Narokobi among island philosophers

HISTORY

Toward a cultural and historical understanding of the Melanesian Way

By LISE M DOBRIN and ALEX GOLUB
WHILE Bernard Narokobi’s account of the Melanesian Way was initially addressed to Papua New Guineans and sought to provide the cultural grounding of a new nation, it also clearly has implications for the region more broadly.
For this reason, it is useful to compare Narokobi to other intellectuals who address similar topics: Jean-Marie Tjibaou, a key figure in the struggle for Kanak independence in New Caledonia, and the great anthropologist of Papua New Guinea, Epeli Hau‘ofa.
These three thinkers, we argue, addressed fundamental issues of identity, cultural change, and regional connection in Melanesia in a way that other authors did not.
For instance, Peter Kenilorea, the first prime minister of the Solomon Islands, was a relatively unideological public servant who actively resisted attempts by his constitutional advisor to innovate on the British model he inherited.
The first prime minister of Vanuatu, Walter Lini, is well-known for his doc trine of ‘Melanesian socialism’. But as one of his best-known expositors, Ralph Premdas, has pointed out, this concept was ‘intended to serve as a broad policymap …erected on a paucity of principles’ without ‘enunciating a theory or definition of the purpose of man and society’.
Lini’s doctrine was itself, moreover, deeply influenced by Narokobi’s work.
Overall then, Hau‘ofa, Tjibaou, and Narokobi seem like the right set of thinkers to focus on in charting out the intellectual history of Pacific decolonisation.
On the surface, Hau‘ofa and Narokobi have much in common. Both were born and raised in Papua New Guinea. Both wrote plays, poetry, and literature, and both envisioned a modernity guided by Indigenous rather than Western values.
But Hau‘ofa’s path was very different from Narokobi’s. The son of Tongan missionaries raised in Milne Bay Province, Hau‘ofa grew up in diaspora rather than on his family’s land in Tonga. His schooling took him throughout the Commonwealth to Tonga, Australia, Canada, and the Caribbean.
Hau‘ofa gave up religion relatively early in life and committed himself to a secular project of modernisation, only to
grow disenchanted with it and develop a new vision of a trans-local, pan-Pacific Indigenous modernity. Hau‘ofa described his background as that ‘of rootlessness, of being a perpetual outsider, a professional underdog, a clown at heart, a connoisseur of absurdity, and an unbeliever’.
His hilarious satirical writings include scenarios like a set of notebooks documenting local oral traditions being used to attract grant aid but then being sold for toilet paper before they could be preserved, and a novel with the (literally) cheeky title Kisses in the Nederends.
Narokobi could not be more different. While he and Hau‘ofa both criticized the economic dependency that foreign powers foisted on the Pacific and sought to combat the disempowering ideology of smallness and remoteness that went with it, Hau‘ofa was not directly involved in the struggle as a politician or an activist as was Narokobi. Hau‘ofa’s identity was decidedly that of a transnationalist, whereas Naro kobi was a nationalist, indeed, one deeply rooted in his village culture and family land.
While Hau‘ofa’s life seems one constant itinerary, Narokobi spent almost his entire life living in Papua New Guinea, except for a few years as a student at the beginning of his career and a few years as a diplomat at the end.
Hau‘ofa left the civil service to work on satirical novels, while Narokobi never gave up his attempts at government reform.
Hau‘ofa felt himself to be an outsider and an underdog. Groomed for leadership from an early age, the fundamental message Narokobi absorbed was one of empowerment, responsibility, and self-confidence. His earnestness contrasted with Hau‘ofa’s clownish cynicism.
Narokobi did share Hau‘ofa’s suspicion of secular Western modernity, but he came by his suspicion much earlier in his life than did Hau‘ofa, and it sprang from a different source.
For Hau‘ofa the church was part and parcel of Western colonisation, and he experienced his parents’ Christian faith as ‘heavy and stifling’, yet another burden that had to be overcome.
Narokobi, by contrast, drew profound meaning from Christianity, interpreting it as an inheritance from his own forefathers. Narokobi envisioned secular modernity as just one historical epoch, a cultural movement criticised by both the Catholic Church that had preceded it and the decolonised, indigenous, and spiritual nation state of PNG to come after it.
Narokobi saw in Catholicism a deep spiritual connection with Indigenous Melanesian views of the cosmos. For him, both Christianity and the Melanesian Way preceded and morally superseded the capitalism that he foresaw would come with a decolonised Papua New Guinea.
At first blush, Tjibaou and Narokobi might seem to be more similar. Both were nationalists, both struggled for decolonization, and both were simultaneously committed to Indigenous culture and Catholicism. But here, too, there are important differences. Tjibaou’s decolonisation struggle was unlike Hau‘ofa’s or Narokobi’s.
While Narokobi actively worked for independence, he did so right in step with Australia, the colonising power. Moreover, he was actively encouraged and mentored by Australians who were themselves working for Papua New Guinean independence.

Tjibaou, on the other hand, came of age politically during the first decades of De Gaulle’s Fifth Republic, a time when self-government was withdrawn from New Caledonia and France encouraged recolonisation by white settlers.
Expatriates in PNG were never more than three per cent of the population in Narokobi’s time, while in New Caledonia, Kanak people are just slightly in the minority.
To say there was substantial opposition to decolonisation in New Caledonia is an understatement: in the 1980s, opposition to settler colonialism meant intense unrest that almost reached the level of a civil war. As a result, Tjibaou’s political career involved trials that Narokobi could never have dreamt of.
Like Narokobi, Tjibaou was actively engaged in politics. But Tjibaou was tragically murdered in 1989 at the age of 53 in the course of his struggle for New Caledonian independence, making him a martyr and a potent political symbol, whereas Narokobi continued to work toward an ever more independent PNG into his old age.
So Narokobi had a longer life but less fame and renown. In his dogged focus on legislative reform both at the Law Reform Commission and in parliament, Narokobi was more interested in the minutiae of policy than was Tjibaou.
Finally, Narokobi’s experience of Christianity differed from Tjibaou’s. On the one hand, both relied on the educational opportunities presented by the Catholic Church, with Tjibaou joining (and ultimately leaving) the priesthood. Both also ‘saw no contradiction in being both a Catholic and a Melanesian, a Christian and an animist’.
On the other hand, however, Tjibaou struggled with the church as a worldly institution. Tjibaou experienced racism while attending seminary, and in New Caledonia the Catholic Church ‘limited the horizons for Melanesians to a few subordinate positions in the Caledonian ecclesiastical hierarchy’.
Unsurprisingly, given the long connection between church and state which De Gaulle continued, it was referred to as ‘l’Église des blancs’ (the church of the whites).
Australia, in contrast, was a historically Anglo-Protestant country which lacked a state church.
And, as Gibbs shows in his contribution to this issue, the Catholic Church Narokobi encountered was one that was seeking to decolonise and indigenise itself. Tjibaou found it difficult to separate the Catholic Church from colonialism, while Narokobi could imagine the Catholic Church as a resource for resistance.
By comparing and contrasting Narokobi with these other Melanesian thinkers, we aim to show what made Narokobi’s programme for an indigenous modernity distinctive. Narokobi appreciated cultural diversity and international connections but was ultimately a committed nationalist. He was also a political moderate who believed not in overturning but engaging with the hegemonic political and legal structures
whose pressures he felt. This could not be said of Hau‘ofa, who built a space outside mainstream politics in which to imagine his new artistic and cultural forms, and who was committed to a post-national regional identity. Tjibaou was a peace-maker who sought to prevent violence, but he was never in a situation like that of Narokobi in PNG, where a ‘normal politics’ was possible.
Finally, as we have seen, Narokobi is also set apart from Hau‘ofa and Tjibaou by his unambivalent embrace of Christianity as an appropriate Pacific cultural form.
We believe that Narokobi may continue to serve as a useful ancestor for Melanesian people today who are committed to Christianity, cultural unity in diversity, regional connection but national aspiration, and nonviolent resistance to colonialism. West Papuans, for instance, will be interested to know of his long dedication to their cause. Furthermore, while we have discussed Narokobi in the context of Melanesia, we hope that our analysis might stimulate even broader comparisons across the Pacific region. For instance, in many ways Narokobi calls to mind Pacific politicians such as A pirana Ngata of New Zealand, who sought betterment for his people by promoting a decolonisation programme that could operate within existing structures.

– Excerpts from the article Toward a Cultural and Historical Understanding of the Melanesian Way, published by Researchgate.net