First Contact

First Contact - Further Context

Conventionally “the Bougainville crisis” is an expression that demarks a period of armed conflict which began in 1988, and formally ended in 2001, by which time up to 20,000 people had lost their life. The framing commonly used to gloss this process, states that customary landowners living in the region impacted by Rio Tinto’s expansive copper and gold mine, initiated a campaign of industrial sabotage. This was prompted after grievances over the mine’s socio-environmental impacts, and the sharing of benefits, went unheeded.

Industrial sabotage then triggered a sequence of events that resulted in the Papua New Guinean and Australian governments partnering in a military campaign marked by a range of gross human rights abuses. Out of this violence, a struggle for Bougainville’s independence emerged, pursued by guerrilla forces operating under the banner, Bougainville Revolutionary Army. The Bougainville Peace Agreement, signed in 2001, formally ended this struggle, with the promise of devolved government and a referendum over independence.

In series one, an alternative framing of the crisis is offered. Drawing on theory consolidated in the analysis of elders from the mine impacted area in central Bougainville, it is argued the crisis in fact began in the 19th century when the numerous civilisations indigenous to Bougainville confronted external powers insistent on radically changing their way of life – a venture that continues today, often in more subtle forms. From this vantage point, the events of 1988-2001 were violent symptoms of a much deeper social crisis implanted by colonialism. And while the peace process itself ended armed violence, it did not end the struggle to resolve this deeper social crisis.

The idea that struggles to decolonise continue long after the formal ending of colonial empires is not a new one. Intellectuals from the global south have attempted to conceptualise this seemingly contradictory process through the concept of coloniality. Nelson Maldonado-Torres writes:

Coloniality is different from colonialism. Colonialism denotes a political and economic relation in which the sovereignty of a nation or a people rests on the power of another nation, which makes such nation an empire. Coloniality, instead, refers to long-standing patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism, but that define culture, labour, intersubjective relations, and knowledge production well beyond the strict limits of colonial administrations. Thus, coloniality survives colonialism. It is maintained alive in books, in the criteria for academic performance, in cultural patterns, in common sense, in the self-image of peoples, in aspirations of self, and so many other aspects of our modern experience.

On Bougainville the project initiated during the colonial period, which attempted to demean as primitive local ways of life, and induct people into a system of practices and values that emerged in Western Europe and was exported violently across the globe, remains alive today. It is a source of tension, critique and resistance. Understanding it is essential to understanding the Bougainville war as symptomatic of a deeper crisis.

Formally speaking, Bougainville’s sovereignty was first pierced by the German empire, which annexed the island and its many unique civilisations, following the signing of the Anglo-German Declaration in 1886. It was then subsumed within an Australian ‘protectorate’ after a brief military incursion by Australian forces in 1914. Alongside the introduction of colonial government imposed through often brutal displays of violence against unwilling communities, was the growth of a settler dominated plantation sector, supplemented by medium scale mining. Various Christian denominations grew in influence as well, following extensive missionary work across Bougainville.

While easy to forget under the weight of euphemisms commonly used today to detoxify the colonial period, what this historical process heralded was in effect, a complex long-standing siege directed against the economic, political, cultural, social, and spiritual pillars of local civilisations indigenous to Bougainville, that had emerged over thousands of years. The aim was to forcefully induct communities into a new way of life, that was deemed by the German, Australian and indeed British administrations, as civilised.

This new way of life itself was of modest age. While there is extensive debate over when and where capitalism emerged as a social system, it took root most persuasively in Western Europe during the seventeenth century, bringing about seismic change. Capitalism was then exported, often violently, during subsequent centuries, forming a social system that is truly global in reach. Its growth has been typified by a near singular focus on accumulating money through investment in market based enterprises.

On the one hand this has prompted revolutions in the productive forces available to humankind, on the other it has seen subjugated on a mass-scale human beings and the natural environment to the goal of profit, which many argue is leading to a terminal decline of the human species. This globalised process has been guided by a system of political governance dominated by managerial states – which range from liberal democracies through to authoritarian regimes – whose goal is to manage national and international resources in a way that allows the turbines of a profit oriented economy to continue without disruption, whether it be through suppressing labour strife or securing ‘free’ access to raw materials through military incursions abroad.

When the German, and then Australian governments, attempted to annex Bougainville to this emerging global political-economy, it precipitated a profound internal crisis on the island, whose effects would be felt most forcefully during the second half of the twentieth century. Societies indigenous to Bougainville, and Papua New Guinea more widely, were deemed backward, primitive, primordial, and steeped in savagery, by the colonial regime. This “backwardness” became the justification for introducing a set of political and economic practices that would plant on Bougainville the seeds of “civilisation”.

Bougainville’s rural population, who were confronted by an organised and coordinated attack by colonial powers wielding stigmatising and pejorative labels against a way of life they were proud custodians of, experienced a process of disorientation as their sensibilities, beliefs, knowledge, customs and skills, became defined as ‘primitive’.

Against this backdrop a sizable copper and gold ore body located in the Panguna region of the Crown Prince Range, was designated by the colonial administration as the means through which its Papua New Guinean colony would be rapidly inducted into modernity. For those living amidst the mine impacted areas in Central Bougainville, the siege on their way of life, and subsequent process of disorientation, was experienced in a particularly violent and condensed form – a matter that will be dealt with in more detail in series two.

But this is not a history marked by the colonial powers who determine the fate of its subjects, and a colonised people who are the passive receptacles of a destiny designed for them from abroad. Resistance, struggle and revolution, are instead indelible features of this confrontation, as communities on Bougainville defended their culture, resources and legacies from the corrosive effects of colonisation and coloniality. This struggle has occurred through everyday acts, women retaining their culture, customs and traditional practices, through to artistic celebrations of indigenous histories using song, theatre and art. It has also involved confrontations with colonial power, through mass mobilisation, protest, skirmishes with police, industrial sabotage, and armed struggle.

A motif that spans this period of struggle, from 1886 through to today, tying together its many threads, is land. Land on Bougainville is not a mere commodity; that is, an asset stripped of political, cultural and social significance, which can be freely traded on open markets like cotton or shoes. Land is steeped in meanings, that are essential to the integrity of local civilisations on Bougainville, and to individual identity. Sewn into landscapes are features and boundaries critical to ceremonies, family ties, personal belonging, rites of passage, and spiritual beliefs. Land is also the source of life, an asset that assures communities of their access to everyday life essentials – something markets cannot offer. Finally, it is the thread that connects communities alive today with their ancestors and future generations.

Therefore, land has been fiercely guarded on Bougainville, not simply as a monetised asset that communities can use to extract rents, but as a key rampart for reinforcing local sovereignty whilst under siege from outside forces. Land, of course, is also a core target for colonialism and coloniality, processes which aim to strip it of the many historically inscribed significances it enjoys locally, so it can be freely employed to build a capitalist economy, and establish the physical installations essential to government and public administration. Accordingly, in Bougainville, and in Papua New Guinea more widely, land has always loomed large as the flashpoint of colonial and anti-colonial struggle.

When plans were announced to establish a large-scale mine in Bougainville, with a raft of associated infrastructure, it brought the tensions that land is pregnant within this context to the fore, a matter that is the focus of series two. Series one will lay the foundations for a deeper understanding of the confrontation precipitated by the mine, by interrogating the violence of colonialism and coloniality, and the deeply personal sense of trauma and disorientation it inscribes into impacted communities. The series also captures the rich cultures of resistance and revolt that emerged in Bougainville too.