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Micronationalism in Papua New Guinea
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4. Micronationalism in Papua New Guinea[10]

Abstract

In the context of this book, the term ‘micronationalism’ describes a varied collection of movements which display a common tendency to disengage from the wider economic and political systems imposed by colonial rule, seeking instead an acceptable formula for their own development through some combination of traditional and modern values and organisational forms.

The author examines the emergence of micronationalism, the development of marginal cargo cults, local protest movements, self-help development movements, regional separatist movements, and micronationalism and government policy. He analyses the anatomy of micronationalism – the objectives, leadership and organisation, strategies and achievements – before explaining the micronationalism phenomenon through timing and rot bilong development.

There is a strong possibility that micronationalist movements will become incorporated within the system at the provincial level. An alternate possibility is that micronationalist movements will continue to emerge as protest groups, which consider themselves deprived or threatened.


One of the most remarkable aspects of social and political change in Papua New Guinea in the late 1960s and early 1970s was the proliferation of spontaneous local movements, differing in their origins and specific objectives but sharing a broad concern with the achievement of economic, social and political development through communal action. Some of the movements emerged from a background of local cult activity; others were established ostensibly to organise local opposition to particular policies of central government but came to assume wider objectives; still others were specifically motivated by a desire to achieve development through local community action; a few emerged to press for a geographically more broadly based regional autonomy.

In an earlier paper (May 1975) a preliminary attempt was made to provide a brief survey of the more significant of these movements and to place them in some sort of social, cultural and historical perspective. The term ‘micronationalism’ was introduced in that paper to describe a varied collection of movements which displayed a common tendency, at least at an ideological or psychological level, to disengage from the wider economic and political systems imposed by colonial rule, seeking in a sense a common identity and purpose, and through some combination of traditional and modern values and organisational forms, an acceptable formula for their own development.

In employing this term to describe so disparate a group of movements it was our principal intention to draw attention to the convergence in objectives and organisational style of movements with often widely divergent origins and in particular to emphasise their common tendency towards disengagement or withdrawal (but not, as a rule, formal secession) from the larger, national community. Although most of the movements described possessed a loosely defined ethnic base, many of them cut across linguistic and tribal boundaries and few placed much emphasis on ethnicity, some even specifically seeking a multiracial membership; for these reasons (and also because ‘ethnicity’ is at best a slippery concept,[11] especially in the culturally complex situation of Melanesia) we avoided the term ‘ethnonationalism’, which has been employed by some authors to describe somewhat similar movements in other countries.[12] We also rejected the term ‘primordial’ (Shils 1957), which has been attached to comparable movements in other new states but generally seems to imply greater internal coherence and intensity than most Papua New Guinea movements have possessed; similarly, terms such as ‘communal association’ and ‘voluntary association’, used to describe groups in Asia, Africa and Latin America, seemed to suggest more clearly defined membership and organisational structures than was the case with movements we described for Papua New Guinea in 1975.

An anatomy of micronationalism is attempted below; for the present, the essential characteristics of the movements we have described as micronationalist might be summarised: (1) membership is based on community or region and is typically fairly loosely defined; (2) objectives are universalistic but place major importance on broadly based and generally egali-tarian ‘development’; (3) ideologically (if not always in practice) emphasis is on achieving objectives through communal self-help, rather than through dependence on that colonial creation, ‘the state’. It is in this last sense that we speak of ‘disengagement’ and ‘withdrawal’ (and by implication distinguish micro-nationalist movements from pressure groups and political parties[13] ). At the same time, although we have included in the category ‘micronationalist’ some movements which might be described as ‘separatist’ (see below), micronationalism does not imply political separatism in the usual sense of that term (cf. Griffin 1973, 1976; Premdas 1977; Woolford 1976:chapter 11); nor does political separatism necessarily imply micronationalism.

By way of further clarification it might be useful to say what we have not included within the ambit of micronationalism. We have not included relatively narrowly-focussed interest groups (such as farmers’ clubs and cattlemen’s associations), whose membership tends to be restrictive, whose objectives tend to be specific, functional and individualistic, and whose activities are primarily concerned with access to government services. We are not concerned with political parties[14] (though the fact that some micronationalist movements have sponsored electoral candidates does not disqualify them from our definition). Nor are we looking at ‘cargo cults’.[15] More tentatively, we have sought to con-fine the term to movements which extend beyond the level of a single village or clan, thus excluding the numerous small ‘village development associations’ which have sprung up (partly in response to government stimulus) since around the mid 1970s. (Information on grants approved by the Office of Village Development up to 1978 suggests that there were probably well over a hundred such organisations scattered throughout the country towards the end of the 1970s.) Finally, though they are closely related to the micronationalist phenomenon, we have excluded from our definition ethnic and regional associations formed amongst urban migrants.

In retrospect, ‘micronationalism’ may seem an overly dramatic term to use in the description of the local movements we have identified, especially in a country which has displayed the high degree of political stability which independent Papua New Guinea has; nevertheless the term has gained some currency and we will continue to use it in this volume as a convenient umbrella, albeit one which casts a wide and perhaps poorly defined shadow.[16]

The emergence of micronationalism

Before European contact Papua New Guinea’s population consisted almost entirely of small, largely independent communities of subsistence cultivators. Within these communities social, political and economic relationships were generally close and fairly well defined. Between them, notwithstanding some extensive trading networks and enduring political alliances, relations tended to be limited.

Under the impact of missions, traders and colonial administrators the situation gradually changed. As tribal fighting diminished and as plantations and commercial and administrative centres were established people began to move outside traditional tribal boundaries and to take up wage employment in the colonial economy. Later, encouraged by the colonial administration, rural villagers turned increasingly to cash cropping, producing mostly export crops whose income provided the means with which to acquire the goods and services of the modern sector and sometimes also to buy into traditional systems of status attainment. In time cooperatives were introduced as a method of promoting collective local enterprise and steps were taken to foster individual and group enterprises in secondary and tertiary as well as primary production. As in other parts of the developing world, a growing proportion of the population shifted at least temporarily to towns where they became wage earners or used established networks of kinsfolk to stay on as pasindia.[17]

Politically, the colonial administration sought to foster participation in the imposed system through local government councils at the local level and through a systematic programme of political education to reinforce the introduction of Westminster style political institutions at the national level.

The early relationship between the colonial regime and its subjects was, however, essentially exploitative. Traditional villagers and those on the periphery of the colonial society sensed an inability to bridge the gap between their own situation and that enjoyed by their colonial masters; this in turn generated a sense of deprivation and frustration which manifested itself from time to time in spontaneous local movements which sought, through a variety of means, to remove the blockages to the people’s enjoyment of material wealth and power. Usually such movements were mystical and millenarian in nature but sometimes too they expressed themselves through acts of defiance against government and mission. With rare exception the colonial regime regarded such movements, loosely lumped together under the term ‘cargo cults’, with suspicion and hostility and frequently they were repressed under the various regulations which prescribed against illegal cults, illegal singsing and spreading false reports.

As in other parts of the Pacific, the experience of the Second World War stimulated the growth of spontaneous local movements seeking change: it demonstrated the vulnerability of the colonial regime, it dimini

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