Critical Issues

Critical Issues Facing the Original First Nation People in Oceania

The original sovereign nation of tribes, clans, and families across Oceania are at a crossroads. Many old people are dying without transferring their languages and knowledge of the ancient spiritual world to the younger generations. Our young people are being drugged at an unprecedented rate through all kinds of modernity. Their ancestral communal land and forests are being bought and sold by highly organized local and international crime syndicates, camouflaged as multinational corporations, foreign aid, and NGO’s. The Western and Asian countries continue to view Oceania as their holiday playground – a vacant region where they can establish their military bases and economic exploits. Oceania is still to this day being held hostage by colonial institutions and political propaganda; our children are taught to think less of themselves, and to distance themselves from their First Nations identities.

Development is a new code word used for domination in Oceania. It is assumed that foreign-engineered development programs will solve the problems in our region; however, problems in Oceania are not developmental problems. The critical issues facing the indigenous people here are related to the annihilation of their cultural identities, languages, rituals and customs, the loss of their sacred, ancestral homelands, and the threat against the survival of their future generations.

The fundamental doctrine underpinning the whole developmental enterprise is to reshape the first nations people into “civilized” imagery – fit them into the colonial image. We have been told to covet this ideal image – the very same image which is destroying our culture and family. It is a psychological scam designed to distract us – a wild goose chase for us to embark on, whilst our country is degraded, and our dignity stolen. This war that is waged here is fought at levels of ideology, emotions, and perception. This is a spiritual war, designed to attack the very spirit that keeps us connected to our traditions and ancestors; this is an ontological and epistemological war, not a developmental one.

The entire idea of “the third world” is a state of mind created and reprogrammed into the mind of a colonized man, instilling the notion that he will never be a complete, happy human until he changes himself to fit the image of “the first world”. The dichotomy of “third world” versus “first world” – “bad” versus “good” – is created, marketed, and controlled by the Western world for their own benefit; at the very core, this is a manufactured perception, built into the system that controls the human perception of reality.

The creation of modern geographical boundaries, socioeconomic, political, legal, religious, cultural, and educational institutions in the land of sovereign nation tribes in Oceania fundamentally violate the original lore of the land. These institutions exist solely to serve the interests and agenda of colonisers: to eliminate the original first nations people and appropriate their ancestral lands for material gain. Terminologies such as West Papua and Papua New Guinea, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, South Sea Islander and Kanak, Black Melanesia and lighter Polynesia are illegal renaming of these ancient lands and people, by colonial projects, committed for the purpose of domination, power, and control.

The depth of this psychological propaganda of developed versus undeveloped deeply influences the way we perceive reality, and it has been normalised to the extent that we accept this propaganda as an objective, universal truth. This is the crux of the tragedy which the first nation people of Oceania face every day.

How much longer can we endure this lifestyle of destructive, machine-based, material progress? Sadly, this decision is not in the hands of the small tribes, clans, and families of Oceania; the super-power countries are the ones who control this game of destruction and domination, with their big global hegemonic ambitions and even bigger weaponised militia.

After enduring five hundred years of Western domination, the world begins to show signs of internal sickness and weakness, with impending collapse of society. There seem to be other forces at play here, but they cannot be accurately determined. It just feels like something inside us, inside the human spirit and psyche, is dying, and something else is being incubated for birth, which gives an uneasy premonition about the future of humanity.

In the meantime, it is hard to focus on the future when we are scrambling to protect our past. We, the sovereign nation of tribes, clans, and families of Oceania, are losing our ancient spiritual languages, sociocultural values, and original knowledge. Personally, saving our spiritual cosmology and languages has become a significant duty. The current generation is the portal to the world of our ancestors and the future world of generations to come. What happened in the past and what will happen in the future depends on what happens now.