New Zealand’s forgotten slaves of the Pacific – Stuff.co.nz

OPINION: Slavery is often perceived as an African/American issue, a past era when indigenous Africans were kidnapped and sold to work on American plantations.

But modern slavery as we know it actually goes back to the Arab Moors who wreaked havoc around the Mediterranean.

In the AD 1544 Sack of Lipari, one of the Aeolian Islands off northern Sicily, arch pirate Hayreddin Barbarossa attacked, enslaved, and sold off virtually the islands entire population of 7000 inhabitants.

The Pacific too has seen its share of slavery blackbirding it was called - whole villages rounded up and shipped off to work on colonial plantations in South America, Queensland, Fiji and Samoa essentially any place where the indigenous folk were not able to be coerced into working for the white man.

READ MORE:* Migrant exploitation complaints jump more than 250 per cent* Barbados bids farewell to British monarchy, becomes republic* Pompeii dig yields rare window on daily life of enslaved* A plywood box in a liquor store backroom, home for one of New Zealand's estimated 3000 modern day slaves

Established in Apia in 1857, German plantation owner DHBG (Deutsche Handels-und Plantagen Gesellschaft) grew to be a key player in the Samoan economy by the end of the 19th Century.

At first, they used indentured labour from Niue and Rarotonga, but this changed in 1867 when they switched to more compliant Melanesians, nearly all collected from the Solomons and Bismark Archipelago of Papua New Guinea.

In Samoa, these Melanesian labourers became known as the Tama Ulis, Black Boys, their skin being so much darker than the Polynesian.

New Zealand took ownership of the German plantations in Samoa, including their workforce, soon after New Zealand troops landed without resistance at Matautu near Apia in 1914. All the German plantations were formally confiscated and turned into the New Zealand Crown Estates (later New Zealand Reparation Estates).

It is well recorded in Samoa how under their German owners, the Melanesian plantation workers were strictly controlled, one could certainly suggest to the point of ill-treatment.

Cattle whips and sticks were often used on them by their overseers, and their movements were strictly controlled, largely forbidden to leave their individual plantation blocks to make social visits to other Tama Uli.

Alexander Turnbull Library

Part of New Zealand Expeditionary Force camp at Malifa, Western Samoa, taken in 1914.

Colonial correspondence reveals that the Germans preferred Melanesians because of their humble nature; they hardly ever complain, even when ill-treated, reported one German commissioner.

Robert Louis Stevenson arrived in Samoa in 1890 at the height of the German occupation, describing the German plantations as being prolific producers of cattle, coconut, coffee, rubber, pineapples and other crops.

His estimate of total area intensively worked by DHPG was around 10,000 acres, all so well-kept as to have the appearance of fairyland.

It was always going to be a difficult legacy to appropriate.

When New Zealand took over the German plantations, the treatment of the indentured labour did become more humane, all the punishments stopped for a start. But because of acute labour shortages no way would any successive Kiwi government make any moves to repatriate any of the approximately 125 original Melanesians back to their home islands which they all desperately wanted to return to.

This is complex territory, remembering the Melanesians were not taken at the point of a gun.

Oral histories clearly reveal most were tricked and bribed to come to Samoa in the first place, verbally promised that they would be returned to their home islands after three years with a wooden box of trade goods which at the time was highly regarded in their communities.

John Titchen/Getty Images

The grave of Scottish writer, poet and traveller Robert Louis Stevenson on Mount Vaea behind his home at Vailima, Western Samoa.

Another complication here came in 1957 when the New Zealand Reparation Estates, and all their employees, were handed over to the Western Samoa Trust Estate Corporation (WSTEC), ahead of independence in 1962.

Effectively we offloaded the Tama Uli on the Samoan Government, adding another layer of post-colonial complexity.

So what has happened to them all?

Today the Melanesian descendants of the original Tama Uli in Western Samoa number with their families around a 1000, most of them still residing around the old plantation district of Upolo, mostly within 30 miles of Apia.

It must be said that some Tama Uli descendants have successfully integrated to now live in Samoan villages, in several cases even bestowed matai (chief) status, while others have acquired small parcels of mostly leasehold land to live on with their families in semi-urban locations around the capital.

Both these sub-groups it could be said have done relatively well integrating into Samoan society.

But the big share of Tama Uli descendants still congregate in strong Melanesian communities, well represented tin the villages of Aele Fou, Sogi, the Samoa Trust Estate Corporation plantation villages (including their sub-communities of Afia, Olo and Sina), Tufulele, and Vaitele Uta.

I first became aware of the well-forgotten plight of Samoas Tama Uli while researching for Unescos Cultural Office in the Pacific the plight of the Banaban people, another displaced Pacific minority which New Zealand has benefited from.

After World War II, they were all tricked to relocate to Rabi Island in northern Fiji by the British Phosphate Company (BPC), simply so the BPC could entirely mine their home island of Banaba in the Central Pacific *now part of Kiribati).

All its guano phosphate was used to promote agricultural production in the British Empires farming countries of Australia and New Zealand. It was a straight steal, and we became prosperous through it, to their detriment today.

Like the Banabans on Rabi, who still wait patiently for redress, let alone any real apology for past wrongs, the displaced Melanesians in Samoa havent exactly been complainers.

According to Unescos 2000 report commissioned by its Pacific Cultural Office in Apia, the Melanesian communities in Western Samoa still have the lowest level of integration into Samoan culture, still suffering subtle discriminations on at a personal level.

Phil Walter/Getty Images

The Melanesian descendants of the original Tama Uli in Western Samoa number with their families around a 1000, most of them still residing around the old plantation district of Upolo, mostly within 30 miles of Apia.

Unable to escape their inferiority complex that binds them psychologically, this could be considered the starting point for the cycle of poverty that still inflicts them. Low self-esteem results in poor achievement in life, resulting in poor education and achievement in children, resulting in low-paying jobs, resulting in an inability to make any serious investment in education and so the cycle continues.

Governments in Samoa, Australia and Fiji have all moved in recent years to make apologies and some amends to their descendants of indentured labour.

Australia made their official public declaration back in 2000, testifying many of its indentured Melanesian labourers were treated like slaves, and noting that their descendants today remain little understood.

But no effort from New Zealand towards the Tama Uli has been forthcoming, almost certainly because of the sensitive nature of the subject in Samoa, with many government officials there denying the existence of an ethnic group which could prove divisive.

Many Melanesian descendants were interviewed for the UN report, but no real names could be used, so sensitive has the subject become in Samoa.

Exploitation is an old issue. Especially in this complicated world where history keeps getting revised, and compensation from countries perceived as profiteering and exploiting less developed countries can become little more than quagmires of blame-fuelled discussion.

The best result we could hope for in todays complex world may be to encourage rich donors and sponsors to take up the cause of the exploited, let the mantle of honour fall upon the givers, and encourage all of us to become better people in a brave new world.

See the original post:

New Zealand's forgotten slaves of the Pacific - Stuff.co.nz