Sometimes brute force was used to kidnap whole villages. Islanders were tempted on to ships with promises of trade, or, once Christianity had taken hold, called to revival meetings by blackbirders pretending to be missionaries. In the Pacific islands most islanders had no desire to leave their idyllic homes, and blackbirders resorted to force. In the Azores, China, Japan, India & the Philippines, recruits to Pacific islands may have been mislead as to how rosy the prospects would be in their new homeland, but they were (usually) came willingly, of their own accord. For the sugar cane plantations of Queensland in Australia, and the tin mines of the Solomon islands, as well as for copra plantations and phosphate mining on other Pacific Islands, the mine and plantation owners looked closer to home: to the myriad small islands of Vanuatu and the Solomons. In Fiji, the English brought in workers from India. The descendants of these recruits make up Hawaii’s multicultural population (for a really good introduction to immigrant labour in Hawaii, try to find a film called Picture Bride, about an early 20 th century Japanese ‘picture bride’ who comes out to marry a sugar cane worker). In Hawaii, these industries were sugar cane and pineapple, and they recruited workers first from the Azores in Portugal, then in huge numbers from China and Japan, and finally from the Philippines. In the late 19 th century different European powers began developing industries in the Pacific that were dependent on large amounts of hard labour. Vanuatu’s national language is bislama specifically because there are over 100 native languages, and because the Western colonial powers (England and France, to be precise) shoved a random assortment of islands into one country without regard for any unity of culture, and for one, further, terrible reason: blackbirding.īlackbirding is essentially slavery in the South Pacific. In understanding bislama, and what it is, and where it came from, I was finally able to understand Vanuatu a little bit. The kanaka maoli culture of Hawaii and the tangata maori culture of New Zealand are very similar: parallel customs and traditions, each with a single language, with minor dialectical changes based on region (note the similarities in the terms for native people).Ī memorial stone in Bislama for Bertha Dobbins, who brought the Baha’i Faith to Vanuatu Hawaii and New Zealand are very similar culturally: first world, Western, developed. The problem was not just words: it was worlds. They were shy and giggly, talking to my sister and I with their heads ducked, turning to each other and talking in bislama, trying to interpret and translate our questions about their country and culture into words both parties would understand. A group of young Ni Vanautu men in New Zealand as seasonal workers, picking peaches and nectarines, were also at the backpackers. I was first exposed to bislama a year and a half ago, staying in a backpackers in the Hawke’s Bay. As well as bislama, each Ni Vanau will speak one or more of the 100+ native Melanesian languages (making Vanuatu the most language dense country in the world), and possibly English, or French, or both. The national language of Vanuatu, and the one language that you can guarantee an Ni Vanau will speak, is bislama.
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