An historical consideration of Bougainville’s ‘redskin’ issue

ROSS HOWARD

IN World War II, after fighting with the Americans on Guadalcanal and New Georgia, my father was sent to Bougainville.

I heard him comment a few times about how he liked the Bougainville people and found them to be good soldiers. In fact, he said of the Bougainvilleans: “They killed more Japanese than we did”.

He also mentioned troubles between redskins and locals. The redskins to whom he referred were soldiers from the mainland. He blamed a lot of these problems on the Army’s attitude of instilling into soldiers that, once they were properly trained, they were superior people.

He said this resulted in the redskin soldiers looking down on, and trying to lord it over, the Bougainvilleans.

To be fair to the Army, during an emergency such as war one does not have much time to indulge in all the niceties of peacetime, like cultural sensitivity training.

But my father said the result of the mainland soldiers not respecting the local Bougainvilleans did cause him real problems.

I don’t think race, of itself, is the big problem. Countries like the USA, Australia and Israel have people from every country in the world who have fitted in well to their societies. And PNG, with its great diversity, has done well so far.

I was in Mt Hagen during the Fijian coup and I think most highlanders I spoke to were sympathetic to the Fijians.

They seemed to agree with those Fijians who said they were quite happy for foreigners to dominate the country’s commerce which they were good at.

However, when it looked like the Indians would dominate the Fijian political landscape as well as the commercial landscape, this was seen as a step too far.

I found myself in sympathy with those views. You have to leave the original inhabitants in a position where they do not feel dominated by outsiders.

Even in Australia today, while most people welcome foreign investment there is a growing resentment if foreigners are seen to be buying too much land. The Australian government recently blocked the sale of the vast Kidman properties to Chinese buyers.

So I don’t see race as the problem. It’s usually other issues that cause tensions. Most of the troubles in the world today come from aggressive religion, not race.

I hope this contributes to the debate.