Welcome to this week’s editorial,
From a very early age I learnt that not all men were equal. The evidence was all around me and I was reminded of it daily, if not hourly.
Growing up in Papua New Guinea I quickly learnt of tribes. It was essential. In PNG there are over 820 languages accounting for nearly 12% of the known living languages spoken in the world today . Why? Because there are 320 tribes. The word Wantok sums it up.
Wantok = OneTalk. If you speak my language then we are one. What is yours is mine and vice versa. Very black and white, very clear and most of all ingrained in the DNA.
Your tribe in PNG is your DNA. You defend it to your death and that has been the case for tens of thousands of years. In PNG you can generally tell where someone is from by their physical features. You can recognise a person approaching by skin tone, nose, eyes and in more remote areas by their attire, or lack there of. As soon as you hear someone speak you can drill down to a province, a district and a village. Each village had its borders and each tribe had even firmer borders that they fiercely protected, for food, for women and pigs.
For me, growing up in PNG required learning of the tribes, recognising the ways and accepting the customs. I quickly learnt about tribal wars that would erupt without warning. In a country where pay-back killing is a standard there was always an ignition point just around the corner.
Tribalism was, and remains, everywhere. The police in Papua needed to be from New Guinea to ensure there was no favouritism given to Papuans, and vice versa. The end result however saw the riot squads of PNG being declared the most brutal in the world.
Once the borders to PNG were open one of the first ’teams’ in were the bringers of Christianity to save the ‘heathen souls’. Nice idea until that boiled over that one version of Christianity was superior to another and that those who followed the alternates would burn in hell. It took no time at all for locals to work out that the ‘expatriates’, including the priests, were highly racist, not only to locals but to their own kind as well, and especially those who were ‘foreign’ such as the minority Chinese. Further faux tribalism came in the form of rugby league. Initially teams were formed that represented various provinces and towns. To add to the entertainment the organisers decided it would be good to have Papua play against New Guinea in an annual competition. As Blind Freddy predicted the riots in the streets after the match sometimes lasted for days. That was where the end result was won or lost.
At its heart PNG is truthfully racist. The racism comes from recognising those who are not part of your tribe. It is a survival tool hardwired into the DNA. It comes with its own unwritten rules. If we look at PNG we can see ourselves. We too define ourselves into groups. We may have lost our absolute tribal link but we do our best to be part of a tribe. As children we are segregated into Colours or Houses at school to compete against each other. We attend different schools based on location and income. We live in different suburbs based on parents affluence. We dress accordingly. We even take on uniforms to show allegiance or belonging. How many follow the “Gucci” tribe or “Nike” tribe and show swear their allegiance by displaying their totem? We prey to different Gods and defend to the death that one God is mightier than another. Such wars we have had over Gods. We sing, with hands on hearts, our patriotic anthems that celebrate lines on the ground that do little but to further separate us from each other. Yet from space these borders, so hard fought can not be seen as astronauts observe a Big Blue planet, with possibly the only life form in the Universe, hurtling through space. But on the ground, instead of being team Human we instead squabble and argue which end of a hard boiled egg should be cracked.
I came to Australia to discover that it was filled with so many tribes. There was the State tribes that I discovered sadly came with a vitriol. NSW against Victoria and against Queensland. Infantile name calling and chest beating. I then noticed the same tribalism in Sydney with the racism being handed out to immigrants.
I moved to Canberra in the 1970’s and discovered that there was a mixing pot of people from all over the world. While delighted to find that there was less racism I soon discovered that there was another form of discrimination. Whether you were a public servant or not. And if you were, what grade you were. To add to the madness there was a distinction made between those who lived north of the lake or south.
Up until 1981 Canberra had no footy team. They had no chant, no colours to call their own. But in 1981 along came the Raiders with their Big Drum, their Green and White and their song. Canberra had a new tribe. They were joyous. It gave them another point of difference to add to their blue and white number plates.
In 1985 I moved to the coast in a Renault 12 sporting ACT number plates. It was the first time I heard the term “Yogi” that was the term used by South Coast folk to anyone from the ACT sporting a blue and white “Y” prefix number plate.
I remember feeling a bit more ‘like a local’ when we transferred those plates to NSW team colours.
I was reminded of the nastiness around Canberra number plates during the bushfires with social media erupting in vitriol about the Canberra residents apparently overstaying their welcome and depleting our supermarket shelves of toilet paper. “They were told to leave and they didn’t, and now they are a burden on our essential supplies!” was a typical catchcry. Next came the claims that Canberra people had taken all our essential petrol supplies as they finally evacuated.
In the end there was an attempt to patch up the relationship when the local businesses put together a nice little video called “Canberra Come Back”. The message went out that we needed their business and we even invited them to bring Empty Eskies.
But then along came Covid. Once again the good people of Eurobodalla went into protection mode and demanded borders be established to keep out the Greater Sydney plague. Our border to Canberra was still open for the minute to allow our citizens access to family and medical.
Again social media erupted each time someone from Greater Sydney breeched our borders. They did so by certificates of exemption for essential work and they did so via the loophole of having a holiday house here that needed “maintenance”. Tribalism kicked in and Crimestoppers was the go to with each new car appearing in the street. There was fear and a frustration in seeing borders breeched.
Canberra then went into lock down. On the day it was announced there was more traffic than usual coming to the coast. Over the following weeks social media once again vilified those with Blue and White number plates, so much so that ACT visitors parked at the rear of their houses. Things then settled as it was deemed everyone on the South Coast was Locked Down.
With ten days remaining until we are free to come out of hibernation there is time to think through of how we are going to face the new rules that will be in place set to divide the community into “The 2Vax” and the “UnVax”. Already rules are being established around entry to pubs, overseas travel, interstate travel, and even continuity of employment.
It is confirmed that once the borders open and we come out of doors there will be positive cases walking amongst us. We are offered the assurity that while we will get sick it hopefully will not require hospitalisation, nor the prospect of loss of life. The onus of our personal safety will be on our own actions. Will we associate with Unvaxed, will we go to Unvaxed stores, eat at Unvax cafes. These questions are already being raised with State controlled solutions of showing Apps and certificates to prove vaccination.
How we move ahead now will reveal who we are. How we act. How we treat each other.
There are just ten days before our borders open. What happens after that remains anyone’s guess.
Until next—lei
