Our Pacific Ways

15/07/2024

She’s working hard to keep the language alive 👏

15/07/2024

Recently activists from Blockade Australia were charged under New South Wales’ anti-protest laws.

Last Sunday, Laura Davy disrupted a loading facility at the Port of Newcastle. A day later, the court determined that she deserved a three-month sentence.

They’re among a growing number of Australians who’ve been criminalised for protesting under what the Human Rights Law Centre recently described as a worrying proliferation of “vague” anti-protest laws. Its report, called Protest in Peril, concludes the laws have eroded the right to protest, a right it says is fundamental to democracy.

You can read more at the links below.

09/11/2023

20/09/2023

The Melanesian Way
Bernard Narokobi

"Our Melanesian ways stem from the unquestionable fact that we are an ancient people, born to liberty, born to ancient culture and civilisation. We are not one year old, nor are we 200 years old. We are thousands of years old. We might be new to modern institutions, but we are not new to human persons' strengths and weaknesses.

We have a right and indeed a duty to call on the wisdoms of our ancestors. Collectively we possess the treasures of time tested and proven strengths. These we can use in times of stress and strain to liberate ourselves from oppressive circumstances, of whatever nature or magnitude."

"As Melanesians, we are a spiritual people. Even before Christians came onto our shores, we felt and knew the forces of a source greater than ourselves. That was our divine power, the Melanesian way. We can and should call on the strength of that source. We have a right to demand interpersonal dialogue with the forces at work to change us. We have a right to be here, not as carbon copies, but as authentic Melanesians."

"From our spirituality, we had a communal vision of the cosmos. Our vision was not and still is not an artificially dichotomised and compartmentalised pragmatism of the secular society. Ours is a vision of totality, a vision of cosmic harmony. Our vision sees the human person in his totality with the spirit world as well as the animal and the plant world. This human person is not absolute master of the universe but an important component in an interdependent world of the person with the animal, the plant and the spiritual. However he came to be, the Melanesian is".



Photo taken from PNG in Pictures
Milne Bay

21/05/2023

There are multiple serious risks to investors from deep-sea mining, not offset by any possible benefits. They should avoid this deeply risky investment.

09/12/2022

The genetic legacy of Denisovans may be shaping the modern immune system of southwest Pacific populations

18/09/2022

In the shadow of the United Nations' towering headquarters in New York City, law student Solomon Yeo from an island nation in the South Pacific is taking in what he describes as a “surreal moment.”

10/09/2022

Giant ice sheets, ocean currents and permafrost regions may already have passed point of irreversible change

10/09/2022

In a minute from the World Council of Churches (WCC) 11th Assembly, the WCC expressed grave concern over the situation in West Papua.

10/09/2022

She helped obscure a bloody history of decolonization whose proportions and legacies have yet to be adequately acknowledged.

10/09/2022

While some in Africa paid tribute to the deceased monarch, others stressed Britain’s violent colonial history on the continent.

27/10/2021