South Sea Islander

Encyclopedia : S : SO : SOU : South Sea Islander

For general context see White Australia Policy.

The Australian label South Sea Islanders refers to the Australian descendants of people from the more than 80 islands in the Western Pacific:

Melanesia: mainly the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu (formerly New Hebrides)
Polynesia and Micronesia: the Loyalty Islands, Samoa, Kiribati and Tuvalu)

who were recruited (some by kidnapping or blackbirding) to labour in the sugar cane fields of Queensland, Australia from the 1860s over a period of 40 years. As stated in the article on the history of Vanuatu

During the 1860s, planters in Australia, Fiji, New Caledonia, and the Samoa Islands, in need of laborers, encouraged a long-term indentured labor trade called blackbirding. At the height of the labor trade, more than one-half the adult male population of several of the Islands worked abroad.

These people were generally referred to as Kanakas, although many Islander descendants today regard the term as pejorative and an insulting reminder of their ancestors' exploitation at the hands of white planters.

With time, owing to intermarriage, many Australian South Sea Islanders also claim a mixed ancestry including Aboriginals, Torres Strait Islanders and immigrants from the South Pacific Islands.

Of the 62,000 South Sea Islanders recruited the majority were repatriated by the Australian Government in the period between 1906-08 under the Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901 ([link]), legislation related to the White Australia Policy. Those exempted from repatriation, and a number of others who escaped the deportations remained in Australia to form the basis of what is today Australia's largest non-Indigenous black ethnic group.

The question of how many Islanders were blackbirded is unknown and remains controversial. The question:

Were Islanders legally recruited, persuaded, deceived, coerced or forced to leave their homes and travel by ship to Queensland?

is difficult. Official documents and accounts from the period often conflict with the oral tradition passed down to the descendants of workers. Stories of blatantly violent kidnapping tended to relate to the first 10–15 years of the trade.

In recent generations, facing many similar forms of discrimination in Australia as Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, Australian South Sea Islanders have been prominent figures in civil rights and politics. Faith Bandler, Evelyn Scott and Bonita Mabo (widow of Eddie Mabo) are prominent Indigenous activists who are also descendants of Pacific Island plantation workers. Another area Australian South Sea Islanders have excelled in is sport, especially the game of Rugby League. State of Origin and Australian representatives Mal Meninga, Sam Backo, Gorden Tallis and Wendell Sailor (current Australian Rugby Union representative) are all members of the Australian South Sea Islander community.

External links

[Background and history of the South Sea Islanders] Queensland Department of Premier and Cabinet

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South Sea Islander

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