Archive for the 'History' Category

Vanuatu find confirms Taiwanese links

Published on August 25, 2008 in History. 1 Comment

VANUATU’s  DAILY POST carries an interesting article about an archaeological find that gives further credibility to the view that some people’s of the Pacific have a Taiwanese origin. The find was discovered by accident when a bulldozer unearthed a piece of lapita pottery in a placed called Teouma. The site at Teouma was cleared and dug up to enable the construction of a commercial prawns project. When the piece of lapita was discovered, a locally trained person attached to the Vanuatu Cultural Centre was called in both to document the find and to organise a more coordinated archaeological excavation.

This was where Professor Mathew Spriggs from the Australian National University became involved. Spriggs is an household name in Vanuatu’s archaeology and has worked there for more than three decades. Further archaeological excavation at Teouma unearthed 71 headless skeletons. Spriggs opines that the heads were probably taken away for ritual purposes, a religious practice found in several societies of Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea.

Professor Spriggs told the Vanuatu Daily Post that archaeological evidence indicate “that the first settlers to arrive and settle in Vanuatu arrived from Taiwan via the Bismark archipelago in New Guinean and Solomon Islands four or five thousand years ago before sailing further to Vanuatu where they settled in the islands three thousand years ago”. This archaeological theory is connected to linguistic theory about the origins of the Austronesian family of languages.

“Vanuatu’s language today originally grew out of the indigenous language of Taiwanan approximately 5,000 years ago. Linguistically all the languages of Vanuatu today belong to a big language family called the Australasian Family and the furthest we can trace is in Taiwan”.

Many archaeological finds of this kind often make their apperance as favourite news items in the media. It is heartening to see the prominence that the Vanuatu Daily Post gave in talking about the find and even to provide a picture of Spriggs in his cap and beard.

However interesting the find maybe to archaeologists, geneticists and those who value historical information, the important point for cultural heritage management here is that the find was discovered by accident rather than by design. Many Pacific Island countries do not have genuine archaeological heritage management policies which are supported by a budget that can allow archaeologists to carry out regular reconnaissance and so we are left merely with contingent responses to discoveries. If accidents help us discover our history, would we be justified to hold that history is, after all, an accident?

The return of tradition in plastics

Published on May 8, 2008 in History. 7 Comments

“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.

I think Solomon Islands as a country that went through a crisis is in a vulnerable position because a crisis opens the door for outside individuals and entities to capitalise on things that would be in the best interest of the people to know…We already know that when there is a crisis, the government machineries are not very effective and the justice system is weak and exploitation usually happens.

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.