Blackbirding: South Sea Islanders celebrate and reflect | ABC News — Transcript

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1. 0:04[Music]
2. 0:08between 1863 and 1904 over 60 000 South
3. 0:13Sea Islanders were coerced or kidnapped
4. 0:15and shipped to Australia to work
5. 0:17primarily in the sugarcane fields of
6. 0:19Queensland and New South Wales it was a
7. 0:22practice known as blackbirding I have
8. 0:24asked people to picture themselves as a
9. 0:2612 year old and to look at their own
10. 0:29children and imagine them being stolen
11. 0:31off a beach put in a hold and forced to
12. 0:33work in harsh conditions it would be one
13. 0:36of the most traumatic experiences for
14. 0:38anyone to have their birthrights stolen
15. 0:40in that manner many were promised good
16. 0:42wages or tricked aboard ships only to
17. 0:45find themselves subjected to slave-like
18. 0:47conditions for decades these workers
19. 0:49fueled economic growth and brought
20. 0:51riches to Australian landowners after
21. 0:53Decades of servitude many were later
22. 0:55deported
23. 0:59Island laborers were deported back to
24. 1:01the islands under a set of racist
25. 1:03policies and by 1904 Pacific Islanders
26. 1:06were prohibited entry into Australia
27. 1:08those that escaped deportation form the
28. 1:10basis of today's South Sea Islanders a
29. 1:13community that was formally recognized
30. 1:14by Australia in 1994. resilience is a is
31. 1:18a beautiful thing and so is Hope and I
32. 1:21still sit here with much of that with
33. 1:23not
34. 1:25um denying the fact that our forebears
35. 1:28uh paved the way for us to come out of
36. 1:31this this this this challenge I guess
37. 1:34this life challenge the contributions of
38. 1:37south sea Islanders also go far beyond
39. 1:39Australia with Islanders coming from
40. 1:41different parts of the Pacific this
41. 1:43mixture of language and culture is
42. 1:44considered Central to the creation of
43. 1:46melanesia's Creole languages talk pigeon
44. 1:49and PNG bislama and vanwatsu and pidgin
45. 1:52in Solomon Islands all are now the most
46. 1:55widely spoken languages in their
47. 1:57countries Australian South Sea Islanders
48. 1:59have worked tirelessly to keep their
49. 2:01Rich Heritage alive and raise awareness
50. 2:03about the injustices their ancestors
51. 2:06faced yes this morning Jacob samil
52. 2:08Maguire is a south sea Islander an
53. 2:11indigenous Australian who's the host of
54. 2:13ABC's Nisha daily radio show as a teen
55. 2:15he went back to his village of lumter
56. 2:17hickle on tenor Island and we got to
57. 2:20stand on the beach that my great great
58. 2:22grandfather Jimmy Hughes was taken from
59. 2:24when he was a kid and you could stand
60. 2:27out I remember just standing unlike the
61. 2:29Black Sands and looking out and thinking
62. 2:31oh this is where it all began for us
63. 2:34so being in a space now where I can just
64. 2:37be with my people especially my new van
65. 2:40people I think that was sort of an
66. 2:42important moment and a a great moment
67. 2:44for for me and sort of you know my
68. 2:46parents being able to see that having a
69. 2:48day of recognition is a powerful first
70. 2:50step in acknowledging the contributions
71. 2:51and the suffering of this community but
72. 2:54the story is far from over it's a step
73. 2:57further now of reclaiming our identities
74. 2:59and we Forge an identity of South
75. 3:02sianders and now it's time to reclaim
76. 3:04our identities as an events as Solomon
77. 3:07Islanders uh new colored only Canuck you
78. 3:10know uh Papua New guineans we need sets
79. 3:14at the table
80. 3:15to actually sit down and share our lives
81. 3:18on life and lived experiences
82. 3:19[Music]