The legacy of blackbirding

Today as a distinct race of people, there are some 70,000 surviving Australian South Sea Islander descendants

Flag-raising at the Australian National Maritime Museum by national ASSI dignitaries: custom women from Vanuatu, ASSIPJ board, New South Wales Council for Pacific Communities and the Tweed Heads community, 21 November 2020. Image Lola Forester

Slavery and Australian South Sea Islanders

In the mid-19th century, as Britain and the USA were abolishing slavery, thousands of South Sea Islanders were kidnapped from their homelands and forced to work in agricultural, pastoral, maritime, bêche-de-mer, fishing, cotton and railway industries in Australia. For over a decade, (Waskam) Emelda Davis has traced the bitter legacy of this practice, which is derived from the Atlantic slave trade known as ‘blackbirding’.

BLACKBIRDING WAS A ONCE-COMMON TRADE in which people from Pacific islands were tricked, kidnapped or coerced into slavery. Some small islands had their entire male populations stolen, which devastated island culture and economy by breaking up generations of kinship and civil society. Along with Australian First Nations people, South Sea Islanders were forced to work across pastoral, maritime and fishing industries, and played a key role in establishing Australia’s sugarcane industry.

Human trafficking From 1840 to 1950, the Pacific labour trade moved 1.5 million Indigenous and Asian people around the Pacific.

Blackbirding began illegally in New South Wales in 1847, when entrepreneur Benjamin Boyd kidnapped the first 119 Melanesian men to slave on his whaling industries alongside Maori and First Nations peoples. They were taken from New Caledonia (Lifou Island) and Tanauta (formerly Tanna Island), Vanuatu. A disaster resulted when they escaped from Eden, in southern New South Wales, and walked back to Sydney, where they were found roaming around Kings Cross naked seeking passage back to their homelands. It is reported that one ‘man Tanna’ was found dead on the shores; he had been denied passage on a recruiting ship called Portenia returning to Vanuatu and drowned as he began to swim back to his island home. Between 1863 and 1908, more than 60,000 men, and some women and children, were taken to Queensland from the 80 islands of Vanuatu and the Solomons, including Papua New Guinea, Kiribati, Tuvalu, New Caledonia and Fiji (Rotuma).

As early as the 1860s, the South Sea Islander influx trafficked slaves throughout pearling and bêche-de-mer (sea slug) industries. Acts of assimilation and colonisation were imposed through the work of South Sea Islander Christians as part of the London Missionary Society, which penetrated Torres Strait Island communities. Zulai 1 (July 1), or ‘Coming of the light’, is today a national event that acknowledges Torres Strait Island peoples’ continued culture and recognises the coming of Christianity to the islands. The London Missionary Society also infiltrated parts of Queensland, establishing the Kanaka missions. The most significant Australian South Sea Islander ‘colony’ was on Mua (St Pauls) Island and was established by the Anglican Church in the 1900s. South Sea Islanders were deployed to the Torres Strait Islands from New South Wales ports as early as the 1860s with the treacherous ‘blackbirding’ trade. This involved the inhumane removal and mistreatment of mainly men, but some women and children, from their island homes, who were then shipped en masse to Australia. As hardworking, strong and resilient people, they were recruited as an itinerant labour force to establish the nation’s sugar plantation industries. Later they were vital in the growth of Australian economies as we know them today, and were further exploited to build transport infrastructure such as railways and roads. Still today, descendants of blackbirded people work across these industries. In doing so they travel in a continued circular migration throughout Australia, but mainly Queensland and New South Wales coastal regions and main townships.

Australian South Sea Islanders

Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) has been a receiving port since the 1790s for Pacific Island labour. Our people were wharf labourers, seafarers and deckhands, contracted under the guise of ‘indentured labourers’. There is also evidence of a continued commute from Queensland to Sydney seeking shelter from deportation under the ‘White Australia’ policy. Deportation orders were issued to government agencies such as police and welfare who detained, signed and deported some 7,000 people en masse at the stroke of a pen. Today as a distinct race of people, there are some 70,000 surviving Australian South Sea Islander descendants. Australian South Sea Islander was the name decided upon in the 1970s by our elders and leaders for our community demographic. It refers to ‘a distinct cultural group’ and was legislated as such by the Commonwealth in 1994.

The treacherous ‘blackbirding’ trade involved the inhumane removal and mistreatment of mainly men, but some women and children, from their island homes

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01 South Sea Islander women and children working on a sugar cane plantation at Hambledon, Queensland, about 1891. John Oxley Library 172501 02 South Sea Islanders hoeing a cane field in the Herbert River regions, Queensland, 1902. Many thousands of such enslaved people died from common diseases during the first months after arrival. An astounding 15,000 of these, mainly young men, died well before their prime. State Library of Queensland South Sea Islanders were forced to work across pastoral, maritime and fishing industries, and played a key role in establishing Australia’s sugarcane industry

Australian South Sea Islanders have an evident kinship with First Nations people due to being placed under Aboriginal protection Acts of Parliament of the 1930s and absorbed on missions, reserves and work-stations slaving across industries that required intense labour. Years of displacement and abandonment by government policy programs and services make it challenging for our communities to assert identity and reconnect with heritage. There is much research to be conducted across our nation and in particular New South Wales: investigations into employment records for the Burns Philp archives, looking at ships and voyages; research into the Noel Butlin Archives Centre for employment of our people across factory industries and at Robert Towns Sydney Brewery; and shipping logs that identify the numbers of people received in Sydney. In 2020, the group Australian South Sea Islanders (ASSI) Port Jackson celebrated its 10th year as a not-for-profit with continued assistance from the City of Sydney Council. Homage is due to our organisation’s founding elders, who are well known for their politics and activism across our communities: Ms Shireen Malamoo, Ms Nellie Enares, Ms Carriette Togo, Mr Graham Mooney, Dr Bonita Mabo, Mrs Avis Dugarra and Mr Victor Corowa. All had undivided faith and passion to impress on our government the need for recognition and inclusion across meaningful programs and services. For the past 27 years, Australian South Sea Islander Recognition Day has officially been listed as part of our nation’s cultural calendar for 25 August. Through the advocacy of ASSI-Port Jackson, this day now includes national flag-raisings to inspire ministers, local councils, community organisations and leaders to consider our call for social justice needs and the inclusion of our people across their portfolios. A COVID-delayed ‘soft launch’ of Sugar Fest Oceanic Culture History & Music was held on 21 November 2020. Sugar Fest is the result of over a decade of building community partnerships that celebrate Australian society’s willingness to learn of its historical beginnings and acknowledge the need to work together to build a more cohesive and robust society of inclusive multiculturalism. The event has the ongoing support of City of Sydney Council and community partners. Supported in principal by the Australian National Maritime Museum, the festival will take place over the next three years at Pirrama Parklands, Sydney – once the site of the Sugar Wharf formerly managed by Colonial Sugar Refinery.

For more information please see assipj.com.au

(Waskam) Emelda Davis is a second-generation Australian South Sea Islander who has worked for federal, state, community and grassroots organisations in Australia. As chairwoman of the Australian South Sea Islanders, Port Jackson (ASSIPJ) since 2009, her leadership role has revived the focus on the call for recognition for the descendants of Australia’s blackbirding trade.