| Pacific Update |
Takuu's tragedy unfolding
By Michael Field
Extinction is just a wave or two away for a small civilisation of singing Polynesians. As the South Pacific swallows their island, the people will leave a solitary legacy; a New Zealand anthropologist’s collection of more than a thousand songs many can sing from memory and a comprehensive dictionary of a language lost to the waves.
| Takuu... one big wave could end the community. |
It will be the first and last ethnology of a unique people.
The tragedy is unfolding on Takuu, an obscure, difficult to reach atoll. It is ancestral home to 600 Polynesian people living a subsistence lifestyle based exclusively on the sea.
Part of Papua New Guinea and 200 kilometres north-east of Bougainville, the atoll is made up of 13 islets with a combined land area of less than a square kilometre—none of it now more than one metre above mean sea level.
This dress rehearsal for sea level rise is not the result of global warming but rather of a grand, continental clash of the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates.
It has created the most rapidly extending active rift system on Earth, renown for its heavy magnitude earthquakes.
Auckland University’s Dr Richard Moyle, associate-professor of ethnomusicology, fears the end will come quickly for Takuu.
“A wave coming right through the living area of the village will do it overnight,” he told ISLANDS BUSINESS.
The one big wave which could end the community is likely to come in the form of a king tide rather than a tsunami.
The big tides, which occur around twice a year, sometimes see a low tide up to two metres below normal and—ominously—a high tide 1.5 metres higher than normal.
So far the waters have not reached the orderly village. But Moyle says a king tide would do it. Earlier this year PNG authorities issued a warning for Takuu.
“I thought that was it, they could not survive any longer,” he said, but added that the tide did not meet feared expectations.
Already the sea is destroying the gardens which feed the people and as more become salt strained the ability of the people to survive fades.
The gardens produce taro and giant taro, while the island’s freshwater lens, which sustains human life, is becoming brackish.
Takuu dies slowly or quickly, but dies anyway.
Once known as the Mortlock Islands, it has an odd history. An epidemic hit it in the 1870s and just 13 people survived. It took people from Bougainville to help restore the community.
The disease itself was never identified but was probably smallpox which was present at the time in the Solomon Islands.
In 1896, a Samoan-American woman, “Queen” Emma Coe, bought it for four axes and 4.5 kilogrammes of tobacco. Under Imperial German protection, she had all the trees chopped down and replaced with coconuts and imported New Irelanders to work them.
Takuu’s people spend up to 20 hours each week in group singing and dancing, and the song poetry gives a clue as to the value of this extraordinary sustained output.
Songs celebrate successful relationships—those bonding extended families together in effective productivity and those linking humans with their ancestors in times of personal need or emergency. And the singing sound itself is unique in Polynesia.
It’s like speech played backwards on an old tape recorder with syllable endings louder than their starts, but this is ‘te reo tonu’—‘the correct sound’.
Moyle, the Pacific’s leading authority on traditional music, has been visiting Takuu for years, compiling a dictionary and its grammar and music. His latest visit left him feeling pessimistic, and shocked at the changes hitting the island.
No one beyond the island is listening to them as they appeal for help, although their one idea—a seawall—would seem to only represent a deferment of the inevitable.
Independence not a practical option
Independence may not be a practical option for American Samoa, according to a commission set up to review American Samoa’s political status. The Political Status Study commission is conducting the first full review of American Samoa’s constitution and its political future since 1969, according to a Radio New Zealand International report. The commission’s chief executive, Foufou Sunia said they are going to hold consultations with various government departmental heads and review how the territory’s constitution relates to the US Federal constitution. Sunia said the commission would also study the political status of a number of other United States territories.
Pacific fish deal
Pacific Islands countries will offer member countries of the European Union (EU) access to fishing rights in the region in return for investment in the industry and EU market access. This was revealed by Fiji’s minister for foreign affairs and external trade, Kaliopate Tavola, who chaired a Pacific trade ministers meeting in Nadi, Fiji. Tavola said Pacific islands countries are negotiating with the EU to develop a multilateral fisheries partnership agreement. He said the main focus of the agreement would be market access into the EU for the islands countries. At present, Kiribati, Solomon Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia have bilateral fishery agreements with the EU, but Pacific trade ministers have agreed to maintain unity and negotiate a multilateral fishery agreement.
US$29m for corruption clean-up?
Australia will pay A$40 million (US$29 million) for Nauru to clean up corruption in its administration in return for the impoverished Pacific nation accepting asylum seekers who arrive in Australia by boat, according to a Sydney Morning Herald.
Among the reforms agreed to by Nauru is ending dodgy “investor passports” where passports are sold—and the Bank of Nauru’s practice of allowing money laundering by issuing bank cheques without scrutiny of the source of deposits.
The terms of agreement have come to light as John Howard faces the greatest challenge to his authority in 10 years as Prime Minister, with a group of coalition backbenchers resisting his plan to resume the Nauru solution.
As a measure of Canberra’s faith in the state to which it entrusts the hosting of immigration detention centres, Nauru is also required to appoint an Australian police chief, co-operate in tax information exchange, permit Australian scrutiny of all Nauru government accounts and repair its public service.
The two-year memorandum of understanding was signed by the two countries in September and tabled in a Senate hearing in November, but made public only now.
Air Nauru to start flying in August
Air Nauru expects to resume full air services in the central Pacific in August after buying a replacement Boeing 737-300 aircraft. The aircraft to be delivered to Nauru soon, will head to Australia to undergo registration and certification formalities before being commissioned for service. Nauru’s Minister for Transport, Dr Kieren Keke said: “This successful outcome for Nauru represents the culmination of efforts of Nauruan business entities and in particular, the Government of the Republic of China (Taiwan) which provided the valuable assistance to enable the purchase.”
Support for France growing
New Caledonia’s representative to the French Senate, Simon Loueckhote claims support to remain with France is growing in his country ahead of the independence referendum in 2014.
“From 1988 when the Matignon Accord was signed, now replaced by the Noumea Accord, we have seen a gradual increase of support for France. New Caledonians have seen that their livelihoods have been improved and they have been able to travel widely through France’s support for the economy,” Senator Loueckhote told Pacific journalists in Paris for the France Oceania summit. According to the Noumea Accord, a referendum is to be held in 2014 to decide on eventual independence from France.
PNG in a mess: Patience
Papua New Guinea is in an administrative and political mess and on the verge of collapse, an Australian academic has warned. University of Papua New Guinea politics lecturer, Professor Allan Patience wrote in a recent commentary published by the Sydney Morning Herald that Australia needed to lead a multilateral intervention effort to rescue PNG from collapse. He said violence had spiralled out of control in PNG, coupled with an ever-increasing HIV/AIDS epidemic and a disintegration in health and education services.
He aired similar sentiments in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). “There is incontrovertible evidence that the situation in PNG is worsening by the day. The systemic corruption that poisons the political system from top to bottom is well known. Transparency International continues to downgrade PNG each year on its international corruption index.
“Late last year the PNG police force was strongly criticised by Human Rights Watch International for routinely imprisoning, bashing, torturing and raping children,” Patience wrote. “The real test for Australia will be whether it can assemble and co-ordinate a multilateral approach to PNG—and to all of the South Pacific.” PNG’s chief secretary Joshua Kalinoe acknowledged the problems but said the government was addressing them, while Health and Bougainville Affairs Minister Sir Peter Barter expressed concern the academic’s views undermined efforts to market the country.
Dual citizenship for kingdom
The Tongan Privy Council has approved a submission to make dual citizenship for Tongan citizens lawful. Chair of the Tongan Privy Council Prince Regent Tupouto’a has directed the Crown Law Office to formulate the necessary draft amendments to the Nationality Act (CAP 59) and to other relevant legislation.
The draft amendments would be submitted to cabinet and subject to the Privy Council for detailed consideration and approval with the expressed aim of enacting them during the current session of Parliament. Under the existing Act, a Tongan citizen loses Tongan nationality if he/she voluntarily takes up citizenship in a foreign country. Similarly, a Tongan woman who marries a foreigner and takes on her husband’s nationality also loses her Tongan citizenship.
France to help curb illegal fishing
A tripartite initiative between France, Australia and New Zealand to combat illegal and unregulated fishing in the Pacific was to have been put to Pacific leaders when they met with French President, Jacques Chirac last month.
The initiative, known as the FRANZ agreement, was signed in the Australian capital, Canberra in March, this year. It is yet to be endorsed by all the 14 member countries of the Pacific Islands Forum.
|
|
