Blackbirding and the boys from Tanna who never came home

Updated

Mention 'blackbirding' anywhere on this island and you'll hear harrowing stories of missing boys and men. This is a place where the past haunts the present.

This beach looks like paradise.

It's on the tiny island of Tanna, in Vanuatu in the South Pacific.

Its white sands, turquoise rock pools and volcanic reefs are a huge part of everyday life, used by islanders for hunting, cooking and ceremony.

But this paradise has a harrowing past.

The beach is where thousands of boys and young men were kidnapped, tricked or coerced onto boats, and taken roughly 2,000 kilometres to Australia.

They were forced to work on sugarcane plantations.

Many never returned home.

It happened 150 years ago, but many people are still struggling to come to terms with it.

"Whenever you want to go down the beach, you have to make sure you go with friends — don't ever go by yourself," says local woman Josephine Gideon.

The blackbirding trade

What happened on Tanna is known as blackbirding.

Tens of thousands of Pacific Islanders throughout Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands also became caught up in the trade.

It was started in 1847 by a New South Wales-based grazier, and 16 years later the idea to import Pacific labour was picked up further north in Queensland.

Until the trade ended in 1901, around 62,000 people — mostly boys and young men — were taken to work on sugar plantations.

Some went willingly.

Most did not.

As contracts were signed and men were paid — although their wages were significantly less than their European counterparts — the Australian government legislated the trade as indentured labour.

But many argue that blackbirding was slavery.

"The definition of slavery is basically about one man's control over another," says Emelda Davis, chairwoman of Australian South Sea Islanders.

"These people never benefitted from their contribution or being brought to this country.

"They were severely discriminated against, they lost their families, they lost their money, they lost their lives."

More than 4,000 Tannese were blackbirded to Australia — a huge portion of the small island population of that time.

Today, no-one on the island has direct lived experience of blackbirding, but the Tannese seem to have a collective memory of that time.

The mention of blackbirding is met with harrowing stories of missing boys and men.

Boys who never came home

High up in the hills of Tanna, in a small village called Iounan, Tom Niman tells the story of the disappearance of 12-year-old Iasu.

On the day he disappeared, Iasu's older brother Niman was preparing a turtle to eat.

That required salt water, so Niman asked Iasu to walk down to the beach to get some.

Carrying two hollowed-out coconuts to collect the water, Iasu made his way down a well-worn track to the beach.

He didn't come back.

Niman went to the beach to search for his little brother.

But he only found a coconut container discarded on the shore, and a shoe print in the sand.

"Then he knew that somebody has taken Iasu," Tom says.

"Because at that time we don't have shoes, we don't have clothes."

Tom says Niman — having heard of similar disappearances — knew then that "white man" had kidnapped his brother.

Iasu's family never saw him again.

Tom's family continues to wonder what happened to him, and whether they have relatives in Australia.

There are many others wondering the same thing.

This family even has a photo, showing a descendant of a Tannese man who was blackbirded in the 1800s.

He's of their bloodline.

But other than this photo they know very little about him.

A song that belongs to Australians

Blackbirding stopped in 1901 with the introduction of the White Australia Policy and subsequently the Pacific Labour Act, designed to facilitate the mass deportation of South Sea Islanders working in Queensland's sugar industry.

Fifteen per cent of those blackbirded to Australia died from exposure to foreign illnesses, malnutrition, mistreatment.

Of those who lived, some were sent home to the wrong island, and some managed to stay in Australia.

Others did return home.

One Tannese man, Naoam Tom, brought back a warning in the form of a song.

To this day, at a clearing under a huge banyan tree in his village of Loutaliko, people gather to sing it.

The English translation of the song, in part, goes:

"They recall back to the bad times,

"Bad treatment, low wages, small food and water, hard labour, foreign language.

"So they said 'watch out for Australia'."

Steven Naoam, Tom's great-grandson, says the song "belongs to Australians".

"When a song is composed for you, it belongs to you," he says.

He sees the song as a message from his ancestors to be wary of Australia during the blackbirding period.

"The song is mainly about how the white men treated … our black men when they carried them to sugar cane plantations and they treated them very badly," he says.

In other parts of Tanna, people are actively taking a stance against Australians and Europeans.

The main town, Lenakel, is also known as Blackman Town — and locals explain that that's exactly what it is.

"Blackman Town means we own all the businesses and we also own this little town — there's no white fella," Pastor Steven Iamniko says.

That's in stark contrast to many of the businesses across the rest of Vanuatu, which are owned by expats — though Blackman Town does welcome tourists.

And beyond the preservation of the local economy, it seems the aim of Blackman Town is also to preserve culture.

"We want to own our custom, we don't want to destroy our custom," local Ialou Tre says.

According to Tannese man Samson Numake, the origins of Blackman Town stem back to his grandfather, who was blackbirded.

Samson says his grandfather was deeply affected by his experience, and returned to Tanna with an idea.

"The town will be occupied by Tannese people and the people from Vanuatu only, no European to run the business," he says.

Samson says the idea was implemented well after his grandfather passed away, by himself and his father.

"I know that if he's somewhere in Heaven, he will be very glad because I named the town after him," Samson says.

A devastating legacy

But despite this resistance, the impact of blackbirding continues to take a toll on Tanna.

Josephine was born roughly 100 years after the start of the trade, but remembers as a child being startled by the sound of boats, cars and by the sight of white people.

"We were scared because we heard the story that white people were not good people," she says.

For the island dwellers, blackbirding also brought about a fear of the ocean.

"Because of the stories that we hear that people were taken from the beach, from the reef, from the ocean," Josephine explains.

Perhaps one of the biggest reminders of the trade is language.

Today Vanuatu's national language is Bislama, a creole language formed during the blackbirding time.

"They really wanted to communicate with their mother languages but the white people won't allow them," Josephine explains.

So they developed Bislama, or "mixed language", to communicate.

In the early 1900s, as people from Vanuatu returned to their islands, they brought Bislama with them.

Asked how she feels speaking Bislama, Josephine says: "When I'm angry I use Bislama. When I want to say some just lovely words, I say it in my mother language — it sounds best to me."

Something — or nothing?

Many people of Tanna would like a formal apology from Australia.

It might help them heal.

"Our great-grandfathers were working like slaves in Australia," local Tom Kaltoy says.

"Is the Australian government still thinking if it can give us something like compensation? Or nothing?"

In 1994 the Keating government recognised the descendants of Australia's blackbirding trade for the pain, suffering and severe discrimination imposed on their community.

Yet little has been done by way of acknowledging the experiences of the South Sea Islanders and the impact that blackbirding has had on islands like Tanna.

In 2013, marking the 150th anniversary of blackbirding, Vanuatu's then-prime minister Moana Carcasses Kalosil, called on the Australian government to give a formal apology.

Nothing was done.

The ABC understands the Government is not actively considering a formal apology at this time.

As the people of Tanna wait, life goes on.

Gardens continue to be tended; oceans continue to be fished.

But for this community, the past is always there.

And it continues to haunt the present.

Credits:

Reporting, photography and video : Fiona Pepper for Shifting Cultures

: Fiona Pepper for Shifting Cultures Archival images: Supplied by the State Library of Queensland

Supplied by the State Library of Queensland Editor : Monique Ross

: Monique Ross Digital producer : Monique Ross

: Monique Ross Series supervising producer : Claudia Taranto

: Claudia Taranto With thanks to: Josephine Gideon, Miriam Posen, Naoam Steven, Australian South Sea Islanders - Port Jackson and Stephen Hutcheon

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Topics: history, human-interest, world-politics, foreign-affairs, vanuatu, pacific, australia

First posted