What is development? Our source: the sacred land

BY MARTYN NAMORONG

“Greenpeace is delusional and RH is reckless.  What’s new?  I did a lot of tree hugging in the past and it didn’t get me anywhere” - Nou Vada, law student

WHEN A YOUNG KID in law school posts such comments on Facebook, they need to be taken seriously.  Nou Vada is the most intelligent and articulate young Papua New Guinean I’ve come across (sic).

I don’t know his reasoning behind the comments but they do express a perception and perhaps confusion amongst many Papua New Guineans that green groups are anti-development.

This perception arises from the reality that environmental activists have become synonymous with headline grabbing protest activities. Thus the impression that the public gets is that the greenies just want to stop all sorts of projects.

Indeed, resource exploiters regularly dog-whistle the public with ‘anti-green’ clichés such that many now subscribe to that view that all green groups or non-governmental organizations want to stop development..

I suppose, in any case, both sides may have some merit to their arguments.  Personally, I wish to visit the Constitution of Papua New Guinea to find out how it expresses Papua New Guinea’s development agenda.  And perhaps a law student like Nou may articulate it better than a buai seller like me.

Papua New Guinea’s development agenda, regardless of what the Greens or the Capitalists say, is set out in its National Goals and Directive Principles as expressed in the Constitution.

In a film by Scott Waide, lawyer Ganjiki Wayne states that the writers of the Constitution weren’t so much interested in physical and structural development as in the integral development of the individual.

It was a somewhat spiritual rather that material development that the founders of this nation were interested in.

This concept of development is expressed in the First National Goal and Directive Principles regarding Integral Human Development. The development model envisaged by the founders of this nation is indeed found in Goal Five - Papua New Guinean Ways. Goal Five specifically calls for any activity whether social, political or economic, to be consistent with the ways of Papua New Guinean societies.

Thus, if any social, political or economic activity that impinges upon the Papua New Guinean way of life, it is against the Spirit of the Constitution. And since it is the Constitution that gives legal authority to the nation state, the state of the nation should be consistent with the desires of the Constitution as expressed in the National Goals and Directive Principles.

Now the Constitution gets its legitimacy from the citizens of this nation. The Constitution is therefore an expression of the general will of the people of Papua New Guinea. The people, through their Constitution, have expressed their desire that any social, political or economic activity be consistent with Papua New Guinean ways.

Why was it necessary to explicitly call for all development activity to be consistent with Papua New Guinean ways? The answer is simple, for over 40 000 years indigenous Papua New Guineans were fully independent people before colonisation. It was their Papua New Guinean ways that made them totally independent.

It is this fullness of political and economic independence that the writers of the Constitution expressed in Goal Three of the National Goals and Directive Principles – National Sovereignty and Self Reliance.

The communal ownership of land and sharing of resources and responsibilities that enabled equality and participation of all members of traditional societies is expressed by Goal Two – Equality and Participation. Goal Four on Natural Resources and Environment basically reflects the sustainable livelihood of traditional societies and their minimal impact on the environment.

I do not believe these goals are a rejection of modernity by the writers of the Constitution. Rather, they express a desire to avoid the pitfalls of the greed of western capitalism as witnessed in the current context of global economic crisis. This fear is expressed in this prophetic statement by the Constitutional Planning Committee.

We see the darkness of neon lights. We see the despair and loneliness in the urban cities. We see the alienation of (the people) that is the result of the present machine orientated economy. We see true social security and (the people’s) happiness being diminished in the name of economic progress. We caution therefore that large-scale industries should be pursued only after very careful and thorough consideration of the likely consequences upon the social and spiritual fabric of our people… There is overwhelming evidence to suggest that a significant number of people who live by the fruits of multi-million dollar multi-national corporations live in misery, loneliness and spiritual poverty. We believe that since we are a rural people, our strength should be essentially in the land and the use of our innate artistic talents. (Papua New Guinea Constitutional Planning Committee, 1975)

Fundamentally, the lowest common denominator between all societies in this multicultural nation is the relationship people have with their land. It is the land that defines a person. This is expressed in the first question two Papua New Guineans ask each other when they meet for the first time, “Where are you from?”

Any social, political or economic activity that displaces people from their land and prevents them from accessing and utilizing their ancestral land is contrary to the Papua New Guinean way referred to in Goal Five. It is therefore not sufficient to just resettle people and pay compensation for the land they have been displaced from.

They will never be accepted by another tribe nor will they accept the new reality. The landlord will restrict their access to gardening and hunting grounds making the settlers feeling very insecure. The settlers will also have lost their sacred sites and traditional resources that used to be acquired from their ancestral land.

No amount of money can compensate for the loss of security, culture and identity that is associated with alienation from ancestral land.

What happens next happened on Bougainville on a larger scale but is already expressed in the form of various social problems and disruptions to economic activities. What it means to be Papua New Guinean is to have a connection with the land. That is what give’s one an identity and a sense of social security.

Development with-in the context of Goal Five 5 must respect and safe-guard this intimate relationship between the land and its people.  We don’t own the land, it owns us. We are guardians of the land our forefathers fought to protect for our sake. There is no honour in not fighting to protect one’s land.

Any activity that does not subscribe to these Five National Goals and Directive Principles is not development but bagarapment. That is why blood had to be spilt on Bougainville when people revolted against the destruction of the Mekamui – the sacred land, which is the source of everything.

Comments

[Martyn Namorong]

From the article 'Kiaps and the Panguna mine: the truth revealed':

"It did not surprise anyone that the Moronis were angry over the land situation. It is not just a block of dirt to them - it is part of the body and the soul.

"Their whole social system is based on land. The land is owned by the ancestors now dead, the present occupiers and by the unborn generations to come. The occupiers have the right to use the land, to lease, but not to destroy.

"From as early as 1966 we have been telling all the villages as much as we knew of the project, and tried to put them into the picture ….

"It was difficult even for us to envisage what was going to happen. You can imagine how bewildering it must have been for the Moronis."

-- from an interview kiap Ross Henderson gave to Film Australia in 1969:
http://asopa.typepad.com/asopa_people/2011/11/kiaps-and-the-panguna-mine-the-truth-revealed.html

[Phil Fitzpatrick]

Kela Kapkora Sil Bolkin's book "Flight of Galkope" paints a vivid picture of the flux and flow of land ownership in the Simbu at least. It will be out early next year.

In it he describes a sort of realm within which different groups, motivated by rivalries and serendipitous events, move back and forth over the continuum of time.

An individual's place in this continuum, at least until recently, was fixed in people's minds and recounted in the men's house. This created an oral history in which an ancestor's place was firmly fixed in relation to land.

Sadly, as Sil explains, this knowledge is passing, along with the legacies of those people who came before. The inexplicable human link to land is thus being diminished.

[Paul Oates]

Many people in the world do not actually own their own land. Even communally owned land can be subject to disputed ownership claims.

In a traditional world, the ownership of land was only recognised if you and perhaps your supporters could physically defend it against a rival claimant/s.

Perhaps the only evidence of our existence we can ever lay claim to is what lasting effects we have put in place during our life?

Have we enhanced the world and our environment and made it better for the next generation?

In the end, that’s really all that ultimately matters.

[Barbara Short]

I hear that some Matupi islanders have gone back to their devastated island - their land, with hopes, no doubt, that it can one day be restored to its former glory.

But I hear that many Matupi islanders have been resettled in land formerly used for western plantations. Here they are happily making a new life for themselves. This land is good for farming and can supply their food needs.

I remember in the 1970s when Matupi islanders were developing their blocks in the Bainings. Many had set themselves up in neat houses and seemed to be living a good life.

Yes, land is important to the PNG tribal groups who still rely on farming for their livelihood. But if, for some reason their land is taken from them, in this case, due to the volcanic eruptions, then some other arrangements must be made for them.

I remember the old re-settlement schemes where Sepiks from the crowded parts of East Sepik were given a chance to start up a new type of farmings on oil-palm blocks in West New Britain.

They made a "go" of it in a region far from their tribal lands. They were happy with their new environment.

I feel that land must be looked after in PNG but there will be times when groups have to give up their traditional land for one reason or another, and if they still need to live as farmers they should be given other land.

Flying over PNG so many times, I would not say that PNG is short of land! As the various tribal groups of PNG start to feel united as a country then I feel resettlement schemes are possible.

Yes, people need land, but surely they can be resettled, for whatever reason, volcanic eruptions, mines, oil palm schemes, town expansion, city expansion, etc.

Alienation from ancestral land will happen. But surely there is enough land in PNG for these people to be given other land that they can call home.

My father returned to Manchester UK to see where his father was born. It is now a cark park in the middle of Manchester.

Dad has now passed on but I now look after his garden here at Epping, Sydney, Australia, and it is beautiful. It is my land and I love it. But then I shall be moving on soon.

[Ganjiki D Wayne]

And yet, Paul, they were able to come up with something so profound.

The letter of that Constitution has been abused. It's cos the spirit, found in that Preamble that contains our NGDP, was lost.

Our challenge is to return to that spirit...

[David Kitchnoge]

Thanks Martyn - The question of course is how to find the right balance so as to get the best out of both worlds.

One solution would be to go back and put more emphasis on small scale, village based farming of commercial crops and gaining from the power of the aggregates.

There are two distinct goals in this model. The focus at the producer level in the villages is to use the proceeds of this activity as a tool of individual family and clan betterment while still living a largely PNG way of life. So the two activities run parallel to and supplement each other.

When the produce is aggregated at the market level, then the focus would obviously be commercial. This is the reason we used to have commodity stabilisation boards to try and absorb the inevitable commercial fluctuations in commodity prices so as to shield the small farmer from having to try and manage that himself and lose focus.

This is the development model that Australia left behind for us when we gained independence and I can attest to its success having grown up with it in the early 1980s. Alas, not anymore.

Sadly we thought we knew better and our leaders conveniently forgot our Constitution and started jumping on the “get rich quickly” band wagon. The result? We’ve come back full circle.

[Paul Oates]

It took at least 10 years of debate and in depth consideration and discussion for Australia's Constitution to be agreed upon.

PNG's Constitution was compiled in a rush to meet an artificially driven and imposed imperative.