic South Pacific
Commission. So his was indeed a ‘Pacific Life’: while he lived in Fiji for only 10
years he was involved with mission and general policy in the Pacific for the rest
of his life. His opinions and writings increasingly became a thread running
though my own writing—yet I have never, till now, attempted to pull it all
together.
With his campaign against Indian indenture, Burton seems a very suitable
subject for a historian of Fiji, with an interest in missions, of liberal Christian
tendencies —like myself. It seems clear that to write an effective biography one
needs to have some sort of affinity with your subject. As Neil Gunson put it
(this volume), the biographer should have inhabited some of the same thought
world as the subject, but also have moved outside it. But of course Burton was
more complex than just a social reformer and campaigner against indenture.
Human beings always are. And while social justice is comprehensible and
attractive to a 21st
century biographer, some of Burton’s attitudes are more
problematic. To illustrate this, let us look more closely at Fiji of Today. Most of
the book is actually about Fijians, and it was what he said about them rather
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Ideas and Actions of J.W. Burton
than the comments about indenture which infuriated Burton’s colleagues. There
is in his comments a deeply evolutionist strand. Other missionaries, who worked
with Fijians, had a deep knowledge of Fijian customs, social structures and ways
of life. They identified with their Fijian converts. Burton did not—‘his’ people
were the Indian labourers. He recognised the profound sincerity of some of the
older Fijian preachers and he acknowledged that much ‘progress’ had been made
from the pre-Christian times. But he believed that much Fijian Christianity was
‘superficial’. He did not believe that Fijians ‘had been changed, as if by the
waving of a magic wand, from horrible blood-thirsty cannibals to saintly
Christians’.14 The early mass conversions, he thought, had led to a religious
state of ‘paganism tinctured with Christianity’. Burton was not enthusiastic
either about the Fijian chiefly system, or the adoption by missionaries of de facto
positions within it.15 He criticised the communal system as understood and
protected by Gordon, seeing it as hidebound and restrictive.
Much of Burton’s analysis was based on the commonly-held belief in an
evolutionary hierarchy of human groups, grounded in the assumption that
modern Western European society epitomised the pinnacle of human
achievement. Such assumptions ranked human societies on the rationalist criteria
of the sophistication of technology, the complexity of law, and the shift from
‘error’ or ‘superstition’ to science. These assumptions Burton shared, allocating
Fijians to a fairly low rung in the hierarchy. The group which interested him,
his responsibility, was the Indian community, whom he saw as more advanced
than Fijians. In an early Missionary Review article, he described revealingly an
encounter between the two groups. Burton described a rather hair-raising boat
trip from Suva to Navua, accompanied by an Indian catechist and young Fijian
boys more enthusiastic than skilful. Eventually they made it into the calm of
the Navua River:
‘Sahib!’ exclaims the hitherto terrified Catechist; ‘our lives are snatched
back from death. See how great dangers we meet by trusting ourselves
to these dwellers in the jungle, whose minds have never been exercised
by thought.’
The Catechist evidently thinks that this is the proper place to retaliate
upon the Fijians, who have been taunting him with being unable to
swim.
‘I would rather trust myself to one of these children of nature on a
journey such as this,’ replies the missionary, ‘than to all the Persian and
Sanskrit scholars of Hindustan.’16
The Fijians have practical skills, the Indians intellectual ones; Burton appreciated
both, in their place, but the ‘children of nature’ comment shows where he
thought the Fijians’ place was.
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There is considerable evidence that Burton’s evolutionist beliefs changed
after World War 1, during which he served as a YMCA chaplain in London.
While Burton is not explicit about his own reactions, the experience, even at
one remove, of the horrors of the trenches led many of his contemporaries to
question the supposed superiority of European civilisation. In articles and
writings from the 1920s, Burton’s attitude to Fijian preachers becomes
considerably more approving. In my thesis I explained his shift in attitude as
caused primarily by increased personal knowledge; as Methodist General
Secretary on regular visits to Papua and New Britain he saw Fijian teachers and
ministers working effectively and came to know them personally. In 1926 he
described the ‘real winning of souls’ achieved by Fijian, Tongan and Samoan
pastors and teachers in Papua. There were now congregations of 300 where five
years previously all had been heathen: ‘it is simply marvellous to see what has
been done by some of the South Sea Island teachers’.17 But while this explanation
is certainly plausible, I cannot be certain it is right, and it may very well be
incomplete.
And here we encounter another problem of writing biography. How can
another person be sure about a subject’s motivations, changes of mind and
outside influences? In Burton’s case I have surprisingly little insight into some
aspects of his character and motivation. This may seem an odd thing to say, for
a great deal of Burton’s writing exists. This consists both of published material:
books on Fijian and wider Pacific mission history, study guides for congregations,
sermons, numerous articles in the Methodist mission journal Missionary Review
and the Sydney Morning Herald; and also unpublished letters and reports from
his 30-plus years in mission administration, especially as the General Secretary
of the Methodist Missionary Society. But most of this material is quite impersonal,
and if biography is a balance between the individual and their context, then I
feel I have much more context than individual, more letters than life.
And Burton himself encouraged this. Some time around 1956 he wrote a
200-page autobiography entitled ‘The Weaver’s Shuttle: memories and reflections
of an octogenarian’, which was never published.18 This, he says, was ‘written
for my own delectation, for I have no great concern whether or not these
scribblings find their way into print’. On completing it, Burton, irritatingly for
any potential biographer, destroyed all his personal papers.19 Bearing in mind
Niel Gunson’s reservations about autobiography (this volume), nonetheless, ‘The
Weaver’s Shuttle’ is obviously a crucial document. It also sets the terms about
what Burton was, and was not, prepared to discuss in public. There is very little
about his parents, marriage, children or personal relationships. We learn he
migrated from Yorkshire to New Zealand with his family at the age of nine,
married Florence Hadfield in 1902, had three children, the first two born in Fiji.
He left Fiji in 1911 because of the ill-health of his two small daughters; Burton
has little comment on how he felt about this, although one imagines it must have
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Ideas and Actions of J.W. Burton
been a huge disappointment. I know, but not from him, that the youngest, a
son also named John Wear Burton (born 1915) became famous as the head of
Foreign Affairs under ‘Doc’ Evatt. The relationship between the two is not
discussed by either. Burton tells us little more about family and friends. It is
clear from other peoples’ accounts that Burton was respected by his colleagues
and that he had many friends. Others in the mission environment bear testimony
to his influence; Robert Green, who spent 20 years as a Methodist missionary
in Fiji in the 1920s and 1930s claimed Burton had inspired his interest during
his visitation trips to rural Victoria in 1917.20 But little of this personal
background comes from Burton himself—and if that’s how he wanted it, perhaps
that’s how it should be left. Any biography of Burton could only be
fundamentally an intellectual biography, an examination of the public man, the
administrator, campaigner and theologian.
How did Burton see his own life? His autobiography sets out his priorities.
‘The major interest in my life’, he wrote, ‘has been Christian missions and the
welfare of native races’.21 The constant interests he saw as running through his
life concern wider changes within the broader missionary movement: from
exclusive denominational concern with small groups who must be converted at
the peril of their souls, to an interdenominational effort which gave due
consideration to indigenous perspectives—particularly the growth of the
self-governing church. His other great concern was with the growing linkage,
particularly in the 1920s and 1930s, between Christianity and secular endeavours
for the social advancement and a willingness to consider political change for
colonised people. His own representation of his life remains, as I have suggested,
primarily an intellectual examination.
Burton was what we might call a theological liberal—and it is in expounding
his theological ideas that he reveals most about himself. In middle age he retold
the story of his 1901 commissioning as an overseas missionary. It so happened
that John Paton, Presbyterian missionary for many years in the New Hebrides,
attended the service in Auckland. In his sermon Burton explained his motivation
for going to Fiji:
it was not the belief that the heathen were falling into an endless hell
which had impelled me to go forth, but rather the unhappy condition
of people who, ignorant of the good news, were living without the
happiness that Christ alone could give … The grand old warrior [Paton]
rose, shook his leonine head and … hurled his burning indignation at
the views I had expressed. “Young man,” he almost roared, “do you
think I would have risked my life amongst the savages and cannibals of
the New Hebrides if I had not believed that every man, woman and child
I met was going to hell?” The audience broke into a thunder of applause
and left me feeling utterly undone.22
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This account also gives an idea of Burton’s style, and his sense of humour; he
remained a noted pricker of pomposity, including his own.
Yet he maintained the rightness of this theological position, which he
summarised in 1917:
We have come to believe that there is a wideness in God’s mercy like
the wideness of the sea, and we have turned from the grim negative to
the warm positive, from the post-mortem fortunes to the immediate needs
of the human race.23
This he thought a ‘more compelling and sustaining’ motive for missionary activity
than fear of hellfire—and it lasted. He was influenced by Biblical criticism and
was by no means a literalist. In a radio talk in 1932 he recommended that concerns
about miracles, theories and creeds be made subordinate to experiencing the
love of Christ. ‘I have always refused to be drawn into mere academic and
theological discussion about Jesus, just as I would refuse to subject my love or
those of my family circle to public analysis’, he wrote—incidentally restating
his view concerning personal reticence—but told young people to accept what
they could of the gospels and live by that; the rest would follow.24 His own
experience of converting others was not encouraging; few Fiji Indians became
Christian from his teaching even though, by his own account, he preached on
street corners and in the marketplace rather than just in church.25
Occasionally, his words resonated: in a 1909 Missionary Review article entitled
‘Nicodemus’ he describes Gobind Das, guru to the plantation workers, who
conducts an evening prayer gathering during which he follows recitations from
the Ramayana with readings of the Beatitudes and the parable of the Prodigal
Son from an old Hindi New Testament. On this occasion the guru visits the
missionary by night and converts to Christianity, taking the name Nicodemus.26
A Nicodemus appears in the Methodist preaching lists for the Nausori area in
the 1910s. But such an outcome was rare; Burton’s conversations with the Pandit
Totaram Sanadhya in Nausori were more typical. They seem to have been good
friends, regularly discussing life and death and everything in between—and
both determined not to be converted by the other. Such conversations, along
with a visit to India in 1906, sparked an interest in Hinduism which remained.
In a 1914 sermon he encouraged new missionaries bound for India to cultivate
an attitude of ‘balanced sympathy’ towards Hinduism and Islam, to use their
religious and philosophical tenets to ‘redirect the spiritual instinct of the people
into new channels’, towards ‘a better Saviour, a better Sanctuary’.27 At around
the same time, Burton wrote articles on the Hindu revival and the Arya Samaj,
and especially the poet Rabindranath Tagore, whom he saw as proto-Christian
‘a forerunner—a John the Baptist, heralding the coming One’.28 The strength
of the writing got it published—but some Australian parishioners must have
wondered at such topics. Certainly some others within the Methodist mission
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Ideas and Actions of J.W. Burton
regarded him as too close to C.F. Andrews, who was in turn seen as tainted by
syncretism and too influenced by Gandhi and Hinduism.29
Burton’s tolerant and accepting attitude was also evident in his relations with
other Christians. His writing is noticeably free of the anti-Catholicism common
in Protestant writing of the time. His 1912 Call of the Pacific is unusually generous
about Catholic missionary efforts in Fiji, in spite of being written only a few
years after the ‘Bible-burning’ controversies in the Rewa delta.30 Influenced
by the Student Christian Movement from his own student days, he frequently
attended and spoke at Australian and New Zealand SCM conferences, often
accompanied by Presbyterian leader Frank Paton (son of his old critic).31 His
chaplaincy at the end of the First World War was under the auspices of the
YMCA, membership of which led to useful links with Christian leaders all over
the world. He knew and corresponded with the American ecumenist John Mott,
took great interest in the growth and activities of the World Missionary
Conference movement from its first meeting at Edinburgh in 1910, attended the
1921 inaugural meeting in America of the International Missionary Council, and
watched these develop into the World Council of Churches.
With this view of a worldwide and inclusive Christianity necessarily involved
in world affairs, Burton was not a pious figure of personal sanctity and Christian
orthodoxy. Rather he tended to be criticised by more conventional colleagues
for being too secular; William Slade complained to Chairman A.J. Small in 1909
that Burton advised a mission visitor to ‘bring a ball dress to Fiji’. ‘Our
missionaries’, Slade fulminated, ‘lose spirituality when they mix with the
irreligious spirit of parties’.32 In many ways Burton’s trajectory was typical of
the more liberal wing of Christianity in the 20th
century. For a biographer this
raises questions of potential publisher and audience: Christian publishing outlets
are usually interested in more orthodox and conservative figures, secular
publishers tend to be suspicious of the ‘Christian’ label.
But Burton’s belief that Christianity must be worked out in the world, that
the Gospel was good news for human social and economic as well as spiritual
wellbeing, was no mere theoretical stance. It led to his involvement not only in
the campaign against indenture in Fiji in the 1910s but also his advocacy of the
ideals of the League of Nations in the 1920s, his espousal of the Atlantic Charter
in the 1940s and his membership of the new South Pacific Commission in the
1950s. The vocabulary used shifted with local preoccupations but the message
remained the same—Christians should support political and secular attempts to
improve human social conditions.
In Burton’s view the greatest threat to such a improvement lay in
untrammelled Western commercialism, whether by the CSR in Rewa in 1909, or
plans to use indentured labour in the plantations of Mandated (former German)
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New Guinea in 1921, or fears that ANGAU would overuse Papuan indentured
labour for non-essential purposes in 1943. As he stated on Sydney radio in 1943:
One of the greatest, if not the greatest, obstacles to the welfare and
progress of native peoples in the past has been commercialism. Too often
the commercial point of view has been that the natives are, or should
be, cheap and docile labour to create profits for a superior race.33
But Burton had moved beyond talk of ‘superior races’, even if his vocabulary
retained elements of paternalism. Indeed paternalism, familial imagery, are
exactly how Burton did represent relationships between human groups; in 1921
he praised the Covenant of the League of Nations as:
A daring scheme for corporate living, which transcends every other
attempt in human history to provide an enduring and practical basis for
human society. In looking out upon the nations of the earth it sees them
as one great human family and has for its objective the promotion of true
family feeling.34
Some members of the human family might be stronger and more capable than
others, but mutual obligation and responsibility—not exploitation—should
guide their relations. The exploitative relationships he feared returning in
post-war PNG were rooted in ‘the failure to recognize the brotherhood of man,
the denial of the intrinsic value of every human being’—in other words it was
a ‘moral and spiritual’ problem.35
Burton’s belief in the brotherhood of man, his humanitarian impulse, was
rooted in his Christianity, but interestingly he did not see such beliefs as the
prerogative of Christians. He believed that missions and governments could be
natural partners in ‘native development’, especially in education. What education
existed in many Pacific countries was almost entirely provided by Christian
missions, but any attempt to extend education to whole populations and establish
teacher training and widespread technical training was beyond the missions’
scope; only government possessed the necessary resources. While many
missionaries resisted this simple truth and attempted to forestall any government
move into ‘their’ domain, during the debates between various colonial
governments and mission education bodies in the 1930s and 1940s Burton
consistently welcomed greater government investment and interest. In a
developed statement of his view of government’s proper role in indigenous
development in the Pacific, Burton wrote:
There is a shallow view, sometimes encouraged even by missionaries,
that governments are always wrong … The truth is that, by and large,
the administrative heads have been men of ability and of probity, and
under them are many exceedingly well-trained and devoted officers …
though they do not take the ‘spiritual’ view, and often are frankly
223
Ideas and Actions of J.W. Burton
utilitarian and realistic in their attitude, they usually have well-founded
reasons for their activities, and their policy is a well-considered one.36
In Burton’s view Christians had a right and duty to be involved in secular
politics—and one of their main roles was to remind and if necessary pressure
governments to take their responsibilities towards the weaker, particularly in
colonial situations, seriously. In an era when the relationship between religion
and politics is again under debate, Burton’s views on the matter hold a new
relevance.
John Burton saw the main themes of his own life as ‘Christian missions and
the welfare of native races’.37 In spite of warnings about the dangers of taking
a subject’s judgement about what was important about a life at face value, I see
little purpose in attempting to move beyond Burton’s own judgement.
Considering his reticence about family and personal matters, but also the nature
of his public life, there seems little alternative to an intellectual biography. There
are clearly elements of this life which a critical biographer would examine further,
such as the evolutionism of his early years and the way it melded into a
paternalism he never quite shook off. There are some major issues that need
further discussion: a careful examination of his relationship with the Methodist
missions in Northern Australia, his professional relationships with a number of
public figures in the missions and in Australian public life with whom he had
major disagreements. If I write Burton’s biography, and it’s a big ‘if’, it would
be a study in the relationship between faith and action, religion and
politics—which is I think the way he would have wanted it.
ENDNOTES
1 K.L. Gillion, Fiji’s Indian Migrants: a history to the end of indenture in 1920 (Melbourne 1962); Brij V.
Lal, Broken Waves: a history of the Fiji Islands in the twentieth century (Honolulu 1992); Andrew Thornley,
‘The Methodist Mission and Fiji’s Indians: 1879-1920’, New Zealand Journal of History, 8:2 (1974); John
Garrett, To Live among the Stars: Christian origins in Oceania (Geneva/Suva 1982).
2 Missionary Review, November 1903, 6.
3 Missionary Review, August 1907, 3.
4 John W. Burton, Our Indian Work in Fiji (Suva 1909), 15-16. Many passages from the 1909 pamphlet
are reprinted in almost identical form in John W. Burton, The Fiji of Today (London 1910), and the text
of the pamphlet is reprinted in Brij V. Lal (ed.), Crossing the Kali Pani: a documentary history of Indian
indenture in Fiji (Canberra/Suva 1998), 121-140.
5 Small to Wheen, 12 May 1909, Methodist Overseas Mission archive (hereafter MOM, MMSA), box
106, Mitchell Library, Sydney. I thank the Uniting Church of Australia for permission to access and
cite this material.
6 Missionary Review, January 1909, 14; October 1909, 7.
7 Gillion, Fiji’s Indian Migrants, 167
8 Small to Colonial Secretary, 13 August 1911, MOM 108, MMSA.
9 Small to Danks, 28 August 1912, reporting Burton’s response to Government criticism, MOM 107.
10 Missionary Review, September 1916, 10; also quoted in Gillion, Fiji’s Indian Migrants, 178.
11 Charles Freer Andrews and William Winstanley Pearson, Report on Indentured Labour in Fiji: an
independent enquiry (Calcutta 1916), 45.
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Telling Pacific Lives
12 Brij V. Lal and Yogendra Yadav, ‘Hinduism under indenture: Totaram Sanadhya’s account of Fiji’,
Journal of Pacific History, 30: 1 (1995), 111. Totaram wrote that he planned to translate The Fiji of Today
into Hindi (Totaram Sanadhya, My Twenty-one Years in Fiji Islands, trans. and ed. Jonathan Durham
Kelly and Uttra Kumair Singh (Suva 1991), 78). As far as I know he did not do so.
13 Andrew Thornley, The Inheritance of Hope: John Hunt, apostle of Fiji (Suva 2000); Andrew Thornley,
A Shaking of the Land: William Cross and the origins of Christianity (Na Yavalati Ni Vanua: Ko Wiliame
Korosi kei na i tekitekikivu ni Lotu Vakarisito e Viti) (Suva 2005).
14 John W. Burton, ‘The Weaver’s Shuttle: memories and reflections of an octogenarian’ (n.d.) 69.
15 Burton, ‘Weaver’s Shuttle’, 56.
16 Missionary Review, August 1904, 5.
17 John W. Burton, Our Task in Papua (London 1926), 78.
18 A typescript of this memoir is lodged in the Mitchell Library, Sydney (MLMss 2899)—separately
from the mission archive.
19 Burton, ‘Weaver’s Shuttle’, 3.
20 Robert Green, My Story: a record of the life and work of Robert H. Green (Melbourne 1978), 39, 108.
21 Burton, ‘Weaver’s Shuttle’, 2.
22 John W. Burton, Modern Missions in the South Pacific (London 1949), 12.
23 John W. Burton, Laymen’s Missionary Lecture: some modern problems of the missionary enterprise
(Melbourne 1917), 11. Burton begins by citing a popular hymn by Frederick Edgar Faber (1862).
24 John W. Burton, Why I Believe in Christ (Sydney 1932), 23.
25 Burton, Our Indian Work, 23-4.
26 This is in reference to the Jewish leader who came to talk with Jesus at night (John 3: 1-9).
27 Missionary Review, September 1914, 10.
28 Missionary Review, October 1915, 12. Other articles on Tagore appeared in August and September
1915.
29 Thornley, ‘The Methodist Mission and Fiji’s Indians: 1879-1920’.
30 Andrew Thornley, ‘“Heretics” and “Papists”: Wesleyan- Roman Catholic rivalry in Fiji, 1844-1903’,
Journal of Religious History, 10 (1979).
31 Burton, ‘Weaver’s Shuttle’, 31-33, 90.
32 William Slade to A.J. Small, 25-9-1909, MMSA F/3/(e), Fiji National Archives, Suva. Slade had a
history of objecting to all things Indian.
33 Broadcast address on radio 2BL, 24 October 1943, reprinted in Missionary Review, November 1943,
1-3.
34 John W. Burton, The Australian Mandate in Relation to Our Duty to Native Races (Melbourne 1921),
3.
35 Missionary Review , November 1943, 2.
36 John W. Burton, The Atlantic Charter and the Pacific Races (Sydney n.d.).
37 Burton, ‘Weaver’s Shuttle’, 2.
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Ideas and Actions of J.W. Burton
Chapter 17
E.W.P. Chinnery: A Self-Made
Anthropologist
Geoffrey Gray
In South Seas in Transition, the Australian anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner
commented that a majority of ‘Australians between the wars might have denied,
in all innocence, even with a certain indignation, that the Commonwealth was
a “Colonial Power” at all’.1 This is, with few exceptions, all too true today, and
is mirrored in the lack of scholarly investigation of the interwar period.2 A good
deal that is available focuses on Papua, which Australia administered for over
70 years, rather than New Guinea, a League of Nations mandate.3 This paucity
is to some degree due to the loss of government records. The files of the
Australian administered League of Nations Mandate Territory of New Guinea
were depleted first by the 1937 volcanic eruption in Rabaul and again as a result
of the outbreak of war in February 1942. The National Archives of Australia
explains: ‘in early 1942 the Japanese invasion led to the destruction of large
quantities of records … Of the surviving eight series of records, six relate to
mining in the district of Morobe; none cover the general administration of the
Territory’.4 The situation regarding the records for Papua is much better and
we have, for instance, several superb histories, particularly Francis West’s on
J.H.P. Murray, and J.D. Legge’s on Australian colonial policy. There is also some
interest in the Papuan government anthropologist Francis Edgar Williams.5
Consequently, to develop an understanding and an appreciation of the
interwar period in New Guinea, historians are largely dependent upon the private
papers of colonial officials. For example, E.W.P. Chinnery’s papers in the National
Library of Australia are an exceptionally rich source for the workings of a colonial
official in New Guinea (including Papua and the Northern Territory of Australia).
His personal records are supplemented by the various government records held
in Canberra and Melbourne, particularly the Central Office of the Department
of Home and Territories, and the Territories Branch of the Prime Minister’s
Department, as well the holdings of the National Library, which has a varied
collection of papers of colonial officers, especially field officials.
Chinnery’s career presents an opportunity to investigate Australia’s colonial
involvement in all its territories, as well Australia’s regional and international
relations in regard to its colonial obligations and aspirations. His
227
appointments—Government Anthropologist, Director of District Services in
New Guinea, Commonwealth Advisor on Native Affairs and director of the
Northern Territory Department of Native Affairs as well as his earlier service in
Papua—make him one of the few colonial officials to work in the three main
Australian administered territories of Papua, New Guinea and the Northern
Territory.
Ernest William Pearson Chinnery (1887-1972), born in Waterloo, a Victorian
country town, joined the Papuan service in 1909, rising to Acting Resident
Magistrate, before leaving for England in 1917 to join the Australian Flying
Corps as a navigator. After he was demobilised, he completed a diploma in
anthropology at Cambridge under A.C. Haddon and W.H.R. Rivers. He returned
to Papua, as the supervisor of Native labour for New Guinea Copper Mines
(November 1920), and, in 1924, was appointed Government Anthropologist in
New Guinea, and Director of District Services in 1932, retaining his position as
Government Anthropologist. He was made Commonwealth Advisor for Native
Affairs and, in April 1939, Director of the Native Affairs Branch in the Northern
Territory administration. After Chinnery’s resignation at the end of 1946, the
Commonwealth continued to use his experience and knowledge in matters as
diverse as the South Pacific Commission and the United Nations, sought his
advice on the Papua New Guinea Act of 1949 and the future of the Australian
School of Pacific Administration. (Chinnery had in the early 1930s represented
Australia at the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations). In
1951, John Gunther, Director of Public Health in Papua New Guinea, invited
Chinnery to complete a longitudinal study of depopulation in New Ireland, a
project started under the German administration in 1911. Chinnery retired in
1952.
This chapter concentrates on Chinnery’s work in Papua and his subsequent
attendance at Cambridge in 1919, as it was in the years 1910 to 1920, I contend,
that he formulated ideas about the usefulness of anthropology in the management,
control and advancement of colonised peoples. In this chapter I set out what
brought Chinnery to Papua, his move from a clerk to a field officer, examples
of the work he undertook and the various influences on Chinnery as he developed
an interest in anthropology and it uses for the governance of colonised peoples.
A Biography of Chinnery
I have been working on Chinnery since the early 1990s. Chinnery’s papers were
stored in the house of his eldest daughter, Sheila, and the researcher had to
travel to Black Rock, a bayside suburb of Melbourne, to see them. Sheila and
her late husband Larry looked after researchers well, and the atmosphere was
most congenial and enjoyable. Sheila and her sisters, ever helpful to answer
questions, nonetheless exercised a watchful eye over their father’s legacy and
encouraged researchers to concentrate on his life as a government official. As
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part of a larger work on Australian anthropology I wrote several articles on
Chinnery and aspects of his official work.6 After reading two of my papers on
their father I was contacted and asked if I would write his biography. I discussed
the proposition with various colleagues, especially Hank Nelson, and decided
to start, but could give the family little by way of a completion date. I have other
projects, and all research takes longer than anticipated!
My interest in Chinnery arose from my interest in the intersection between
anthropology and colonial governance. In the first decades of the 20th
century,
anthropology was making a claim for its special relevance to the governance of
colonised peoples. By the mid-1920s there was a chair of anthropology at the
University of Sydney premised on the need to train colonial officials in
anthropology, in order to better understand indigenous peoples and assist in
their transition to modernity.
Chinnery, a colonial official trained in anthropology, had the opportunity to
investigate the relationship between anthropology and colonial governance in
a context wider than simply Australian colonial rule in its external territories.
Such investigations also underline the international aspect of Australian
colonialism. This is most explicit in regard to the administration of New Guinea,
and the obligation to report to the Permanent Mandates Commission (PMC) in
Geneva which put Australian rule under scrutiny. In fact when the University
of Sydney’s Chair of Anthropology was threatened with closure, Radcliffe-Brown
turned to Lord Lugard, chair of the PMC, for support.7
When Chinnery joined the Papuan service, anthropology was dominated by
ideas of evolution and diffusion, and ethnographers, often initially trained in
biology or zoology, were interested in the origins and spread of people and
culture. There was however a nascent anthropological practice developing in
Britain which found expression in long-term expeditions to far-away places,
such as the Torres Strait Islands and Central Australia. In some instances
individuals, such as the Melbourne University biologist Baldwin Spencer,
undertook what might now be considered long-term field work in Central
Australia.8 These expeditions were scientific in character and a move away from
traveller tropes and mission stories of savagery, salvation and conversion. Largely
as a result of colonial rule in Africa and the Pacific, a belief was developing that
colonial governance could best be effected by some sort of specialised training
for field officials. This was reflected in resolutions at meetings of professional
associations and papers published in journals such as Man, the journal of the
Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. For example: In
1894 the Cambridge zoologist Alfred Cort Haddon considered it was of ‘urgent
national importance’ that colonial personnel possess some anthropological
knowledge, and he approached the Royal College of Science in London ‘urging
that a course in General Anthropology with practical work should be provided
229
E.W.P. Chinnery
there to meet this need, and outlining a comprehensive syllabus’.9 Nearly 10
years later he noted that ‘it can hardly be questioned that a missionary would
have a better chance of success if he understood something of the aboriginal
ideas which he proposes to modify or supplant’.10 What was needed was an
acceptance by universities of anthropology so that teaching could begin. In 1900
Haddon was appointed lecturer in ethnology and instituted a course of lectures
in ethnology for missionaries and explorers. He was appointed Reader in
Anthropology at Cambridge in 1909, a position he held until his retirement. The
tripos degree in Archaeology and Anthropology was established in 1919. I
mention Haddon because he trained Chinnery but there were other appointments,
around the same time, such as R.R. Marett at Oxford and C.G. Seligman at the
London School of Economics.
Colonial Government
Australia had some measure of responsibility for the administration of southeastern
New Guinea since British annexation in 1888. From 1888 to 1902
Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria shared responsibility with Britain;
from 1902 to 1905 the newly formed Federal Government of Australia replaced
the three States. In 1906 Australia took full control of the territory from Britain,
changed its name to Papua (it had been British New Guinea) and ruled it as a
separate dependency of the Commonwealth. The foundations of policy had been
laid by the British, especially Sir William MacGregor, who advocated a policy
designed to protect the indigenous population in its relations with Europeans.
This was a touchstone of Australian policy. J.D. Legge argues that one of the
permanent themes of Australian administration of Papua was ‘the benevolence
of the Administration … expressed … in the measures designed to take control
[of] the contact made … between European and the native. More positive
expressions of benevolence in the form of health services, education services,
or adequate schemes for expanding native production within the framework of
the village, were prohibitively expensive’.11
As a result, after pacification (as it was called then), much of the interaction
between the administration and indigenous people was focussed on control and
management, with advancement of the indigenous peoples framed within the
parameters of benevolent government and near penury. Once an area was
pacified, the government could concentrate on the ‘civilising’ and ‘modernising’
of the indigenous population—a government anthropologist would be able to
‘help in reconciling an intelligent though very backward race to the inevitable
march of civilization’.12 J.H.P. Murray, Lt-Governor of Papua, maintained that
the government had to govern and this ‘automatically entailed the suppression
of repugnant customs and the enforcement of certain standards of behaviour,
hygiene and industry. It was irrelevant that these standards cut across traditional
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bases of leadership and influence, for the government had no choice but to
suppress certain customary actions in the process of pacification’.13
A young E.W.P. Chinnery applied for a clerical position in the Papuan service.
His motives are unclear but, according to his daughters, adventure was certainly
one. He was attached to the Government Secretary’s office in Port Moresby but
it is unclear how he perceived a career in the Papuan service and whether
remaining a clerk would have satisfied his yearning for adventure.14 Francis
West, in his Australian Dictionary of Biography entry, states that Chinnery
‘seeking the prestige of field service’,15 won an appointment as a relieving patrol
officer in July 1910 to Ioma in the Mambare division. The following year he
took up a position of Assistant Resident Magistrate in the Kumusi division; for
the next three years his work on routine patrols was said to have:
gained the respect and the confidence of the local tribes. He was,
however, not on good terms either with local Europeans or with Hubert
Murray. In November 1913 Chinnery was charged with infringing the
field-staff regulations and was reduced in rank. In the Rigo district in
1914, a patrol led by him clashed with tribesmen and shot seven; Murray
saw the incident as probably unavoidable. By 1917 Chinnery was
patrolling into new country in the central division behind Kairuku and
into the Kunimaipa valley. There he discovered the source of the Waria
River.16
Helping and Understanding
Undoubtedly Chinnery was introduced to what might be seen as a nascent
anthropological method of colonial governance by Hubert Murray; in the hands
of Murray it was a way of gaining a cultural and social understanding of
indigenous peoples and thus enabling not only peaceful occupation of new
territory but also the ‘uplift’ of Papuan people. Murray argued in 1912 that
when certain customs are forbidden, a substitute ritual is needed to ‘fill the
void’: when, for example, a ‘native who learns for the first time’ that he cannot
engage in head-hunting, never collect any more heads and never fight again, he
is ‘likely to feel a void in his existence, for his chief occupations will be gone,
and unless something is given to him which will fill the void he and his
descendants will suffer’.17 It is only later, in 1916, when Murray was negotiating
for the appointment of a government anthropologist that we gain a sense of the
importance of anthropology to Murray in the governance of indigenous peoples.18
Chinnery was convinced that anthropology was central to good governance
in the colonies. He commented to the ANZAAS conference in 1955 that during
his
service as a native administration official in Papua and New Guinea
between 1909 and 1938, I found it easier, after training in anthropology
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E.W.P. Chinnery
and scientific methods of enquiry, to study the beliefs and practices of
the people, to win and retain their confidence, and to help them through
their problems, and changes due to Government, Mission and Industrial
influences … It should not be forgotten that hasty ill-advised European
pressures disrupting land ownership and usages, and forcing changes
in marriage systems, religious beliefs and practices, social and other
observances, before people were ready to absorb them, together with
irritating racial discrimination, especially in employment, have
contributed largely to nativistic outbreaks damaging European and
Natives alike, and holding up progress in other non-self governing
Territories.19
The primary influence on Chinnery’s anthropology and its method was Alfred
Cort Haddon and W.H.R. Rivers. There is little doubt, however, that his
enthusiasm for what might be now termed applied anthropology was supported
by Haddon, after Rivers’ death in 1922. Chinnery acknowledged the importance
of Rivers for his thinking and development as anthropologist, first in his 1919
paper, ‘The Application of Anthropological Methods to Tribal Development in
New Guinea’, and again in his 1932 ANZAAS presentation, ‘Applied
Anthropology in New Guinea’. But Haddon and Rivers were not the only
influence on Chinnery. It was through Wilfred Beaver, a field officer at Mambare,
that Chinnery became acquainted with Haddon; Beaver also encouraged Chinnery
to develop his ethnography.20 (Beaver was described as a ‘man of patience and
sympathy [dealing] with … the obtuseness of Papuans’.)21 Haddon, probably
the most influential anthropologist of the time, engaged in correspondence with
a number of colonial field officers and missionaries, including Beaver. This
correspondence ranged over many matters but was mainly Haddon seeking
specific information about customs of indigenous people. He had for example
an intense interest in the prow designs of canoes.22
Murray developed his ideas about anthropology from discussions with
anthropologists such as Seligmann and Haddon in the early years of his
administration, yet he made little effort to have his officers trained in
anthropology, preferring to choose field officers on the basis of character. When
he did appoint a trained anthropologist to the position of assistant government
anthropologist it was not his intention that the incumbent train field officers in
anthropology. Chinnery, in contrast, once he was appointed Government
Anthropologist in New Guinea, was eager to gain the support of the
Administrator in training field officers. Chinnery supported the establishment
of a chair of anthropology at the University of Sydney, as did Haddon, and
planned to send field officers to undertake the course proposed by
Radcliffe-Brown.23 So did Murray, at least for a while, although he was
ambivalent about the value of such a course.24
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A Resident Magistrate was expected to undertake patrols, carry out
exploration work, establish and maintain good relations with the indigenous
people, and oversee modifications to their way of life and their interaction with
representatives of civilisation—missionaries, traders, gold miners, and
government officials. The government set about to change household and village
hygiene and health, remove those customs offensive to Australian sensibilities,
and introduce the rule of law.25 Chinnery explained to the ANZAAS conference
held in August 1932 that the field official
[f]ound himself called upon to build houses, roads and bridges; to treat
tropical diseases, to control epidemics, and attempt surgical relief; to
make and record geographical discoveries, to pacify and control savage
tribes of cannibals and head-hunters; to arrest, try and incarcerate law
breakers; to perform routine departmental duties.26
In 1915, the year he and Wilf Beaver published a paper on the initiation
ceremonies of Hunjara, the people of the Yodda Valley at the head of the Kumusi
River, Chinnery was slowly grasping the nature of anthropology. As a result of
this paper, a story circulated that Chinnery had been initiated. Chinnery had
observed parts of the initiation ceremonies, as it was stated that ‘Mr Chinnery
had seen the proceedings and was to a certain degree initiated himself into the
Hunjara’.27 His formal introduction to recording aspects of indigenous life
occurred in 1911, when his superior officer, Resident Magistrate Oelrichs, advised
him to record ‘any curiosities, any peculiarities about a person or a whole tribe’.
The usefulness of drawings to record information about their way of life was
stressed. This was the extent of any training he was to receive in the field. Beaver
therefore was critical in Chinnery’s development as an observer of native customs.
Beaver had formed a relationship with Haddon some years earlier and in 1920
a book on Beaver’s ethnography—that is, his experiences as government field
officer—was published.28
Chinnery’s early reports were used in the report of the Resident Magistrate.29
In later years, Chinnery’s reports were included under his own name. He
collaborated with Beaver in compiling several vocabularies,30 and it was accepted
at the time that genealogical information could be adduced through such
collections.31 During his time in Papua Chinnery produced over 20 ethnographic
and geographic publications, some appearing in British journals.32
We can infer that Chinnery’s method of recording data followed Beaver’s
and Haddon’s advice. His association with them helped him to acquire a structure
in which to present his ethnographic data. In his initial correspondence with
Chinnery, Haddon advised him to read Notes and Queries, especially the 1912
edition which stressed the importance of using, where possible, ‘native
terminology’ when asking question in the field as this minimised
misunderstanding between informants and investigator. The value of information
233
E.W.P. Chinnery
freely provided was also stressed, as this was less likely to be contrived than
information actively sought after. 33
Chinnery at Cambridge
In the year he left Papua to join the Australian Flying Corp in England, Chinnery
published with Haddon a paper on ‘religious cults’.34 He had shown himself to
be capable of writing ethnographic reports and articles; when he was demobilised
in 1919 he enrolled at Cambridge ‘to undertake two years academic study in
anthropology under the tutelage of A.C. Haddon and W.H.R. Rivers’.35 Haddon
had requested the Australian government assist Chinnery: he informed them
that Chinnery wanted to further his theoretical and general knowledge and in
particular to study the distribution and migration of cultures of Oceania.36 His
request was granted.
Critical to understanding Chinnery’s enthusiastic embrace of applied
anthropology is Rivers’ argument as laid out in his paper on ‘The government
of subject peoples’.37 This was published in a volume, edited by A.C. Seward,
whose purpose was ‘to demonstrate the fallacy of [the] distinction that technical
education stands for efficiency and prosperity, but pure science is regarded as
something apart—a purely academic subject’.38 Hoping that ‘our rulers will
recognise the value of those sciences which will make our possessions more
healthy and more productive’, Rivers set out to show how ‘anthropology can
point the way to the better Government’ of peoples ruled by Britain.39 There
were according to Rivers three possible lines of action when one people ‘assumes
the management of another’: destruction, preservation or compromise. Whatever
the degree of interference, ‘knowledge of the culture to be modified is absolutely
necessary if changes are to be made without serious injury to the moral and
material welfare of the people’.40
Of the several tasks of the anthropologist, Rivers considered that only the
collection, description and classification of the ethnographic facts had any
practical value.41 Against the stereotype of anthropologist as head-measurer
and museum collector, he saw a movement away ‘from physical and material
towards the psychological and social aspects of the life of Mankind. [The
anthropologist’s] chief interest today is in just those regions of human activity
with which the art of government is daily and intimately concerned’.42 The
gap between rulers’ and subjects’ knowledge of each other did not, according
to Rivers, promote good government, nor did it ‘foster a healthy sentiment of
respect towards rulers’.43 One misunderstood feature of ‘lowly cultures’ Rivers
saw as ‘the close dependence of one department of social life upon another
[which] is so great that interference with any department has consequences more
immediate and far reaching than in the more developed and specialized varieties
of culture’.44
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Rivers recommended that colonial governments should either employ
anthropologists or sponsor research, as well as require anthropological training
of their recruits.45 Such training, however, should be concerned, not with facts,
but with ‘the principles which underlie the vast variety of social institutions
and belief of mankind’. Nor should training be in the hands of former
administrators, for this would be ‘especially futile’, leading only to the
perpetuation of false knowledge. Finally, Rivers attempted to counter two
objections: that anthropological training would lead to ‘weakness and indecision
on the executive side’ and that time was too short. The first he saw answered
by a separation of policy-makers from executives, with the latter simply feeding
facts to the former; the second in that facts were collected in the normal course
of administration. In short, Rivers looked to the formulation of ‘policies which
will reconcile the general needs of the Empire with a due regard for the moral
and material welfare of the peoples to whom the Empire has so great a
responsibility’.46 This was a call which Chinnery certainly heeded once he
returned to Papua in 1921. But Rivers’ continued influence over Chinnery is
harder to determine, not least because of his death in 1922; it was with Haddon
that Chinnery maintained a correspondence until Haddon’s death in 1940.
While in England Chinnery lectured to audiences of government, academic
and amateur associations on colonial rule and the life and work of a colonial field
officer in Papua (better known as British New Guinea). 47 It was clear that
Chinnery had been cogitating on the value of anthropology as a civilising method.
He gave two addresses which reflect this, the first to the Royal Geographic
Society, and the other to the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI).
To the Royal Geographic Society, Chinnery was reported as describing a clash
with tribesmen in the Rigo district in 1914. The influence of Murray is apparent:
[A] village was raided and some of its inhabitants were murdered by a
hitherto unknown tribe. [Chinnery] was despatched to explore the district
and capture the people responsible for the raid. He found them among
the headstreams of a river draining the principal southerly spur of Mount
O’Bree, one of the peaks of the central chain over 10,000 ft in height,
situated to the east of Port Moresby. The valleys of these streams were
inhabited by fierce peoples who had never before seen a white man or
a Government party. Their villages were built on the summits or
pinnacles of razor-backed ridges, generally over 4000 ft above sea level,
and protected by one or two lines of stockades. The approach of Mr
Chinnery’s was detected at almost every case from look-out houses or
platforms built on tops from within the villages. When the natives learned
the purpose of his mission two or three hundred of them attacked three
of the police and Mr Chinnery with spears and large stones and in the
fighting which ensued six of the ringleaders of the massacre which had
235
E.W.P. Chinnery
given rise to the expedition were shot. The remainder fled, but afterwards
accepted Mr Chinnery’s offer of friendship on condition that he went
into the next valley and pacified the people there, in order that
inter-tribal warfare might cease. This he did under native guidance, and
achieved his objective without further fighting. As a proof of their
appreciation of Government intervention a good many of the natives
accompanied him to the Government Station and for the first time in the
history of their tribe saw the sea. Subsequently when his successor visited
the district he found the native peaceful and contented under the new
conditions.48
His address to the RAI laid out how greater efficiency could be achieved by
colonial administrations when dealing with their ‘responsibility to civilize’
backward peoples, which resonated with the idea of a ‘trusteeship’, a sort of
partnership between the colonised and the coloniser to uplift and advance the
colonised on the ladder of civilisation, which was being discussed in such
circles.49 He pointed out that he had learnt to apply himself to the needs of
primitive cultures through his work as an Assistant Resident Magistrate. His
experience had given him ‘a knowledge of the psychology of numerous tribes,
and the application of such knowledge to general methods of administration
enabled me to assist my [sic] people through their many stages of transition’. He
considered the key to good government in the colonies was knowing how the
minds of indigenous people work (this resonates with Murray’s notion of
encouraging his officers to ‘think black’).50 He discussed how modifications
were being made to various unacceptable elements of Papuan societies, and
concluded by making the following recommendations: first, that ‘general training
in anthropological subjects be [given to all] District Officers and other persons
holding positions of responsibility over natives’; and second, that ‘publication
and circulation of all existing and subsequent records of New Guinea
ethnography [be provided to District Officers] for their guidance’.51
This progressive view of anthropology was in direct contrast to the
course-work and instruction he undertook while at Cambridge. His thesis, as
part of the requirement for the diploma in anthropology, was on stonework and
gold mining in New Guinea.52 In keeping with the diffusionist thrust of
anthropology taught at the time, it contained many speculations and inaccuracies
and shows the influence of the heliocentric school of ethnology of W.J. Perry
and Grafton Elliot Smith at University College, London.53 In fact, Perry used
Chinnery’s Papuan map in his Children of the Sun (1923).54 Chinnery never lost
his interest in such speculative ideas, and in 1956 and 1957 made a series of
broadcasts on the ABC, in which he returned to the topics of stonework and
gold mining.55 Chinnery had opined in 1920 that ‘the New Guinea objects
(mortars, pestles, stone clubs, stone circles and incised stone work) appear to be
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similar in many aspects to objects associated with megalithic cultures in other
parts of the world’.56 These musings about origins and diffusion were elided
in the practical application of anthropological knowledge to the problems of
colonial government. In his work as an anthropologist we find little or no mention
of these matters, nor do such theoretical interests appear to create a tension in
his practical work. Certainly, he held a view that New Guineans were backward,
and most likely unable to achieve their colonisers’ level of civilisation. Yet, as
alluded to earlier, Chinnery argued that they should be assisted to advance, and
treated fairly and with due process.
Return to Papua
When Chinnery was patrolling in various parts of Papua, especially his early
appointment to the Kumusi Division, one task was to arrest labourers who had
deserted from rubber plantations. Native constables assisted the field officers
in their policing work, while indigenous men were employed on these patrols
as carriers, cooks and interpreters.57 It was during this time that Chinnery
developed an interest in labour problems, which were at the heart of the
industrial project of colonial rule. Indigenous people were not skilled in working
on plantations, assisting gold miners and such like. They were agricultural
workers used to different rhythms and division of labour.
On his return to Papua in 1920, he was no longer an officer in the Papuan
service, but was engaged as a supervisor of labour for New Guinea Copper Mines
Ltd at Bootless Bay. This was not what he had anticipated when he wrote from
London seeking an anthropological appointment in Murray’s Papuan
Administration. Murray was seeking a government anthropologist and Haddon
had supported Chinnery,58 but Murray did not want Chinnery. He wrote to
his brother, Gilbert, that
We have a man called [Chinnery] who is in England now—Haddon has
a great opinion of him and wants him appointed. But he would not do
at all—he is quite unreliable as to observation, collection of evidence
etc—he will say any mortal thing in order to excite interest and attract
attention. Not that he is a liar—but he must attract notice.59
It is unclear why Murray took such an attitude. To avoid any undue pressure
from the Minister, Murray quickly appointed his Chief Medical Officer, Walter
Mersh Strong, as government anthropologist. It has been suggested that part of
Murray’s dissatisfaction was with Chinnery’s pursuit of heliocentric ethnology:
‘attempts to link Papuan people to any romantic notions of ancient “civilizations”
would have been anathema to the colonial regime’.60 Personally, I think this is
a fanciful explanation, although some years later there was an exchange between
Murray and Chinnery of some of the ideas about Papua found in Perry’s Children
of the Sun.61 Ideas such as those of Elliot Smith and Perry were academic
237
E.W.P. Chinnery
orthodoxy at the time; rather it was functionalist theory, as promoted by
anthropologists such as Malinowski, that created problems for administrators
like Murray, who believed that it was a theory which supported the retention
of customs despite their offensiveness, thereby keeping people in some form of
cultural servitude.62 I suspect that Chinnery’s anthropology, as he had expressed
in his London lectures, had the potential to question the manner in which Murray
administered the colony.
While Chinnery waited for an opening in the League of Nations Mandate of
New Guinea, he further enunciated the principles of an anthropologically
informed administration at the Pan Pacific Science Congress of 1923. He presented
a paper on native labour in which he discussed his work at the mine. He
explained that an adequate supply of native labour is essential and ‘as numbers
in excess of those now employed may be needed ultimately, considerable thought
has been given by the Company’s officials as to the best means to adopt for
insuring the numbers of recruits needed from time to time for any expansion of
the Company’s business’. He noted that ‘strict observance of the provisions of
the “Native Labour Ordinance”, maintenance for the natives of the pre-war
purchasing power of money, provision of suitable variety of foods, and the
creation of conditions for insuring health and contentment of the natives, will
combine to attract to our Company many boys who have refrained hitherto from
entering into a contract of service, and an increased number of boys who have
already worked a term with the Company’. In this connection New Guinea
Copper had ‘retained the services of two highly competent recruiters’, and
commissioned a former government official, ‘long in the service of the Papuan
government to make the necessary investigations and report on the future
possibilities of recruiting preparatory to assuming the position of supervisor of
native labour department’.63
Chinnery drafted the annual report on labour for New Guinea Copper, in
which he stated that ‘today there may be seen [Papuans] peacefully wielding
the tools of industry … who but yesterday cut off their neighbour’s heads, and
ate their bodies with equanimity’. He went on to explain that the company’s
labour policy was consistent with policies advocated by Murray who had stated
that the ‘preservation of native races depends on whether the energy formerly
devoted to cannibalism and head hunting can be diverted into the relatively
gentle activities of industrial development’. New Guinea Copper was ‘actively
connected with the cultural development of its savage employees, and becomes,
as well as their employer, their guide and teacher through the intricate byeways
[sic] leading from primitive life to the complex state know as civilization’. Once
the indenture was complete, care was taken to ensure that the employee was
paid off in Port Moresby ‘and protected and maintained by our agents until a
boat is available to take them to their homes where they are landed with their
trade goods, the fruits of their labour, well content with the results of their
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service and the envy of their fellow villagers, who, stimulated by the example
and treatment of the time expired boys will, it is hoped engage in their return’.64
Government Anthropologist
Chinnery saw the position as labour supervisor as a holding one. In May 1921,
soon after Australian civil administration had begun in the League of Nations
Mandated Territory of New Guinea,65 Chinnery applied to the Australian
government for an anthropological appointment in the territory. He informed
the commonwealth government secretary that he had discussed the question of
anthropology in connection with the administration of colonies with Prime
Minister Billy Hughes who said he would advise Chinnery as soon as there was
a suitable opening.
In his application to the Official Secretary of the Commonwealth of Australia,
he described himself as a ‘student [who] specialized on the ethnology of Oceania’
and had ‘spent three months on research in parts of the mandated territory’.
Since November 1920 he had been ‘studying problems of native labor [sic] for
the New Guinea Copper Mines and applying the results to their organization’.
To demonstrate his enthusiasm and commitment to anthropology he informed
the commonwealth officer that he planned to spend ‘a short time in the mountains
to investigate the social organisation of one of the negrito tribes’ of Papua.66
He was eager to present himself as both the practical man and most importantly
as an anthropologist, a scientist who could oversee the dramatic changes which
were impacting on the indigenous population and offset the undesirable effects.
His time outside the structure of government service enabled him to put into
practice some of the ideas he developed while in England. Rivers played an
important role in this, as it is apparent Chinnery took two strictures from him
into his supervising of indigenous labour: first, to ‘uphold the indigenous culture
of the subject race’; and second, ‘whatever the degree of interference with
indigenous customs … knowledge of the culture to be modified is absolutely
necessary if changes are to be made without serious injury to the moral and
material culture of the people’.67
He no longer saw himself as merely a resident magistrate or patrol officer: he
wanted to put into effect his anthropological training, which he thought could
be realised by an appointment as a government anthropologist, either in Papua
or the newly acquired mandated territory of New Guinea. Chinnery was both a
product of colonialism and a critic of colonialism, while sensitive to the more
humane ideals of the colonial enterprise. He was deeply influenced by the
idealism of J.H.P. Murray’s colonial philosophy which permeated his thinking
and practice, as well as Haddon who served as his mentor and advisor.
Chinnery had to wait until April 1924 before he was appointed Government
Anthropologist. By then he was well versed in all matters to do with an
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E.W.P. Chinnery
anthropology premised on assisting colonial administrations to help advance
and uplift indigenous populations.
ENDNOTES
1 W.E.H. Stanner, The South Seas in Transition: a study of post-war rehabilitation and reconstruction in
three British Pacific dependencies (Sydney 1953), 1.
2 See, e.g., G.W.L. Townsend, District Officer: from untamed New Guinea to Lake Success, 1921-1946
(Sydney 1968); J.K. McCarthy, Patrol Into Yesterday (Sydney 1964); Ian Downs, The Last Mountain: a
life in Papua New Guinea (St Lucia, QLD 1986); George Stocking, ‘Gatekeeper to the field: E.W.P.
Chinnery and ethnography of the New Guinea Mandate’, History of Anthropology Newsletter, 9:2 (1982),
3-12; Robin Radford, Highlanders and Foreigners in the Upper Ramu: the Kainantu area, 1919-1942
(Melbourne 1987); Deidre J.F. Griffiths, ‘The career of F.E. Williams, government anthropologist of
Papua, 1922-1943’, MA thesis, Australian National University (Canberra 1977); Sarah Chinnery, Malaguna
Road: the Papua and New Guinea diaries of Sarah Chinnery, ed. and introd. Kate Fortune (Canberra 1998);
Naomi McPherson, ‘Wanted: young man, must like adventure. Ian McCallum Mack, Patrol Officer’, in
Naomi M. McPherson (ed.), In Colonial New Guinea: anthropological perspectives (Pittsburgh 2001),
82-110; George Westermark, ‘Anthropology and administration: colonial ethnography in the Papua
New Guinea Eastern Highlands’, in ibid., 45-63; cf. Maria Lepowsky, ‘The Queen of Sudest: white
women and colonial cultures in British New Guinea and Papua’, in ibid., 125-150; Francis West, ‘An
Australian moving frontier’, in Niel Gunson (ed.), The Changing Pacific (Melbourne 1978), 214-227; Bill
Gammage, The Sky Travellers: journeys in New Guinea 1938-1939 (Melbourne 1998); Francis West, ‘E.W.P.
Chinnery’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 7 (Melbourne 1979) 639-640; I.C. Campbell,
‘Anthropology and the professionalisation of colonial administration in Papua and New Guinea’, The
Journal of Pacific History, 33:1 (1998), 69-90; Geoffrey Gray, ‘Being honest to my science: Reo Fortune
and J.H.P. Murray, 1927-1930’, The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 10: 1 (1999), 56-76. This list is
by no means exhaustive.
3 See http://www.naa.gov.au/fSheets/FS148.html
4 Francis West, Hubert Murray: the Australian Pro-Consul (Melbourne 1968); J.D. Legge, Australian
Colonial Policy (Sydney 1956).
5 See http://www.naa.gov.au/Publications/fact_sheets/fs235.html; Michael W. Young and Julia Clark,
An Anthropologist in Papua: the photography of F.E. Williams, 1922–39 (Adelaide 2001); also Griffith,
‘The career of F. E. Williams’.
6 ‘A desire to improve their conditions: E.W.P. Chinnery in New Guinea and the Northern Territory’,
in States and Territories, Proceedings, 1999 http://rspas.anu.edu.au/melanesia/pworkshop.htm; ‘There
are many difficult problems: Ernest William Pearson Chinnery—government anthropologist’, The
Journal of Pacific History, 38:3 (2003), 313-330; ‘“Mr Chinnery should be given the recognition he
deserves”: E.W.P. Chinnery in the Northern Territory’, Journal of Northern Territory History, 15 (2004),
21-33; ‘A wealthy firm like Vesteys gives us our opportunity: an attempt to reform the cattle industry’,
Journal of Northern Territory History, 16 (2005), 37-54.
7 See Geoffrey Gray, A Cautious Silence: the politics of Australian anthropology (Canberra 2007), esp. ch.
3.
8 See, e.g., Howard Morphy, ‘Gillen—a man of science’, in John Mulvaney, Howard Morphy and
Alison Petch (eds), My Dear Spencer: the letters of F.J. Gillen to Baldwin Spencer (Melbourne 1997), 23-50.
9 A.H. Quiggin, Haddon the Headhunter: a short sketch of the life of A.C. Haddon (Cambridge 1942), 117.
10 Haddon, ‘The Teaching of ethnology at Cambridge’, Manchester Guardian, 5 January 1903.
11 Legge, Australian Colonial Policy, 3.
12 Murray, Anthropology and the Government of Subject Races, Australasian Association for the
Advancement of Science (ANZAAS), vol. 15 (1921), 180. See also Murray, ‘The scientific aspect of the
pacification of Papua’, Presidential Address, ANZAAS, 1932. The anthropologist Lucy Mair states that
in many ways Murray presented an enlightened and humanitarian colonial rule but the length of his
administration weakened this position, Lucy Mair, Australia in New Guinea (Melbourne 1970) [1948]
11-13.
13 West, Hubert Murray, 173.
240
Telling Pacific Lives
14 West points out that the educational qualifications of field and office staff were not high: ‘What
Murray was looking for was sober, energetic and fit young men plus, for the field staff, men who could
learn patience and self-control in the face of hardship or danger’. West, Hubert Murray, 118.
15 Shiela Waters, in letters to me, has complained about the use of such an expression. David Lawrence
suggests, without much evidence, that monetary reward attracted Chinnery to field service. ‘The early
ethnographic writings of E.W. Pearson Chinnery: Government Anthropologist of New Guinea’, Public
lecture for the National Archives of Australia, presented in Canberra, 23 March 2006, 4.
16 West, Hubert Murray, 640.
17 J.H.P. Murray, Papua (London 1912).
18 West, Hubert Murray, 10-11. Moreover, Murray’s tracts on anthropology date from 1920. His
Anthropology and the Government of Subject Races was published in 1930.
19 Chinnery, ANZAAS, 1955. Chinnery Papers (CP), National Library of Australia, Canberra.
20 Haddon to Chinnery, 7 July 1915. CP.
21 West, Hubert Murray, 162.
22 A.C. Haddon and James Hornell, Canoes of Oceania (Honolulu 1975). (Originally three volumes,
published between 1936 and 1938).
23 Radcliffe-Brown to Gregory, 2 April 1928, Elkin Papers, Sydney University: 164/4/2/12.
24 Gray, ‘Being honest to my science’ 56-76.
25 Gray, ’Being honest to my science’, 56ff.
26 Chinnery, Applied Anthropology in New Guinea, Report of the ANZAAS, August 1932, Sydney,
vol. 21 (1933), 3.
27 E.W.P. Chinnery and W.N. Beaver, ‘Notes on the initiation ceremonies of the Koko, Papua’, Man,
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 45 (1915), 70.
28 W.N. Beaver, Unexplored New Guinea (London 1920). Beaver was killed on the Western Front in
September 1917.
29 National Archives of Australia, Canberra (hereinafter NAA): A1, 1920/9030(b); see also Annual
Report, Papua, 1911; 1914-15; 1916-17.
30 Chinnery and Beaver, Comparative table of languages of Northern Division and vocabularies, Papua
Annual Report, 1914-15, 161-7; Vocabularies—Buna Station, Kumusi Division, Papua Annual Report,
1919, 86. Chinnery, Comparative vocabulary of tribes of main range, west of Mt Albert Edward, Papua
Annual Report, 1916-17, 65-7, Appendix II, III, IVa.
31 Stocking, ‘The ethnographers magic: fieldwork in British anthropology from Tylor to Malinowski’,
in idem, Observers Observed: history of anthropology, vol. 1 (Madison 1983), 91.
32 For a list see NAA: A1, 1920/9030 (a).
33 George Stocking, ‘The ethnographer’s magic’, 91.
34 Chinnery and Haddon, ‘Five new religious cults in British New Guinea’, Hibbert Journal, 1 (1917),
448-63; also Stanner, South Seas in Transition, 57-73.
35 Chinnery, Applied Anthropology in New Guinea, 4.
36 Haddon to Atlee-Hunt, 15 November 1918. NAA: A1, 1921/9820.
37 W.H.R. Rivers, ‘The government of subject peoples’, in A.C. Seward (ed.), Science and the Nation:
essays by Cambridge graduates (Cambridge 1917). 2-28.
38 Seward, ‘Preface’, in idem, Science and the Nation.
39 Rivers, ‘The government of subject peoples’, 302-3.
40 Ibid., 305.
41 Ibid., 305-6.
42 Ibid., 306-7.
43 Ibid., 309.
44 Ibid., 311.
45 Ibid., 321.
46 Ibid., 325.
47 Papua was described as the ‘first grandchild of the empire’. Unattributed press cutting (London), 6
March 1920. NAA: A1/1, item 21/9820.
241
E.W.P. Chinnery
48 ‘At the sign of the world’s cross roads: a young Australian administrator’, unnamed newspaper
report. NAA: A1/1, item 21/9820; also Chinnery, ‘The opening of new territories in Papua’, The
Geographical Journal, June (1920), 439-459.
49 Chinnery, ‘The application of anthropological methods to tribal development in New Guinea’, Man,
49 (1919), 36-41. For a discussion on trusteeship see Ronald Hyam, ‘Bureaucracy and ‘trusteeship’ in
the colonial empire’, in Judith M. Brown and William Roger Louis, The Twentieth Century: the Oxford
history of the British Empire, vol. 4 (Oxford 1999), 255-279.
50 West, Hubert Murray, 210-11.
51 Chinnery, ‘The application of anthropological methods to tribal development’, 41.
52 It was published as, ‘Stone-work and goldfields in British New Guinea’, Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 49 (1919), 271-91.
53 Among Australian anthropologists who started doctoral theses at London University under Grafton
Elliot Smith and W.J. Perry were Ursula McConnel and A.P. Elkin. Tigger Wise describes Elkin’s PhD,
completed in 1926: ‘It was a vast historical survey of burial rites, initiation rites, the making of medicine
men and mythology, prefaced by 21 pages of index, studded with maps on the distribution of
circumcision rites, subincison rites, the use of shell and ending with a token bow to Elliot Smith’s pet
hobbyhorse: the diffusion of mummification rites out of the Egyptian XXI Dynasty.’ Wise, The Self-Made
Anthropologist (Sydney 1985), 49.
54 W.J. Perry, The Children of the Sun: a study in the history of civilization (London 1923), 291.
55 NAA: A452, 1957/2232.
56 Chinnery, ‘The opening of new territories in Papua’, 279.
57 See Gammage, The Sky Travellers.
58 Murray to Hunt, 21 March 1919. NAA: A1/1, item 21/9820.
59 Murray to Gilbert Murray, 2 December 1919, in Francis West (ed.), Selected Letters of Hubert Murray
(Melbourne 1970), 106. West deletes Chinnery’s name. Murray had decided by March that there was
no opening for Chinnery. Murray to Hunt, 21 March 1919. NAA: A1/1, item 21/9820. Six months earlier
Murray had written to his brother that ‘[w]e want one and I think that I should prefer an Oxford man,
though Haddon, who seems to interest himself in New Guinea more than any one else, is of course
Cambridge. I wrote to Marett about it some time ago ... We could only give him about £300 a year to
begin with, but we should pay his passage out and give him a sum of money for equipment’. (Murray
to Gilbert, 17 July 1919, in West, Selected Letters of Hubert Murray, 104.)
60 Lawrence, ‘The early ethnographic writings of E.W. Pearson Chinnery’, 15.
61 Chinnery, Man, 27 (Nov. 1927), 214-215 and Murray’s reply in Man 28 (Jul. 1928), 128.
62 Gray, ‘Being honest to my science’; idem, ‘There are many difficult problems’.
63 Paper presented by Chinnery to Health Section, Pan Pacific Science Congress, (Haddon chair), 1923,
typescript, CP.
64 E. Hogan Taylor, General Manager, ‘General Report, The New Guinea Copper Mines Ltd.’ (1921),
CP.
65 The mandate was confirmed on 17 December 1920; civil administration formally began on 9 May
1921.
66 Chinnery to Official Secretary, Commonwealth of Australia, 27 May 1921. NAA: A518/1, R815/1
Part 1.
67 Quoted in Chinnery, ‘The application of anthropological methods to tribal development’, 36.
242
Telling Pacific Lives
Chapter 18
Lives Told: Australians in Papua and
New Guinea
Hank Nelson
The home computer, Microsoft Word, more sophisticated programs known to
younger generations, and the flourishing of family history—the practical means
and the incentive—have resulted in the recent publishing of many
autobiographies and biographies. That so many of the lives recorded include
years spent in Papua and New Guinea reflects the fact that Australians have seen
Papua New Guinea as a frontier of adventure, the beginning of the exotic and
where Australians have peculiar responsibilities. Australians wanting to go
‘overseas’, searching for something more exciting than work in an insurance
office or the daily milking of the cows and with an often unexpressed hope that
they might make a name in national, church or commercial history, could get
their fares to, and a job in, Papua New Guinea. It is also where Australians fought
the battles of World War II closest to Australia, the theatre where most
Australians went to war, and where over 8,000 Australians are named on the
headstones and panels at the British Commonwealth war cemeteries at Rabaul,
Lae and Port Moresby. The number of books about Australians in Papua New
Guinea is also a result of the increasing enthusiasm of Australians since the late
1970s to recall and define themselves by their experiences in war.1 While many
of the books are privately published, nearly all have an ISBN number: they are
produced with a consciousness that they will find readers beyond the family.
The production and editorial standards of some of the privately published
books—such as Betty Scarlett’s Oscar X-Ray Calling and Paul and Eleanor Knie’s
The Life Story of Ida Voss—are as high as those of many commercial publishers.
An increase in the number of lives told is obviously an advantage to
historians. On a few topics there are now several books. The growing importance
of Kokoda in Australia, accelerated by the visits of Prime Minister Paul Keating
when he kissed the ground in 1992, and John Howard and Sir Michael Somare
in 2002 when they opened the Isurava monument, has been demonstrated in
the three detailed popular histories by Peter Brune, Peter Fitzsimons and Paul
Ham.2 The autobiographies and biographies now cover most of the key players:
David Horner on Vasey, Blamey and Shedden; David Day on Curtin; Gallaway
on Blamey and MacArthur, Edgar on Potts; Braga on Allen; Ken Eather on his
243
distant relative, Major General Ken Eather; and Brune on Honner. Taken with
the earlier books on and by Sydney Rowell and the Americans Douglas
MacArthur, Robert Eichelberger and George Kenney, and Steven Bullard’s
introduction to, and extension of, Japanese sources, there are few topics in
Pacific history better covered than Kokoda 1942.3 Neil McDonald’s thoughtful
biography of Damien Parer, the cinematographer, adds much to our
understanding of how the Kokoda campaign was reported in print as well as on
the screen. We now have access to much history and the making of history. And
much has been written on another war photographer, Frank Hurley, who was
in Papua between the wars.
The personal reminiscences tend to add detail and confirm established
perceptions. Hamlyn-Harris, who first wrote his account while in hospital in
1943, described his first encounter with the Australian wounded near Myola
and it ‘moved [him] to the depths’:
Picking their way very carefully with expressions of solemn
responsibility, came native carriers with the badly wounded. Some of
these forms under their coverings were horribly mutilated and might
not survive long … The natives moved softly and silently, handling the
stretchers with a surprising deftness in rough places in order to save
their human burden from the slightest jolt. Their homely faces were soft
with pity and concern. They would carry these poor wounded along
such a route as I have described, through mud and slush and morass,
along the razor backs …4
The images and the vocabulary are familiar, and while some soldiers may have
drawn on Bert Beros’s popular poem, ‘The Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels’, others who
wrote before it was published obviously did not.5 Then and now, the carriers
had the admiration of the diggers.
A few books add to published material on Kokoda. The unpretentious family
history of the Hogan brothers gives a picture of the men in the prewar and
follows them through their training, first impressions of Port Moresby (a
‘dilapidated looking place’), combat and the postwar.6 Two of the Hogan
brothers, Tom and Nace, fought in the 3rd
Battalion, a militia unit raised on the
Southern Highlands of New South Wales—from Crookwell to Cooma. The militia
battalions, especially those raised in country areas, were made up of men, many
of whom knew one another in the prewar and who then trained together at local
drill halls and at various camps. With the two Hogan boys in the 3rd
Battalion
were four others from Grabben Gullen who were all farewelled together. Of the
six, two were killed, two wounded and the other two suffered severe illness.
The worst battle for the 3rd
Battalion was at Templeton’s Crossing, and so within
a few days in October 1942 much bad news went back to Grabben Gullen and
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Telling Pacific Lives
nearby Crookwell; and it went to telephonists and ministers of religion who
knew the men and their families. By providing the perspective of Bill Hogan,
who stayed home, the Hogans show the interaction between home and battlefield
in ways missed in much military history, and in a militia battalion that interaction
was concentrated in particular communities.
Alan Hooper gives a different and more intimate account of the home and
battle front through the use of the letters that passed between him and his
fiancée, later wife. But Hooper also provides a detailed account of what was
happening to Papua New Guineans involved in war. Having arrived in Port
Moresby in a Queensland militia battalion, the 49th
, before the Japanese invaded,
he volunteered for service in the newly formed Papuan Infantry Battalion. In
the late stages of the Kokoda and Buna-Gona battles he was on the Opi and
Kumusi Rivers engaged in a complex guerrilla war. Japanese attempting to escape
from battle or new troops trying to re-enforce those already there were passing
through the area; survivors of crashed aircraft were struggling to make their
way to safety; Papuans who had been away as indentured labourers were coming
home; New Guineans who had been conscripted by the Japanese were escaping
into the area; and the local Orokaiva and Binandere were disturbed by the
withdrawal of much of the old system of government and mission authority, the
signs of battle at sea and overhead, the armed and unarmed foreigners amongst
them and the many unsettling rumours. In one incident twelve returning
labourers were killed and some of Hooper’s troops used their rifles to take
revenge.7 Hooper was often the only Australian with his Papuan troops, and
he had had to learn Police Motu to communicate with them and the villagers.
Hooper writes with the same close observation and knowledge as some of the
prewar government field officers who transferred to the army, but Hooper was
young and had none of the prejudices that the older officers carried with them.
The publication of John Jackson’s diary and letters tells us much about the
man after whom Port Moresby’s airport is named, and it includes a full account
of his escape after being shot down off Lae in April 1942.8 Near Busama, he
found some people ‘bluffed by the Japs’ and reluctant to help, other local men
leading the pursuing Japanese, and two Tolai, stranded in the area, who risked
everything to lead him through the Japanese to the nearest Australians. They
were, Jackson wrote to his wife, ‘two wonderful boys’.9 He was flown out of
Wau but killed in combat four days later.
Ken Thorpe, who served with an Independent Company (later commandos)
alongside the coastwatchers on Bougainville, was another soldier dependent on
Papua New Guineans. He reports using women carriers, including one who
carried the heavy battery for the teleradio with her infant perched on top of the
terminals. The almost casual violence of the war is apparent in his account of
the Papua New Guinea police who seized two Bougainvillean ‘boys’, and,
245
Australians in Papua and New Guinea
convinced they had been working for the Japanese, forced them to walk in front
of the patrol. When the two young men made a dash for freedom, the police
opened fire, killing one, but the other may have escaped into dense bush.10
Thorpe also notes an incidental hazard of jungle fighting. Short of oil to protect
his sub-machine gun, he cleaned it with pig grease, but when he fired it a stream
of cockroaches and a cloud of smoke came out with the first bullet.11 Later in
the war when Thorpe was training with the 1st
New Guinea Infantry Battalion,
he disciplined a soldier and was later attacked by about five New Guinea soldiers
when he went for a shower.12 As on other occasions, the men in the Pacific
Islands Regiment demonstrated that they had limits to the extent to which they
could be pushed around. Walpole, 2/3rd
Independent Company, was in the
Wau-Salamuau area, but most of his book is concerned with the later campaign
on Borneo. Mick Dennis, another commando, provides a report on the fighting
around Wau and the 1945 Muschu Island raid, but has few reflections on the
peoples and places of battle.
By contrast with those who fought in or alongside Papua New Guinean units,
most of the Australians who went to Papua New Guinea during the war had
brief contact with Papua New Guineans. On the Kiriwina air base Norman Medew
says that children were nearly always the interpreters. A man, rarely a woman,
wanting to trade might arrive with a large bunch of bananas, and it would be a
young boy who would ask, ‘You got bullamacow?’13 And a swap of tinned meat
for fresh bananas would be organised. Bill Marks in his uninhibited way says
that he was with a group of men recently back from the Middle East. Travelling
on an open truck from the Port Moresby wharf towards Rouna, they passed a
group of bare-breasted women and the sudden rush to one side nearly tipped
the truck over.14 The photographs that appear in the books—particularly of
those who were on the Trobriands—are evidence of the young men’s at least
initial interest in the grass-skirted women.15 The more restrained John Kingsmill
says they rarely saw any Papuan or New Guinean women:
Never alone, always with her husband, the ‘Mary’ would be sighted, as
a curiosity worth noting, walking along the side of the road as our trucks
roared past, flinging up clouds of dust (or mud in the Wet). The man
went several paces ahead, carrying his spear and perhaps a small child,
or with the child running at his heels with the family dog. The woman
walked behind her man, small and meek and heavy-laden. She looked
more like his child than his wife. Suspended from a strap across her
forehead was a large woven bag which she balanced on her shoulders.
I never got close enough to do more than wave and they would invariably
wave back and smile huge betel-nut-red smiles at us, though they
probably had only the vaguest idea of what we were all doing there …
I never once saw an unfriendly face amongst them, rather it was a matter
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Telling Pacific Lives
of childlike friendliness or giggling shyness or a long frowning stare of
incomprehension.16
Kingsmill’s comments were, like most of the casual references to Papua New
Guineans, well-intentioned, but indicate a superficial understanding and more
than a hint of condescension.
Many of the reminiscences retain much of the language of the time, ‘boong’
often being used. Tom Hogan says simply says that the New Guineans were
‘referred to as “Boongs”’.17 With ‘boong’ are the compound terms ‘boong basher’
for an Angau officer and ‘boong train’ for a line of carriers. Lloyd Collins
explained the distinction between ‘coon’ which he said meant a black American
and ‘boong’ which was a Papua New Guinean. Both terms, he said, ‘came to be
used with much respect and endearment and were not interpreted as
derogatory’.18 Later, in the fighting out from Wau, Collins was with a group
who had to carry supplies forward and they were proud to be called the ‘white
boongs’. It was a term of praise, Collins says, because ‘every soldier in New
Guinea knew [that] the word “boong” stood for service, loyalty, sacrifice and
discipline’.19 The diggers had certainly changed the old terms, for in the prewar
the word ‘boong’ was almost unknown, and coon was commonly used for the
local people in New Guinea, even appearing in the Rabaul Times. One of the
first of the Australian troops posted to Rabaul, Jack Stebbings of the 2/22nd
Battalion, wrote in a matter-of-fact way to a mate: ‘the natives here are known
as “Coons”’, but it was not a term used in Papua.20
The ex-servicemen make frank comments on the Japanese. As John Holmes
said, they respected the bravery of the Japanese but ‘never ceased to loathe
them’.21 Several comment on the general attitude to the taking of prisoners,
even if they did not record it with the brutal directness of Frank Perversi, ‘We
don’t take fucking Jap prisoners’. Perversi says that while he heard this often,
he was nearby on just the one occasion when some Australians killed a prisoner.22
At Milne Bay the young militia soldier, James Henderson, said that after the
men had seen evidence of torture of their own battalion dead, they understood
that they had been ordered to take no prisoners and ‘felt that what they had
seen demanded it. The fury they felt would burn for decades among survivors’.23
Near Mubo in the Morobe District, Collins recorded a digger saying ‘We thought
our job was to kill the bastards, not capture them’.24 Stanton went from curiosity
about prisoners, to a determination to shoot them, to sympathy for the
surrendered Japanese at the end of the war. The men who had fought in the
Mediterranean looked back with a ‘hint of nostalgia’ to campaigns that ‘had a
sweep and scope possible only in the open north African desert’. In New Guinea,
Peter Jones said, the ‘claustrophobic jungle imposed a stealth and furtiveness’
and the men did not think of the Japanese as an ‘honourable enemy’. The jungle
war, he wrote, ‘lacked mutual respect’.25 John Bellair, who had fought in Greece
247
Australians in Papua and New Guinea
and Crete, said that after 40 years ‘It had not been easy to write of my brief
experience in New Guinea. I thought that time had healed my memories, but I
found that it was not quite so’.26
Perhaps the greatest value of the recent war reminiscences is the variety.
Many have been written by men who were in non-combat units. Michael Pate
was in a concert party and Keith Smith, radio man and comedy script writer in
the postwar, was with the 15th
Field Ambulance during it. Among the airmen
who have recorded their experiences, Norman Medew and Arthur Gately were
armourers on fighters, John Carroll and Rus Center were wireless operators and
navigators on Beaufighters, Geldard was a wireless operator with 4 Army
Cooperation Squadron, Derrick Rees and Laurie Edmonds were aircraft fitters,
John Kingsmill and Jack Woodward were radio ground staff, John Balfe was
flying transports, and William Deane-Butcher was the doctor with 75 Squadron.
As a 28–year-old doctor from Sydney, Deane-Butcher went north in April 1942
equipped with a ‘weighty text book about tropical medicine’ and a Royal Air
Force handbook which included such useful information as ‘survival in the
Arctic, speaking Arabic and international flags’.27 Deane-Butcher was with 75
Squadron through the grim days from March 1942 when the 75 Squadron
Kittyhawks supplied Port Moresby’s main air defence against the dominant
Japanese and in August 1942 the squadron operated from Gurney airstrip in the
battle of Milne Bay. On his first day at the Seven Mile strip in Port Moresby,
Deane-Butcher woke to terrifying din: a cook was belting a sheet of galvanised
iron slung from a tree and shouting, ‘Come and get it, bugger yers’.28 With his
care for the morale and physical condition of the men, Deane-Butcher’s work is
to be placed alongside that better known memoir of H.D. (Blue) Steward,
Recollections of a Regimental Medical Officer. Weate’s biography of the pilot Bill
Newton is one of only three of at least nine Australians who won the Victoria
Cross in Papua or New Guinea. Wayne Rothgeb’s New Guinea Skies is included
in the bibliography as an example of one of the memoirs of the American college
boys who flew in New Guinea; but few of these are likely to surpass the earlier
Edwards Park’s Nanette. Rothgeb flew Lightings (P-38s) and Park Airacobras
(P-39s) out of various New Guinea strips.
The army reminiscences include those of Bill Marks, who was a corporal cook
and then in a laundry unit and of Roy Sibson, an army craftsman with skills
handy when making souvenirs to sell to Americans. Jim Rudge arrived in Port
Moresby in 1943, served in Angau as a Medical Assistant, and returned briefly
to Australia before going back to Papua New Guinea to work in the Department
of Public Health. Rudge is the only wartime medical assistant to have published
an extensive account of his work. Deploying much detail, Rudge sketches people
of all races, gives much ethnographic information and provides insight into the
life of a medical assistant. He held posts in Kikori, Popondetta, Daru, Rigo,
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Telling Pacific Lives
Kairuku, Abau, and Bougainville. It has to be conceded that the section under
the heading ‘Social Life at Kikori’ is short. Tarlington is one of the few who have
written about the long-term impact of six years of war on the rest of his life.
Polly Underwood, Australian Army Nursing Service, arrived in Port Moresby
in January 1942 wearing her ‘outdoor winter uniform consisting of pure wool,
fully lined winter costume, jacket worn over a long-sleeve white cotton shirt
with brown woollen tie, cotton stockings, brown lace-up shoes with our grey
felt hats pulled well down over our eyes and our brown kid gloves clutching
our neat, very small, zippered purses’.29
Having reached Port Moresby before the impact of battle, she saw something
of the prewar Territory. On a visit to Koitaki plantation at Sogeri the nurses had
their ‘clothes laid out, baths drawn and … beds made’ and at meals they were
attended by immaculately turned-out servants. When Moresby appeared to be
under threat of invasion, the nurses were evacuated. Later in the war when
Underwood was stationed at Finschhafen, the nurses were enclosed in barbed
wire, guarded and not allowed out alone. The threat was said to be black
Americans—and that says something about perceptions of race and gender in
wartime New Guinea.30
Alice Bowman, another New Guinea nurse to have written an autobiography,
went to New Guinea in 1939 to work in the European hospital. Choosing to stay
in Rabaul after the Japanese southward assault, she was captured and interned
in Japan. Her work is an account of captivity and can be placed alongside
Margaret Clarence’s short book on her mother, Kathleen Bignold, another civilian
woman captured in Rabaul and forced to endure captivity in Japan. Peter
Fenton’s biography of the lively Olive Weston includes only a brief mention of
her time in New Guinea.
Although we now have Alan Powell’s careful unit history of Angau, the eight
reminiscences of the Angau officers (Geoff Blaskett, John Cooke, Ted Fulton,
Kingsley Jackson, Clarrie James, Jim Ross, Jim Rudge and Eddie Stanton) extend
knowledge of the military administration of New Guinea.31 Jackson, James,
Rudge, and Stanton bring the perspective of the outsiders, the Angau officers
without experience in the prewar territories. James served in a number of centres
from the Highlands to Misima—including being present at the hanging of eight
Islanders at Bwagaoia. James handed over Goilala station in 1946 and took up a
position in Canberra that had nothing to do with Papua and New Guinea. His
experience was exclusively that of the wartime kiap. Stanton spent most of his
war in the Milne Bay Islands and in his detailed diary he displayed the racial
prejudices of his time and he was equally frank about his fellow officers. By
contrast Fulton first went to New Guinea in 1930, returned to run a plantation
in the postwar and continued to visit Papua New Guinea after Independence.
In Angau, Fulton walked the Bulldog track to Wau and just kept on going
249
Australians in Papua and New Guinea
through to Bena Bena. In his revealing comments on the police, he shows an
understanding of the complexities of loyalty; and his relationships with Father
Schwab and other priests raise different questions about race, culture and loyalty.
Both James and Rudge note that the police were carrying and demonstrating
sub-machine guns on patrols among Papua New Guineans.32 Brian McFarlane
was called up to do his national service in the 1950s and stayed in the army. His
is one of the few reminiscences of serving in the postwar Pacific Islands Regiment.
McFarlane joined the ‘black hand gang’ in 1963, and was posted to Vanimo, Port
Moresby and Wewak before leaving in 1965 and going on to Vietnam.
Of the four accounts of the escape from the disaster of Rabaul in 1942, Gordon
Abel gives an unpretentious and moving account of the gradual reduction of
his group to just two. One man, he said, committed suicide when he realised he
could no longer keep up; and Abel admits the guilt of survivors who struggled
on, unable to bury their dead or even record where they had died.33 The most
important, because of the key role that he played, is by Frank Holland, a timber
worker, who crossed New Britain to carry news of one escaping group to the
other. Included in the bibliography are books by Americans who survived as
prisoners of war in Rabaul: Kepchia, McMurria and Nason were three of six
American survivors from a group of 83 Allied prisoners. The only other survivor
was the Australian kiap and coastwatcher, John Murphy. Fred Hargesheimer,
another American and extraordinary survivor, is also included because he
returned to New Guinea and repaid the villagers who saved his life after he
crash-landed on New Britain in 1943.
Margaret Reeson in her study of those who waited and grieved during the
war has shown how the thirst for knowledge among close relatives is intense
and sustained.34 And clearly the desire to know has driven the research for
some sons and daughters of those caught in extraordinary circumstances and
especially of those who did not survive and have no known grave. Anne
McCosker has written well, not just of her mother and father and their lives on
New Guinea island plantations, but of that generation and the way of life that
was overwhelmed by three years of war. Margaret Henderson and Gillian Nikakis
have written moving accounts of fathers they did not know and who disappeared
as prisoners of the Japanese: the reader shares their obligation to chase rumours
and fragments of information to understand the reaction of their mothers and
to create a father with greater substance than the one existing in family lore.
Where in the past much biographical writing of peace-time Papua and New
Guinea has been dominated by missionaries, government field officers and travel
and adventure writers (such as James Chalmers, C.A.W. Monckton and Ion
Idriess) in recent writings, apart from Kingsley Jackson, the kiaps and
adventurers have largely abandoned publishing.35 But there has been little
change in the production rate of the male mission memoir and the book tribute
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to the distinguished missionary. Henry Kendall wrote his own unpretentious
record of his time at the Anglican mission in Popondetta, Samarai and Dogura.
Milton McFarlane was a state school teacher in Queensland who from 1961
committed himself to 17 years’ teaching for the Seventh Day Adventist mission
on Mussau, Bougainville and in the British Solomons. Lynette Oates has written
of David Lithgow who went to the Milne Bay islands in 1964 and through the
next three decades did much bible translation work. Glen O’Brien wrote a
biography of Kingsley Ridgway; and Ridgway’s own memories of leading the
Methodist mission in the Southern Highlands in the 1960s is included within
the one volume. Ian Frazer’s biography of Ed Tscharke (soldier in the New
Guinea Volunteer Rifles, medical assistant in Angau and Lutheran medical
missionary on Karkar for nearly 40 years) is different in that Frazer is not a
Lutheran and he writes with an easy journalist’s style. Diane Langmore and
David Wetherell provide the only outsider and scholarly studies of missionaries.
Like the war reminiscences, much of the recent writing by civilian men has
broadened the range. The title of John Cooke’s autobiography Working in Papua
New Guinea 1931-46 indicates what is to come—a frank narrative of someone
who was, among other things, a barman, timber cutter, schooner operator,
recruiter and cargo handler for Guinea Airways. Arthur John worked on the
Bulolo goldfields—with a digression for sexual adventure in Japan in 1933. John
says that the round trip to the near north via the China ports, Japan and the
Philippines was common among the goldfields workers who had two months’
leave after two years’ service. Keith Buxton was a postwar medical assistant and
then tour operator; Tom Cole was a crocodile shooter and coffee planter with an
interest in a saw mill and a hotel; Bobby Gibbes, DSO, DFC and Bar, fought his
war elsewhere, but in the postwar he operated an airline in New Guinea and
owned a plantation and hotels; and Les Bell ran the Kavieng engineering works
(‘We repair everything from sewing machines to aeroplanes’) and a plantation
before serving in a radar unit in World War II. Born in England, Dennis Puffett
served in the war in Europe, came to Australia and worked in the Northern
Territory before being superintendent of wildlife management in Port Moresby
from 1971 to 1973. Geoff Litchfield gained his initial flying experience in the
services, but he was a ‘fly boy’ in the postwar navy and came to Papua New
Guinea in 1966 as a pilot for civilian airlines. His last stint was with Air Niugini
in the 1980s.
Bruce Neale gives a cheerful impression of life in bachelor quarters in early
postwar Port Moresby and of later surveying roads and hydro-electricity stations
for public works. Jim Allen, geologist, and Max Reynolds, vulcanologist, have
written short memoirs of their work, Allen with private companies and Reynolds
with the government. Phil Thomson, actor and dramatist, has provided an
impressionistic account of theatrical ventures and leading a theatre company
and cultural centre in Madang.
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Bob Connolly’s Making ‘Black Harvest’ is obviously essential reading for
understanding his and Robin Anderson’s prize-winning film trilogy (First
Contact, Joe Leahy’s Neighbours and Black Harvest) but it is more than that.
Anderson kept a diary, both wrote letters written from the field. Tim Bowden
taped six hours of interview with them, they took notes while filming and they
had kept the film and recorded dialogue not used in the edited films. This material
gives a density of evidence about what many commentators called a tragedy.
As a result, Connolly has written one of the most revealing accounts of the
turbulent Highlanders taking their warfare into the world of cash cropping.
One of the few of the recent books that continues an older tradition of frontier
patrolling is Jim Sinclair’s sympathetic and well researched life of Ivan Champion
which concentrates on his exploratory patrols. Margaret Abbotts’ biography of
her father, Stanniforth Smith, is a family history and while it gives family context
it is brief on critical incidents in Papua such as the expedition up the Kikori in
1910. The work and beliefs of Raphael Cilento, director of public health in
Mandated New Guinea, has been re-assessed, but more because of his place in
the history of racial attitudes and medicine in Australia, rather than for what
he did in New Guinea.36
Before 1975, most scholars who recorded their time in Papua New Guinea
wrote more in the tradition of the travel and adventure writers. Evelyn Cheesman
(who was in Papua 1933-4) and Jock Marshall (New Guinea 1936) both conform
to that pattern.37 Hortense Powdermaker (New Ireland 1929-30) with her shrewd
comments on the black and white societies and her discipline was an exception.38
Of the recent books, Tim Flannery’s Throwim Way Leg looks back—as its
sub-title, An Adventure, makes clear—to the old tradition, but many of the others
break completely with any chasing of the first, wildest and most remote.39 Spate
and Fisk write about Papua New Guinea while considering tough questions
about economic development in the third world. Spate, after his second visit in
1952, decided that
the way forward would not be by plantations, and dreams of small-scale
white settlement were just that, fancy dreams. They failed to account
for just about everything: the high costs of initial clearing, the almost
complete lack of transport (except by air) and other infrastructure, the
distance from markets.40
This is a long way from the last ‘unknown’, lost ‘paradise’, stone-age warriors
and first contact. The intellectual problems are important, conclusions drawn
from research in the rest of the third world are presented, while the exotic
locations and the physical adventure have almost disappeared. In the collection
edited by Brij Lal in honour of Bob Kiste, several contributors provide revealing
accounts of their background and their engagement with Papua New Guinea,
and while the country they encounter is different from that pictured by
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Monckton or Hides, it is still exotic.41 Ulli Beier’s memoir is urban and the
culture that he is concerned with is that of the Papuan New Guineans who work
within the literary and visual arts appreciated in Sydney, Berlin and London.
He brings comparisons with other colonies to Australians and to Papua New
Guineans.
The writings of and about anthropologists have done most to expand and
change scholarly biographies of foreigners in Papua New Guinea. In Return to
the High Valley, Kenneth Read added to the base of fine writing and revelation
about himself, his discipline and the people of the Asaro that he began in The
High Valley published in 1966.42 The extent to which he found that the Asaro
had changed and the corrections that he needed to make to his original findings
on basic issues such as land ownership and the hierarchies of families, enforces
the need for long-term studies. The American, Michael French Smith, has written
a personal account of his visits to Kragur on Kairiru Island in the East Sepik
Province, the first and longest beginning in November 1975, and the later and
briefer visits in 1981, 1995 and 1998. Significantly, all of Smith’s visits have
been to a post-independence Kragur. On his last visit he noticed that people
were referring to the ‘chief’, both the term and position were new: in the past
he had known several village bigmen who, while not equal, none was the
recognised village leader. He listed other changes:
While a mainstay of village life, Catholicism still managed to stir things
up. Charismatic worship in particular gave women, the young, and the
mildly rebellious opportunities to carve out new zones of freedom from
established authority and hierarchy. School learning was becoming
significantly more common, and its tensions with older forms of
knowledge and power were becoming more pronounced. Assertive
women were scandalising conservative men; youths filled with spirits
of various kinds butted heads with elders; the educated young were
annoying almost everyone, including each other; traditional leaders were
struggling to define and assert their authority; and the gap between
villagers and urban Kragurs was more apparent than ever. Some villagers
found themselves divided by support of rival parliamentary candidates.
The possibility of mining put an edge on concerns about land rights …43
The villages remain dynamic, changing substantially within a generation, and
those changes have nothing to do with Australian government—or any
governments’—officers demanding or guiding change.
Margaret Mead generates comment (for example, Howard and McDowell)
but no one has attempted a sustained re-evaluation of her New Guinea
monographs as Derek Freeman did of Coming of Age in Samoa.44 Wetherell and
Carr-Gregg have written a sympathetic study of Camilla Wedgwood, and while
she is an interesting character and did fieldwork on Manam Island in 1933 and
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engaged in important debates on education during and immediately after World
War II, she was not at the forefront of a discipline or a driver of government
policy. With Michael Young’s work on F.E. Williams and his essays and first
volume on Malinowski, scholarly biography has made a significant advance.
His Malinowski: odyssey of an anthropologist contributes to the general history
of Papua, as well as giving insights into one of the most important and complex
minds to engage with the Pacific and influence the formative years of a discipline.
We are indebted to the breadth of Young’s research, the structure that allows
easy shifts between narrative and analysis, and the lucid prose.
Since Paul Hasluck’s A Time for Building was published in 1976, there has
been no comparable exposition and defence of Australian administration; but
then no other Australian minister of any department has been as willing to do
the research or as able to write about policy and its implementation as Hasluck.45
It is appropriate that Hasluck has stimulated two volumes reappraising his work
(Porter and Stannage). Both Les Johnson and Rachel Cleland have given their
different perceptions from government house, Port Moresby; Nott has written
a biography of Charles Barnes; Peter Fox’s memoir of accounting in Port Moresby
and Goroka includes broader economic and political issues; Tom Leahy has
recalled his time in politics before 1972; Downs has dealt briefly with his early
years in the House of Assembly; Ray Whitrod has given a chapter to his time as
Commissioner of Police 1969-70; but in the 30 years since independence, few of
the other Australians who were actors and observers of the critical years of
transition—say from 1968 to 1978—have written of their experiences in
Canberra, Port Moresby or a district. If Rowley Richards aged 88 can publish
his memoirs of being a prisoner of war of the Japanese, and at 89 speak eloquently
about writing and memory, then there is still plenty of time.46
Papua and New Guinea have raised questions of definition of ‘Australia’ and
‘Australian’ for the Australian Dictionary of Biography. An eminent Australian
citizen who worked in the Mandated Territory of New Guinea qualifies for an
entry because he or she was an Australian, but German, New Zealand or American
missionaries qualify only if they were thought to have worked within ‘Australia’
or had an impact on Australian policies. The indigenous people of the Mandated
Territory and subsequently the United Nations Trust Territory were Australian
protected persons, but not citizens of Australia. British New Guinea was a British
possession, and the Australian colonies contributed to its revenue, but it was
not Australian. Although from 1906 Papua was an Australian Territory, its
indigenous inhabitants were less than citizens of Australia: they could not live
on the Australian mainland, and did not qualify for Australian welfare payments.
In practice, the Dictionary has included some foreign and indigenous inhabitants
of Papua and New Guinea, but the criteria for inclusion may have been higher
than for those who spent all their lives clearly within Australia. First published
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in 1966, the 16th
volume of the Dictionary was published in 2002, completing
the four volumes of those who died in the years 1940-1980. Those significant in
Papua and New Guinea (other than those who were there because of war) in
Volume 16 include: Joan Refshauge (medical practitioner and administrator),
Alfred Robinson (government officer, soldier and planter), Matthias Toliman
(school teacher and politician), Peter To Rot (Catholic catechist and martyr),
Camilla Wedgwood (anthropologist and educationist), Eric Wright (medical
practitioner), Leigh Vial (coastwatcher and patrol officer), and Yali (political and
religious leader). There is also an entry on Peter Santo (indentured labourer of
Espiritu Santo). The Australian Dictionary of Biography, a basic tool of historians
of Australia, is often neglected by historians of the Pacific Islands.
When Chilla Bulbeck, Jan Roberts and Stephanie Lloyd and others put
together their reminiscences of Australian women and children in Papua New
Guinea, they could reasonably claim that the histories then published were
histories of events in which men dominated—often apparently events in which
only men were involved. Bulbeck went on to say that ‘women’s stories are
contained in a handful of white women’s memoirs and the ephemera of mission
booklets’.47 That seemed reasonable at the time; but women have been quick
to exploit the ease of home publishing and recently more have had their
experiences published commercially. Women live longer and as widows they
may have the chance and feel an obligation to record their husbands’, as well
as their own, lives. Several, including Beavis, Boys, Cleland, Deasey, Kidu,
Hollinshed, Maclean, Rule, Rybarz, Scarlett and Sherwood, wrote or were
recorded as widows or as wives who did not share their husbands’ Papua New
Guinea experience.48 Although nearly all write generously of their husbands,
their accounts benefit from the absence of any personal or official constraints
that the husbands might have imposed. Winsome and Ormond Speck solve the
problem of wife and husband perspectives by each writing sections on their
times in the eastern highlands and among the Kukukuku.
The short mission memoirs continue: Beavis, Biggs, Edwards, Freund, Gray,
Scarlett, and White. They may now be more common, but the Sunday School
prize market has almost disappeared and so have the old home mission societies
that needed comforting reports from the field to encourage them to keep
contributing funds to convert, heal and clothe the pagans. The changing audience
and attitudes means fewer claims to piety, dedication and frontier adventure by
the missionaries and fewer references to savages emerging from the darkness of
brutality, superstition and ignorance. Betty Scarlett was the wife of a New
Zealand Presbyterian minister who worked for the old London Missionary Society
on the Papuan coast. The Mission had already changed its name to Papua Ekalesia
and was on its way to becoming part of a Papua New Guinea United Church.
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Her memoir is almost secular: she is a wife and mother in a foreign country, and
the many tasks that fall to her as a minister’s wife are practical.
The brief lives are more than anodyne reports: all are valuable to historians.
Blanche Biggs was a doctor and coordinator of the medical services of the
Anglican Mission. Her book, a collection of letters to her friends, includes reports
of patrols and her work in the aftermath of the eruption of Mt Lamington in
1951. Maureen Carlon has written well of being a teacher with the Catholic
mission at Kiripia in the Kaugel Valley from 1969 to 1980. (She realised she had
enrolled one boy underage when a mother arrived flapping her breast to indicate
it was time he was fed.) Sister Catherine O’Sullivan writes of the internment of
the Rabaul Sacred Heart nurses during World War II, Dorothea Freund has an
account of the evacuation of women and children in December 1942.
In many of the brief memoirs there are often points of particular interest. For
example, Nancy White, a teacher with the Anglican mission from 1948 to 1967,
said that at a mission conference in 1950 at Dogura the bishop announced there
would be an increase in pay for white staff from 50 to 64 pounds a year. It was,
she claims, the first increase the mission had ever given, and the rate of pay
applied to all staff irrespective of their qualifications or position.49 That decision
said much about the poverty of the Anglican mission and the demands that it
made on its staff. In October 1958, the first students from White’s school at
Manau at the mouth of the Mambare River sat for the examination to enter a
secondary school, the Martyrs Memorial School. After the examination she sealed
their papers in an envelope and two boys set out to carry it to the Martyrs School.
It was three days tough walking, but, she thought, it would be good for the
boys who would see their first cars and trucks, even their first road. John Waiko
and his brother Bob were two of the first boys to go from Manau to the Martyrs
School. John was later a professor of history at the University of Papua New
Guinea and Minister for Education and Bob Dademo was a senior officer in the
Papua New Guinea Defence Force.50
Secular women have taken up the short memoir. Anna Phillips is an able
writer and has shrewd comments on memory as well as demonstrating an ability
to rework them. Phillips is a daughter of Frank Tuza, a doctor who went from
Hungary in the turmoil of the postwar and the Russian occupation to Australia,
and after a brief course at the Australian School of Pacific Administration in
1950, to Buin in south Bougainville. By alternating her accounts with her father’s,
Phillips provides a rare forum for one of the refugee doctors who supplied much
of the expertise in the Public Health department, and she is able to comment on
the family’s different memories. Phillips makes subtle comments on the position
of New Guinean servants in the 1950s: ‘a strange colonial amalgamation of
affection, interdependence and paternalism attended by innuendo of racial
superiority’. Pat Boys and Edna Maclean writing of the 1930s describe a society
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with clear distinctions. When she was working in Rabaul, Maclean would spend
weekends at Ranau:
There were dozens of little native girls everywhere. They pulled the
punkahs in the dining room and while we were having dinner, there
would be one underneath the table. We would get a smack on the leg if
ever a mosquito or whatever happened to land … On the tennis courts
they would be running around getting the balls for us and throwing
them back.51
After Margaret Wood’s sister, Carol Coleman, arrived in Rabaul in the mid-1930s
she worked for an accountant. He found a ‘boi’ for Carol, and told Carol that
‘under no circumstances’ was she to carry anything, not even a packet of
cigarettes—that was the job of the servant who would walk a few paces behind
her.52 For many of the Australians then in Rabaul the aim was to keep the
distinction between the races sharp rather than subtle.
Many of the short memoirs deserve to be more than ephemera, but more
significant have been longer studies by Baranay, Deasey, Downing, Green,
Golski, Kidu, Harkness, Hollinshed, Lewis, Rule, Rybarz, Sherwood and Voss.
They have few male equivalents. Ida Voss, Marjorie Deasey, Doris Downing,
Bessie Lewis and Joan Rule gave most of their working lives to missions. Ida
Voss was born in Iowa into a family of Lutheran missionaries and travelled with
her sister, Lulu, to New Guinea in 1921. A trained nurse, Ida married fellow
missionary Victor Koschade in 1924. The Koschades left New Guinea in 1936,
and lived in South Australia until they went north to spend five years in central
Australian missions. She died in 1972.53 Her story has been put together by her
grandson, Paul Knie, and his wive Eleanor, mainly from Ida’s unpublished
autobiography and letters. Marjorie and Dudley Deasey went to Balimo to work
among the Gogodala for the Unevangelised Fields Mission. They left in 1942,
returned to Papua in 1944, retired from Balimo in 1974 and spent another ten
years working for the mission—then the Evangelical Church of Papua—in
Hohola. (Keith Briggs’ memoir covers the extension of the Gogodala mission into
Mount Bosavi. The Briggs family left in 1990.) Both Deasey and Voss reveal the
church and social contexts that directed them to Papua and New Guinea, and
neither the Australian Baptist nor the American Lutheran background is readily
available to most historians of Papua New Guinea.
Both books have much interesting detail. Marjorie Deasey almost provides a
history of the Gogodala. On her arrival, they were a people lightly touched by
the outside world, still living in longhouses and nobody baptised. When she
left 35 years later the Gogodala were within months of being citizens in an
independent nation. Her perspective as a woman is evident in the broad issues
and the trivial. (A man might not note when the Gogodala women first began
clothing their babies in nappies—it was 1953-1954.)54 In writing of her sister,
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Doris Downing, Joyce is able to fill in the background that gave rise to the
dedicated teacher, but unfortunately many of her letters from 1929-1941 written
while at the Anglican station of Boianai have been lost. There is much more
detail on her earlier life in the Carpentaria mission and on her return to Papua
from 1944 to 1946.
Joan Rule, who spent 40 years in the Southern Highlands, is strongest on the
problems of learning a language and producing written material in the new
language. She and her husband did not leave Kutubu and Mendi until 1991, but
she has only brief comments on the impact of gas and oil production. In her
reminiscence of nursing at Anguganak in the West Sepik from 1965 to 1981,
Bessie Lewis gives a thoughtful account of the medical work of the Christian
Missions in Many Lands. Judith Green’s These were my children recalls the four
years that she and Barney Green spent at Bundi in the early 1960s. That was the
year that August Kituai started Standard 1 as a nine-year old boarder under the
care of ‘Masta and Misis Green’. They did, he said, ‘wonderful work’.55
Carol Kidu’s book is a frank account of a romance; her marriage in 1969 to
the Papuan lawyer and later judge, Buri Kidu; married life in Papua New Guinea
from 1969; and, after Buri’s death in 1994, her election to parliament in 1997.56
She allows the reader a level of intimacy that brings understanding to race
relations, cross-cultural marriage and politics. None of the Australian men who
have married Papua New Guinean women have written a book of their
experiences; and Tom Leahy is one of the few to have given an account of
contesting elections and life in the House of Assembly, but his experience was
before independence and only a handful of copies of his book were printed.57
In her 10 years in Papua New Guinea from 1951, Beverley Rybarz had a
rollicking, emotional time. Having arrived in Lae as the bride of a pilot, she soon
separated, and in 1957 married Stanislau Rybarz. Rybarz was contracting for
major road and bridge projects—such as the Kumusi Bridge—and Beverley was
sometimes with him and sometimes working elsewhere. She admits to being
caught with a bare bum more often than anyone in other confessional memoirs.
Her life is in sharp contrast to that of the moral rectitude maintained by most of
her mission sisters. Barbara Sherwood arrived in Manus in 1946 when it was
still strewn with the debris of war, and American troops were still present. A
lecturer in biology at the University of New England before her marriage to Bill,
a doctor and linguist, she was also a talented artist. Her memories of Manus,
Samarai, Mapamoiwa, Rabaul and Port Moresby are gentle, perceptive and
illustrated with her own line drawings and wash paintings.
The books by Harkness, Hollinshed, Carlon, Golski and Baranay make a
Highlands sequence. Chris Harkness was in Mount Hagen working for the
administration from 1965 to 1968 and her book is a detailed evocation of the
lives of the expatriates at the height of their influence and when Tom Ellis, as
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District Commissioner, was ‘the greatest of men’.58 This would be a better book
at half the length, but it must be conceded that some of its value lies in its detail.
Hollinshed arrived in the Western Highlands nearly a decade earlier in 1956 and
she records the struggle to establish the coffee plantations, the flourishing of
the plantations, and the deterioration resulting from crime and resurgent tribal
fighting. She suffered personal assault and as a reporter for the Post-Courier
wrote of the warfare through the Nebilyer Valley in the 1970s: thousands of
coffee trees and many houses were destroyed, at least 15 people killed and some
‘of the injured died, others were too afraid to go to hospital and some lived
maimed for the rest of their lives’.59
Judith Hollinshed and her husband left Papua New Guinea at the end of the
1980s and she returned to bury his ashes at Verona plantation in 2000 to see
‘bleak evidence of lawlessness’.60 Maureen Carlon arrived at Kiripia mission
station in 1969 and taught there until 1980. With Mount Giluwe in the distance,
Carlon was living in an area more isolated from the obvious changes and violence;
and she has chosen to say little of any disturbing reverberations that came into
the valley. Inez Baranay and Kathy Golski were in the Highlands well after
independence, Golski at Rulna out of Mount Hagen in 1981 and Baranay at
Wabag in 1992. Neither had a position of authority over Papua New
Guineans—and did not expect one. In fact, one of Baranay’s problems was the
assertiveness of her Papuan New Guinean boss. Both women have a sense of
being guests in another country, and of having to tolerate inconvenience and
negotiate for much that they would have liked to have taken for granted. Both
are articulate, have absorbed much about gender, colonialism and third world
aid, and both accept that no culture has a monopoly on virtue or evil. In memories
and judgments they are further from the women of the Territory than the passing
of 20 or 30 years would suggest. The changing perceptions of place and roles
are apparent, but less extreme, in the deft impressions recorded by Jean Bourke
and others in Our Time But Not Our Place.
Before 1975, the government field officers, the mission patriarchs and the
independent adventurers were writing their books within a context of easily
measured progress. For the government officers there were increasing numbers
of peoples being contacted and brought under control. New sub-districts and
patrol posts were being opened, peace imposed, and obviously repugnant
practices such as cannibalism, payback killings and infanticide suppressed. With
a few injections and a wider range of foods the people were healthier. People
were concentrated into better built and cleaner villages, and tracks between
villages were cut and maintained. The police, village officials and dokta
bois—under the direction of government officers who eliminated the few
backsliders—were efficient and loyal. The planters cleared the jungle, tended
the orderly tree crops and provided the revenue that paid for government. Their
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labourers returned home taller, stronger, knowing the ways of the cash economy
and equipped with a lingua franca.
The missionaries saw themselves coming among peoples living in fear,
ignorance and dirt. They gave them literacy in their own languages, freed them
from superstition and malign sorcery, provided them with modern health
services, and brought them the intellectual, spiritual and institutional benefits
of a world religion and a promise of a life beyond death. All had ready self-images
and metaphors: they were explorers, pioneers on an untamed frontier, manning
outposts of empire, civilisers, and peace-makers. They replaced stone with steel;
they were the bringers of light into the earth’s last dark corners; and in the end
they were the makers of a democratic and Christian nation. Even if the
biographers avoided triumphalism, and conceded that they went to the Territory
to do good for themselves, they had still worked within a greater scheme of
progress. They had, as it was sometimes said, ‘done good while doing well’.
Those who have written reminiscences since 1980, and certainly since 1990,
have written either as builders of institutions that have failed, decayed or been
replaced, or they have gone to a foreign country with obligations to abide by
local laws and customs and work within institutions where power is held by
Papua New Guineans. Missionaries, particularly those from the old missions—the
Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, Methodist, and London Missionary Society—must
now face the facts that they might suffer assault; and that, in areas where they
were once dominant and in the towns, charismatic movements have captured
the enthusiasm, and collection money, of many Papua New Guineans. But the
institutional strength of the Catholic, Lutheran and Seventh Day Adventist
churches has remained important, and where the state has not been able to meet
the needs of its citizens, the missions may have increased in importance. The
crowds greeting visiting hot-gospellers, the numbers of people claiming to be
‘born-again’, and the assertions of their faith by leaders indicate that Papua New
Guinea’s belief systems have been strongly influenced by over 130 years of
missionary endeavour.
The government officers who brought peace now read of resurgent tribal
fighting, a 10-year low-level war on Bougainville and that razor wire is standard
on houses in the towns. Those who took ‘government’ to villages know that
now no government services reach many of those villages. Kiap government was
for many an interlude, not a transformation. The miners have seen the destruction
of one of the world’s great mines on Bougainville, the transfer of ownership of
Ok Tedi, the ravaging of the alluvial field at Mount Kare and the fluctuations
on the oil and gas fields between riches and corruption and violence. Elizabeth
Thurston, the daughter of a planter and later the wife and partner of a planter,
wrote of their unlocked plantation house in the 1960s: ‘None of us could have
believed that in the next decade or so this presumption of innocence and
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enduring stability would be replaced by fear, uncertainty, a sense of anarchy
and a groundswell of political pressure and change’.61
That shift in the context in which biographies have been written in the last
twenty or so years could be expected to change them—in tone, in reflection on
what might have been done better, and in assessing the legacy. In practice, the
impact has varied. The government field officers have largely stopped writing.
Perhaps they are inhibited because those ready images of the outpost of empire,
the boys’ own adventure on the frontier and bringing the benefits of civilization
to ignorant tribesmen have so passed from fashion their resurrection seems
impossible. Perhaps, too, some are conscious that Bill Gammage in his writing
on Jim Taylor and John Black and the Hagen-Sepik patrol has introduced a level
of frankness and complexity that they could not, and may not want to, reach.62
But it may also be because they would have to write defensively—to explain
why their peace was for many an interruption, not a legacy. The silence of the
field officers is unfortunate: we need to know more about what they were doing
when they were not on patrol. We need to hear their own tough self-evaluation
of trying to set up local government councils, conduct national elections,
introduce the first Papua New Guinean patrol officers and specialists into their
districts, and maintain peace when their authority was shifting to others. The
continuing reluctance of most of the bureaucrats in Canberra and Port Moresby
to write memoirs means that social scientists and historians have no equivalent
to Paul Hasluck’s Time for Building to help them interpret government files.
Resources for administrative and political histories may be thin, but the
possibilities of other sorts of histories have increased. Now there are the memoirs
of film-makers, dramatists, literature and art teachers, geologists, self-taught
mechanical engineers, mine workers, recruiters, accountants, school teachers,
anthropologists, wildlife managers, hydro-electricity plant planners, Pacific
Islands Regiment officers, planters and civilian pilots.
The missionaries have continued to write, and the range of writers has
widened to include the lay workers and subordinates who will not have mission
colleges and scholarships named after them. In their lives there is an emphasis
on achievement, and it is undoubtedly justified. For little material reward and
often putting up with physical hardship, they taught, healed and gave people
the first printed texts in their own languages. A few still have the piety, fervour
and faith of the prewar mission books: these are lives fulfilling a greater design.
But in many in the last few pages there is now a brief summary of crime and
corruption and competing beliefs. Seven years after leaving Papua New Guinea
in 1971, Betty Scarlett and her daughters returned to the house in Port Moresby
used by transiting missionaries. She said, ‘Our welcome in this wholly expatriate
establishment was cool. They seemed to have interest only in Faith Missions,
not those like our United Church …’63
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Australians in Papua and New Guinea
Many mission biographies also now include a defence against charges of
suppressing benign and creative elements in local cultures. The excesses, they
claim, were often carried out by converts, not by overseas missionaries. Marjorie
Deasey comes closest to admitting to a ‘life of failure’ after more than 30 years
among the Gogodala. Having faced accusations about destroying Gogodala culture
and being caught up in local politics, Marjorie and Dudley Deasey flew out of
Balimo with no farewell. They recovered in Port Moresby where their house
was a second home to the Gogodala, and after Dudley died Marjorie was feted
on her return to Balimo. Marjorie Deasey’s self-assessment of the dedicated
missionary allows glimpses of opposing arguments, the possibility of failure and
the personal anguish that would follow. In the end, the Deaseys could claim
success, but it is not triumphant.
What is common to the great diversity of lives now recorded is that by going
to Papua New Guinea they claim to have had their lives enriched. Even those
who were in Papua New Guinea for just two or three years, regard Papua New
Guinea as having been important in who they became and what they remember.
Seen in this way, the biographers are not claiming to have done good, but almost
incidentally to have had good done to them.
The most obvious change that has taken place has been the increase in the
number of women writers. Whether church or secular, or from pre- or
post-independence Papua New Guinea, in the last 25 years women have been
more ready to record their lives. They have had less immediate responsibility
for policies, and less responsibility for their implementation, so they have been
free of the restraints that may have inhibited some men. Also, women who have
been aware of the feminist movement and have changed their roles or aspirations
in the workforce and in their relationships with men may be more ready to adapt
to the changes that came with the transition from ‘territory’ to ‘colony’ to foreign
country. Whatever the reason, many women have been ready to accept the
present and concentrate on the immediate task—whether that was running a
health clinic in the West Sepik, opening a school in the Highlands, or trying to
introduce a literacy program for womens’ groups. Often the most engaging and
revealing moments are not incidents of great drama—they are the memories of
nights spent on pitching small boats, clinging to small children, chucking up
over the side, and accepting the impossibility of using the only toilet, a bucket;
or noticing that the school children had placed the long buds of the red flowers
of the tulip tree on their desks—they contained water and were used to clean
their slates; or trying to explain to a 16-year-old son why he could not ride a
motor bike exuberantly in front of a group of Highlanders who once would have
been entertained but were now enraged because this was an arrogant display
of what they did not have and could not do in their own country.
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The men obviously vary widely from the fundamentalist missionaries to the
knockabout labourers, but the women reveal a wider range of attitudes. No man
writes with Kidu’s commitment to a Papua New Guinean community, or with
Baranay’s distance and criticism of contemporary Highlands. The diversity of
the women is most obvious in their vocabularies. While some women can write
of having to ‘slosh along in pig shit’, ask ‘What the fuck do I want?’, or recall
having a ‘hot fanny’, for other women such terms—and implicit values—are as
alien as an iceberg in Moresby Harbour.
The servicemen and women who were ‘in the islands’ during World War II
have had much encouragement to write. The increasing crowds at Anzac Day
ceremonies, the repeated public appearances of prime ministers at battle sites
and war graves, the affirmation of the values of a nation displayed and reaffirmed
in war, and the many celebrations of the 50th
and the 60th
anniversaries have
increased consciousness of war service. The emphasis has been on particular
battles, theatres and experiences: the prisoners of war of the Japanese and the
battles in Papua New Guinea, particularly Kokoda. This has been consistent
with the desire to bring the symbols of nationhood closer to home, to diminish
distant and empire service, and to make central the battles in immediate defence
of Australia and without moral ambiguity. The soldiers did not aim to convert,
rule or make money out of Papua New Guineans. Their memories are set against
the ‘special relationship’, their dependence on the carriers and the carriers’
generous response.The servicemen and women therefore can exempt themselves
from any of the sins of commission and omission of colonial masters and nation
builders, and they write to record experiences seen as critical in the making of
their own nation. And it is not only men who were in battle who write, but
many of the support troops.
Social scientists now, and historians now and in the future, have a mass of
memoirs to exploit. Where the archival records of governments, missions and
companies are largely written by men, the memoirs are being taken over by
women. The division between male political and economic history and female
social history seems to be widening. In this two-stream world of enquiry, the
value of those few who bridge the streams—such as Carol Kidu who is as
revealing on politics as she is on social history—are all the more important.64
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Australians in Papua and New Guinea
Bibliography
A selection of books published since 1980 primarily by or about
Australians who went to Papua New Guinea
Abbotts, Margaret, One Man’s Life: Staniforth Smith, Books and Stuff, Welshpool,
1994.
Abel, Gordon, To War and Back: a young soldier’s journey through the terrors and
boredoms of World War Two, privately published, 1999.
Allen, Jim, Goodbye to the Territory: no ken kam bek! privately published, 1999.
Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vols 1-16, Melbourne University Press,
Melbourne, 1966-2.
Balfe, John, … And Far From Home: flying RAAF transports in the Pacific War
and after, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1985.
Baranay, Inez, Rascal Rain: a year in Papua New Guinea, Angus and Robertson,
Sydney, 1994.
Barnes, Robert, Village Ministry Breakthrough, privately published, 1983.
Black, Geoff, Against All Odds: the survival of Australian Z-Special Unit Commando
‘Mick’ Dennis behind enemy lines, privately published, 2004.
Bloomfield, David, Rabaul Diary: escaping captivity in 1942, Australian Military
History Publications, Loftus, 2001.
Beavis, A. Halliday, My Life in Papua 1929-1967, privately published,1994.
Beier, Ulli, Decolonising the Mind: the impact of the University on culture and
identity in Papua New Guinea, 1971-74, Pandanus Books, Canberra, 2005.
Bell, Less and Gillian Shadbolt, New Guinea Engineer, Rosenberg Publishing,
Dural, 2002.
Bellair, John, Amateur Soldier: an Australian machine gunner’s memories of World
War II, Spectrum, Melbourne, 1984.
Blaskett, Geoffrey, Islands and Mountains, privately published, no date (1990?).
Bice, Raymond, A Victoria Cross on Bougainville 24 July 1945, privately published,
1999(?).
Biggs, Blanche, From Papua with Love, Australian Board of Missions, Sydney,
1987(?).
Boehm, Ken, Rabaul Erupts: my experiences at Sonoma Care Centre during the
Rabaul volcanic eruptions, H and R Dixon, Morisset, 1999.
Bourke, M. Jean, et al, Our Time but not Our Place: voices of expatriate women in
Papua New Guinea, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1993.
Bowman, Alice, Not Now Tomorrow: ima nai ishita, privately published, 1996.
264
Telling Pacific Lives
Boys, Pat, Coconuts and Tearooms, privately published, 1993.
Brennan, Niall, Damien Parer: cameraman, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne,
1994.
Braga, Stuart, Kokoda Commander: a life of Major-General ‘Tubby’ Allen, Oxford
University Press, Melbourne, 2004.
Briggs, Keith, Potato Milkshakes and Other Aspects of Pioneer Missionary Life,
Asia Pacific Christian Mission, Melbourne, 1995(?).
Brown, Rodger, Talatala: Kath and Rodger Brown’s life in pre- and post-war PNG
and their escape from the Japanese, privately published, 2001
Brune, Peter, We Band of Brothers: a biography of Ralph Honner, soldier and
statesman, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2000.
Burke, Gail, Meeting the Challenge – Australian teachers in Papua New Guinea,
Pre-Independence 1955-1975, privately published, 2005.
Bywater, Ern, No Names – No Pack Drill, Royal Australian Army Resources and
Reproduction Unit, Puckapunyal, 1989(?).
Buxton, Keith, Papua New Guinea: the golden years, Privately published, No
Date.
Carlon, Maureen, Taim long Kiripia: my time at Kiripia 1969-1980, Killabakh,
NSW, 2000.
Carroll, John, Good Fortune Flew with Me: memoirs of John W. Carroll’s tours of
operational duty during World War II, privately published, 2002.
Center, Rus, An Armchair Ride, Seaview Press, Adelaide, 1997.
Chinnery, Sarah, Malaguna Road: the Papua and New Guinea Diaries of Sarah
Chinnery, National Library of Australia, Canberra, 1998.
Clarence, Margaret, Yield Not to the Wind, privately published, 1982.
Cleland, Dame Rachel, Papua New Guinea: pathways to Independence official and
family life 1951-1975, Artlook Books, Perth, 1983.
Cole, Tom, The Last Paradise, Random House, Sydney, 1990.
Collins, Lloyd, New Guinea Narrative 1942-1943: incorporating the wartime diary
of a cipher operator, privately published, 2001.
Connolly, Bob, Making ‘Black Harvest’: warfare, film-making and living dangerously
in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, ABC Books, Sydney, 2005.
Cooke, John, Working in Papua-New Guinea 1931-1946, Lara Publications, Mt
Gravatt, 1983.
Coombes, David, Morshead: hero of Tobruk and El Alamein, Oxford University
Press, Melbourne, 2001.
265
Australians in Papua and New Guinea
Damman, Sheila, The Lieutenant and Her Tin Trunk, privately published, 1999(?).
Day, David, John Curtin: a life, HarperCollins, Sydney, 1999.
Deane-Butcher, William, Fighter Squadron Doctor: 75 Squadron Royal Australian
Air Force New Guinea 1942, privately published, 1990.
Deasey, Marjorie, Never Say I Can’t, privately published, 2004.
Dixon, Jonathan, Papuan Islands Pilgrimage, privately published, 1988(?).
Down, Goldie, When Father Disappeared, Eben Publishers, Mt Colah (?), 1994(?).
Downing, Doris, The Bridle Path: Doris Downing, her life and letters, ed. by her
sister Joyce, privately published, 1991.
Downs, Ian, The Last Mountain: a life in Papua New Guinea, University of
Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1986.
Eather, Steve, Desert Sands, Jungle Lands: a biography of Major General Ken
Eather, CB, CBE, DSO, DSC, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2003.
Edgar, Bill, Warrior of Kokoda: a biography of Brigadier Arnold Potts, Allen &
Unwin, Sydney, 1999.
Edmonds, Laurie, Down Through the years: the story of my life, privately published,
1996.
Edwards, Doreen, Woman of Vision: Sister Catherine O’Sullivan Daughter of our
Lady of the Sacred Heart also known as Mother Flavia and ‘The Little
Flower of Rabaul’, privately published, no date.
Ennis, Helen, Man with a Camera: Frank Hurley overseas, National Library of
Australia, Canberra, 2002.
Epstein, T. Scarlett, Swimming Upstream: a Jewish woman from Vienna, Valentine
Mitchell, London, 2005.
Farquhar, Murray, Derrick, V.C., Rigby, Adelaide, 1982.
Fenton, Peter, Olive Weston: the heroic life of a World War II nurse, HarperCollins,
Sydney, 2003.
Fisher, Fedora, Raphael Cilento: a biography, University of Queensland Press
Brisbane, 1994.
Fisk, E.K., Hardly Ever a Dull Moment, National Centre for Development Studies,
History of Development Studies 5, Australian National University,
Canberra, 1995.
Fowke, John, Kundi Dan, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1995.
Fox, Peter, Stephenson called Peter: a life, Peter Fox, Crawford House, Bathurst,
1995.
Flannery, Tim, Throwim Way Leg: an adventure, Text, Melbourne, 1998.
266
Telling Pacific Lives
Frazer, Ian, God’s Maverick, Albatross Books, Sydney, 1992.
Freund, A.P.H., Missionary Turns Spy, Lutheran Homes, Adelaide, 1989.
Freund, Dorothea, I Will Uphold You: the memoirs of Dorothea M. Freund, nee
Ey, Lutheran Publishing, Adelaide, 1985.
Fulton, E.T.W., No Turning Back: a memoir, Pandanus Books, Canberra, 2005.
Gallaway, Jack, The Odd Couple: Blamey and MacArthur at war, University of
Queensland Press, Brisbane, 2000.
Gately, Arthur, A Call to Arms: war service with the RAAF 1942-1946, diary
notes and memoirs of Arthur Gately, Aerospace Centre, RAAF Base,
Fairbairn, 2003.
Geldard, Wal, Forked Lightning, privately published, 1998.
Gibbes, Bobby, You Live But Once: an autobiography, privately published,1994.
Glinster, O.E., Forgotten Hero, privately published, 1995,
Golski, Kathy, Watched by Ancestors: an Australian family in Papua New Guinea,
Sceptre, Sydney, 1998.
Gomme, Brian, A Gunner’s Eye View, privately published, 1997.
Gray, Laurel, Sinabada Woman among Warriors: a biography of the Rev. Sue
Rankin, Joint Board of Christian Education, Melbourne, 1988.
Graham, Vincent, At Scarlet Beach: the story of a soldier, privately published,
1995(?).
Green, Judith, These were my children, Landin Press, Adelaide, 1989.
Green, Olwyn, The Name’s Still Charlie, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane,
1993.
Hamlyn-Harris, Geoffrey, Through Mud and Blood to Victory, Wild & Woolley,
Sydney, 1993.
Hand, David, Modawa: Papua New Guinea and me 1946-2002, Port Moresby,
2002.
Hargesheimer, Fred, The School that Fell from the Sky, eBookstand Books, Auburn,
2002.
Harkness, Chris, New Guinea: the Wahgi impact, Robert Brown, Cooparoo, 1994.
Harle, Charles, A Rising Son of Empire, Mostly Unsung Military History, Melbourne,
1993.
Henderson, James, Onward Boy Soldiers: the battle for Milne Bay, University of
Western Australia Press, Perth, 1992.
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Australians in Papua and New Guinea
Henderson, Margaret, Yours Sincerely, Tom: a lost child of empire, privately
published, 2000.
Henderson, Margaret, Yours Sincerely, Tom, Revisited, Seaview Press, Adelaide,
2005.
Hoe, Susanna, At Home in Paradise: a house and garden in Papua New Guinea,
Women’s History Press, Oxford, 2003.
Hollinshed, Judith, Innocence to Independence: life in the Papua New Guinea
Highlands 1956-1980, Pandanus Books, Canberra, 2004.
Holmes, John, Smiles of Fortune: a memoir of the war against Japan 1943-45,
Kangaroo Press, Sydney, 2001.
Hogan, Tom, Nace and Bill, From Grabben Gullen to Kokoda, privately published,
1992.
Hogbin, H. Ian, Conversations with Ian Hogbin/Jeremy Beckett, Oceania Monographs,
35, University of Sydney, Sydney, 1989.
Hooper, Alan, Love War & Letters PNG 1940-45: an autobiography 1940-1945,
Robert Brown, Coorparoo, 1994.
Horner, David, General Vasey’s War, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne,
1992.
Horner, David, Blamey: the Commander-in-Chief, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1998.
Horner, David, Defence Supremo: Sir Frederick Shedden and the making of Australian
defence policy, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2000.
Howard, Jane, Margaret Mead: a life, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1984.
Hungerford, T.A.G., A Knockabout with a Slouch Hat: an autobiographical collection
1942-1951, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Fremantle, 1985.
Jackson, Kingsley, Not Always Wise, privately published, 2004.
Jackson, Patricia and Arthur Jackson, eds, ‘A Lot to Fight For’: the war diaries
and letters of S/Ldr J.F.Jackson, DFC, privately published, 1996.
James, Clarrie, ANGAU One Man Law, Australian Military History Publications,
Loftus, 1999.
John, Arthur, Fortune Favoured Me, privately published, 1999.
Johnson, L.W., Colonial Sunset: Australia and Papua New Guinea 1970-74, University
of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1983.
Jones, Peter, The Reluctant Volunteer in Service with the Ninth Division 1940-
1945, Australian Military History Publications, Loftus, 1997.
268
Telling Pacific Lives
Kendall, Henry, Not Forever in Green Pastures: the personal memoirs of the Rt
Revd H.T.A.Kendall MA, Diocese of North Queensland, Townsville,
1988.
Kepchia, John, M.I.A. over Rabaul, privately published, 1986.
Kidu, Carol, A Remarkable Journey, Longman, Sydney, 2002.
Kingsmill, John, No Hero: memoirs of a raw recruit in World War II, Hale &
Iremonger, Sydney, 1994.
Klitzman, Robert, The Trembling Mountain: a personal account of kuru, cannibals,
and mad cow disease, Plenum Press, New York, 1998.
Knie, Paul and Eleanor, To the Ends of the Earth: the life story of Ida Voss,
privately published, 2004.
Kuelinad, Marlon, My Memories of Life in the Forest: images of a forest village in
the Gogol Valley, Pearson Education, Melbourne, 2004.
Lal, Brij, ed., Pacific Places, Pacific Histories: essays in honor of Robert C. Kiste,
University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu, 2004.
Langmore, Diane, Missionary Lives: Papua, 1874-1914, University of Hawai’i
Press, Honolulu, 1989.
Laughton, Valerie, From Housework to Adventure, privately published, 1978.
Leahy, Tom, Markham Tom: memoirs of an Australian pioneer in Papua New
Guinea, edited by Chris Ashton, Crawford House, Adelaide, 2002.
Lewis, Bessie, Nupela Misis: an Australian nurse in Papua New Guinea, Lowden
Publishing, Melbourne, 2002.
Litchfield, Geoff, Fly Boy, privately published, 2002.
Lloyd, Stephanie, Marlena Jeffery and Jenny Hearn, Taim Bilong Misis Bilong
Armi: memories of wives of Australian servicemen in Papua New Guinea
1951-1975, Pandanus Books, Canberra, 2001.
Lock, Lester, Locks that Opened Doors, Signs Publishing, Warburton, No Date.
McDonald, A.K., War Memories of A.K.McDonald: a Bougainville non-combatant
remembers, privately published, 1994.
McDonald, Neil, War Cameraman: the story of Damien Parer, Lothian, Melbourne,
1994.
McDowell, Nancy, The Mundugumor: from the field notes of Margaret Mead and
Reo Fortune, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, 1991.
McFarlane, Brian, We band of Brothers: a true Australian adventure story, privately
published, 2000.
McFarlane, Milton, What God Did with my Life, Dixon, Morisset, 1999(?).
269
Australians in Papua and New Guinea
McGregor, Alasdair, Frank Hurley: a photographer’s life, Viking, Melbourne,
2004
Mackie, Ronald, Prelude to Battle of Wau, privately published, 1990.
Maclean, Edna, My Loves and Hates, privately published, 1990.
McCosker, Anne, Masked Eden: a history of the Australians in New Guinea,
privately published, 1998.
McMurria, James, Trial and Triumph, privately published, 1991.
Marks, Bill, The Fall of the Dice, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Fremantle, 1991.
Marne, Jack, The World around the Corner, Seaview Press, Adelaide, 2001.
Masters, Peter, Born Lucky, Seaview Press, Adelaide, 1998
Medew, Norman, Up North in Fortythree: the story of a spitfire squadron in the
Island War, privately published, 1989.
Mennis, Mary, Ferdy: The story of Father Ferdinand Parer O.F.M., 1910-1997,
Lalong Enterprises, Aspley, 2003.
Mitchell, Rob, One Bloke’s Story, 1937 to 1946, Henry Mitchell’s MM escape from
Rabaul, privately published, 1998.
Morris, Harry, Memories of New Guinea: Rabaul 1937-1942, privately published,
no date.
Nason, Joseph and Robert Holt, Horio You Next Die, Pacific Rim Press, Carlsbad,
1987.
Nelson, Hank ed., The War Diaries of Eddie Allan Stanton: Papua 1942-45, New
Guinea 1945-6, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1996.
Neale, Bruce, Nine Lives Had I, privately published, 1991(?).
Nikakis, Gillian, He’s Not Coming Home: a story of love, loss and discovery in
Rabaul during World War 2, Lothian, Melbourne, 2005.
Nott, Lorraine, CEB: Exploits of an Uncommon Man, Pioneer Press, Warwick,
1989.
Oates, Lynette, Not in the Common Mould: the life of Dr David Lithgow, Wycliffe
Bible Translators, Kangaroo Ground, 1997.
O’Brien, Glen, Kingsley Ridgway: pioneer with a passion, his life and legacy, Wesleyan
Methodist Church of Australia, Melbourne, 1996. (The second
half of this book is an autobiography by Kingsley Ridgway.)
Olson, William, The Years Away, Wordspec, Canberra, 1993.
Pate, Michael, An Entertaining War, Dreamweaver Books, Sydney, 1986.
Park, Edwards, Nanette, Andre Deutsch, London, 1978 (Norton, 1977)
270
Telling Pacific Lives
Pearson, Arthur, Brothers Battlers and Bastards, Boolarong Press, Maroochydore,
1995.
Pearce, Lionel, Feathers of a Snow Angel, Memories of a child in exile, Fremantle
Arts Centre Press, Fremantle, 2002.
Perversi, Frank, From Tobruk to Borneo: memoirs of an Italian-Aussie volunteer,
Rosenberg, Sydney, 2002.
Phillips, Anna, As the Catalina Flies: a Hungarian girl growing up in Bougainville,
Butterfly Books, Springwood, 1993.
Phillips, Norman, My Highway of Life, privately published, 1995.
Pinney, Peter, The Barbarians: a soldier’s New Guinea diary, University of
Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1988.
Pinney, Peter, The Glass Cannon: a Bougainville diary 1944-45, University of
Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1990.
Pinney, Peter, The Devils’ Garden: Solomon Islands war diary, 1945, University
of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1992.
Porter, Robert, Paul Hasluck: a political biography, University of Western Australia
Press, Perth, 1993.
Puffett, Dennis, With a Bit of Luck, Charles Darwin University Press, Darwin,
2004.
Pybus, Cassandra, The Devil and James McAuley, University of Queensland Press,
Brisbane, 2001.
Raggett, Sidney, All About Sid: the story of a gunner in World War II, privately
published, 1991.
Ralph, Len, The Ramblings of a Wandering Radar-Man, privately published,
2004.
Read, Kenneth, Return to the High Valley: coming full circle, University of California
Press, Berkeley, 1986.
Rees, Derrick, By Then I was Thirteen, Lexington Avenue, Sydney, 1999.
Reynolds, Max, Experiences in Vulcanology & Life in the Territory of Papua New
Guinea 1953-1957, privately published, no date.
Rolleston, Frank, Not a Conquering Hero: the Siege of Tobruk, Battles of Milne
Bay, Buna, Shaggy Ridge, Pacific Rim Press, Currimundi, 1984.
Ross, James (Jim), My First Seventy Years, privately published, 1991.
Rothgeb, Wayne, New Guinea Skies: a fighter pilot’s view of World War II, Iowa
State University Press, Ames, 1992.
Rudge, G.A., A Medast’s Way Part 1 1943-46, privately published, 1987.
271
Australians in Papua and New Guinea
Rudge, G.A., Halfway to the Sun, privately published, 1989.
Rule, Beyond the Limestone Barrier, DSAMC Education, Tamworth, 2001.
Rybarz, Beverley, The Bridge Builder, Wakefield Press, Kent Town, 2005.
Sandell, Arthur, Dicing with Death: an airman’s account of his training and operations
against Japan, Aerospace Centre, RAAF Base, Fairbairn, 2001.
Scarlett, Betty, Oscar X-Ray Calling: the story of the Scarlett family in Papua New
Guinea 1962-1971, privately published, 2005.
Schacht, Tod, My War on Bougainville: war under the Southern Cross, Australian
Military History Publications, Loftus, 1999.
Sibson, Roy, My Life As I Saw It: boots ‘n’ all, privately published, 1997.
Sinclair, James, Last Frontiers: the explorations of Ivan Champion of Papua, Pacific
Press, Gold Coast, 1988.
Sherwood, Barbara, Too Long in the Tropicals: a tale of the Papua New Guinea in
the fifteen years after World War Two, Parker Pattinson Publishing,
Douglas Park, 2003.
Smith, Michael French, Village on the Edge: changing times in Papua New Guinea,
University of Hawai’i, Honolulu, 2002
Spate, Oskar, On the Margins of History: from the Punjab to Fiji, National Centre
for Development Studies, History of Development Studies, 3, Australian
National University, Canberra, 1991.
Keith Smith, World War II Wasn’t All Hell, Hutchinson, Sydney, 1988.
Speck, Winsome and Ormond, Into the Unknown: featuring a life-time of adventures,
anecdotes and evidences of God’s hand in the period 1948-1998,
privately published, 1999.
Stannage, Tom, Kay Saunders and Richard Nile, Paul Hasluck in Australian
History: civic personality and public life, University of Queensland Press,
Brisbane, 1998.
Stubbings, Leon, Command Wisely: the biography of Lieutenant Colonel Lee William
Fargher, privately published, 1996.
Steward, H.D., Recollections of Regimental Medical Officer, Melbourne University
Press, Melbourne, 1983.
Stone, John, ed., El Tigre: Frank Holland, M.B.E. – Commando, Coastwatcher,
Oceans Enterprises, Yarram, 1999.
Tarlington, George, Shifting Sands & Savage Jungle: the memoirs of a frontline
infantryman, Australian Military History Publications, Loftus, 1994.
272
Telling Pacific Lives
Thomson, Phil, Whitefella Wandering, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Fremantle,
2001.
Thorpe, Ken, My Wartime Story, Brolga Press, Gundaroo, 1996.
Underwood, Polly, The Reflections of an Old Grey Mare: a salute to those who
served, privately published, no date.
Veale, Lionel, Wewak Mission: coastwatchers at war in New Guinea, privately
published, 1996. And see his novel, And then there were two … A New
Guinea saga of life before and during the war against Japan, Privately
published, 2000.
Wallace, Doug, You Asked! Remember? Privately published, 2000(?).
Walpole, Brian, My War: life is for living, ABC Books, Sydney, 2004
Weate, Mark, Bill Newton V.C.: the short life of a RAAF hero, Australian Military
History Publications, Loftus, 1999.
Wetherell, David, ed., The New Guinea Diaries of Philip Strong 1936-1945,
Macmillan, Melbourne, 1981.
Wetherell, David and C. Carr-Gregg, Camilla C. H. Wedgwood 1901-1955: a life,
New South Wales University Press, Sydney, 1990.
Wetherell, David, Charles Abel and the Kwato Mission of Papua New Guinea
1891-1975, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1996.
White, Nancy, Sharing the Climb, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1991.
Whitelock, Ian, Missionary Memories (and Mishaps): family missionary life in
Papua New Guinea 1960-1971, privately published, 2005.
Whitrod, Ray, Before I Sleep: memoirs of a modern police commissioner, University
of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 2001.
Woodward, Jack, Under it Down Under: surviving in slit trenches, privately
published, 1996.
Woodward, Jack, Singing for the Unsung: WW2 New Guinea, privately published,
2000.
Young, Michael and Julia Clark, An Anthropologist in Papua: the photography of
F.E. Williams 1922-39, Crawford House, Adelaide, 2001.
Young, Michael, Malinowski: odyssey of an anthropologist 1884-1920, Yale University
Press, London, 2004.
Zigas, Vincent, Laughing Death: the untold story of Kuru, Humana Press, Clifton
NJ, 1990.
 
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Of those listed, I have not seen: Barnes, Boehm, Bywater, Damman, Dixon, Down,
Glinster, Graham, Hoe, Jackson, K., Kueland, McDonald A.K., Mennis, Pearce,
Ralph, Stubbings, Wallace, Whitelock.
Hank Nelson (December 2005)
Biographies Published since December 2005
Chalmers, Gloria, Kundus, Cannibals and Cargo Cults, privately published, 2006.
Genty, Owen, The Planter, privately published, 2006.
Guntner, Mary W., Doctor in Paradise: challenges and rewards in medical service
New Guinea 1958-1970, Crawford House, Adelaide, 2006.
Hurrell, A. Lloyd, Hurrell’s Way: an autobiography, Crawford House, Adelaide,
2006.
Huxley, Jim, New Guinea Experience: gold, war & peace, Australian Military
History Publications, Loftus, 2007.
Jephcott, Barbara, Bombs to Beef: development of Dumpu Cattle Station, Papua
New Guinea, privately published, 2007.
Murray, John, The Minnows of Triton: policing, politics, crime and corruption in
the South Pacific Islands, privately published, 2005.
Smith, Chris Viner, Australia’s Forgotten Frontline: the unsung police who held
our PNG front line, privately published, 2007.
Sturt, John, Loving Life: one physician’s journey, DayStar Publications, Auckland,
2006.
ENDNOTES
1 With one or two exceptions, all books listed have been published since 1980.
2 Peter Brune, A Bastard of a Place: the Australians in Papua (Sydney 2003); Peter Fitzsimons, Kokoda
(Sydney 2004); and Paul Ham, Kokoda (Sydney 2004).
3 Sydney Rowell, Full Circle (Melbourne 1974); Lieutenant General Robert Eichelberger, Jungle Road
to Tokyo (London 1951); George Kenny, General Kenny Reports: a personal history of the Pacific War
(New York 1949); Clayton James, The Years of MacArthur: 1941-1945, vol. 2, (Boston 1975) remains one
of the best on MacArthur in the Pacific; Steven Bullard, ‘“The Great enemy of humanity”: malaria and
the Japanese medical corps in Papua, 1942-43’, Journal of Pacific History, 39:2 (2004), 203-20.
4 Geoffrey Hamlyn-Harris, Through Mud and Blood to Victory (Sydney 1993), 50-1.
5 Beros says it was written on 14 October 1942, The Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels and Other Verses (Sydney n.
d.). The poem was in the Courier Mail and the Women’s Weekly before it appeared in the book. It was
certainly published in Australia before the end of 1942.
6 Tom Hogan, Nace and Bill, From Grabben Gullen to Kokoda, privately published (1992), 106.
7 Alan Hooper, Love War & Letters PNG 1940-45: an autobiography 1940-1945 (Coorparoo 1994), 142.
8 Also quoted in David Wilson, The Decisive Factor: 75 & 76 Squadrons—Port Moresby and Milne Bay
1942 (Melbourne 1991), 46-50.
9 Patricia and Arthur Jackson (eds), ‘A Lot to Fight For’: the war diaries and letters of S/Ldr J.F. Jackson,
DFC, privately published (1996), 230.
10 Ken Thorpe, My Wartime Story (Gundaroo 1996), 37.
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11 Ibid., 33.
12 Ibid., 64.
13 Norman Medew, Up North in Fortythree: the story of a spitfire squadron in the Island War, privately
published (1989), 31. Carroll also comments on the peoples of Goodenough and Kiriwina.
14 Bill Marks, The Fall of the Dice (Fremantle 1991), 113.
15 John Carroll, Good Fortune Flew with Me: memoirs of John W. Carroll’s tours of operational duty during
World War II, privately published (2002), has several good photographs—of more than Papuan women.
16 John Kingsmill, No Hero: memoirs of a raw recruit in World War II (Sydney 1994), 160.
17 Hogan, From Grabben Gullen to Kokoda , 121.
18 Lloyd Collins, New Guinea Narrative 1942-1943: incorporating the wartime diary of a cipher operator,
privately published (2001), 6.
19 Ibid., 102.
20 Jack Stebbings to Bert Collinson (n.d.), letter collection in Salvation Army Heritage Centre, Bourke
St, Melbourne.
21 John Holmes, Smiles of Fortune: a memoir of the war against Japan 1943-45 (Sydney 2001), 81.
22 Frank Perversi, From Tobruk to Borneo: memoirs of an Italian-Aussie volunteer (Sydney 2002), 131.
23 James Henderson, Onward Boy Soldiers: the battle for Milne Bay (Perth 1992), 161.
24 Collins, New Guinea Narrative, 112 and 95.
25 Peter Jones, The Reluctant Volunteer in Service with the Ninth Division 1940-1945 (Loftus 1997), 161.
26 John Bellair, Amateur Soldier: an Australian machine gunner’s memories of World War II (Melbourne
1984), viii.
27 William Deane-Butcher, Fighter Squadron Doctor: 75 Squadron Royal Australian Air Force New Guinea
1942, privately published (1990), 18.
28 Ibid., 27.
29 Polly Underwood, The Reflections of an Old Grey Mare: a salute to those who served, privately published
(n. d.), 14.
30 Ibid., 42.
31 Alan Powell, The Third Force: ANGAU’s New Guinea War (Melbourne 2003). Also, Frazer has written
of Ed Tscharke, a medical assistant in Angau.
32 Clarrie James, ANGAU: one man law (Loftus 1999), 81; G.A. Rudge, A Medast’s Way, Part 1: 1943-46,
privately published (1987), 37.
33 Gordon Abel, To War and Back: a young soldier’s journey through the terrors and boredoms of World
War Two, privately published (1999), 29.
34 Margaret Reeson, A Very Long War: the families who waited (Melbourne 2000). See also Carolyn
Newman (ed.), Legacies of our Father: World War II prisoners of the Japanese—their sons and daughters
tell their stories (Melbourne 2005).
35 Philip Fitzpatrick, Bamahuta: leaving Papua (Canberra 2005), has been omitted because a ‘number
of characters are fictitious and one or two things didn’t quite happen in the way I’ve described’ (preface).
Similarly I have left out E.I. Symons, Beyond the Reef, privately published (1985), who has written a
novel, but the section on the war in New Guinea is he says, the story of his own platoon and ‘as true
as my memory will allow’, 173.
36 See, e.g., Warwick Anderson, The Cultivation of Whiteness: science, health and racial destiny in
Australia (Melbourne 2002).
37 Evelyn Cheesman, Things Worth While (London 1958), brings together her travels. A.J. Marshall,
The Men and Birds of Paradise: journeys through equatorial New Guinea (London 1938).
38 Hortense Powdermaker, Stranger and Friend: the way of an anthropologist (London 1967).
39 The Age, 22 March 1998, headed its review ‘Boy’s own story’—and Flannery writes sharp clear
narrative.
40 Oskar Spate, On the Margins of History: from the Punjab to Fiji (Canberra 1991), 91.
41 Brij V. Lal (ed.), Pacific Places, Pacific Histories (Honolulu 2004).
42 Kenneth Read, The High Valley (London 1966).
43 Michael French Smith, Village on the Edge: changing times in Papua New Guinea (Honolulu 2002),
168.
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Australians in Papua and New Guinea
44 Derek Freeman, Margaret Mead and Samoa: the making and unmaking of an anthropological myth
(Canberra 1983).
45 Paul Hasluck, A Time for Building: Australian administration in Papua and New Guinea 1951-1963
(Melbourne 1976).
46 Rowley Richards, A Doctor’s War (Sydney 2005).
47 Chilla Bulbeck, Australian women in Papua New Guinea: colonial passages 1920-1960 (Melbourne :
1992), 2.
48 I have used ‘Boys’ but she is the daughter of Margaret Woods, and it is Woods who lived in New
Guinea. Several of the other women noted earlier also wrote as widows, e.g. Bowman, Epstein, and
Green.
49 Nancy White, Sharing the Climb (Melbourne 1991), 34.
50 Ibid., 81.
51 Edna Maclean, My Loves and Hates, privately published (1990), 30.
52 Pat Boys, Coconuts and Tearooms, privately published (1993), 107.
53 Contrary to most of the women noted here, Ida Voss was outlived by her husband by some nine
years.
54 Marjorie Deasey, Never Say I Can’t, privately published (2004), 188.
55 August Kituai in a letter to Hank Nelson, 1 December 2005. It is interesting that the primary teachers
of the two historians, John Waiko and August Kituai, have both written reminiscences.
56 Carol Kidu, A Remarkable Journey (South Melbourne 2002).
57 There is no copy in the National Library of Australia. As noted earlier, Ian Downs has a little of his
own involvement in politics.
58 Chris Harkness, New Guinea: the Wahgi impact (Cooparoo 1994), 274. A biography of Ellis is included
in an appendix.
59 Judith Hollinshed, Innocence to Independence: life in the Papua New Guinea Highlands 1956-1980
(Canberra 2004), 204.
60 Hollinshed, Innocence to Independence, 3.
61 E.T.W. Fulton, No Turning Back: a memoir (Canberra 2005), 284.
62 Bill Gammage, The Sky Travellers: journeys in New Guinea 1938-1939 (Melbourne 1998).
63 Betty Scarlett, Oscar X-Ray Calling: the story of the Scarlett family in Papua New Guinea 1962-1971,
privately published (2005), 170.
64 Kidu, A Remarkable Journey.
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Chapter 19
Biography of a Nation: Compiling a
Historical Dictionary of the Solomon
Islands
Clive Moore
I have been conducting research in the Solomon Islands since the 1970s, but
must admit my intensity varied during the 1980s and 1990s, when I continued
to visit my adopted family1 but concentrated on other historical projects
elsewhere. Then in the early 1990s, I conceived the idea of writing a history of
Malaita Province from the time the British administration began on the island
in 1909 and started working slowly, through the files in the National Archives
in Honiara. At the beginning, this meant a few weeks each year or two, typing
everything into my laptop as there was no photocopying facility available. I
came to respect the huge amount of material in the archives and despaired that
I would never get through it all. During the crisis years, 1998-2003, my attention
to events in the contemporary Solomon Islands intensified and eventually I
decided to write an account of the years, which appeared in 2004 as Happy Isles
in Crisis: the historical causes for a failing state in Solomon Islands, 1998-2004.2
At the same time, I applied for Australian Research Council funding to write a
history of Malaita, and received a large grant over 2005-2007.
In writing Happy Isles in Crisis, I became aware of just how difficult it is to
gather even basic biographical information on the leaders of the nation, or to
get reliable information on everything from the oil palm plantations to churches
and other organisations. I now know I got some things slightly wrong, and a
few things quite wrong. I even slighted a Prime Minister, Francis Billy Hilly, in
a short biographical piece, by omitting to mention that he had once been Premier
of Western Province. These frustrations led me to think about how this situation
could be rectified, both for myself in the future, and for other researchers. In
my speech when the book was launched in Honiara in August 2005, I began to
formulate a plan to create a historical dictionary of the Solomon Islands. During
2005, I had a full-time research assistant, and the funds to buy microfilm. I used
it to complete the necessary Malaita research, but at the same time gathered a
wider source base that will enable me to work on the whole history of the
Solomon Islands, and to create a historical dictionary for the nation.
277
The Solomon Islands is the second largest nation in the Pacific in land area,
and has a population of over half a million. Yet it is poorly served in historical
literature. There is a substantial bibliography of published sources on the
Solomon Islands to 1980, by Sally Edridge, which is something of a bible for all
Solomons scholars.3 There is a large literature on the Solomon Islands, some of
it scientific, relating to geology, agriculture and marine studies, but most of it
is social science monographs, chapters and journal articles that are not easily
accessible to Solomon Islanders. There are two excellent general histories, Wealth
of the Solomons and Pacific Forest by Judith Bennett, church histories such as
those by David Hilliard for the Anglicans, Hugh Laracy and Claire O’Brien on
the Catholics, and Dennis Steley on the Seventh-Day Adventists, labour trade
histories by Corris and Moore, and a substantial body of Second World War
writings, but overall the Solomons has not been well served by general texts.4
There is also Graham Goldens’ The Early European Settlers of the Solomon Islands
(1993), which is of indifferent quality, and a large collection of autobiographical
reminiscences by missionaries, planters, traders, government officials, and
anthropologists, mainly written since the 1920s.
My proposal is to create a historical dictionary of the Solomon Islands which
will contain a dictionary of biography and a historical encyclopaedia of events
for the Solomon Islands, arranged alphabetically. The models for the project are
Jackson Rannells’ PNG: a fact book on modern Papua New Guinea,5 and to a
greater extent Ann Turner’s Historical Dictionary of Papua New Guinea.6 This
Solomons’ historical project will be in two volumes, one covering the period
from first foreign contact to Independence in 1978, concentrating on the
1893-1978 British Solomon Islands Protectorate years, written or edited by Clive
Moore. The second would cover the period from Independence to the present
day. The overall aim of the project is to foster national consciousness in the
Solomon Islands and to provide easily accessible information for use by
government departments, churches, civil society organisations, the tourist
industry, students, teachers, and the interested general public.
Based on the Scarecrow Press model that has worked successfully for Papua
New Guinea and dozens of other countries, the two books would contain:
• A chronology
• A historical dictionary of biography on leading citizens of the British Solomon
Islands Protectorate (BSIP) to 1978; and of the modern nation since 1978
• A historical encyclopaedia of information on important events and places
• A short bibliography of easily available sources on the Solomon Islands.
There are differences between this and the Scarecrow Press model: Scarecrow
uses only one volume for each nation. My concept has two volumes, and the
research base for each volume will be different. Scarecrow Press usually contracts
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single authors to write each volume. This would probably be the case for volume
one, but not for volume two of the Solomons project.
Volume One
Volume One will depend mainly on existing materials already published by the
BSIP government, private newspapers, secondary sources, and hopefully the
assistance of colleagues and the Solomons general public, both as critics and to
supplement areas where my information is too meagre. I have gathered large
amounts of material on a variety of topics from the National Archives in Honiara
and from the Western Pacific High Commission Archives now situated in
Auckland, which will form part of the basic entries. This will be supplemented
by newspaper sources. The Government Information Service began a roneoed
News Sheet in 1955, and each District also had its own local version. The Pacific
Manuscripts Bureau has copied the main News Sheet and intends to copy the
District News Sheets in the near future. In Malaita District, for instance, the local
News Sheet began in 1954, continued until the mid-1980s, then staggered on
until 1991. The Honiara-based BSIP News Sheet continued until 1975 when it
turned into a weekly newspaper called Solomons News Drum. The first private
newspaper was The Kakamora Reporter, published between 1970 and 1975, set
up as an alternative to the government-controlled press. This was followed by
Solomons Toktok, which began in 1977 (originally published as the Melanesian
Nius and the Kiokio Nius), and continued publication until 1992. The Toktok
was the first Solomons tabloid newspaper with its own version of sensationalist
reporting. It came out in competition with the government-owned Solomons
News Drum and was intended to have more popular appeal. The Solomons News
Drum was privatised in mid-1982, taken over by Solomon Islander shareholders,
and renamed the Solomon Star. It remains the main newspaper today, with five
issues a week.7 Other newspapers have also come and gone. At present, the
lesser rivals to the Solomon Star are the National Express and various church
papers.
As in all newspapers, the quality of the reporting varies, but collectively the
Solomons papers are an enormous resource that has been little tapped by
historians. The print media from the 1950s and 1960s contained many
biographical pieces on the nation’s first educated and politically conscious
citizens. It is possible to build up biographies and other items of interest by
compiling them from a run of sources. Young future leaders such as Peter
Kenilorea, Baddeley Devesi, Mariano Kelesi or Lilly Ogatina Poznanski start to
appear through snippets in newspapers, and in government records bit-by-bit
as they attended school, progressed through the public service or entered politics.
Older famous citizens such as Jacob Vuza, Jonathan Fifi‘i, ‘Elota, Fred Osifelo,
Lloyd Maepeza Gina, Belshazzar Gina, Gideon Zoleveke and Dominiko Alebua
have written autobiographies or had books or chapters written about them,8
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and they can also be followed in the media. Although newspapers are an
invaluable aid, later in this paper I will give some examples of why newspapers
should not be trusted as sole sources of information.
So far I have prepared a 50,000 word draft of 186 biographical entries and
184 general entries for Volume One, which vary in length from a few lines to
2,500 words for the Diocese of Melanesia (the Melanesian Mission). There are
many entries for non-Solomon Islanders who have served the Solomon Islands
in some way. The Resident Commissioners, some District Officers, planters and
bishops all deserve entries, as do some of the quite remarkable lesser clergy.
How could I leave out Sister Mary Joseph, or Mother Superior Marie Irene, or
the Reverend Charles Fox? Sister Mary Joseph, an Australian, joined the Catholic
Mission in 1941. In 1944 she was sent to the Makogai Leprosarium in Fiji for
two years, to specialise in the care of those suffering from Hansen’s disease. She
arrived in the Protectorate in 1946 and became sister-in-charge of the Government
Leprosarium at Tetere in 1949, where she remained, improving and extending
the hospital. A 1950s World Health Organisation survey found that two-thirds
of the lepers in the Protectorate were being treated at Tetere and the Mission
leprosariums, using DDS (Diphenyl-dimena-sulphone), an effective cure for most
cases, rendering the patients non-contagious. She was awarded an MBE in 1957.
Although Sister Mary Joseph was much loved by Solomon Islanders, John
Roughan, a long-time resident of the Solomons, has a memory of her as being
quite ferocious to any patient who did not take their medication at the correct
time, and as having an interesting hobby. She was a good shot and loved going
crocodile hunting. They bred tough nuns in the Solomon Islands.9
Sister Marie Irene was the first Catholic nun to become a missionary in the
Solomon Islands in 1904. Born in France in 1878, for nearly 40 years she directed
the work of the Mission’s Sisters throughout the Protectorate. First based at Rua
Sura, Guadalcanal, where she educated women, she next served at Tangarare,
opening the first girls’ school there. Based at the Visale headquarters when the
Japanese invaded, she escaped with other Mission staff to Tangarere, where she
was picked up on a government boat and taken to Lunga to travel by American
Liberty ship to Nouméa. Returning to the Protectorate in 1946, she was again
stationed at Visale, this time as Mother Superior. After retirement, she continued
to train local Sisters atVisale. Awarded an MBE in 1959, she died on 23 September
1965. She gave over 60 years service to the Solomon Islands, her few years in
Nouméa the only absence.10 There are many other clergy who similarly spent
many decades in the Protectorate.
While Mother Superior Marie Irene’s stay was quite remarkable, she was
eclipsed by Charles Elliot Fox, an Anglican priest and Brother who gave 65 years
of his long life to the Protectorate. Born in 1878 in Dorset, England, Charles Fox
holds the record as the longest-serving expatriate member of any religious order
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in the Solomon Islands. Son of Canon John Elliot Fox and Emma L. F. (née
Phillips), he was educated at Napier Boys High School, the College of St John
the Evangelist, Auckland and at the University of New Zealand (Auckland
College) where he obtained BA and MA degrees (1899-1901). After a short spell
teaching science in New Zealand, he became a member of the Melanesian Mission
on Norfolk Island in 1902, and was ordained in 1903. He taught for a short time
at the Norfolk school, where there were 240 boys, 160 of them from the Solomon
Islands, which was the beginning of his interest in the Protectorate. After a few
months on Mota Island in the New Hebrides, Fox began his Solomon years as a
missionary at Pamua on San Cristoval. In 1905 he returned to teach at Norfolk
Island, before returning to San Cristoval in 1908, where he remained for the
next 10 years. In 1911 he opened the first boarding school in the Solomon Islands,
St Michael’s at Pauma, for boys from San Cristoval, Ulawa and Malaita. In its
early years the school had to post guards to prevent attacks from marauding
bushmen. In 1922, the Melanesian Mission’s main school on Norfolk was moved
to Pawa on Ugi Ne Masi Island, near San Cristoval, and between 1924 and 1932
Fox became principal of All Hallows School, Pawa, which in the 1920s was the
finest school in the Protectorate. In 1932 he declined the Melanesian bishopric,
becoming a member of the Melanesian Brotherhood on Guadalcanal (1933-44),
and at Fiu, Malaita (1944-50).
During the war, then well over 60, he spent some time as a coastwatcher on
Malaita, before moving to Nggela as a guest of the American Seebee Construction
Corps. In 1950 he became principal of the Catechists school, and in 1952 chaplain
at diocesan headquarters, before two years (1952-54) as Head Brother of the
Melanesian Brotherhood at the headquarter school at Tabalia. In 1956 he was
made Canon of Melanesia, and finally (1968-70) was based as chaplain at
Taroaniara. He retired to New Zealand in 1973. Also known as ‘Takibaina’, this
was an exchange name given to him during his early years on San Cristoval,
when he gave his name, house and possessions to a local man in a swap of
identity. Author of a dozen books on the Solomon Islands, his major publications
include Introduction to the Study of Oceanic Languages (1910), Threshold of the
Pacific (1924), Lord of the Solomon Islands (1958), his memoirs Kakamora (1961),
and dictionaries of the Nggela, Lau and Arosi languages. Fox received a Doctor
of Literature from the University of New Zealand in 1922, an MBE in 1952 and
a CBE in 1974. He died in 1977, one year short of 100.11
What is clear from these three European biographical entries is that the detail
on expatriates is usually better than on Solomon Islanders in this period, but I
have also tried to include as many indigenous entries as possible. Two will serve
as examples. In 1851 William Didi was the first Solomon Islander to be baptised
by the Melanesian Mission. Born on San Cristoval, he was taken from the island
in 1850 by the Captain of the HMS Havannah and sent to St John’s College in
New Zealand where he spent 1850-51. Then he joined a vessel as crew, which
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Biography of a Nation
took him to China and around the Pacific. Returning to St John’s in 1858, Didi
helped Bishop George Selwyn translate the Lord’s Prayer into the Arosi
language.12 Another very different Christian convert was Monilaws Soga, the
last great chief of Isobel Island. Soga, son of the great fighting chief Bera, was a
chief at the time when head-hunting raids from New Georgia were causing havoc.
He lived at Pirihandi in the Bugotu area and was personally responsible for a
great deal of the upheaval. In the 1890s it was said that Soga had earlier destroyed
many of the coastal communities, and he had entirely wiped out the people of
St George’s (Maumolu Naunitu) Island. He was baptised in 1889 after an 1886
influenza epidemic, when he was nursed back to health by Bishop John Selwyn.
Charles Fox described him as a ‘tall, lean, powerful man’ who always travelled
with an armed bodyguard.13 Bishop Wilson described Soga as ‘a very remarkable
man’, ‘with a face and bearing of one greater than all his neighbours’.14 Easily
able to raise an army of 200 men, after baptism he was as fervent a Christian as
he had ever been a warrior, and used his power to befriend the New Georgia
raiders and his enemies on Isabel. Through his great influence, peace was
achieved and the Melanesian Mission was able to spread Christianity through
the island. In later life he lived at Sepi village and when he died in 1898, the
cross on his grave bore the inscription Ke vonungia na dotho (He was filled with
love).15
There are many other such individuals of note, and the art will be in achieving
a balance between foreigners and Solomon Islanders, and between the
biographical and historical events and places sections. At the moment, Honiara
has the longest place entry, and my favourite entry is on the Kakamora, the
legendry midget humans of San Cristoval, Guadalcanal, Malaita and the Banks
Group, believed to be about two feet to four feet tall with long black hair and
long finger nails. On South Malaita they are called Mumu. They are said to hide
in the mountains, living in caves and eating wild bush foods, never using fire.
They have a reputation as mischievous, and were said to become aggressive
when cornered.16 Charles Fox seemed to believe they existed when he wrote
about them in his book The Threshold of the Pacific (1924), and used the name
as the title for his autobiography, in which he said ‘[t]hey build no houses, have
no tools, make no fires, but they are strong and live in holes or caves’.17 They
may be like fairies and goblins of European mythology, but since the early 2000s
archaeological discovery that a small, pre-modern human-related race once lived
on Flores Island in Indonesia, the myth has regained some validity. Whatever
the truth, how could I leave them out?
Volume Two
The plan for Volume Two takes an altogether different approach. Because of its
time-period, it will consist primarily of entries on citizens of the Solomon Islands
and would be written mainly by Solomon Islanders. The problem is how to
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gather the material. The various newspapers since 1978 will still be a basic
resource, but the second volume is intended as a people’s history, gathered
largely through public cooperation and as a nation-building exercise. Its level
of success will depend both on local support and on obtaining funding.
Gathering a new set of biographical pieces, provided by the citizens of today,
along with support from foreign academics, clergy and others who work or have
worked in the Solomon Islands, will be a crucial part of the project. Although
some entries will be about the rich, famous, illustrious, dreaded, or in some other
way well known, many of the entries for Volume Two would not be about
national Bigmen and Bigwomen. Along with the national personalities, a
regional/provincial focus will be necessary, as would be a fairly proportioned
emphasis on women’s entries. Medical Dressers, Native Medical Practitioners,
District Headmen, teachers, nurses, clergy, and traditional leaders of all sorts
have made the nation what it is today and deserve fair mention. My suggestion
of a way to achieve this balance and spread has three essentials: local autonomy;
local involvement and agency; and incorporation of and assistance from the local
media.
Committee
There needs to be a local committee to oversee the process. I suggest that the
committee should be chaired by the University of the South Pacific (USP) Centre
Director or his nominee. The committee would be responsible for organising the
local collection of material, and ensuring standards and accuracy of the pieces
that are published in the Solomon Star or aired over the radio. The committee
would include representatives of USP, the Solomon Islands College of Higher
Education, churches, some NGOs, the national government, all provinces, as
well as the Solomon Star and the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation
(SIBC). This would not be a paid committee, and I am presuming that all members
would be Honiara-based, which would allow easy communication. Much of the
minor communication could be via email. Members would take on the task for
love of their nation, not love of money.
Solomon Star and SIBC
The cooperation of the Solomon Star and the government radio stations will be
a crucial part of the project. At the beginning, to get the project rolling, public
interest could be gained by publishing a weekly column in the Solomon Star
that included draft entries from Volume One. This would enable trialling of the
entries and correction of any errors through public responses. Then, I envisage
a national competition, the best material from which would be published in the
Solomon Star. Each week for a year or two, a biographical or historical place or
event entry could be published in the paper in a regular column. These would
vary in size from 200 to 700 words, depending of the importance of the subject.
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Biography of a Nation
Once the Volume Two series has begun, there would be a prize offered for each
new entry published, probably of about SI$150 to SI$300, as it has to be worth
winning, but not so large as to be too expensive for donors. Fifty historical
columns paid for at SI$300 each would cost SI$15,000, which is less than A$3,000
for a year, or A$6,000 for two years. Publishing about 50-100 pieces in the
Solomon Star would generate many more, which might not be of sufficient
standard to publish, but would also contain valuable historical information
which could be followed up to make other entries. Perhaps the committee would
end up with 500 entries, of various standards, which would all be deposited in
the National Library as a record for the future. The committee and the newspaper
would have the final veto over publication of any entry, to ensure standards
are met and defamation avoided. The Solomon Star would benefit from free copy
every week, and presumably through sales.
At the same time, a wider coverage could be achieved by using the SIBC. The
newspapers really only reach the urban areas, but the medium wave and short
wave radio stations reach out to all parts of Solomon Islands. There are also FM
stations, which can be heard over quite surprising distances (the east coast of
Malaita, for instance), but generally the SIBC and commercial FM stations only
tap the urban population. Radio is the premier media in the Pacific and would
need to be used to supplement the newspaper.
National Competition
Hopefully, these first pieces would generate the interest of the newspaper’s
readers, and prepare them for a bigger, national competition. The Committee
could offer different types of prizes for entries on national, provincial, area
council, business, church leaders, village and customary leaders, and teachers
and health workers etc. Women’s biographies would be a special, lucrative
category to encourage as many entries as possible. There could also be a section
for places and events: cathedrals and major church buildings, sports, institutions,
towns, companies, schools, and industries etc. The committee could offer prizes
in many different categories, making sure that all provinces are covered and
that as many women as possible are included. The prizes could vary in size:
SI$1,000 for the best entry; SI$500 for the next 10 best, down to SI$200 for
worthy entries. SI$20,000 worth of prizes would only cost A$4,000.
Funding
So far, the suggested costs are no more than A$10,000. The Committee could
approach the various High Commissions and Embassies for supporting funds to
an initial level of about A$25,000, which should be easy to obtain for a
nation-building exercise that has spin-offs for education. One problem will be
that that many of the entries will be handwritten, not typed. The Solomon Star
and the SIBC are going to need their material typed up and on computer disk,
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and there will be expenses involved in this. All entries should be typed up for
posterity and possible use in the Historical Dictionary. The Committee would
have to decide on the level of funding necessary. Permanent secretarial staff are
not envisaged in the early stages, but this would become a cost in final
preparation stages.
Publication and Editing
Through its Institute for Pacific Studies, the University of the South Pacific has
produced an extensive set of publications from its member countries. Although
the nature of IPS has changed in recent years, I see the USP as the natural home
for the publication, both as a book and in electronic form. The involvement of
the Honiara USP Centre is crucial in planning, as the conduit back to the main
campus, and with present plans to upgrade the Honiara campus into a central
part of the USP hub, this project could become a focus of community outreach.
At a later stage, the Committee would have to choose an editor/editors for Volume
Two, and negotiate with the USP over methods of publication. Outside referees
would ensure that standards were maintained.
Referees and Overseas Contributors
There is a large group of academics, church and NGO leaders, and tertiary
educated Solomon Islanders who have material that can be used. Any
anthropologists could easily provide several entries on traditional leaders and
institutions, and historians, geographers and political scientists can also be asked
to participate. A refereeing practice would be followed, using knowledgeable
Solomon Islanders at home and abroad, and other experts. The bibliography for
Volumes Two can be compiled with co-operation from the National Library, but
essentially it will probably be an extended version of the one prepared for
Volume One.
National Library
All of the project materials would be deposited in the National Library for
long-term storage, preferably in digital and paper format. Photographs could
also be gathered and copied at the same time. Digital cameras and computers
now make copying much easier than back in the days of negative film. An
accompanying part of the project could be to ask permission from institutions
with photographic collections on the Solomon Islands, copies of many of which
are held by the National Museum and Library, to allow these ethnographic and
historical photographs to be made easily accessible on a webpage. The speed at
which the electronic world is developing may make this quite easy within the
next five years or so, and although I am not as naive as to envisage villagers
using solar electricity and laptops to access this material, the resources could
easily be made available in all towns and to many schools.
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The Pitfalls of Writing Entries
Finally, let me discuss the pitfalls of writing entries. Writing entries for historical
dictionaries of Pacific nations is fraught and an excellent test for the skills of
any historian. I have become quite fascinated with the art of writing concise,
accurate but interesting entries, and have been on a steep learning-curve when
it comes to balancing entries and chasing contacts. The example of the major
Christian denominations is the best. The Anglican Church of Melanesia produced
a rich secondary literature during the colonial years, far better than that available
on the Catholics, the South Seas Evangelical Mission, the Seventh Day Adventists
or the United Church. There will be criticisms if the Anglicans dominate Volume
One, but at the moment this certainly is the case. But sources have to be
reasonably readily available, and I am not planning to brush up my school-boy
French and head off to the Vatican archives to improve the Catholic entries.
There are often no supporting rite of passage documents such as the birth,
marriage and death certificates, on which other similar projects such as the
Australian Dictionary of Biography or the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography
rely. In the end, Volume One may have some flaws that can be improved upon
in a second edition. There will be a fine line between delaying because there is
not enough material, and going ahead, knowing there are still some problems
with balance.
And as any historian knows, information in the public record can be
misleading, even downright wrong. A good example would be any entry I began
to write on Petero Ara‘iasi, a traditional ramo (warrior and bounty-hunter) at
Tarapaina in the ‘Are‘are language area, Hauvarivari Passage, Small Malaita. His
age can only be estimated, based on the first written references to him when he
was in his 20s. We can presume that he was born in the mid-1880s, the time
when Malaita was the chief source of indentured labour for Queensland and Fiji
sugar plantations.
When he died in died on 11 February 1963, at about 80 years of age, the
British Solomon Islands News Sheet granted him a paragraph obituary, which is
how he first caught my eye.18 In it there is a claim that in his youth he had
killed 80 men while a ramo, which I must admit rather impressed me. The News
Sheet said that Ara‘iasi first met Father Jean Coicaud, a long-serving Catholic
priest in the Solomon Islands, when Ara‘iasi was exiled to Marau, Guadalcanal,
and the two became friends. Ara‘iasi is supposed to have invited the Catholic
priest to return with him to begin missionary work at Tarapaina. Claire O’Brien
believed this story, which she dated at 1911.19 Soon after Ara‘iasi teamed up
with Father Jean Coicaud, Ara‘iasi is supposed to have killed a man from Rokera,
was hunted by the police and captured but managed to escape. The News Sheet
said that Coicaud made a deal with District Officer William Bell that he would
hold Ara‘iasi as his personal prisoner for at least 10 years, to which Bell
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supposedly agreed, but impounded Ara‘iasi’s large collection of shell money
and kept it at Auki as security. After some years, Ara‘iasi was said to have
captured a South Malaitan who had escaped from Tulagi, and was rewarded
with release from detention, returning to Tarapaina, where he became a Christian.
Not able to stop his old ramo ways, he murdered another man, but as he was
now a Christian, he went to Auki to report his crime. At the same time he brought
with him another man who had shot his own sister, after which Ara‘iasi was
supposedly pardoned. The News Sheet also said that after the death of Bell at
Sinerango in 1927, Ara‘iasi was appointed Headman of Tarapaina for three years,
and thereafter lived a Christian life, much respected as a hereditary chief and
ex-ramo.
My further explorations have not confirmed this tale, which had obviously
been gleaned from Catholic sources on Malaita when Ara‘iasi died. He was the
son of a ramo, and was also the spokesman for Iava‘o, the hereditary araha
(paramount chief) for the area. Hugh Laracy, using church sources, records that
in 1909 Ara‘iasi was offended by Florence Young, founder of the SSEM, who
wanted to establish a base in ‘Are‘are, but he and Iava‘o recognised that there
were benefits from having a missionary presence, and invited the Marists to
begin a station. The Catholics chose Tarapaina as the site in 1910, but due to
poor soils, moved to Rohinari in 1912, where Ara‘iasi had arranged a contact
with the local ramo Aris‘imae.20 Catholic records contain the following
explanation by Father Raucaz:
The old man-eater had already met him [Aris‘imae] at Marau. But he
wanted details about his generosity: the quality of tobacco, pipes and
matches that he would bring with him. Religion was of no account to
him; he would not touch it at any price; what would his spirits think of
such an idea? He therefore questioned the crew and also Ara‘iasi, his
rival from the south isle. The report must have been favourable, for the
old bandit immediately agreed to sell the small isle of Rohinari with a
good portion of ground on the mainland.21
Father Bertreux purchased the Tarapaina land in 1910. Florence Young made
another attempt to establish the SSEM in the area in 1911, but once more managed
to insult the local people. Certainly, a relationship of mutual benefit developed
between the Bigmen and the Catholic mission: Ara‘iasi extended his power
through access to medical aid and European goods and the missionaries received
protection. In 1916 Ara‘iasi was accused of another murder and was paroled for
four years to Rohinari and Visale on Guadalcanal, where he was baptised in
1922. Aris’imae was less beholden to the mission, but was also baptised on his
deathbed in 1947.22
Another complication is working out which Father Coicaud one is talking
about? There were two brothers from Le Regrippiere, Loire Infoieure, France,
287
Biography of a Nation
in the Marist order on Malaita, Jean-Baptiste (born 1878) and Donatien Joseph
Pierre (born 1881), both bearded, and both worked on Malaita. It would be very
easy for memories of the brothers to get mixed up over decades. Father Jean
Coicaud was in BSIP from at least 1902 and stationed at Marau, Guadalcanal from
1905.23 He arrived at Tarapaiana in 1911, after the second SSEM fiasco. His
older brother, Father Donatien, came to the Pacific from France in 1910 and was
first appointed to New Caledonia. In 1912 he was transferred to BSIP, first posted
to Rua Sura and Visale on Guadalcanal. One 1913 record suggests that he was
sent to Rohinari Mission on Malaita, but all other evidence suggests that this
was his brother Jean. That year the Coicaud surname appeared in a list of the
32 foreigners on Malaita, and there is another unnamed Marist priest as well,
which presumably means both brothers were present.24 In 1914 Donatien was
posted to Buma mission station on the west coast of Malaita where he remained
until the time of his death on 11 January 1957. From 1914 until the early 1930s,
Father Donatien made frequent journeys along the Malaita coast, north of Buma
in the Mission ketch Hambia, and later on a smaller vessel. He established a
reputation for his medical work and for his knowledge of Malaitan custom and
languages. In 1918 he was in Auki, trying to obtain a lease on land at the mouth
of the Kwareuna River in north Malaita. In 1917 ‘Jean-Baptiste Coicaud’ was at
Auki, the headquarters for Malaita District, wanting to purchase land at Bira
River, at the head of Su‘u Harbour, for the site of a mission. They were certainly
both on the island in 1918 when a census of foreign residents was held: a
‘Jean-Marie Coicaud’ was at Rohinari and ‘Donatiey Joseph Pierre Coicaud’ was
living at a mission base in Langalanga Lagoon [Buma].25 Donatien Coicaud spent
39 years in BSIP, broken only by four years in Australia during the war. Jean
Coicaud remained at Rohinara from 1912 to 1942.26
The BSIP officers on Malaita had been trying to curb Ara‘iasi’s murderous
ways for many years. William Bell said that at the time when the SSEM had first
tried to establish a mission post a Tarapaina (when Florence Young insulted
Ara‘iasi), Ara‘iasi had taken part in the murder of two men and maimed a woman
at Pau. This was before there was a government station on Malaita, and although
the SSEM’s Dr Northcoat Deck had informed Resident Commissioner Woodford,
the government as unable to do anything. At about this stage, probably in 1905,
Ara‘iasi turned against the SSEM mission and invited the Catholics to take their
place.
In about March 1916, Manihuot was killed at Nusi by Ahau and Hoa from
the inland village of Weisiala‘ala, and the Administration thought that Ara‘iasi
was behind it all. Manihout was from the same village as Ara‘iasi, and in late
1915 he was accused of using sorcery to kill a man and his son, which caused
him in mid-1916 to seek protection at the Catholic Mission at Tarapaina. While
there he had an affair with a woman, which caused Ara‘iasi to demand
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compensation from the man’s relatives, who refused to pay and gave Ara‘iasi
permission to kill Manihout. In fact they helped catch him and gave him to
Ara‘iasi, who told Ahau and Hoa to take him away in a canoe and kill him at
Nusi. When the murder of Manihout occurred, Bell was on leave and F. M.
Campbell and the Native Police went to Tarapaina to arrest Ara‘iasi, but he
eluded them. At the time Father Jean Coicaud just ‘spread out his hands and
shrugged his shoulders’, which Bell believed indicated that he thought it was
the government’s problem and that Ara‘iasi was welcome to continue to live at
the mission. In 1918 Bell had been talking to the other Coicaud, Father Donatien,
who was in charge of Buma mission. Father Donatien indicated that Araiasa had
been involved in at least 10 other murders.27
In 1918 District Officer William Bell was still trying to get control of Ara‘iasi.
He reported to the acting Resident Commissioner:
On this occasion [1916] I passed through the Maramasike Passage at night
with the police. We surrounded the house of Alaiasi before daybreak
and demanded the surrender of Alaiasi, Kope and Lamamatawa. Two
men from the house broke through the police to the bush. On my
instructions the police broke in the doors and we entered the house and
detained the people in it. We searched the house and collected the
property above-stated, and also a Snider rifle, some native weapons
which were destroyed, and some cooking utensils, which were handed
back shortly after on the same day. The same day Lamamatawa was
brought in by two natives and the people detained were released with
the exception of a man named Kope. Later I found out that the Kope I
had in custody was not the Kope I wanted. The man wanted is Kope
(Pipiala). The people who saw the shooting at Pau told me that one of
the men who did the shooting was Kope a piccaninny of Alaiasi. Kope
Pipiala was adopted by Alaiasi when a child and brought up by Alaiasi
at Tarapaina, which accounts for the natives considering him also as a
piccaninny of Alaiasi. Since he has grown up I am informed Kope Pipiala
has lived most of his time at Tarapaina and sometimes at Iorailamu. Alaiasi
is not really a chief but he has acquired power through his murderous
habits. The Tarapaina and the Iorailamu people are practically one and
the same community. In my efforts to arrest the murderers of Hiruaru‘se
and Laokeni I have been handicapped by the natives being afraid to give
information and other assistance, and the man they say they are most
afraid of is Alaiasi of Tarapaina, not Ala‘aiasi of Iorailamu.
In the process Bell and his police confiscated a large amount of property: 48
strings of red money, 127 porpoise teeth, two cane knives, one sheath-knife and
sheath, one davi, and 28 sticks of trade twist tobacco. These were held in pawn
until Kope Pipiala was surrendered for the murder of Hiruatu‘e and Laokeni,
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Biography of a Nation
and Ara‘iasi was charged with being an accessory to the murder of Manihout
in 1916. This seems to be the origin of the story that Bell confiscated Ara‘iasi’s
wealth. However, the police appear to have been over-diligent in their seizures
and had taken more than Bell knew. Constable Bera had a new waistcoat,
Constable Abanakona had purloined a singlet and a pair of knickerbockers, and
a complete case of trade tobacco belonging to Father Jean Coicaud had also gone
missing from Ara‘iasi’s house. The police also insisted that Ara‘iasi feed the
patrol and had consumed about two hundredweight of yams.
Three weeks after his raid, Bell was back in Tarapaina, and reported to acting
Resident Commissioner Workman that Ara‘iasi had laid traps around his house
at the mission—slanted bamboo stakes buried in the ground in hidden ditches.
Workman advised Bell to pay for Ara‘iasi’s yams at the current price and to
continue to pursue him.28 My investigation is continuing, but at the least I have
learnt not to put to much faith into obituaries written 50 years after the events
being described.
Conclusion
This project is underway, but is a long way off completion. I sometimes think
I am very foolhardy to even consider beginning it. But it seems to me that this
method of creating a historical dictionary of the Solomon Islands holds lessons
and implications for the history of other Pacific nations. As historians we have
a responsibility to try to get away from monograph myopia, as Kerry Howe once
advised. In recent years there have been several new general histories of the
Pacific, and the Lal and Fortune encyclopaedia,29 but we need more reference
works that go in-depth into the history of individuals and events in Pacific
nations. There have been other major biographical projects, such as the Papua
New Guinea Dictionary of Contemporary Biography, and Stewart Firth and Daryl
Tarte’s edited book on 20th
century Fiji.30 In past decades the USP produced
the first national histories of many Pacific nations. Now we need to think about
reference works, and perhaps a set of historical dictionaries for all Pacific Islands
nations. Changes in publishing styles and finances, and the growth of electronic
media may well mean a different approach from the old way of producing
hardcover, expensive books. Any projects need to consider all of the possibilities,
but I believe that we need to try.
ENDNOTES
1 Clive Moore, ‘Rakwane’, in Brij V. Lal (ed.), Pacific Places, Pacific Histories: essays in honour of Robert
C. Kiste (Honolulu 2004), 242-266.
2 Published by Asia Pacific Press, Canberra.
3 Sally Edridge, Solomon Islands Bibliography to 1980 (Suva, Wellington, and Honiara 1985).
4 Judith A. Bennett, Wealth of the Solomons: a history of a Pacific archipelago, 1800-1978 (Honolulu
1987); Bennett, Pacific Forest: a history of resource control and contest in Solomon Islands, c. 1800-1997
(Cambridge 2000); David Hilliard, God's Gentleman: a history of the Melanesian Mission, 1849-1942 (St
Lucia QLD 1978); Hugh M. Laracy, Marists and Melanesians: a history of the Catholic Missions in the
290
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Solomon Islands (Canberra 1976); Claire O’Brien, A Greater Than Solomon Here: a story of Catholic Church
in Solomon Islands, 1567-1967 (Honiara 1995); Dennis Steley, ‘Juapa Rane, 1914-1942’, MA thesis,
University of Auckland (Auckland 1983); Peter Corris, Passage, Port and Plantation: a history of Solomon
Islands labour migration, 1870-1914 (Melbourne 1973); Clive Moore, Kanaka: a history of Melanesian
Mackay (Port Moresby 1985).
5 Jackson Rannells, PNG: a fact book on modern Papua New Guinea (Melbourne 1990).
6 Ann Turner, Historical Dictionary of Papua New Guinea (Lanham, Maryland & London 2006).
7 Much of description comes from the PAMBU catalogue, which in turn comes from Dr Ian Frazer at
Otago University, whose collection of Solomon newspapers is unsurpassed.
8 Jonathon Fifi‘i, From Pig-Theft to Parliament: my life between two worlds, trans. and ed. Roger M.
Keesing (Honiara and Suva 1989); Roger M. Keesing, ‘Elota’s Story: the life and times of a Solomon Islands
big man (Brisbane 1978); Frederick Osifelo, Kanaka Boy: an autobiography (Suva 1985); Lloyd Maepeza
Gina, Journeys in a Small Canoe: the life and times of a Solomon Islander, ed. Judith A. Bennett and Khyla
J. Russell (Suva and Canberra 2003); George G. Carter, Yours in His Service: a reflection on the life and
times of Reverend Belshazzar Gina of Solomon Islands, ed. Esa Tuza (Honiara 1990); Gideon Zoleveke,
Zoleveke: a man from Choiseul / an autobiography by Gideon A.P. Zoleveke, ed. John Chick (Suva 1980);
Tarcisius Tara Kabutaulaka, Footprints in the Tasimauri Sea: a biography of Dominiko Alebua (Suva 2002).
9 British Solomon Islands Protectorate News Sheet (BSIPNS), January 1957; October 1957; email, John
Roughan, 24 November 2005.
10 BSIPNS, May 1959; 30 September 1965.
11 Biographical Summaries of the Anglican Clergy; Pacific Islands Monthly, May 1952; July 1956;
BSIPNS, March 1962; Charles E. Fox, Lord of the Southern Isles: being the story of the Anglican Mission
in Melanesia, 1849-1949 (London 1958); Charles E. Fox, Kakamora (London 1962).
12 Fox, Lord of the Southern Isles, 159.
13 Fox, Lord of the Southern Isles, 198, and 31, 196.
14 Cecil Wilson, The Wake of the Southern Cross: work and adventures in the South Seas (London 1932),
228-31.
15 Henry H. Montgomery, The Light of Melanesia: a record of thirty-five years mission work in the South
Seas, (London 1904), [1896 edition], ch. 21.
16 Pacific Islands Monthly, February, March 1950; D.C. Horton, The Happy Isles: a diary of the Solomons
(London 1966), 25.
17 Fox, Kakamora, 22-23.
18 BSIPNS, 15 March 1963.
19 O’Brien, A Greater Than Solomon Here, 176.
20 Laracy, Marists and Melanesians, 48.
21 O’Brien, A Greater Than Solomon Here, 177.
22 Laracy, Marists and Melanesian, 48-49; BSIPNS, 15 March 1963.
23 Laracy, Marists and Melanesians, 76.
24 Solomon Islands National Archives (SINA) BSIP 14/41, 15 April 1913, District Officer T.W.
Edge-Partington to Resident Commissioner Charles M. Woodford.
25 SINA BSIP 14/45, 26 August 1917, District Officer W.R. Bell to acting Resident Commissioner; BSIP
14/46, 25 February 1918, District Officer W. R. Bell to Acting Resident Commissioner Charles Workman.
26 SINA BSIP, 1, 22 January 1917; BSIP 14/46, 5 January 1918, District Officer W. R. Bell to Acting
Resident Commissioner Charles Workman.
27 SINA BSIP 14/44, 11 September 1916, District Officer W.R. Bell to Acting Resident Commissioner
F.J. Barnett.
28 SINA BSIP 14/46, 23 September 1918, District Officer W.R. Bell to acting Resident Commissioner
Charles Workman; 14/12, 10 October 1918, Acting Resident Commissioner Charles Workman to District
Officer, W. R. Bell.
29 Brij V. Lal and Kate Fortune (eds), The Pacific Islands: an encyclopaedia (Honolulu 2000).
30 The Papua New Guinea Dictionary of Contemporary Biography was begun by James Griffin in the
1980s when a considerable number of entries were generated. Refer to Sam Kaima, ‘Papua New Guinea
Dictionary of Contemporary Biography’, (paper written for but not presented at) ‘Telling Pacific Lives’
Workshop, Division of Pacific and Asian History, RSPAS, Australian National University, 5-7 December
291
Biography of a Nation
2005, Appendix Two for a list of the entries; Stewart Firth and Daryl Tarte (eds), 20th Century Fiji:
people who shaped this nation (Suva 2001).
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Notes on Contributors
Pauline McKenzie Aucoin completed her doctorate in anthropology at the
University of Toronto, and currently teaches at the University of Ottawa.
Lucy de Bruce completed her graduate studies at the University of Technology
Sydney and is currently a freelance scholar.
Michael Goddard teaches anthropology at the University of Newcastle, NSW.
Michael Goldsmith teaches anthropology in the Department of Societies and
Cultures at the University of Waikato.
Geoffrey Gray is a Research Fellow at the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Studies and Honorary Research Associate in the School of
History, Monash University.
Niel Gunson is a Visiting Fellow in the Division of Pacific and Asian History at
The Australian National University.
David Hanlon is the Director of the Center for Pacific Islands Studies at the
University of Hawai‘i at Manoa.
Christina Houen is a doctoral student at Curtin University, in the School of Media,
Society and Culture, and a research assistant in the Australia Research Institute
at Curtin.
Wolfgang Kempf is a lecturer and researcher at the Institute of Cultural and Social
Anthropology, University of Göttingen.
Brij V. Lal is Professor of Pacific and Asian History in the Research School of
Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University.
Vicki Luker is Executive Editor of The Journal of Pacific History in the Division
of Pacific and Asian History, The Australian National University.
Clive Moore is Professor Pacific and Australian History at the University of
Queensland.
Doug Munro is an Adjunct Professor in the School of History at Victoria
University of Wellington.
Hank Nelson is an Emeritus Professor in the Division of Pacific and Asian History,
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University.
Andrew Robson teaches English at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh.
Sr Alaima Talu is currently pursuing graduate studies at the University of the
South Pacific.
Deborah van Heekeren is an anthropologist in the School of Humanities at the
University of Newcastle.
293
Christine Weir teaches history at the University of the South Pacific, Suva.
Graeme Whimp is a graduate of the Pacific Studies Programme,Va‘amanū Pasifika,
Victoria University of Wellington.
Elizabeth Wood-Ellem is the author of Queen Salote of Tonga: the story of an era
1900-1965, editor of Songs and Poems of Queen Salote and of Tonga and the
Tongans: heritage and identity. She is an honorary senior fellow in the School of
Historical Studies at the University of Melbourne.
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Index
Abaijah, Josephine 46
Abanakona, Const 289
Abbotts, Margaret 252
Abel, Gordon 250
Ahau 288
Ahuia Ova, 40ff
Aikman, Colin 155
Alebua, Dominiko 279
Alesana, Enoka 118
Alesana, Usoali‘i 118
Allen, Jim 251
Amaraich, Andohn 173
Amery, Julian 187
Anderson, Robin 252
Andrews, CF 216-217, 222
Ara‘iasi, Petero 286-7, 288-90
Aris‘imae 287
Avinashnanda, Swami 191
Backscheider, Paula 159
Bain, Kenneth 184
Baker, Ray 185
Baker, Shirley Waldermar 6-8
Balfe, John 248
Ballard, Chris 3
Banks, Charles W 208
Baranay, Inez 257, 258, 259
Barley, Jack Charles 104
Barnes, Charles 254
Barsden, Joseph 4
Baudrillard, Jean 71, 77
Bavin, Cyril 215
Baxter, George 5
Bay, Max 184
Beaver, Wilfred 232, 233
Beavis, AH 255
Bebe, Ratu Taitusi 99
Becke, Louis 10
Begley, Sr Ursula 125
Beier, Ulli 253
Bell, Les 251
Bell, William 286-7, 288-290
Bellair, John 247-8
Bennett, Judith 278
Bera, Const 290
Beros, Bert 242
Bertreux, Fr 287
Besnier, Niko 108, 114
Biggs, B 255, 256
Bignold, Kathleen 267
Bingham, Rev. Hiram, 117
Binner, George 197
Black, John 261
Blanc, Bishop 141
Blaskett, Geoff 249
Bose, Subhash Chandra 190
Bougainville, Louis Antoine de 9
Bourke, Jean 259
Bowden, Tim 252
Bowman, Alice 249
Boyd, Mary 155
Boys, P 255, 256
Braga, S 243
Brennan, Geoffrey, QC 182-183
Briggs, Keith 257
Brodie, Fawn 8
Bower, Dr Isaac 201
Bruce, William Henry clan 97ff
Brune, Peter 243
Buasi 37
Bulbeck, Chilla 255
Bullard, Steven 244
Bullen, Frank 10
Burkitt, Ian 114
Burton, JW 215-224
Burton,
JW (Jr) 220
Buxton, Keith 251
Byatt, AS 70-71, 81
Cakobau, Ratu George 187
Cakobau, Seru 196, 197, 199-200
Caldwell, 208
Calvert, James 200, 201
Campbell, Ian 7
Campbell, John Dr 5
Capps, Lisa 91
Carlon, Maureen 256, 258, 259
Carlyle, Thomas 11
Carr-Gregg, C 253
Carroll, John 248
Catholic nuns, Kiribati 126ff
Center, Gus 266
Certeau, Michel de 76, 81
Chalmers, James 9, 250
Chalmers, NS 182
Champion, Ivan 252
Cheesman, Evelyn 252
Chinnery, EWP 227ff
Churchwood, William 141
Cilento, Raphael 252
Clarence, Margaret 249
Clark, Sr Christine 127
Claxton, Sr Berness 130, 131, 136
Cleland, Rachel 254, 255
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296
Clifford, James 20
Coicaud, Fr Donatien Joseph Pierre 288
Coicaud, Fr Jean-Baptiste 286, 287-8, 290
Cole, Tom 251
Coleman, Carol 257
Collins, Lloyd 247
Connolly, Bob 252
Cook, Captain James 4, 9
Cooke, John 249, 251
Cooper, Frederick 205, 206
Corris, P 278
Coward, Noel 147
Cummins, Geoff 6
Curnow, Allen 211
Dademo, Bob 256
Dagora, Kevau 41ff
Damien, Fr De Veuster 5, 9
Dampier, William 9
Das, Gobind 221
Davidson, George 159
Davidson, Jim (JW) 8, 9, 11, 149ff
Davidson, Mabel 159
Davidson, Ruth 154-155, 156
Daws, Gavan 6
Day, David 243
Deakin, Alfred 8
Deane, Mrs 215
Deane-Butcher, William 248
Deasey, Dudley 257, 262
Deasey, Marjorie 255, 257, 262
Deck, Dr Northcoat 288
Defoe, Daniel 159
Deleuze, Gilles 69ff
Dening, Greg 196
Denison, Sir William 197
Denning, Lord 182, 192, 193
Dennis, Mick 246
Denoon, Donald 211
Derrick, Ronald 202
Devesi, Baddeley 279
Didi, William 281
Dillon, Peter 9
Dirks, Nicholas B 205
Doi, Takeo 76
Donnelly, Sr John Bosco 126, 131, 132
Douglas, Norman 8
Downing, Doris 257, 258
Downs, Ian 254
Dudley, Hannal 215, 216
Dunmore, John 11
Eather, Major General Ken 243
Edridge, Sally 278
Edwards, D 255
Eichelberger, Robert 244
Elekana 107ff
Ellis, Tom 258
Ellis, Henry 208
‘Elota 56, 279
Eve, Sir Malcolm Trustram 182
Exham, Richard 209
Fairbairn, Ian 154
Falcam, Leo 172
Falvey, John 183, 188, 199
Farrer, TH 201
Fekitetele 4
Fenton, Peter 249
Fielakepa 141
Field, H John 208
Field, Norma 80
Fifi‘i, Jonathan 279
Finau 4
Finau, Bishop 141
Firth, Sir Raymond 153
Firth, Stewart 252
Fisk, EK 252
Fitzgerald, Scott 122, 123
Fitzsimons, Peter 243
Fitzpatrick, Brian 153
Flannery, Tim 252
Flynn, Sr Callistus 125
Forster, EM 139
Fortune, K 290
Foster, Sir Robert 189
Foster, Stephen 151
Foucault, Michel 113
Fox, Rev. Charles Elliott 280-1, 282
Fox, Emma L 281
France, Peter 180
Frank, George 122
Frazer, Ian 251
Freeman, Derek 1, 253
Freud, Sigmund 69ff
Freund, Dorothea 255, 256
Fujitsubo 79
Fujiwara, Kaneie 78
Fulton, Ted, 249-50
Furbank, Nick 139
Fusipala, Princess 145ff
Gaigo, Bobby 44ff
Gammage, Bill 261
Gandhi, Mahatma 121, 122
Ganilau, Ratu Penaia 187
Garnier 208
Garrett, John 215
Index
297
Gately, Arthur 248
Gauguin 9
Gebauer, G 52
Geldard, W 248
Gelling 208
Gerre Rupa, 32
Gibbes, Bobby 251
Gibson, Walter Murray 6
Gill, William, 11
Gina, Belshazzar 279
Gina, Loyd Maepeza 279
Glover, Ellen Fanny 200
Glynn, Sr Oliva 126, 133
Goldens, Graham 278
Goodwin, Frederick 209
Golski, Kathy 257, 258, 259
Gormley, Sr Mary 132
Gosset, Ralph 209
Graham, Sheila (Lily Sheil) 122ff
Gray, L 255
Green, B 258
Green, J 257, 258
Greenwood, Caroline 158
Greenwood, Cecilia (Pips) 158
Greenwood, Miles 158
Grey, Sir George 207
Grimble, Arthur 10
Grin, Henri Louis 10
Guattarri, Felix 69ff
Gudgeon, Walter Edward 205ff
Guichet, Bishop Peter 132
Gulati 39
Gunther, John 228
Gure Gure 22ff
Gure Kila 27
Gure Velapo 22
Haddon, AC 228, 229, 230, 232, 233, 234, 235
Hadfield, Florence 219
Hair, Paul 155
Hall, Harold 188
Ham, Paul 243
Hamlyn-Harris, G 244
Hancock, Sir Keith 9, 153
Hanlon, David 151
Hanrahan, Sr Nora 132
Hargesheimer, Fred 250
Harkness, Chris 257, 258
Harris-Hamlyn 262
Hasluck, Paul 254, 261
Hatab, LJ 36
Hau‘ofa, Barbara 144
Hau‘ofa, Epeli 144
Heian Japanese women 69ff
Hempenstall, Peter 10
Henderson, James 247
Henderson, Margaret 250
Hennings, Frederick 201
Henry, Betwel 173
Hilliard, David 278
Hilly, Francis Billy 277
Hirsch, Fr 128
Hoa 288
Hobsbawn, Eric 207
Hobson, JA 207
Hogan, Bill 263
Hogan, Nace 244
Hogan, Tom 244, 247
Holland, DC 51
Holland, Frank 250
Hollinshed, Judith 255, 257, 258, 259
Hollis, Sr Veronica 132, 135
Holmes, Richard 150
Hooper, Alan 245
Horner, David 243
Howard, Catherine 133
Howe, Kerry 290
Hurley, Frank 244
Hughes, Billy 239
Iava‘o 287
Idriess, Ion 250
Iga, Wala 20
Igawai, Kila Kaile 27ff
Ihlein, Anne 133
Iieshi, Ambilos 173
Irene, Mother Sup Marie 280
Jackson, John 245
Jackson, Kingsley 249, 250, 186, 187, 188
Jakeway, Sir Derek 185, 187, 188, 189
James, Clarrie 249, 250
John, Arthur 251
Johnson, Les 254
Jones, Mary Harris (Mother) 122ff
Jones, Peter 247
Joseph, Sr Mary 280
Kabua, Amata 166, 171
Kailoma 93ff
Kalawa Walo 21, 24ff
Kamehameha 9
Kana Vali 18
Kearsley, Richard 189
Keating, Paul 243
Kee, Ioanna Ben Kum 130
Keesing, Roger 62
Kelesi, Mariano 279
Telling Pacific Lives
298
Kendall, Henry 251
Kenilorea, Peter 279
Kenney, George 244
Kennedy, DG 109ff
Kenona, Marica 99
Kidu, Buri 258
Kidu, Carol 255, 257, 258, 263
Kikang, John 51ff
Kila Kawa Igawai 25
Kila Wari Lui Rupa 19
Kilawari stories 15ff
Kingsmill, John 246-7, 248
Kiste, Robert 252
Kituai, August 258
Knie, Paul and Eleanor 243, 257
Koch, Klaus-Friederich 114
Konio 38ff
Kopi Kila Kana 18
Kori Taboro 41ff
Koschade, Victor 257
Koya, Siddiq 182, 186, 190
Krämer, Augustin 3
Krishnamurthy 188
Kwamala Wari 18
La Nauz, John 8
La Pérouse, Comte de 9
La‘a 25
Lacan, Jacques 69ff
Lal, Brij 215, 252, 290
Langdon, Robert 11
Langmore, Diane 7, 9, 259
Laracy, Hugh 12, 278, 287
Large 209
Laval, Father 6
Lawes, WG 41
Le Carré, John 149
Leahy, Tom 254, 258
Lee, Helen Morton 145
Leehardt, Maurice 39-40
Legge, JD 227, 230
Leonardo, Micaela di 87
Lévi-Strauss, Claude 69ff
Lewis, Bessie 257, 258
Lifuka, Neli 108ff
Lilburn, Douglas 158-159
Lindt, JW 23
Linnekin, Jocelyn 113
Litchfield, Geoff 251
Lloyd, Stephanie 255
Lono 22
Lugard, Lord 229
Luomala, Katherine 2
Ma‘afu 200, 203
MacArthur, Douglas 244
Macdonald, Barrie 6
Macdonald, PD 183
MacGregor, William 45, 230, E 255, 256-7
Maclean, Edna 255, 256-7
Maddocks, Sir Kenneth 181
Mailefihi, Tungi 142
Malapasina 3-4
Malinowski, B 16, 40, 238
Mangafel, John 173
Manihout 288-290
Mara, Ratu 182, 183, 187-188
Marett, RR 230
Mariner, Will 9
Marks, Bill 246, 248
Marshall, Jock 252
Massumi, Brian 71
Mata‘afa 199
Maude, Harry 5, 152
Maui 2-3
Maxwell, Dale 133
May, Governor 216
McArthur, Piera 5
McCosker, Anne 250
McDonald, Niel 244
McDowell, Nancy 253
McFarlane, Brian 250
McFarlane, Milton 251
Mea Gure 22ff
Mea, Paul 132
Mead, Margaret 253
Medew, Norman 246, 248
Mega Velapo 22
Melberg, Arne 66
Melville, Herman 6, 9
Merivale, Herman 196
‘Michitsuna, mother of’77
Mihalic, Francis 61
Mihter 181
Miller, Perry 8
Monckton, CAW 250, 253
Moore, Clive 278
Moore, William 214
Moresby, John 49
Morris, Ivan 78
Moss, Frederick Joseph 219, 222
Motu-Koita 35ff
Moulton, JE 6
Mückler, Hermann Dr 198
Munro, Doug 107, 109, 211
Murasaki Shikibu, 72ff
Index
299
Murphy, John 250
Murray, AW 11
Murray, Gilbert 252
Murray, JHP 40, 227, 230, 231, 232,235,237
Murray, Sir James 201
Naite, Nakesa Luisa 104
Nakayama, Tosiwo 165ff
Nakayama, Sydiniha 165
Nakayama, Masami 165
Nakayama, Mihter 171
Naniseni, Maheu 137
Natusch, Guy 158
Natusch, Sheila 158
Neale, Bruce 251
Nelson, Hank 229
Newton, Bill 248
Ngiraked, John 172
Nicholas, Henry 208
Nightingale, Florence 9
Nikakis, Gillian 250
Noser, Adolph Alexander 55
Nott, Henry 197
Nott, L 254
Numa Name Gure 27ff
Oates, Lynette 251
O’Brien, Claire 278, 286
O’Brien, Glen 251
O’Reilly, Father Patrick 11
O’Shea, Sr Dennis 126
O’Sullivan, Catherine 256
Ochs, E 91
Okada, Richard 73
Olter, Bailey 173
Omai Ongka 57
Oram, Nigel 18, 23
Orsmond, John Muggridge 9
Osifelo Sir Frederick 123, 279
Palmer, Bryan 152
Park, Edward 248
Parula Wari 25ff
Pasifika, Frank 108ff
Pate, Michael 248
Patel, AD 177ff
Patel, Leela & family 178-192
Paton, John 220, 222
Peacock, JL 51
Perry, WJ 236
Perversi, Frank 247
Phillips, Anna 256
Poitier, Sidney 121 ff
Pomare 209-210
Pompallier, Bishop 5
Porter, Andrew 196
Powdermaker, Hortense 252
Powell, Alan 249
Powell, Graeme 156
Porter, R 254
Poyer, Lin 113
Poznanski, Lilly Ogatina 279
Prakash, Gyan 205, 206
Pritchard, George 202
Pritchard, Patisepa 199-200
Pritchard, William 195ff
Puffett, Dennis 251
Pulusi, Tafaoata 118
Rabuka, Sitiveni 10
Radcliffe-Brown, AR 229, 232
Ralston, Caroline 7
Ramrakha, Karam 182
Ramirez, Guadalupe 200
Rannells, Jackson 278
Raucaz, Fr 287
Read, Kenneth 253
Rees, Derrick 248
Reeson, Margaret 250
Refalopei, Kalisto 172
Refshauge, Joan 255
Reid, AC 185
Remelik, Haruo 172
Reynolds, Max 251
Richards, Audrey 153
Richards, Rowley 254
Richards, Thomas 205
Riessman, CK 87-88
Rivers WHR 228, 232, 234, 235
Roberts, Jan 255
Robinson, Alfred 255
Roger, Gordon 184, 185
Rogers, Sir Frederic 195-196, 202
Roimata 3, 12
Ross, Jim 249
Rothgeb, Wayne 248
Rotia, Sr 137
Rougemont, Louise de 10
Rowell, Sydney 244
Rudge, Jim, 248, 249, 250
Rudrananda, Swami 185, 191
Rule, Joan 255, 257, 258
Rutherford, Noel 6
Rybarz, Beverley 255, 257, 258
Rybarz, Stanslau 258
Sahlins, Marshall 113
Said, Edward 195, 201
Salamasina 3
Telling Pacific Lives
300
Sali, Lazarus 1173
Salote, Queen 9, 149ff
Samson, Jane 196, 202
Sanadhya, Pandit Totaram 217, 221
Sanders, Robert 182
Sanneh, Lamin 197
Santo, Peter 255
Saussure, Ferdinand de 69ff
Scarlett, Betty 243, 255-256, 261
Scarr, Deryck 9, 11
Schoeffel-Meleisea, Penny 3
Schwab, Fr 250
Searson, Anne 133, 134
Seddon, Richard 207
Seemann, Berthold 190, 202, 203
Seidensticker, Edward G 72
Seligman, CG 40, 230, 232
Sellers, Peter 3
Selwyn, George 197, 282
Selwyn, John 282
Senimili, Adi 99
Seward AC 234
Seymour, Commodore 199, 214
Shepperson, George 155, 156
Sherman, Thos 208, 209
Sherwood, Barbara 277
Sherwood, Bill 258
Short, Lillian M 16
Sibson, Roy 248
Silsoe, Lord 182
Sinaitakala 4
Sinclair, Jim 252
Singh, Ram Dayal 178
Singh, James Shankar 186
Singh, Vijay R 182
Sitas, Ari 90
Skinner, Sr Rita Mary 132
Slade, William 222
Small, AJ 216, 222
Small, Cathy 145
Smith, Barry 9
Smith, Grafton Elliot 236
Smith, Keith 248
Smith, Michael French 253
Smith, Stanniforth 252
Smith, Trafford 183, 187, 188, 189
Smythe, Colonel 197, 200, 201, 203
Soga, Monilaws 282
Somare, Sir Michael 46, 243
Spate, Oskar 7, 9, 157, 252
Speck, Ormond & Winsome 255
Spencer, Baldwin 229
Stanley, GAV 41
Stanley, Owen 45
Stannage, T 254
Stanner, WEH 227
Stanton, Eddie 247, 249
Stebbings, Jack 247
Steley, Dennis 278
Stevenson, Robert Louise 6, 9
Steward, HD 248
Stewart, Richard 6
Stoler, Ann Laura 205, 206
Strathern, Andrew 56
Strong, Walter Mersh 237
Sukuna, Ratu Sir Lala 9, 177
Sura 89
Ta‘emoemimi 3-4
Tabuanaba, Viane 118
Tabuanaba, Taeaniti, 124
Tabuanaba, Ioane, 124
Tabuana, Teresa 124
Tagore, Rabindranath 221
Takau, ‘Queen’ Makea 209
Tarte, D 290
Taukoriri, Takenrerei 130
Taunga 10
Tawita, Witake 133
Taylor, Jim 261
Tebwebwe, Bwebwenteiti 130
Teuo, Taulu 118
Tefolaha 124
Thaman, Konai Helu 113
Thomas, John 109
Thomas, Nicholas 205
Thompson, EP 152
Thomson, Phil 251
Thomson, Sir Basil 7
Thornley, Andrew 215
Thorpe, Ken 245
Thurston, Elizabeth 260
Thurston, Sir JB 9
Te Pou, Jimmy 207
Timbs, Sr Marie 133
Tmetuchl, Roman 173
To Rot, Peter 255
Toliman, Matthias 255
Tongilava, Sione Filipe 152
Tora, Apisai 190
Tscharke, Ed, 251
Tu‘i Tonga Fefine 3-4
Tun, Petrus 173
Tupou, King George 195
Tupou IV, King 146
Index
301
Tupou Moheofo 4
Turner, Ann 278
Turner, WY 42
Tuza, Frank, 256
Tyler, Royall 72, 77
Underwood, Malcolm 152
Underwood, Polly 249
Usher, Leonard 183-185
Vainu‘upo, Malietoa 198, 203
Vairuarangi, Panapa 209
Vakatani, Makea Daniela 208
Varghese, Margaret 151
Vial, Lee 255
Vivekananda, Swami 191
Voss, Ida 243, 257
Vuza, Jacob 279
Waiko, John 256
Waiko, Bob 256
Wala Iga 17
Waley, Arthur 72
Walo Kalawa 21, 24
Wari Lui Kila Rupa 19ff
Warinumani Lui 18
Washington, Captain John 196
Waterhouse, Rev John 5
Watkins, Rev JB 142
Weate, M, 248
Wedgewood, Camilla 253, 255
Wendt, Albert 198
Wesley, John 8
West, Francis 227, 231
Weston, Olive 249
Weston, QVL 192-193
Wetherell, David 251, 253
White, Eireen 188
Whitlam, Gough 139
Whitrod, Ray 254
Whitty, Albert 209
Williams, FE 40ff, 227, 254
Williams, Henry 5
Williams, John 5, 6, 9, 198, 215
Wilson, Bp 282
Wolff, Michael 155, 156, 160
Wood, Margaret 257
Wood-Ellem, Elizabeth 9
Woodburn, Susan 152
Woodford, Comm. 288
Woodhouse, Jena 72
Woodward, Jack 248
Workman, Res. Comm. 290
Wright, Eric 255
Wulf, Charles 52
Yali 255
Young, Florence 287, 288
Young, Michael 254
Zoleveke, Gideon 279