Ethnic Identity and Regionalism in the Southwest Pacific:
The Melanesia/Polynesia Divide in Contemporary Politics1
Stephanie Lawson
Macquarie University
Abstract
The usual terrain of the politics of ethnic identity is at the national or subnational
level, and even a cursory overview of the literature serves to confirm that scholarly
studies of the phenomenon are usually focused on these spheres. The rise of
regionalism or regionalization, however, brings with it the potential for ethnic politics
to be played out on this broader stage as well. We have already seen the concept of
‘culture’ extended to cover some very broad areas – ‘the ‘Confucian culture area’ of
East Asia being one obvious example. In neighbouring Southeast Asia the ‘ASEAN
Way’ has also been used to characterize the diplomatic culture said to prevail in that
region. The Southwest Pacific has long had its own version in the form of the ‘Pacific
Way’ – a diplomatic style which, like the ASEAN Way, has frequently been used to
differentiate the political culture of island nations, both collectively and
individually, from that of Western nations, especially Australia and New Zealand.
More recently, however, the apparent unity of ‘Pacific Way’ regionalism has come
under strain and a growing division between the Melanesian and Polynesian subregions appears to be developing. This paper explores the historic construction of
these categories as markers of racial, cultural and ethnic identity and their
implications for contemporary regional politics.
___________________________________________________________________
________
Introduction
Ethnic identity can incorporate a variety of elements, be expressed in numerous
ways and deployed in many different situations. Identities – ethnic or otherwise – are
1
Paper prepared for presentation to RC 14, Politics and Ethnicity, International Political Science Association
XXIInd World Congress, Madrid, 8-12 July 2012.
1 generally relational and situational. They depend on the availability of other,
distinctive identities in social and political contexts to achieve contrast and thereby
affirm a sense of self as belonging to a particular entity. Identities can also be highly
instrumental – a resource to be utilized according to the issues and interests at
stake. This has certainly been the case with ethnic identities in the circumstances of
the post-Cold War world and the new wave of state- making (and unmaking) that has
ensued. Thus the usual terrain of the politics of ethnic identity in this period has
been located at the national and subnational level and has revolved around the state
in one way or another.
State dynamics, however, have worked alongside another important
phenomenon – the rise of regionalization which has brought with it the potential for
ethnic politics to be played out on a broader stage. This has often been expressed in
the more expansive notion of ‘culture’ which may incorporate, but is not identical to,
the concept of ethnicity.2 The culture concept has been extended to cover some very
broad areas. ‘Europe’ and ‘Europeans’ are readily assumed to share some kind of
common culture which in turn underpins the European Union. In Southeast Asia, the
‘ASEAN Way’ has been used to characterize the diplomatic culture prevailing in that
region, and is assumed to be based on certain underlying cultural characteristics
common to the ten member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
At the same time, all these regions are acknowledged as highly diverse in both
cultural and ethnic terms. Here is where the relational aspects of identity come into
play. ‘Europe’ (as represented by the EU), for example, may be diverse, but it
acquires a form of cultural coherence when – and indeed only when – it is held up in
contrast to some other cultural formation. Similarly, the ‘ASEAN Way’ can only be
understood as a regional diplomatic culture in contrast with some other ‘way’. For
ASEAN, the contrast is almost always drawn in relation to ‘Europe’ or ‘the West’
more generally. These latter entities also provide the essential contrast for many
other projects of regional identity construction, especially in Africa and the Middle
East as well as East Asia. This has much to do with the legacy of European
2
‘Culture’ is a phenomenon associated almost exclusively with social factors – language, art, religion, ‘way of
life’ etc. Ethnicity may include some or all of these, but also generally involves some notion of biological
descent, and is in some ways is a contemporary substitute for older notions of ‘race’. These issues are certainly
worth exploring further but there is not the space to do so here.
2 colonialism and the postcolonial ‘moment’ as well as the hegemonic status of the US
in world politics.
In the island Pacific, both pan-Pacific ideologies as well as more specific subregional ethnic identities have emerged in the initial postcolonial period. The idea of
a ‘Pacific Way’, potentially gathering in all Pacific islanders, was the first to be
articulated, although its early formulation reflected the ‘way’ of a particular group of
countries in the southwest Pacific with more specifically Polynesian connections.
Also, the early expression of the Pacific Way was by no means cast in opposition to
the ‘ways’ of former European colonial powers or ‘the West’ more generally. Rather,
the originator of the idea, Fiji’s Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, used it to characterize the
peaceful pathways to independence achieved by Pacific island countries in contrast
with other parts of the former colonial world, mainly in Africa and Asia, where such
processes, and their aftermath, had been marked by violence and disorder. But the
idea of a ‘Pacific Way’, based on a notion that Pacific islanders generally shared
some kind of common cultural heritage that shaped their social and political styles,
did come to acquire an anticolonial or, more accurately, postcolonial resonance in
the discourses surrounding further developments in regional order over the decades
that followed independence. The Pacific Way was therefore often expressed in
contrast with or, indeed, in opposition to the ‘Europeaness’ of Australia and New
Zealand, countries which, given their size, status and resources vis-à-vis the island
states, were also perceived as neocolonial powers.
The Pacific Way as a unifying ideology was soon challenged by the idea of a
‘Melanesian Way’ and, in more formal terms, by the formation of a sub-regional
organization, the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG). Although ‘Melanesianism’,
as expressed in the form of a Melanesian Way, has had a definite anticolonial/postcolonial edge entailing a certain critical posture in relation to Australia
and New Zealand, it also involves a certain oppositional stance in relation to
countries classified as Polynesian. The latter have recently formed their own
Polynesia Leader’s Group (PLG). This now stands alongside both the MSG and the
Micronesian Presidents’ Summit (MPS)3 as the third organizational leg of a tripartite
division of the Pacific islands established almost two centuries ago on the basis of
some rather dubious ethnographic assumptions.
3
This meets annually while a Micronesian Chief Executive’s Summit (MCES) meets twice yearly.
3 The following discussion examines the idea of ‘Melanesia’, in particular, as a
marker of ethnic identity both historically and in terms of contemporary regional
politics. It suggests that despite its problematic origins in racist European
ethnography, it has taken on a salience in regional politics that transcends its origins
and underpins a positive regional identity in relation both to other sub-regions of the
Pacific as well as to Australia, New Zealand and other relevant entities in the broader
Asia-Pacific area. We shall also see, however, that ‘Melanesianism’ as a unifying
ideology in regional politics also its limitations.
The Historical Division of the Pacific and Contemporary Implications
It is well known that the historical division of the island Pacific into three distinct
zones, viz. Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia, almost two centuries ago, was
based at least partly on the perceived characteristics of the inhabitants. Of the three
groups, Polynesians were judged to be the most ‘advanced’, especially with regard
to socio-political institutions, while Melanesian people were regarded as much closer
than either of the other two groups to a ‘barbaric state’.4 Such images persisted
through to the twentieth century and were replicated in some of the most influential
anthropological studies of the late colonial/early post-colonial period which focused
on contrasting ‘political types’ in Polynesia and Melanesia. Marshall Sahlins, for
example, clearly contrasted a ‘backward’ Melanesia with a relatively ‘advanced’
Polynesia.5 This particular article was subsequently condemned by Tongan scholar
Epeli Hau’ofa as obnoxious in its treatment of the Melanesians, replicating the
prejudices of a long line of explorers, missionaries and colonial officials, among
others, ‘who have romanticized Polynesians and denigrated Melanesians.’6 He also
highlighted the potential of Sahlins’s work to bolster ‘the long-standing Polynesian
racism against Melanesians.’7 Hau’ofa may have had in mind, among other things,
works like that of Maori scholar Sir Peter Buck, otherwise known as Te Rangihiroa.
No doubt following the conventional wisdom of his time, Buck delineated certain
4
Jules-Sébastien-César Dumont D’Urville, ‘On the Islands of the Great Ocean’ reproduced in Journal of Pacific
History, 38: 2 (2003) 163-174 (originally published in 1832).
5
Marshall D. Sahlins, ‘Poor Man, Rich Man, Big Man, Chief: Political Types in Melanesia and Polynesia’,
Comparative Studies in Society and History, 5: 3 (1963).
6
Epeli Hau’ofa, ‘Anthropology and Pacific Islanders’, Oceania, 45 (4) 1975: 285.
7
Ibid., 286.
4 basic racial divisions among humankind. Polynesians were classified as ‘Europoids’
– in contrast with Melanesian ‘Negroids’ (and Asiatic ‘Mongoloids’) – the former
being described in physically flattering and heroic terms as ‘a tall athletic people’ who
had historically shown ‘the ability and courage to penetrate into the hitherto
untraversed seaways of the central and eastern Pacific’. 8
Some contemporary scholarship in the field of political science has also
distinguished sharply between Melanesia and Polynesia in terms of state functioning
citing the near collapse of government in Solomon Islands and the coups in Fiji as
well as ongoing conflict in parts of PNG and Vanuatu as indicative of a general
Melanesian socio-political malaise. This is contrasted with Polynesia countries
which, it is said, have provided relatively stable government.’9 More recently, another
trenchant critic noted the attendance of Melanesian leaders at an unofficial summit in
Fiji – the latter suspended from the Pacific Islands Forum and subject to diplomatic
sanctions following a fourth coup – remarking that Papua New Guinea, Fiji, the
Solomon Islands and Vanuatu were ‘the poorest and worst governed independent
states in the Pacific.’10
A more sensitive summary of the sources of instability in Melanesian
countries has been provided by anthropologist Geoff White who points out that
western ideas about good governance start from a very different perspective from
that of Melanesian societies characterized by small scale socio-political organization
with egalitarian rather than hierarchical structures, together with high levels of
diversity among a largely rural-based population. This makes the task of managing
modern statehood enormously difficult. These features, however, also provide for
much stability and self-sufficiency at the localized level even in times of state crisis.11
With respect to Papua New Guinea, Ron May has also pointed out that it is among
the few post-colonial states that has actually maintained an unbroken record of
democratic government.12 This remains so, despite the constitutional crisis of 2011 8
Peter Buck, Vikings of the Sunrise (Wellington, 1954) 19.
9
Benjamin Reilly, ‘State Functioning and State Failure in the South Pacific’, Australian Journal of
International Affairs, 58 (4) 2004: 479.
10
Helen Hughes, ‘The Fiji Meeting Would be a Farce if it were Funny’, Canberra Times, 30 March 2011.
11
Geoff White, Indigenous Governance in Melanesia, Canberra, SSGM DP, 2006, p. 1.
12
R.J. May, ‘Disorderly Democracy: Political Turbulence and Institutional Reform in Papua New Guinea’,
Scientific Commons, 2003, at http://en.scientificcommons.org/33107246 accessed 24/2/2012.
5 2012.13 It also stands in contrast with Western Samoa and Tonga. The former,
although stable and now relatively prosperous (thanks in large measure to aid and
remittances), continues to exclude citizens without matai (chiefly) status from holding
public political office while in Tonga, an autocratic system of rule by a monarch and
‘nobles’ has only just given way to something resembling a parliamentary
democracy14
To summarize briefly, assumptions based on a relatively ‘backward’
Melanesia, especially in contrast with an ‘advanced’ Polynesia’, have persisted into
the present period both in certain branches of academia as well as in some popular
perceptions.15 Some academics have therefore called for the abandonment of the
tripartite division of the island Pacific altogether, based as it is on highly suspect
ethnographic categories which continue to be used to draw invidious distinctions
between the two sub-regions.16 Such calls, however, have not been echoed by
Pacific Islanders themselves. Indeed, Solomon Islands born academic, Tarcisius
Kabutalaka, has been reported as saying that despite the origins of the term,
‘Melanesia’ is now used as a term of empowerment and a focus of identity.17 This
has been reflected for many years now in a form of ‘Melanesianism’ which has
emerged out of what anthropologists have described as Melanesian kastom
discourses along with constructs such as the ‘Melanesian Way’ as formulated, in
particular, by Bernard Narokobi.
The Melanesian Way and Discourses of Kastom
The best-known conception of a ‘Melanesian Way’ was promoted through a series of
articles by PNG intellectual, Bernard Narokobi, in the PNG Post-Courier in the period
immediately following independence from Australia when national sentiment as
13
Ongoing at the time of writing but likely to be resolved through peaceful, if fraught, political/legal processes.
14
On recent reforms in Tonga see Ian Campbell, Tonga’s Way to Democracy (Wellington, 2011).
15
For a blog on distinctions between Melanesians and Polynesians from a tourist perspective, with impressions
strongly favouring the latter, see http://english.martinvarsavsky.net/general/melanesians-vs-polynesians.html
accessed. 24/2/2012.
16
See Bronwen Douglas, Across the Great Divide: Journeys in History and Anthropology (Amsterdam,
Harwood Acdemic Publishers, 1998), pp. 5-7.
17
Quoted in Ron Crocombe, The South Pacific (Suva, Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South
Pacific), 2001, p. 146. See also Clive Moore, New Guinea: Crossing Boundaries and History (Honolulu,
University of Hawai’i Press, 2003), pp. 3-4.
6 reflected in a heightened sense of Melanesianess’, especially in contrast with the
identity of the former colonial power, was high. It was no doubt intended to resonate
as a unifying ideology in a country in which sub-national ethnic diversity is reflected
in the most extreme incidence of language diversity in the world, with more than 800
different language groups identified among a population of less than 7 million. This
diversity characterizes Melanesia generally, and is one major factor which delineates
it from Polynesia where languages and other cultural institutions and practices
evince a certain uniformity.
Narokobi’s articles were collected, together with some critical commentaries
by a number of other contributors, and first published in book form under the title The
Melanesian Way, in 1980.18 Although associated with PNG’s newly achieved
independence, Narokobi’s vision of a Melanesian Way was identified with the
broader region, and included the people of ‘West PNG, Papua New Guinea and her
outer islands, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Fiji’ and who are
‘of neither Asian nor European stock’ nor of ‘African or Polynesian.’19 Narakobi
declined to define the Melanesian Way a clear definition but his purpose in asserting
a Melanesian Way linked with a specific ethnic identity was clear. Narakobi argued
that for the past two centuries Melanesians had come to see themselves through a
foreign interpretive lens rather than in their own terms. The task therefore was to
establish an authentic basis for identity founded on a philosophy reflecting the
‘ancient virtues’ of Melanesian people.20
The assertion of a Melanesian self in contrast with Western conception(s) of
Melanesianess established a clear anti-colonial/anti-Western character for the
Melanesian Way. Narokobi’s vision, however, did not amount to a complete rejection
of Western ways, but was rather a call for the judicious blending of local and
Western practices.21 One analysis suggests that Narokobi ‘imposed upon himself the
18
Bernard Narokobi, The Melanesian Way, rev. edn (Boroko and Suva, Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies
and Institute of Pacific Studies, [1980] 1983).
19
Narokobi, Melanesian Way, p. 4.
20
Ibid., p. 9.
21
For an interesting discussion of this and related issues see Gregory Bablis, ‘A Melanesian Icon: Professor
Bernard Mullu Narokobi (
-2010), paper presented to the biennial conference of the Pacific History
Association, University of Goroka, September 2010. Note that Narokobi’s birth year is omitted because it is
uncertain, although other sources give it as 1937.
7 task of defending an ‘imagined “we” against an – equally imagined – “them”’, the
latter referring to various agents or representatives of colonial and metropolitan
powers and the ‘we’ to all Melanesians. Also, although Narokobi’s Melanesian Way
was not a national narrative in a strict sense, it nonetheless performed something of
a ‘nation-building’ role within PNG at the time.22 But the general notion of a
Melanesian ethnic identity was soon to be projected onto the broader stage of
regional organization in the context of post-colonial politics.
Another important element in a developing Melanesian consciousness was
the emergence of certain discourses which overlap with, but are not identical to,
Narokobi’s Melanesian Way.23 Anthropological studies based primarily on Vanuatu
and Solomon Islands provided new insights into how the idea of kastom was
implicated in identity formation among the new nations of the Melanesian subregion.24 Among the key points raised was how the reversal of the negative images
of Melanesians produced under conditions of colonialism, with important input from
Christian missionaries, was effected through an ideology of decolonization which
drew inspiration from an idealization of past ways to promote unity and solidarity
both nationally and regionally.25 Educated indigenous clergy also succeeded in
rehabilitating kastom by treating it as a gift from God rather than as a collection of
outmoded heathen practices.26 Vanuatu’s first Prime Minister, Father Walter Lini,
also challenged conservative views through the promotion of ‘Melanesian socialism’
which, with its emphasis on communal sharing, could be regarded as much more
22
Ton Otto, ‘After the “Tidal Wave”: Bernard Narokobi and the Creation of a Melanesian Way’ in Nicholas
Thomas (ed.), Narratives of Nation in the South Pacific (Amsterdam, Harwood Publishers, 1997), pp. 39-40.
23
There is not the space here to deal with the topic adequately, but the issue of gender inequality and violence
against women in PNG was raised during the course of debates about Naraokobi’s Melanesian Way and some of
the collected criticisms in the latter section of the book address the issue.
24
See especially Roger M. Keesing and Robert Tonkinson (eds), Reinventing Traditional Culture: The Politics
of Culture in Island Melanesia, Special Issue of Mankind, 13 (4) 1982.
25
Roger M. Keesing, ‘Kastom in Melanesia: An Overview’ in Keesing and Tonkinson (eds) Reinventing
Traditional Culture, p. 297. See also Robert Tonkinson, ‘Kastom in Melanesia: Introduction’ in Keesing and
Tonkinson (eds) Reinventing Traditional Culture, p. 302.
26
Ibid.
8 compatible with Christianity than the individualistic and materialist values evident in
the West.27
This way of thinking has also been associated with the rise of more critical
and skeptical attitudes among Melanesians towards the conservative Pacific Way
discourse from around 1980, and its close association with Polynesian interests.28
But at the same time, Melanesian kastom discourses began to incorporate
something that had long been considered typically Polynesian, and that was the idea
of ‘chiefs’ rather than simply ‘big-men’.29 Interestingly, the title ‘Grand Chief’ has
become part of PNG’s honours system, along with all those of the British system.
This scarcely accords with the Melanesian Way advocated by Narokobi who spurned
the whole idea of such honours.30
Another expression of Melanesianism emerged in New Caledonia in the mid1970s and revolved around a Festival of Melanesian Arts (‘Melanesia 2000’)
designed to bring together the diverse and widely scattered Kanaks of the islands.
Although focused largely on the national sphere, there can be little doubt that it
drew on the wider regional discourses prevalent at the time. The festival was
followed up by a book Kanaké, The Melanesian Way authored by Kanak leader
Jean-Marie Tjibaou. Generally regarded as moderate and thoughtful in his approach,
Tjibaou called for a reconciliation between European and Melanesian ways in his
own country, something which French colonialism had scarcely attempted to date.31
In his quest for recognition, Tjibaou also rejected long-held associations of
Melanesians with primitivism and, like Narokobi, proclaimed a living cultural
existence for the indigenous people of his country: ‘We want to say to the world that
27
Walter Lini, from full text of speech delivered at a conference on Australia and the South Pacific and
reproduced in Pacific Islands Monthly (April 1982), 25-28.
28
Michael Howard, ‘Vanuatu: The Myth of Melanesian Socialism’, Labour, Capital and Society, 16: 2 (1983)p.
184.
29
See Geoffrey M. White, ‘The Discourse of Chiefs: Notes on a Melanesian Society’ in Geoffrey M. White and
Lamont Lindstrom (eds), Chiefs Today: Traditional Political Leadership and the Postcolonial State (Stanford,
Stanford University Press, 1997), pp. 230-31.
30
Bablis, ‘A Melanesian Icon’, p. 1.
31
Jean-Marie Tjibaou. Kanaké, The Melanesian Way, transl. Christopher Plant (Pape‘ete: Les Editions du
Pacifique and Suva: Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific, 1978).
9 we are not survivors from prehistory, even less some sort of archaeological relics,
but rather men of flesh and blood’.32
The Melanesian Way, and its variants, may be read as discourses which have
played an important part in raising a positive ethnic consciousness within individual
Melanesian countries as well as in the broader region. Indeed, in combination they
can be seen as contributing to an ideology of Melanesianism which has in turn
underpinned the assertion of a specific regional identity based on a conception of
ethnicity adopted, shared and indeed propagated by those on whom it was first
imposed. Thus Melanesianess now emerges as a largely Melanesian enterprise,
primarily in PNG, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu as each of these countries gained
independence and sought to establish a sense of self rooted in a form of cultural
authenticity distinct from the former colonial powers, but also among the Kanaks of
New Caledonia in a similar form of self-assertion shaped by the ongoing experience
of colonization. A less prominent aspect of the construction of the Melanesian self,
however, is a relational dynamic engendered by a ‘Polynesian other’.33 Assertions of
‘Melanesianess’ or ‘Melanesianism’ may therefore be a response to either or both,
depending on the context. In the next section we examine the practical development
of Melanesian regionalism in the form of the MSG in which aspects of these
relational dynamics are evident.
Melanesianism and Ethnic Regionalism.
Processes of regionalization in the Pacific commenced at much the same time as
they did elsewhere, and in the context of similar dynamics. These included the
aftermath of the Second World War, an emergent Cold War, and the ‘winds of
change’ which ushered in a period of large-scale decolonization around the world
promoted strongly by a newly reconstituted organ of global governance – the United
Nations. The first regional institution established in the Pacific, however, was a
purely colonial one. Membership of the South Pacific Commission (SPC) established
at a meeting in Canberra in 1947consisted of the six colonial powers with
‘possessions’ of one kind of another in the region: Australia, France, New Zealand,
32
Quoted in Alban Bensa and Eric Wittersheim, ‘Nationalism and Interdependence: The Political Thought of
Jean-Marie Tjibaou’, Contemporary Pacific, 10 (2) 1998: 373.
33
To date there has been little if any sense of a need to assert a Melanesian self in contrast with Micronesians.
10 the Netherlands, the UK and the US. Its official purposes were to restore stability
following the turbulence of the war as well as to ‘assist in administering their
dependent territories and to benefit the people of the Pacific.’34 Airbrushed out of
such official accounts are the threats perceived as emanating from the USSR and
communist ideology more generally. Although this was certainly a sub-text, political
issues (including any discussions of self-government, autonomy or independence)
were firmly excluded from its mandate and it was to address only social, economic
and technical matters for the purpose of promoting welfare and development among
Pacific islanders. Three years later a companion organization, the South Pacific
Conference, was established to give indigenous islanders a voice. Its first meeting in
Fiji in April/May 1950 brought together indigenous islanders from around the Pacific
for the first time, although most Micronesians were initially excluded because of their
geographical location north of the equator. The only colonial power to send a
European to represent native people was France.35
This meeting has been analysed in terms of an ‘experiment’ conducted along
several lines, including whether cultural diversity and different levels of development,
especially as between Polynesians and Melanesians, would prove too great an
impediment to fruitful discussions.36 Such differences as existed, however, ‘did not
produce the predicted failure in creating a sense of region among islanders.’37 In
subsequent developments, individual Pacific island countries joined as full members
on attaining independence, beginning with Western Samoa in 1962 and continuing
on into the 1980s by which time most had achieved independence or self-governing
status. The Conference became the governing body in 1983, and the organization as
a whole was renamed the Pacific Community in 1997. It still uses the familiar SPC
acronym (with the S now standing somewhat misleadingly for ‘Secretariat’). Its
membership now includes 22 island countries and territories and just four of the
original founders (the Netherlands and the UK withdrawing in 1962 and 2004
respectively).38
34
www.spc.int/en/about-spc/history.html accessed 25/2/2012.
35
See Greg Fry, ‘The South Pacific “Experiment: Reflections on the Origins of Regional Identity’, Journal of
Pacific History, 32 (2), 1997: 186
36
Ibid., p. 183.
37
Ibid., p. 192.
38
www.spc.int/en/about-spc/history.html accessed 25/2/2012.
11 Despite reforms to the SPC over the years, it did not satisfy all regionalist
aspirations. The year 1971 therefore witnessed the foundation of the South Pacific
Forum with an initial membership consisting of Australia, the Cook Islands, Fiji,
Nauru, New Zealand, Tonga and Western Samoa. In 2000 the organization’s name
was changed to the Pacific Islands Forum to reflect more accurately the
geographical facts of its membership which now included Micronesian countries
north of the equator. In additional to the founding members, the PIF also embraces
the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), Kiribati, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea,
Republic of Marshal Islands, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.39
The Forum had a much wider remit than the SPC, including political issues
which the exclusion of France and the US now made much easier to raise especially
in relation to nuclear issues and decolonization. Membership by Australia and New
Zealand, the only former colonial powers included, reflected a different kind of
relationship with respect to the island members. New Zealand in particular is actually
‘in’ the region and its indigenous people are of course Polynesian. Australia’s status
is more ambivalent but its close ties with the region ensured that it would also be ‘in’,
despite some initial controversy. In practical terms, Australia and New Zealand
provide more than 90 per cent of the organization’s funding as well as the lion’s
share of ongoing aid to the Pacific islands generally. This also makes them targets
for accusations of neo-colonialism – sometimes deserved, sometimes not.
Despite the Forum’s engagement with important political issues, it was
nonetheless seen by at least some of its members as taking too soft a line,
especially with respect to the treatment of Kanaks under French rule in New
Caledonia. This appears to have been an important factor behind the formation of
the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) which was also designed to give
Melanesian countries more clout in the Forum generally.40 An informal Melanesian
caucus formed in 1986 and was followed up in March 1988, by the signing of a set of
Agreed Principles under the banner of the Melanesian Spearhead Group by the
prime ministers of PNG, Vanuatu, and the Solomon Islands, committing their
39
See www.forumsec.org/pages.cfm/about-us/, accessed 25/2/2012.
40
See Ronald May, The Melanesian Spearhead Group: Testing Pacific Island Solidarity; ASPI Policy Analysis
no. 74, Canberra, Feb. 2011; David Hegarty, ‘Papua New Guinea in 1988: Political Crossroads?’, Asian Survey,
29 (1), 1989: 184; Yaw Saffu, ‘Papua New Guinea in 1987: Wingti’s Coalition in a Disabled System’, Asian
Survey, 28 (2), 1987: 249.
12 countries to consultation and cooperation on regional and international issues. A
preferential trade agreement followed in 1993. The formal agreement under which
the MSG now operates was signed in March 2007, and the organization is
headquartered in Vanuatu with a secretariat funded by China. New members since
1986 include the Front de Liberation Nationale Kanak et Socialiste (FLNKS) of New
Caledonia, admitted in 1991.41 For this group, membership of a regional organization
was a major advance in political recognition, and one which was unlikely to come
through any other regional group.42 Fiji did not join until 1996, perhaps indicating its
lesser identification with ‘Melanesianess’ to that time.43
The MSG’s preamble states that its members believe that the Melanesian
region ‘can be a region of solidarity and cooperation … with the objective of
strengthening wider institutions of regional and international cooperation.’ It further
states the determination of MSG members to ‘have a region that is respected for the
quality of its governance, the sustainable management of its resources, the respect
for and promotion of its Melanesian cultures, traditions and values and for its
defence and promotion of independence as the inalienable right of indigenous
peoples of Melanesia and the promotion of their human rights.’44
As noted above, an important factor behind the emergence of the MSG was a
desire to strengthen Melanesian voices in the Forum. This was perhaps seen as
necessary not only vis-à-vis Australia and New Zealand but also in relation to the
Polynesian states, for as one commentator suggests, although the MSG’s aim was
to strengthen Melanesian relations economically through trade and politically through
annual meetings: ‘Maybe, it was also to band together against the Polynesian
41
See http://archives.pireport.org/archive/2011/September/tcp-nc.htm accessed 25/2/2012.
42
New Caledonia, along with French Polynesia, has associate member status within the Forum, but this is a very
different thing from the FLNKS’s membership of the MSG.
43
Throughout virtually all of the colonial period, and much of the post-colonial period as well, Fiji was
dominated politically by a conservative chiefly elite from the eastern part of the island group which identified
closely with Polynesia, especially Tonga and (Western) Samoa. This has changed with the decline of this group
politically, and especially since the seizure of power by Commodore Bainimarama in 2006.
44
www.vanuatu.usp.ac.fj/library/Paclaw/Agreement%20Establishing%20the%20Melanesian%20
Spearhead%20Group.pdf accessed 10/02/2012.
13 domination of regional organizations.’45 This theme is evident in another political
analysis which notes attempts in both Melanesia and Polynesia to create subregional organizations in the mid-1980s. Underlying these was a sense that the
broader region was ‘too geographically dispersed and too culturally diverse to be
adequately served by the South Pacific Forum alone’ and that ‘the Melanesians in
particular have identified a number of distinct positions and attitudes on regional and
international issues which depart from those of their Polynesian neighbours.’46 It is
further suggested that the ‘Melanesians, with Papua New Guinea setting the pace
for Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands, found themselves increasingly at odds with
what they perceived as the diplomatic conservatism of the Polynesian island states
on a range of issues from nuclear testing to New Caledonia.’ Thus from the 1986
Forum meeting a pan-Melanesian caucus developed from a pressure group to a
formal inter-governmental organization in the form of the MSG.47
If the idea of the Melanesian Way and the formation and subsequent
development of the MSG has been at least partly a response to perceptions of
Polynesian dominance, then the more recent formation of the Polynesian Leaders’
Group (PLG) must also be considered in terms of similar dynamics operating in the
opposite direction. As noted above, a group of this kind was mooted in the early
1980s, mainly by Ratu Mara of Fiji and possibly as a reaction to the formation of the
MSG, but nothing came of it at the time probably due to lack of a sense of purpose
for such a grouping. By the mid-2000s regional dynamics had changed significantly,
especially with the MSG acquiring a stronger profile. A Polynesia grouping was once
again on the agenda. But the formalization of the group took until November 2011
when a meeting of leaders from French Polynesia, Niue, Tokelau, Cook Islands,
Tonga, Tuvalu and American Samoa came together in Apia at the invitation of the
Samoan Prime Minister and agreed a set of principles to ‘develop, promote and
protect common interests and objectives of the members’ and provide ‘a systematic
45
Tarcisius Kabutalaka, ‘Cohesion and Disorder in Melanesia: The Bougainville Conflict’ in Peter Larmour
(ed.), New Politics in the South Pacific, Suva, Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific, 1994,
p. 73.
46
Norman MacQueen, ‘Island South Pacific in a Changing World’, Pacific Review, 6 (2), 1993: 145. See also
Norman MacQueen , ‘New Directions for Papua New Guinea's Foreign Policy’, Pacific Review, 4 (2) 1991:
169.
47
MacQueen, ‘Island South Pacific’, p. 145.
14 approach to cooperation among Polynesian countries’.48 Fiji is not a member,
although it may apply to join. This, however, is unlikely under Fiji’s present political
circumstances and strained relations between the Bainimarama regime and Tonga
and Samoa. However limited its capacity in diplomatic and other terms, and an as
yet to be determined agenda for future action, the formation of the PLG reflects
continuing trends in sub-regionalism along ethnic/cultural lines.
An interesting point to note is that, along with the MCES and the MSG, the
PLG does not include any former colonial powers as members. Thus each grouping
is, at least in a formal sense, much more independent than any of the other regional
bodies. Even so, each has delineated its sub-regions more or less along the lines
originally set out in the tripartite division of the Pacific imposed almost two hundred
years ago, and on more or less the same ethnographic basis – with Fiji, now as then,
occupying an ambivalent position.
Finally, we should note one significant limitation of Melanesian solidarity in
contemporary regional politics, and that concerns the Melanesian people of West
Papua. Their own pro-independence organization has not been invited to join the
MSG and has been unable, to date, to gain observer status in its own right. This is
despite the fact that their status and situation in many respects resembles that of the
Kanaks. Furthermore, the treatment of West Papuans at the hands of the occupying
Indonesians, who have effectively replaced the Dutch as the colonizers of half the
island of New Guinea, has in many ways been much worse. Vanuatu, always the
most politically radical (or progressive) member of the MSG, has been the strongest
supporter of the West Papuans, but successive PNG governments have consistently
blocked any move to embrace them. Of all the Pacific Island countries, PNG is the
closest to Southeast Asia and has nurtured its ties with Indonesia. It is the only
Pacific country with special observer status in ASEAN and it is well known that it
aspires to full membership. At least one justification used by ASEAN members to
exclude PNG is simply that it is not a Southeast Asian nation, but rather a Pacific
one.49 But if PNG is Pacific rather than Southeast Asian, both geographically and in
cultural/ethnic terms, then so is West Papua. All this highlights the hypocrisy of
48
http://archives.pireport.org/archive/2011/November/11-21-01.htm accessed 27/1/2012. This site also contains
the full ‘Outcome Statement’.
49
See www.nationmultimedia.com/home/2010/09/20/opinion/Is-an-Asean-12-possible--with-Timor-Leste-
30138306.html, accessed 25/2/2012.
15 Indonesia’s continued occupation of West Papua. But it also seriously undermines
PNG’s own anti-colonial credentials in the contemporary game of identity politics.
Conclusion
‘Melanesia’ is an entity constructed historically by Europeans, and which reflected
certain derogatory assumptions about the inhabitants of the group. Such
assumptions persisted well into the twentieth century, and perhaps persist today in
some assessments of the problems of political stability in the region. Controversies
attending the Melanesia/Polynesia/Micronesia division, however, have been confined
mainly to academic discourses and are certainly not evident in the formation of
subregional associations by Pacific islanders themselves. It is also clear that the
origins of the term ‘Melanesia’, and any negative connotations it may have had, now
matters little to Melanesians themselves when it comes to self-identification as
Melanesians. Indeed, ‘Melanesianism’ has solidified as a form of ethnic/cultural
identity, now manifest in a set of attitudes and orientations as well a sub-regional
organization which has developed an increasingly prominent profile. As we have
seen, it has been nurtured not only in the context of the relatively strong anticolonialism evinced by Melanesian countries vis-à-vis European imperialism, past
and present, but also in relation to Polynesian ‘others’. This illustrates, among other
things, the inherently relational, situational and instrumental dimensions of the
phenomenon through which the ‘self ‘and relevant ‘others’ are constructed. We
have also seen, however, that ethnic Melanesian solidarity as a political ideal has its
limits in the context of broader regional dynamics, and that the ideal of a ‘Melanesian
brotherhood’ remains subservient to the contingencies of realpolitik in some very
important respects.
16