Auckland: Atuanui Press, 2013. 256 pp. (Illustrations.) NZ$45.00, paper. ISBN 978-0-9922453-3-7.
“Oceania” as represented by Vltchek is addressed in eight essays about separate nation states, with a lengthy introduction on the New Pacific Wall. While Chomsky’s one-page foreword suggests the author reveals “festering sores,” Dr. Steven Ratuva’s six-page introduction places the essays as “a critical appraisal of the destructive forces of colonialism and neo-colonialism as these have shaped and reshaped the very essence of Pacific humanity” (9). Vltchek himself sees Oceania as despoiled and divided by what he calls “the New Pacific Wall” erected as a result of the intrusions of neo-colonialist ideology, in the form of aid, from the US, Australia, and New Zealand. He omits discussion of French colonies in the Pacific.
Regional integration is his answer to overcoming the fragmentation in order “to construct a new Pacific bloc able to negotiate with the rest of the world as an equal partner “ (53). To overcome the corruption and imposition of new ideas introduced by those educated abroad, Pacific Islanders have to break free from the “ridiculous western concepts” by which they have become “imprisoned,” he argues (28).
Each essay addresses “the plight of the people in this part of the world” that he visited between 2005 and 2009. He welcomed the vibrancy of music in Port Moresby, but that contrasts with the violence and corruption that keep the many cultural groups apart. His vision was tarnished by the garbage dumps beside the road in Tuvalu and elsewhere, and overcrowding, lack of electricity, and children without shoes as signs of poverty. The corruption of officials, particularly in the use of aid money, is a dominant theme. His vision itself appears to have become jaded by his personal experiences of delays in plane connections and the costs of air travel, as well as the lack of air conditioning and the abundance of cockroaches in his hotel room in Ebeye.
He attributes the Tragedy of the Marshall Islands and Fiji’s Mercenary Military, as he entitles two essays, to uncurbed external invasions mainly by the US for their own US benefit. Employment opportunities available either in UNIFIL (mistermed a US agency), or on mainland US under the terms of the Compacts of Freely Associated States of Micronesia are not considered to have positive outcomes.
Tuvalu and Kiribati, as presented in separate essays, are viewed as a “natural and human-made disaster” (158) where dependency on aid supports the monetary economy, yet “most of the population is involved in subsistence fishing.” Tuvalu is preparing itself, or being prepared by others, for the threat of sea-level rise. But just what regional solution will address this disaster is unclear. The author cites long paragraphs from the various people he interviewed to conclude that islands such as the Marshalls, Tuvalu, and Kiribati will not “disappear under the surface of the ocean” but will instead become uninhabitable with no local produce, so “there would simply be no point in living in the islands or atolls of bare coral” (167). Cultural attachments to the land are not considered.
The author regrets the separation between the two Samoas, which he labels as “two failed states” where they “hardly bother to grow anything or to fish” (142), but with no further explanation of that “failure.” Despite the high numbers of educated Tongans, he sees their situation as “bleak” due to unemployment, reliance on remittances, poverty, and a tightly controlled press. The essay on Solomon Islands, entitled Paradise Lost, attributes the loss of this exalted state to logging, and environmental degradation, particularly polluted lagoons. The despoliation of “Paradise” is a major concern for the author, as tourist facilities replace protective mangrove swamps, and the super-rich visitors are enveloped in a world that sets them far apart from the locals.
The readership to which this volume is addressed is puzzling. Vltchek clearly states that this is not a book for academics, as such a work “would disqualify many of the people of Oceania and many visitors to the region” (21). So what will readers gain from the volume? The absence of an index and citations and omission of timelines for the numerous interviewees’ comments diminishes the usefulness for a whole range of readers. The organization of the various essays into some thematic sequence, when readdressed in a succinct conclusion, would help to draw the essays together, and thus clarify the book’s intentions. Long paragraphs of opinion provided by those the author spoke to detract from any coherent links between the ideas, or between the various nation-states. Close reading by an editor would have ironed out some of the errors such as misspellings (e.g., Pohnpei, Betio, and others), and omissions such as the numbering of chapters in the table of contents, but not in the text.
That this book took three months in 2015 to cross the ocean to reach me in New Zealand from North America suggests to me that it became becalmed somewhere, to linger amongst the “islands” of flotsam and jetsam that pollute the ocean today. Such delays draw attention to the importance of time frames, where so much happens in Oceania in such a short period of time. Since the book began its journey to me (March 2015) the people of Vanuatu have been severely impaired by Cyclone Pam—from which they have reinvigorated themselves and their environment, incorporating new ways with the old. Such resiliencies over time, and untoward experiences, tell us of the various strategies that the people of Oceania have used to their advantage to enable their survival in their chosen location.
Nancy J. Pollock
Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand (retired)
pp. 735-737