South Pacific islanders in Australia

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Arrival of a three-master in Bundaberg (Queensland) with contract workers on board
Employees on the deck of a ship, Bundaberg 1895

The South Pacific islanders in Australia are the descendants of 64,000 islanders mostly Melanesian descent who for 1863-1906 Indentured Labor ( German  contract work, work commitment ) of more than 80 islands in the South Pacific were recruited mainly on sugar cane, cotton or pineapple plantations in Queensland , a British colony and later state of Australia.

With the arrival of 11,500 in twelve months, imports into Queensland peaked in 1883. Most of the "Kanakas" (from the Hawaiian word for man ) were boys and young men, women and girls only to a lesser extent. 15 to 20 percent of Queensland's initial diaspora was affected by blackbirding , the process of recruitment using deception and violence. Their living conditions and wages were poor. There was a high mortality rate among contract workers.

The Pacific Islanders' Fund was intended to finance outstanding wages and repatriation of the islanders. The Australian government embezzled funds worth around 25 million euros (2013) from islanders' families in 85 percent of the cases concerned, thereby financing large parts of the administrative apparatus for the system of indentured labor and the repatriation of islanders as part of its White Australia Policy . The deportations ended in 1906, only a few remained in Australia.

In the 1970s, the descendants of the South Pacific islanders became politically active in Australia and achieved recognition as a national minority in 1994. In 2013, around 40,000 people belonged to the ethnic group that exists on the fringes of Australian society. Their representatives hope for an apology from the Australian government and expect compensation for injustices suffered. They are supported in this view by the governments of the Solomon Islands and Vanuatus. Australia has not yet complied with this request.

A lot of South Pacific islanders play in the Australian rugby leagues.

history

Beginnings in Queensland

Routes of worker recruitment, starting from Fiji and Queensland, ca.1860 - ca.1910

About 64,000 South Pacific islanders came between 1863 and 1906 through the system of indentured labor as contract workers to Australia, mostly to Queensland , a British colony that became part of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901 . In total, workers were recruited from over 80 islands, including the New Hebrides, the Solomon Islands and, to a lesser extent, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Kiribati and Tuvalu. 95 percent were men and boys between the ages of nine and 30, women and girls came only to a lesser extent. The workers were called Kanakas in colloquial Australian , after the Hawaiian word for man .

About 10–15 percent of the Pacific islanders recruited here were blackbirded and so often, through deception and violence, involuntarily fell into slavery- like conditions. The Australian Human Rights Commission believes that a third have been kidnapped or fraudulently lured to Australia. In this system, which in its entirety was motivated by exploitation, those affected lived under slave-like and racially despicable conditions.

The later passed laws such as the Polynesian Laborers Act (1868) or the Pacific Island Laborers Act (1880) regulated labor trade in Queensland as part of indentured labor , with those willing to work receiving three-year contracts. Most of the islanders left Australia at the end of their contracts.

working conditions

South Pacific islanders as workers on a pineapple plantation in Queensland, in the 1890s

The food given by employers was of poor quality, as were the clothes and blankets to protect against freezing temperatures, which are not uncommon in the Australian winter. Around 30 percent of those obliged to work died before the end of their contract due to a lack of immunity against common diseases.

Contract workers were paid £ 6 a year, which in 2014 would have been around 685 euros. The White Australian population perceived the South Pacific islanders as undesirable competition and as a threat to their own employment in the market for unskilled labor and increasingly stigmatized them. The trade unions fought for workers' rights, but contact workers from the South Seas were forbidden to organize as a group to represent them. They did not have the right to strike and were not allowed to leave their jobs. Workers who left their jobs without a permit or even escaped from the employment relationship faced a prison sentence of three months.

There is widespread agreement in the literature that Australia's sugar industry was built “on the backs” of the South Pacific islanders. At the turn of the century there were around 2,600 sugar cane plantations in Queensland, the size of which had roughly doubled in the 1890s.

Deportations as part of the White Australia Policy from 1901

Deportation of South Pacific islanders. This group entered before leaving for a medical examination, Cairns 1906.

The Commonwealth of Australia was constituted in 1901. With its White Australia Policy (German policy of the White Australia ) adopted the new federal government as one of its first acts was the Immigration Restriction Act of Australia , who finished all from non-European immigration basically, as now skills constituted an authorization criterion for immigration in European languages. As a result of the Pacific Island Laborers Act (1901) of December 23 of that year, the administration repairs approximately 7,500 islanders from 1904 to December 31, 1906. Only around 1,600 were allowed to stay in Queensland, around 1,000 escaped into the surrounding bushland.

The South Pacific islanders are the only population group in Australian history to have been subjected to mass deportations. Their remaining relatives continued to suffer from racial discrimination in the 20th century and often lived on the margins of society. In many cases, they were denied citizenship and prohibited from purchasing alcohol.

Pacific Islanders' Fund

South Pacific islanders clearing and clearing, Yeppoon in Queensland, 1895

Between 1885 and the 1900s, the Queensland government ran a Pacific Islanders' Fund , which was supposed to finance the return journey of the obligated workers and the payment of outstanding wages of deceased islanders to their families. Due to the high death rate of 30 percent, the fund accumulated considerable sums. There is evidence that the Queensland government is only about 15 percent. of the cases had paid full wages to the families of the deceased and misappropriated the remaining funds to partially finance the administrative apparatus surrounding the system of indentured labor . In 1901, Queensland transferred the remaining funds to the Commonwealth government, which in turn covered part of the costs for the deportation of the islanders. Estimates of the current value of the misappropriated funds were A $ 38 million in 2013, which was equivalent to approximately EUR 24.7 million this year.

Political awakening in the 1970s

Islander children in Innisfail, Queensland , between 1902 and 1905

From the 1970s onwards, the Australian federal government began calling for recognition as a disadvantaged ethnic identity within the Australian South Sea Islanders community . In 1975 the Australian South Sea Islanders Secretariat (ASSIS) was set up with headquarters in Brisbane to represent their interests. Politician Faith Bandler lobbied state and federal government officials for appropriate recognition and support for Australian South Pacific islanders. ASSIS received support from the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC, Commission for Human Rights and Equal Opportunities ) from 1992 . The HREOC report called on the Commonwealth government to recognize the community as a unique and racially disadvantaged ethnic minority of Australia.

Recognition as a national minority in 1994

The federal recognition of the Australian South Pacific islanders as an independent and ethnic group from Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders took place in 1994, which the government of the state of Queensland under Prime Minister Peter Beattie followed in 2000. However, with the resignations of Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating and Prime Minister of New South Wales Bob Carr , the initiative lost its momentum, leaving the Australian South Sea Islander community as well as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders a socially disadvantaged fringe group. A plan of action drawn up in 2000 outlined the federal government's relations with the Australian islanders.

South Pacific seasonal workers in the new millennium

South Pacific seasonal worker harvesting in Australia, 2007

In 2003 , the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade received numerous submissions in the parliamentary question on relations with Australia in its region, proposing regulations for contract work in the Pacific region and recommending a pilot program. The 2005 Pacific Islands Forum in Port Moresby focused on the Guest Worker Program, which the Association of Australian Farmers saw as a means of tackling rural labor shortages. In 2008, the Australian government launched a Seasonal Workers Program (SWP) to compensate for the seasonal labor shortage in the horticultural sector by recruiting workers from Timor Leste, Kiribati, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu and has since been tested in the hotel, aquaculture, cotton and sugar cane industries.

No apology even after 150 years

2013 marked the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the first blackbirded islanders to work in Australia. Some of them were sixth generation here at the time. To mark the occasion, ceremonies and the Wantok Forum were held at the State Library of Queensland in Brisbane, where tribal elders from Queensland and leading Melanesians demanded a formal apology from the Australian government for the practice of blackbirding and compensation for the misappropriated funds. The Prime Minister of Solomon Islands , Gordon Darcy Lilo , joined in this demand, also from agriculture and Prime Minister of Vanuatu , Moana Carcasses Kalosil was supported. However, Australia has not yet followed this request. Bonita Mabo, the widow of indigenous activist Eddie Mabo , is one of the South Pacific islanders' spokesmen.

Population development

A 1992 census of South Pacific islanders in Australia counted between 10,000 and 12,000 members of the ethnic community, 80 percent of whom still lived in Queensland. In the 2001 census, only 3,442 people claimed to be of South Sea Islander ancestry, as many can look back on ancestors from the ranks of the Torres Straight Islanders and / or the Aborigines due to interethnic relationships. About half of the respondents also stated that they were of Aboriginal descent.

The population of the descendants of the islanders in Australia reached 25,000 in 2009; Figures from 2013 ranged from over 30,000 to around 40,000.

Sports

Mal Meninga (* 1960), former rugby league player and coach of the Queensland State of Origin team, comes from the diaspora of the South Pacific islanders. The recording was made in 2001.

Studies from 2013 determined the growing importance of Pacific islanders in both rugby codes of Australia , for example 50 percent of the young players in the west of Sydney. These are both new immigrants and second and third generation descendants in Australia. Peter Horton from James Cook University saw “parallels to blackbirding ” in the “harvest-like” recruiting of these players .

Well-known Australian rugby players with a South Sea Island background include Mal Meninga , Sam Backo , Gorden Tallis and Wendell Seemann .

Personalities

  • Bob Bellear (* 1944, † March 15, 2005), first indigenous Australian judge

Web links

Commons : South Pacific Islanders in Australia  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Charmaine Ingram: South Sea Islanders call for an apology. In: Australian Broadcasting Corporation , Lateline, September 2, 2013
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Susan Johnson: Spirited Away. ( Memento of the original from March 12, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / hapi.uq.edu.au archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: The Courier-Mail , QWeekend, 2013, pp. 19-21.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Tracey Flanagan, Meredith Wilkie, Susanna Iuliano: Australian South Sea Islanders. A century of race discrimination under Australian law , Australian Human Rights Commission
  4. ↑ Historic inflation calculator → £ 6/1901 = £ 536.60 / 2014
    Oanda: Historical Exchange Rates → 1.2639 as mean for € / £ 2014 → € 685
  5. ^ A b The Sugar Labor Trade. 1995 documentary. National Film and Sound Archive, Section: Background Information .
  6. ↑ foundingdoc.gov.au: Documenting Democracy ( Memento of October 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) .
  7. ↑ Josepf Cheer, Keir Reeves: Roots Tourism: Blackbirding and the Sout Sea Islander Diaspora . Australia International Tourism Research Unit, Monash University, 2013, p. 249; quoted from:
    Matthew Peacock, Clive Moore: The Forgotten People: A History of the Australian South Sea Island Community. Australian Broadcasting Commission, Sydney 1979, ISBN 0-64297-260-5 , 95 pp.
    Wal F. Bird: Me no go Mally Bulla: Recruiting and blackbirding in the Queensland labor trade 1863-1906. Ginninderra Press, Charnwood (ACT) 2005, ISBN 1-74027-289-7 , 111 pp.
    Carol Gistitin: Quite a colony: South Sea Islanders in Central Queensland 1867 to 1993. ÆBIS Publishing, Brisbane 1995, ISBN 0-64624-229-6 , 123 pp.
  8. ↑ Edward Wybergh Docker: The blackbirders: the recruiting of south seas labor for Queensland, 1863-1907. Angus and Robertson, 1970, ISBN 0-20712-038-2 , p. 260
  9. ^ Stefanie Affeldt: Consuming Whiteness. Australian Racism and the 'White Sugar' Campaign . Lit-Verlag, Münster 2014, ISBN 3-64390-569-6 , pp. 152-188, online
  10. ↑ Museum Victoria: Our Federation Journey - A 'White Australia' ( Memento of the original from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / museumvictoria.com.au
  11. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica : White Australia Policy
  12. ^ Brij V. Lal, Kate Fortune: The Pacific Islands: An Encyclopedia, Volume 1. University of Hawaii Press, 2000, ISBN 082482265X , p. 621
  13. ^ Clive Moore: The Pacific Islanders Fund and the Misappropriation of the Wages of Deceased Pacific Islanders by the Queensland Government. ( Memento of the original from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / hapi.uq.edu.au archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: University of Queensland , August 15, 2013
  14. ↑ a b Catherine Graue: Calls for an official apology over 'blackbirding' trade on 150th anniversary. In: Australian Broadcasting Corporation, August 16, 2013
  15. ↑ Oanda: Historical Exchange Rates → 0.6500 as mean value for A $ / € 2013 → € 24.7 million
  16. ↑ a b c d e University of Sydney : The Call for Recognition of the Australian South Sea Islander Peoples: A Human Rights issue for a 'Forgotten People' , August 20, 2013
  17. ^ Australian South Sea Islanders Secretariat (ASSIS)
  18. ^ A b c d Special Broadcasting Services: 150 years on, South Sea Islanders seek apology for Blackbirding. November 2, 2013
  19. ↑ a b c d e University of Sydney: Free forum to call for recognition of South Sea Isländers. 19th of August 2013
  20. ↑ Stewart Firth (Ed.): Globalization and Governance in the Pacific Islands ; State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Project, ANU E Press, 2006, ISBN 1-92094-297-1 , p. 154
  21. ↑ Helen Hughes, Gaurav Sodhi: Should Australia and New Zealand Open Their Doors to Guest Workers From the Pacific? Costs and Benefits. ( Memento of the original from May 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.cis.org.au archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Center for Independent Studies, 2006
  22. ↑ Pyone Myat Thu, Ismenio Martins da Silva: The Australian Seasonal Workers Program: East Timor's case , Australian National University , 2013
  23. ↑ a b Special Broadcasting Service : South Sea Islanders mark sugar 'slave' days. March 26, 2014
  24. ↑ Global Education: Australian Pacific Isländers . Based on: Hilary Macleod, Tim Delany: Pacific Neighbors: Understanding the Pacific Islands , Curriculum Corporation (Australia), 2009, ISBN 1-74200-089-4
  25. ^ Daryl Adair: "Pacifica Diaspora in Australian Sporting Codes", University of Technology, Sydney , Abstract , 2013
  26. ↑ Geraldine Coutts: Exploitation and 'black birding' in harvesting of Polynesian sports stars. Polynesians have become sport's hottest global commodity. ' ABC Radio , May 30, 2013
  27. ↑ Tony Burton: Australian South Sea Islanders flag , Flag Society of Australia, 2012