“IF THESE WHITE PEOPLE HAVE A CULTURE, THEY WILL UNDERSTAND OURS”. These are the words of a strong willed and deeply courageous Motuan girl called Gabi who hails (most likely) from Poreporena village which was once located at the base of the Tuoguba Hill that overlooks the city of Port Moresby and the Fairfax Harbour. Poreporena is now incorporated into the great Hanuabada village and is just a stone throw from the western foothills of Tuogoba and Port Moresby. It might be accurate to guess that Gabi uttered these words in the period immediately after the second world war in the 1940s when Papua and New Guinea was still under colonial rule.
Gabi was in her teens and only a few hours prior, she witnessed a bloody execution where a young Motuan boy from Kori village was hung on a rope at Ela, the beach front located on the eastern slope of Tuoguba Hill. The boy was charged of commiting a particular crime that might be labelled as visual rape. Allegedly, he was caught staring at a particular expatriate subject, namely Ms Collie Damont, who happened to have fixated herself in the direction of the boy’s gaze. In those days, staring at a white woman was tantamount to sexual harrassment or visual rape to be exact. Such an offence carried the penalty of an execution which was organised as a public spectacle that serves both to punish and deter such a form of harrassment as well as to intimidate and assert the power of colonial administration over the natives. More details about this particular story of Gabi and the execution is recounted in The National’s Writer’s Forum by Melinda Kanamon and is entitled as “The Freedom of Culture”.
After witnessing the execution Gabi returned home with her younger sister, Tama. They reported the day’s incident to their parents and cried out their hearts over what they have seen.The incident installed a stubborn spirit of resistance into the hearts of these two young Motuan women. While the village slept quietly in shock and bereavement that night, the two girls left the comfort of their homes and sought out their male relatives who have taken refuge in the mangroves located in a delta further afar from the village.
Their male relatives must have been avoiding captivity and ultimately execution for similar or other nuisances defined as criminal by the then colonial masters. Gabi and Tama had some food with them which they gave to their male relatives. But Gabi was not content to be a mother or a sister only that night. Her heart was burdened with the affliction of the day and she had to deliver this particular spirited message:
“How long are you going to keep on hiding? Ah? This is our land. We belong here. They don’t. And now you are still trying to flee your land. Where will you go? Where will your sons and daughters grow up and call home? Where will you go? Today a young boy was hanged at Ela. He was only 17. Tomorrow more will be hanged as they defy their laws. Take up your places and make a difference for your people. If these white people had a culture they would understand ours. You men sitting here are the only educated natives in Port who can one day run our government. Now is the time to make a difference, now”.
All was not lost. Gabi’s words penetrated the hearts and minds of her male relatives and some of them eventually teamed up with other Papua and New Guineans of the time to campaign for Papua New Guinea’s independence from colonial rule. Gabi might therefore be regarded as one of the women who laid the foundation stones that helped created Papua New Guinea.
What is equally attractive about Gabi is her particular deployment of analogical reasoning which assumed the view of culture as a universal similarity based on analogy. “If these white people had culture they would understand ours”. This is not a proposition framed to deliver the negative impression that “white people do not have culture and therefore they do not have the moral and cognitive capacity to understand us”. Gabi’s premise is that understanding is gained through an exchange of similarity and culture is the symbolic currency of this exchange. It therefore follows that if similarity is already assumed, what needs to be created is difference in itself because only difference and difference alone can make a difference. Gabi makes no hesitation to summon our attention to an imminent and an enduring call of all times : “Now is the time to make a difference, now“…….Thank you Gabi!
Then the pertinent question for me is: How did the white man get to such a stage where he has no culture?
Bula,
Quiet the contrary. It is not that the white man got to a stage where he has no culture. He has CULTURE all along and is fully cognisant of the fact that he has this thing culture which he uses to differentiate and create the distinction between Westerners and resterners. What is problematic is that his concept of culture probably blinded him to the ways in which the idea of culture might be constituted either similarly or differently. What I think can be gained from Gabi’s concept of culture is the way in which people create social and cultural differentiation. Now these are technical terms which philosophers and anthropologists think about in different ways.
An insight from Gabi’s view of culture is akin to what the anthropologist, Roy Wagner, has argued that all human relationships is similar in one way or another, irrespective of our creed, colour or geographical backgrounds. So self-similarity is already projected into the conceptual design of her moral and cognitive stance. We are already similar is different to saying we are already different. This therefore means that we have create difference out of similarity. Now this is getting into conceptual terrain so I will stop here for the time being.
Cheers,
Andrew
There are several reasons for our apparent lack of culture. One we are a recently settled – displaced – people in a foreign and often hostile land, whiuch we don’t understand, so we have no roots yet.
For my self; My family have been here five generations now, and my ancestors hail from Scotland. So after this amount of time, I am starting to feel as one with my native land. I also know my family dates back several centuries in Scottish Kirk records. So I have a culture.
The other reason was the old (not so old) notion, that white culture was superior, and all other cultures should be subservient to ours. (The whiteman’s buden no?)
These notions are gradually passing. Men of my father’s generation were in favour of freedom for the “blacks”…. “But a black man should keep a black man’s place.” I never asked what a black man’s place was, even though I was somewhat curious. It is not pukka, to too closely examine your parent’s prejudices.
Regards……Ralph.
Isn’t Koki east of Tuogoba hill? I think you mean Ela Beach is south of Tuogoba?
yours uncultivated
-R
Very interesting to note all your comments. I believe “the white man” actually lost his culture pursuing wealth, fame and power through anixation of other indigenous peoples and cultures. The ‘white man’ has not only been an imperialist but a suppresionist of indigenous cultures while promoting ‘his’culture as superior to others. The sad things is many of us educated and well-to-do Pacific people are also carried away by this notion that a ‘white culture’ of superior to our own. We are becoming individualist and pursuing wealth, fame and power in the same way as a ‘white man’ . We have become a ‘white man in a black body’. Another sad fact is many of our well to do who are politicans are selling our traditional, cultural, social and environmental heritage to these foreigners to fullfil these dreams – many times at the cost of their people and country. These dreams also come with their social evils of corruption, AIDS, life-style diseases and spiritual unfullfilment.
I agree with Dorothy. I find it interesting to wonder about how the white man came to a point where he begins to think the way he does and it could have something to do with his pursuit of wealth and power.
What mystifies me is why all other cultures of the world operate on very similar basis of communalism while the white man comes with his concepts of individualism? Where or how did it begin? Have the white man always thought this way?
His mentality fascinates me.
I agree with the author in terms of the need to find similarities and not differences – to overcome the notion that we are separated by culture(s). I have my kastom – you have yours. Fine – are we able to agree on common grounds? Do we all struggle to better the world in small steps, do we all suffer from injustice? Of course, the suffering of colonial subjects in the past and present (if I may gloss it this way) is very painful – pain is what unites us, as is love and hope.
The White Man is not necessarily white in today’s global economy, individualism not a disgusting ego-trip of Westerners alone. White and brown are no valid categories in our world when we stop to think and act them. Many of us have crossed borders, culturally, emotionally, epistemologically. We may gain and suffer from these crossings but they help us to understand each other better.
History can help to see where we came from – female agency, for example, has led to many changes. Gabi is to applaud in her courage and vision of resistance. Speaking up is not easy – that unites us in this world as well.
SK
Interesting article. Gabi’s comment is still very relevant in modern Papua New Guinea. All you have to do is hop on down to the yacht club in any major centre to understand what I’m talking about.
What concerns me, is the lack of cross-cultural training (if any) that a lot of expatriates in PNG are given prior to them immersing themselves in business within PNG. This is where the door is opened for the implementation of an ethnocentric perspective on PNG, its people and culture – and you see it all over PNG.
I agree with Andrew, the white man does have culture but there a lot of issues surrounding that culture like Fijinut pointed out – individualism vs. collectivism.
There is one tool that I can think of that allows one to understand better certain cultures and that is a Hofstede Analysis.
I’ll try to address the issue in one of my posts when I can find the time