THE ORIGINS OF FIJIANS

BLACKS IN THE PACIFIC By RUNOKO RASHIDI DEDICATED TO SISTER CHARSEE McINTYRE PART 1 MELANESIA: THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES! Melanesia (the Black islands of the South Pacific) has been described as the eastern flank of the African world, an expression of ages past when an uninterrupted belt of Black people stretched across Africa, Eurasia, Australia, Oceanica and ancient America. In 1545 Spain made a claim on New Guinea, the largest and most populous island in Melanesia. Indeed, New Guinea is the largest island in the world after Greenland. It is tremendously wealthy in mineral resources, including uranium, copper cobalt, silver, gold, manganese, iron and oil. In 1545 Spain made a claim on the island and called it Nueva Guinea because of the striking resemblance between Melanesians and West Africans. Other Melanesian islands include New Caledonia, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji, New Ireland and New Britain. Split into two by colonial design, New Guinea has until recently contained a racially homogeneous population of five to six million Africoid people. The eastern half of the island became independent in 1975 under the name of Papua New Guinea. In a 1976 interview, Foreign Minister Ben Tanggahma of Papua New Guinea insisted that: "Africa is our motherland. All of the Black populations which settled in Asia over the hundreds of thousands of years, came undoubtedly from the African continent. In fact, the entire world was populated from Africa. Hence, we the Blacks in Asia and the Pacific today descend from proto-African peoples. We were linked to Africa in the past. We are linked to Africa in the present. We will be linked to Africa in the future." The western half of New Guinea, however, along with a significant portion of the island's total population, has been seized by Indonesia. Indonesians generally have a condescending view of Melanesians and consider them their racial inferiors. Under Indonesian rule since 1963, the Melanesians of New Guinea, known as Kanaks, want their island to become an independent country run by and for Melanesians. Their struggle continues.