“THEY ARE MAKING PLASTIC VERSIONS OF OUR MONEY IN CHINA….THE WORSE THING IS WHEN THEY START TURNING TRADITIONAL ARTEFACTS INTO PLASTICS, then we really have a big problem…Our traditional drums, our warrior items are all coming back as plastics”. The words above come from Leliana Firisua who is the technical director for Small and Medium Entpreprises for Solomon Islands in Honiara. His concerns were raised in a workshop organised in Suva 3 months ago by the Pacific Islands Private Sector Organisation and the South Pacific Regional Economic Integration Program. While the words from Mr Firisua carry a familar ring of echoes throughout the Pacific (including Australia and New Zealand), they have a particular sense of urgency for his country.
Apart from the issue of a vulnerable state, the concerns of Mr Firisua reiterates ongoing efforts of Pacific Island countries to find appropriate legal mechanisms for the protection and exploitation of traditional knowledge and expressions of culture. A draft model law, developed by the South Pacific Forum, has been in circulation and member countries will have to make necessary adoptations. This model law takes its cue from copyright but privileges a particular view of perpetual ownership.
The news article that gives prominence to Mr Firisua’s concerns is written by Dionysia Tabureguci of Pacific Islands Monthly. The front-page news article, entitled as The Pacific Stolen Identity implicates a cluster of issues in intellectual property rights including those to do with trademarks, copyright and patents and the yet-to-be-developed, ‘traditional knowledge and expressions of culture’.
The general moral of the article is phrased in the language of “identity theft” and links this particular kind of theft to the commercial exploitation of traditional knowledge and biogenetic resources. The image of converting and relegating an enduring tradition into a plastic and ephemeral commercial item is a part of the article’s message. It assigns cultural rights and ownership to the “owners” of traditional knowledge against those who are exploiting it. Exploitation is aligned with a logic of commercialisation where intellectual labour is converted into an item of exchange value: “our traditional…items are…coming back as plastics“. Conversion seems to create a rupture with tradition.
The story of appropriating and converting traditional items that have a monetary value is not unfamiliar. Presently In Solomon Islands we hear that Chinese have invented plastic versions of traditional shell money that are normally used in various parts of Solomon Islands. The factory-made plastic shell money is cheaper and is threatening to replace and displace the “traditional knowledge” that keeps “the shell money alive”.
More than hundred years ago, the Germans attempted to do the same with the Tolai shell money (tabu) in the East New Britain area of Papua New Guinea. When the Germans arrived in New Britain they found that the tabu permeated all aspects Tolai life and culture including its use in bridewealth, mortuary payments and land transfer etc. So the Germans thought that they could buy out all the land from the Tolai’s if they minted the shell money and bring it in huge quantities. The Tolai soon discovered the faked and artificial money and rejected it. The Tolai tabu has survived ever since.
In its endurance since colonisation, the tabu has measured itself against the German Deutz, the British Pound, the Australian Dollar, the PNG Kina and even now, the European Euro. It is generally renown for its abiding resilience as a local currency. Attempts have been made in East New Britain to make the tabu a legal tender so that it would co-exist with the PNG Kina. That attempt has yet to be formalised.
However as it happens, the sources that traditionally supplied the Tolai for their tabu have now been depleted. Consequently, more and more Tolai people are going to Solomon Islands for their supplies of tabu. All the prominent Tolai people who have a name and standing in their society today would have imported several tonnes of tabu from Solomon Islands. Perhaps a reason behind the legacy of resilience with the tabu is because it emanates from and feeds into an economy of sentiments that motivates itself against the seductive and sweeping forces of a plastic commodity logic while displaying itself in the guise of a commodity form.
I find the term “economy of sentiments” very appropriate when you use it to describe the resilience of tabu over the decades.
It’s very true – there is an intrinsic cultural connection to the creation, passing, and acceptance of tabu. Something that no machine on Earth will ever be able to reproduce or recreate.
From the very beginning when one finds, splits, skins, dries, and sizes the kanda, to the process of threading the param shell by shell – a physical connection is established.
And when the shells you are threading came to be in your hands in the first place by means of a wedding, funeral or other cultural matter from your very own people – there is an emotional connection.
And when you see certain tabu and understand the traditional knowledge that is entrenched within it – for good or for bad, and when you know the origins and the history, and the path it has traveled to be where it is at that moment in time – there is a spiritual connection.
Which is why I find it extremely difficult to understand as to why some Solomon Islanders are able to use the counterfeit plastic shell money.
I can not comprehend it.
P.S
The reason why we could tell the Germans were trying to counterfeit our currency was simple: their shell money was too clean!
Their tabu was never threaded, sized, cut, given, bought, broken, whipped, nor touched by the hands of our ancestors. There was never any value in it to begin with.
Tavurvur,
Thank you for your comments and it is comforting that it should come from a Tolai as yourself. The Tolai tabu is a very curious piece of cultural object. I think there hasnt been any conclusive study of this object as yet. I often think that a radical alternative to market economics could come out of understanding the tabu carefully.
I hope that Solomon Islanders will sooner or later come to realise the counterfeits they are buying and be decisive enought to abandon the use of these counterfeits.
A very interesting conversation here. It is worrying that the exploitation of indigenous cultures is obviously rife in the Pacific but there is no regional or even national mechanism in place to keep track of what’s going on.
Adaptations of the model laws to local situation should at least provide assurance that grievances can be addressed through legal channels but more should be done to create awareness.
In the meantime, outsiders are really taking advantage.
Andrew – thanks for this post, it couldn’t be more timely. I completely agree with you about the manifold issues at play with Chinese manufacturing plastic shell beads, the resilience of the tabu and what you and others have said about the power and value – emotionally, morally, socially, culturally and spiritually – of locally made valuables from and locally derived materials. Pei-yi Guo (http://idv.sinica.edu.tw/peiyiguo/English/indexen.htm), who has done extensive work on Langalanga clear demonstrates the importance of these forms. Without wishing to undercut the urgency of the situation, it is useful to remember Nick Thomas’ comment in Entangled Objects that ‘Just because black bottles were given, does not mean that black bottles were received.’ One wonders how these plastic beads are seen and evaluated locally, whether they have the same value as the shell beads and how they as materials will play out in the long term (plastic after all cracks and splits). Another issue here also seems to be our, and their definitions of the local or what Strathern would frame as the extent or rather where they cut their network. My comments are not meant to undercut the tangible economic and social issues at play with the Chinese undercutting local processes of shell valuable manufacture but rather to say that Solomon Islanders, and Pacific communities more widely, have historically been resilient and continue to be so when faced with foreign introductions. Perhaps this is overly an optimistic view engendered by my Euroamerican academic perspective, but I take some hope out of the reliance of the tabu, and the fact that in the past Solomon Islanders knowingly used ceramic copies of their valuables without losing the pre-existing system in which they played a fundemental role. Steven Becks, a maritime archaeologist, has this useful website – http://www.faess.jcu.edu.au/homepages/staff/SteveBeck/index.htm – which gives images of ceramic copies of dog’s teeth and shell vaulables from a 1893 ship wreck, which was returning 84 Islanders to the Solomon Islanders. See also this article:
Gesner, P. (1991). “A Maritime Archaeological Approach to the Queensland Labour Trade.” Bulletin of the Australian Institute for Maritime Archaeology 15(2): 15-20.
These ceramic items entered into circuits of exchange through the labour trade, and as these maritime materials suggest were willingly introduced by islanders. In colonial Papua people bought and sold shell valuables in Moresby, which they then used in coastal networks up into the Purari Delta of the Papuan Gulf. One wonders what local hierachies these returning labourers were trying to displace or rather enter into through their introduction. At issue is what relationships these objects engender. So, while the logic of these plastic beads are different in their imposition, my hope is that communities local manufacture will not collapse, and that Solomon Island legislation will be enacted to help stem the influx of these materials. The Vanautu Cultural Center provides a wonderful example of what can happen (http://www.vanuatuculture.org/trm/index.shtml).
Em tasol!
Josh,
Thanks for extending this discussion along another intellectual trajectory and for the interesting references as well. The original news article indicated that it was for economic reasons that is compelling Solomon Islanders to resort to the use of these plastic shells. I do not know if the reasons for the use of these shell money is same or different. But we hope that appropriate legislative mechanisms are put in place to secure the interest of the local people in Solomon Islands. And certainly Vanuatu has been very very examplary in many of those things deal with kastom. I was reading the Vanuatu Daily Post over the weekend I learnt alot from one of its articles written about kastom wok there. I think I will take it up at some point as a matter of discussion here.
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Hello from Byron Bay australia
we are about to arrive in POM and have only the Comfort Inn in Boroko lined up.
We would be after accommodation in POM with melanesian if possible. that is for two weeks. we are the founder of a small ngo seedsavers.net.
we condider renting a flat or a room. or share.
we come to POM to present our film/meetings with NGO and GO and shoot some more
We produced a documentary for the people of the Pacific exclusively with a dubbed version in Pigin, that was released late 2008. Let me know if you are interested to use it.
PLEASE SEE THE FIRST THREE MINUTES ON YOUTUBE.COM/SEEDSAVERS
or http://masalai.wordpress.com/2009/02/07/a-seedy-movie/
we are due to leave for PNG on Feb 15th to present the film to gov and ngo civil societies.
Michel Fanton