New Zealand Fana Kingstone

Gilbert Islands Katherine Tekanene

Family life was a strongly organised social institution in the Gilbert Islands long before the arrival of Christianity. Woman was the companion of man and not his slave. She was not subjected to tasks beyond her strength but was expected to perform ordinary household duties besides helping her husband in certain kinds of fishing, in the cultivation of taro and the building and maintenance of dwellings.

She wove strings from coconut fibre for construction of canoe and house buildings; skirts, the only wearing apparel, she fashioned from coconut leaves for all the family. Bedding mats and baskets she dexterously wove in intricate designs from pandanus leaves. Her usual household chores would have consisted of collecting firewood for cooking purposes. As there would have been no cooking utensils, all food had to be either baked or grilled. Toddy was converted into molasses by being boiled in coconut shells on hot stones. All this would have taken up most of a housewife's day. With the extended family system, she would have had helpers, as old women could have done many of these tasks.

Unlike many other cultures, a girl was not purchased from parents by prospective husbands. She had her share of family inheritance, although less than a son's share. An only daughter inherited not only land but also whatever particular skills her father possessed - even navigation. Women were mostly well treated by their husbands except when these were of a jealous nature (which was quite common). Then the wife had very little freedom and could not assist at any social gathering. Young girls were subject to very strict supervision and could not go anywhere alone.

In spite of all this, women were (and still are) regarded as inferior to men. On no account must she stand up to address an assembly in the ‘maneaba’ (meeting house), but must sit meekly behind the elders in the first rank. Walking along the road she usually kept a few paces behind her man.

When education was introduced by the missionaries, it was thought to be only for boys; girls had no need of it. It was a long struggle to convince parents to send girls to school, but they were quite happy and even anxious to let them be in boarding school with the missionaries as they knew they would be safeguarded. So long as they were taught to weave mats, etc., it did not matter what they learnt academically.

Even after 1945, no woman went to secondary school or held any position other than that in the home. When the Medical Department first started to train nurses, this was frowned upon by most parents and it took time to be accepted. Another stumbling block later on was co-education in secondary schools and teacher training, but this too has been successfully overcome and today we have a woman Minister in the House of Assembly, a woman doctor, many trained nurses, religious sisters, female teachers, radio announcers, typists clerks etc.

Cook Islands Mata Tuara

From the time they were small babies, children were taught how to behave towards their brothers and sisters. Female children had to observe certain restrictions on their behaviour towards their brothers - they were not allowed to step on his sleeping mat, or dance with him in a traditional dance, and could not kiss his face but rather his hand, as a sign of respect. They had special forms of address for their brothers alone. Females could not appear partially undressed in front of their brothers. Males were also taught to respect their sisters, and could not swear in front of them. These observances were reinforcement to the strong incest taboos.

The first born child in the family, especially if it was a boy, occupied a privileged position in the family. He had to stay with the father and learn the management of the household. His younger brothers and sisters were taught to obey the first born in all family matters since the knowledge of the family's genealogy and lands was passed to him. He was also the teller of special family traditional stories. The first born child would inherit the chiefly title and control the management of family lands.

The head of the household was the father. It was his responsibility to provide for the family. There was a definitive division of labour; only men did the fishing beyond the reef and women fished within the lagoon. On land the men were the hunters and gatherers and the women made mats, etc., and looked after the children at home. With the coming of Christianity, the belief that the man had authority over the woman was reinforced.

However, the changes in economic life, caused changes in the division of labour and women became slightly more independent. Both sexes participated in planting, men working on the land, and both sexes planting and harvesting. This division of labour still exists today. After contact with Europeans, the Cook Islanders noticed the greater independence of European women and the fact that the head of their country was a woman, Queen Victoria. Women began to succeed to chiefly titles, following the European example.

Many women in the Cook Islands now hold chiefly titles, for example, of the 23 Paramount chiefs (the Independent chief or “Mataiapo”), 7 are women. One is here at this conference - Poko Ingram - who is also the President and founder of the Cook Islands Women's Association formerly known as the Democratic Women's Association.

Women had been important in making alliances between tribal groups but an examination of traditional stories does not reveal women as decision makers or leaders, but as desirable marriage partners, childbearers or the cause of disputes over their favours.

Today, women are valued not only for their ability to bear children, but also, with the introduction of a new economic system, as wage earners. Children can claim land from both their mother and father and men can work their wife's land. Marriage is also a way of acquiring more land. Within the home, the husband still remains the decision maker, and in some cases this is necessary, while in other cases, women have also become the decision makers. Though women are regarded as chief planners of the family and household affairs, and have considerable say, many would find it difficult to accept positions of responsibility because they are so accustomed to accepting male leadership.

As women are starting work, and sometimes are earning as much as their husbands, they are now realising the independence that money brings. However, generally, girls are not expected to plan a career of their own as it is assumed they will be having children for most of the time between the age of 20–40, when women are tied to the home. As their children grow up and begin to help with child-minding and housework, and later earn wages, women assume more authority in the home In middle age, when children no longer have to be watched over, these women want to go out and work. It is at this time in her life that a woman begins to be independent.

Rotuma Lavenia Kaurasi

What the Rotuman woman is like today is really a lot of traditional attitudes or beliefs that have been handed down by generations to the young ones today.

How does traditional culture fashion Rotuman women? Firstly, like other cultures it defines the sex roles of Rotumans, and child bearing and child rearing become the prime role of the woman. One striking feature regarding Rotuman women is that their role is very, very rigid. This is greatly determined by the fact that Rotuman women are considered very uneconomically productive in agriculture. Yet if you go to Rotuma now, you would not meet a Rotuman woman coming back from the bush carrying a load of food and her caneknife because this would only reflect that her husband is lazy! Relieved from agricultural activities, her activities within the family or in the home become very rigid.

Thus, it is the woman who wakes up at night to answer to the call of the child, cleans up any mess and controls the child, while the father is left to sleep on because he has had a strenuous day in the bush. In the urban complex, the woman is blamed for the untidiness of the child when he or she goes to school. Yet in the urban situation, many women earn a lot more than their husbands and are better educated as well. This shows the inequality and the unfairness of the treatment that the Rotuman women are receiving today.

Marriage is commonly matrilocal, the husband residing at the woman's place. The Rotuman woman acts under a lot of constraint. The husband is regarded as a guest, therefore she adopts the role of a good hostess. Within the family, the woman had to keep quiet about troubles and give in to her husband to uphold the family image publically and also to uphold family solidarity.

Traditional culture specifies many things that a woman cannot do. For example, she is not supposed to talk too much in a meeting since this is a priority of the men. The woman is expected to make herself as inconspicuous as possible in a gathering, remaining, if possible, at the same place and not moving around.

Her in-laws expect her to display proficiency in speaking, in craftwork, and it can become embrassing for the woman if she visits her husband's place and does not succeed in the tests given by her in-laws. For example, they may ask her to plait a certain mat out of coconut leaf, and she is expected to use up the whole coconut leaf economically. This means that she plaits the mat and then if there are any bits left over, she makes a broom, and out of the hard stem in the middle, she must fashion a certain fork, a Rotuman fork. She cuts it up into long strips and then folds them into two. If she is able to prove her efficiency, then she is accepted. If not, in early days, songs would be composed about her inefficiency. Even though this is not done today, the idea that you must be adequate in the eyes of your in-laws is still very strong.

The Rotuman woman is also expected to be proficient in ceremonial activities. Her main role is either serving the kava or serving the food. In Rotuma, the food is served on a very low table and the serving of the food needs a lot of skill, and a lot of practice. If you forget the type of food that goes on first, you are subjected to a lot of ridicule later. The Rotuman woman undergoes a lot of tests that are not serious as far as men are concerned. It shows the inequality between the two sexes and the rights that they enjoy.

The most important and the most controversial feature of traditional culture is virginity. The women are expected to be virgins when they marry and are condemned if they are not by the parents or in-laws, if they find out. This is quite unfair that while women are expected to inhibit their sexual desires, men can have a good time and nothing is said about them. In Rotuman society, the men are entitled to this, it's the men's right or priority but not for women. This attitude had better change. Once the attitude is changed then women will not suffer from unnecessary guilty consciences.

The Rotuman wife in the family maintains the strong link between the relatives. She initiatives how much should be taken to a wedding, how much should be taken to a funeral. But this is not acknowledged. For example, when a man is successful as a leader in the society, he is praised, but the wife is never associated with him. She is not associated with the success of the husband. But when the husband does a lot of bad things, normally the people blame the wife, saying that she must be a bad wife, inconsiderate etc.

In her family, the woman's husband sometimes takes advantage of her and even though she is better educated, and better paid, he still has the final say in the home. And it restricts woman from speaking up or saying things that may be constructive as far as the whole society is concerned.

Rotuman women are not equal to the opposite sex. Attitudes that the Rotumans hold strongly must be modified. We need a lot of womenpower to do that. Women should threaten their husbands, that if he does this or that again, they will walk off, since they may be earning a lot more than he is.

Papua New Guinea Josefa Namsu

I have been asked to come and say something about Papua New Guinea women. In our Papua New Guinea societies, I can say that our women do play an advisory role even though that may be indirectly done.

Our women work in the gardens and basically they look after their children and also do the housework. Because of these - working and planting in the gardens, looking after the children, working in the home - the men consult the women about what to do, and the actual decisions are made in the home before they go out to the public. In that way, I should say that our women indirectly do play a part in decision-making in our traditional culture.

Nowadays, it is not so obvious that women are a success. I would like to see an equal recognition of the sexes. I would like to see that there is equality in pay for capability in doing the same type of work.

The idea of ‘women's liberation’ is a bit confused back in our country. Western countries have their own ideas of what ‘women's liberation’ is supposed to be and this has been passed on at our PNG University. In the beginning, I used to think that if I became liberated I had to become like a European woman or her ideas of a ‘liberated’ woman. But I have come to believe now that this, liberation, is not in the sense that they are pushing into us - to go out and demonstrate. We don't need to have all that. We should try to think of ‘liberation’ within our own capabilities, how much we understand, how much we can do, how much we can contribute and not simply go out and demonstrate how we must dress and things like that.

Tahiti Ida Teariki-Bordes

I want to ask a question to all the women from the other islands. A very important question in Tahiti is religion. Nearly everybody is religious, either Catholic or Protestant, or Mormon. The more important religion is Protestantism, and the Catholics coming after, Adventists next and the Mormons. I want to know if the pastors and priests in your islands have taken a position socially on economics and politics? In Tahiti we have a very special problem whic is the bomb, and we should like to know if, in your countries, your pastors and your priests take a position in all these subjects.

The time I want to tell you about is when John, my brother, was the deputy in the French National Assembly, and he was against the bomb. As he is a very religious man, (he's Protestant), he thought he would get help from the pastors and even from the Catholic bishop, so he went to see them And that was just to help the Tahitians… So he went to see the Bishop first and the Bishop said: “I can't speak against France because I'm French and I don't want to speak anything against my own government”. So my brother ‘phoned us and said: “Please, can't you do something?” (because I live about 40 miles from the main town of Papeete). “Please, would you try to see the priests in your place because your husband is a Catholic, and ask him (the priest) if he could help us.”

So I went to the priest and after a small talk I began to direct the conversation to nuclear tests and the priest was so afraid to talk about it that he just ran out, forgetting his hat in the house! He was so afraid to say a word about that. So I told my husband what it was and he said that it was a French priest and maybe the bishop had told him not to talk about the bomb. So now there was nothing to do, so I decided to turn to my Protestant pastors.

I was not happy about it because first, they are Tahitians. And so I couldn't understand when the Protestant pastors would not talk about the bomb because I said: “We are women and we are thinking about our children, and you should think about our children too.” But the Protestant pastor explained to me that they were afraid to talk about it because just a little while before one of the French Protestant priests had talked about and against the bomb and he was sent right away to France. So they were afraid to talk.

That's the question I want to ask you. Why are priests afraid to talk about all these things against the bomb? They represent God and God wants the good of the people, and they should want the good of the people too. And I want to know if this is the same in your countries, if the priests take the same position, and don't want to be involved. This year it's a bit better because the bishop wrote an article in which he says, very vaguely, I must say, a little against the atom bomb. And the Protestants are talking a little bit more. But I must explain that I didn't know about the South Pacific Bishop's meetings (the World Bishops Conference, Vatican, August, 1975) in which the bishops decided against all these things. So the Bishop in Tahiti had to write something about this and say something, but it was very, very mild.

But I didn't realise about the conference because in Tahiti we have no contact with the outside world. They cut it off. Everything is turned to outside, to Europe.

But this doesn't mean that I'm no more Protestant. I'm still a very good Protestant and my husband is still a very good Catholic because the religion is God's; the pastors and priests are human beings.

New Hebrides Grace Mera

I'd like to answer the question that our sister from Tahiti has posed.

Her first question was that she'd like to know from us – from other countries – what our ministers or what our churches' stand is in relation to the bomb and nuclear testing in Tahiti.

I am very grateful that this Conference has made it possible for people from New Caledonia, New Hebrides and Tahiti to meet, as we have a common area that we share and that it is that we are French Territories. We come under French Colonialism, and this particular system makes it very very difficult for our three peoples to meet, to communicate As our Tahitian sister has stated, information to come out is very difficult and the relevant information to come in to us is also very difficult. This is the first time that I am able to hear anything from a Tahitian.

In the New Hebrides, as far as Christian religion is concerned, we have something like a dozen different denominations of one kind of Christianity or another. I have beer brought up in the Anglican tradition, my father being an Anglican minister. I went through Anglican church schools and have been involved in church activities.

The point is this: in the New Hebrides we have not had the education, we were denied education. People were educate by different churches, but what they were taught were only Christian teachings and may be how to read and write. So any knowledge of anything outside the religious traditions, they don't know very much about. For example, maybe a world-view or a world-outlook, anything on economics, and things like this, many people do not understand because they have not had the chance to be educated.

Coming back to our ministers, in the Anglican Church in the New Hebrides we have between sixty to eighty priests who are Anglican and out of these only two have had high-school education. They did not have high-school education because the Government made it impossible for them to have this. They had schooling because their families made it possible for them. Therefore, many of our ministers, because of lack of education, do not understand much about politics, economics, or, as you said, the bomb. However, a few priests who understand the world problems and the world situation as it is today, are involved in political developments like some of you might have heard about in the New Hebrides. There are a number of political parties now and one of them being the National Party which is headed by and the core of it is, the Church from the different denominations. Much of the leadership are ministers.

Our stand is with you. We are against the bomb. We are against militarism in the Pacific.

However, our voice is not yet a united voice because the few who understand us are so few, and our people who are the masses are so much for us to cope with that the information has not been channeled back into the grass-roots effectively yet. But the few who have had the chance to be educated or to see this light, realise that that is the challenge, and that that is the direction that educated and the more understanding are taking. And we hope more will come to understand that we must stand together and that things like militarism and other aspects that arise from it, I think we have to handle carefully and maybe base our ideas on real Christianity – not the Christianity that has been created after Christ dies, but Christ's true teachings has to be involved.

New Caledonia Dewe Gorodey

I'm from New Caledonia which is a French territory like Tahiti. Like the New Hebridean girl (Grace Mera) we have a very similar situation and it is very different from your situation, because we are under a colonial system.

In New Caledonia the priests and the ministers are going on with the colonial system. They are supporting it. My Tahitian sister was saying that the Bishop refused to take a stand against the nuclear tests. Like the sister on the Protestant side, I was not surprised because it is exactly the same in New Caledonia. When you know that the people who have come to speak of God perpetrate the colonial system, you ask yourself the question if they really represent God.

My Groupe, Groupe 1878, tries to get independence in New Caledonia. The young people don't go any more to church because they ask themselves if God really exists. Because the same people talk to us on the bible and now we have been left with the bible and they kept the arms.

Papua New Guinea Josefa Namsu

I am at the moment studying Law and I should be the first woman graduate in law from the University of Papua New Guinea. I do find a lot of opposition from male students in the Law Faculty at the university but they have a lot of respect for me and it is encouraging to see that there is not that traditional attitude that women should not come out and talk in public. I do fight for what I think is right and for what I am capable of.

In modern Papua New Guinea, women are better educated - there are a lot of young girls going through secondary education and quite a number of us are in university.

New Caledonia Lucette Neaoutyine

After more than a century of French colonisation in New Caledonia, one can no longer talk about a woman's education which is really Kanak or traditional.

On the one hand, as far as the woman who is brought up on the reserve or in tribal surroundings is concerned, one continues to instill in her the respect of the group to which she belongs, her duties towards her community, and a submissive attitude in front of men. For example, she is still advised not to speak to certain assemblies of men, such as the Council of Elders, not to talk to her brothers nor her maternal uncle, and to find a husband in order to have children. She is taught to weave mats and baskets, taught how to work in the fields, how to look after the plantations and the areas around the house, the flower-gardens and the weedings, for example. She is shown how to prepare the “bougna” which is the traditional Kanak food cooked in an oven made of hot stones buried in the earth. She is brought along to gather coffee beans, and to cut straw for the roofs of their own houses. And she learns how to recognise edible shells on the reefs for the tribes along the shore.

However, given that traditional Kanak values are denied by the colonial system, a woman's ‘tribal’ education is an education designed to make her into a perfect imitation of the white woman. In the bourgeois, capitalist, colonial society, the Kanak child collides with Western values in the primary school, whether it be in the rural areas or in the town: all teaching in New Caledonia, from primary to secondary school, is done in French, with programmes designed for Parisien children. In addition, when teachers tell young Kanak girls to “work hard at school and get your diplomas so that you can get good jobs”, it is purely and simply encouraging them to become good little “civilised” blacks.

In the same way, when Kanak mothers say to their daughters: “Find yourself a husband who has a good position”, they are simply pushing them into the arms of lower-level Kanak civil servants - primary school teachers, nurses, country police or policemen - who have an enviable position for Kanak people in the white colonial society. For the Kanak woman to be looked upon favourably by the white people, she must not only speak good French, be well-dressed, and be well made up, but also be a good housekeeper, a good cook, and must know how to sew, iron and mend clothes. She must also be a good mother, a good wife, a good Christian and an excellent hostess.

In this New Caledonian colonial society where racism is institutionalised, where the superiority of the white over the coloured peoples is set up as a principle, the education system is established in such a way that the person being educated - here, the Kanak woman - cannot refer to herself in order to make judgements, since there are no criteria other than Western criteria to be used. This system of education designed to integrate and assimilate can only force the Kanak woman to renounce her original society and make herself more white than the white woman, and to flee the reserve for the town.

Being a well-educated Kanak woman today in the colony of New Caledonia means that you know the rules of how to live in the white-man's way, that you have had solid learning in white schools, and that you have your diplomas. In school, one is successful or not according to how well one knows the history of France, the geography of France, etc.

The more we forget, the more we deny our identity as Kanak women, the better one is “educated”; that is how it really is in New Caledonia. This is why when it is heard said to a little Kanak girl: “Work well at school so that you can get your certificates and a good job”, it must be interpreted as: “Try to become a good little civilised black bourgeois who won't have anything more to do with her primitive people”. It must be interpreted that way and not otherwise.

But in any case such an integrationist education contains its own contradictions as is demonstrated by this expression frequently heard in New Caledonia: “They have their diplomas, but they are Kanaks”. Indeed, however much one is educated, has diplomas, or tries to be more westernised than the white woman, the colonial system is there showing us every day that the white leaders are not prepared to consider us as their equals, still less as human-beings.

In fact, this Western education is only intended to make us into little puppets, or rather cheap exotic merchandise in the hands of the white master. The intention is to make us into alienated people, so that as mothers we can educate our children in ways still more Westernised, which will thus perpetuate the bondage of our people by the white colonial system.

Now we are going to briefly list some of the Kanak woman's complexes which are the result of this integrated education:

Racial complex: the Kanak woman who believes in the superiority of the white in everything, is ashamed to speak her vernacular language, to meet her Kanak parents in town, to be seen with Kanaks and coloured people in general.

Social complex: denying her original society, that is say the tribal, village world, she prefers to be exploited by a white boss or become a prostitute in town than to return to her original community. Of course, those who live in Noumea, the capital, consider themselves “civilised”, and scorn those living in the village.

Class complex: women who have their secondary school certificates, or who are teachers, nurses, or employed in offices, believe themselves to be superior to the housegirl in town. Naturally there is no question of her joining in with work in the fields, or quite simply of her dirtying her hands working the land.

If she wants a husband, he should at least be a minor civil servant.

If she is married, the mother of a model family, and a practising Christian, she can only regard unmarried mothers, for example, as whores.

In our group - Groupe 1878, which is a mixed group - we are only a minority of women who are trying to start posing the problems of the Kanak woman as being indissociable from that of all our people subject to the colonial domination of France.

New Hebrides Grace Mera

I would like to make a comment to support and clarify Lucette's statement on education in New Caledonia which is similar to the situation in New Hebrides. I feel even though some of our speakers have said that national topics are becoming or clouding the overall women's issues, as far as the area of education is concerned, I feel that we must understand and I ask you to understand, that in the French territories, that's New Caledonia, Tahiti and New Hebrides, the situation is a little bit different if not very different from the experience that the other territories have been through. Some of you people speak from independent platforms, places that have already gained their independence, and determine their own education system; whereas in our areas that exist under colonialism, this problem is not only duplicated, it is multiplied, because the education system is not only an imposed one it is in many ways in contradiction to our traditional way of education.

The underlying factor in our colonial situation is that the type of education that we have has been planned hundreds of years ago and that is why we have this type of education that we have. For example, Lucette has brought out the fact that in today's education on the French side, a woman is expected to speak good French, is expected to dress nicely, wear make-up the right way, and all those kind of things. This is because the colonial policy, the plan that has been made by the colonial governments when they came in and took over our countries, especially on the French side, have always been and are still effective today, is that you educate a person to become a Frenchman, and that when you move into a country, you occupy that country and make it a part of France outside France. Therefore, you try to turn those people into French people. So to be recognised at all, you either inter-marry and produce mixed-blood people who speak French and who adopt French life-style, or if you don't inter-marry and you keep within your own ethnic groups, then you must deny everything that is yours before you can be recognised.

In the New Hebrides, for instance, education has not been allowed until the last ten years even though the New Hebrides has existed under colonialism for more than sixty years - it's in its sixty-nineth year this year. At the moment there is only one high school in the whole country. This is not an accident, it has been planned.

Tahiti Ida Teariki Bordes

I would like to speak to you about French Polynesia, as the New Caledonian women and the New Hebrides woman have done, but there will be a difference because I am a Polynesian, and it would be interesting for you to compare.

By chance, the Tahitian women have not the same kind of life as the New Caledonian and the New Hebridean. Even in the olden days the Tahitian women had a very high position in the society and they could even become chiefs. This is so in other Polynesian groups. In Tahiti, the women have always considered themselves the equal of the men, and they always did what they wanted to do.

In our time, the boys were not as well educated as the girls. Both went to school, but when the boys reach the age of twelve they are taken from school to work on the plantations, to go fishing, to work for the family. But, the girls could stay at school and learn more. And now, these girls have married those who are not as well-educated as themselves. This has become a problem in many households because the women know much more than the men and it is very difficult for them. And the women want to dominate the men, and if they cannot do that, they at least want to be on the same level.

I want to speak a little now about the education of our children today. I have three daughters and they got their secondary education in Tahiti in the French school and the girls got their GCE “A” Level certificate. We then sent our daughters to France for further education. I am a farmer, even though I am also well-educated. I have a very good and close relationship with my three daughters, but I can see that some of my friends do not have such a good relationship with their children and I feel that now there is a big gap between the children and the parents. Many young girls now have this type of education. After some years, they come back to Tahiti and it takes time for them to become once more Tahitian-minded because they had very little contact with their own people.

When they begin to work, they always need the family so they come back to the family. But they want to make the parents do things in the French way, and the parents do not always agree. So, with all the education you have got, you still need your mother on the farm, to give you money. You are not able, with all that education, to get enough money for yourself. It is a big problem now, because all those children who come back from France are taxed by the French government and it tries to get them to do what it wants. But we are trying to prevent this and we hope that we shall be able to help these children and take them back into our society.

Tahiti Marie Therese Danielsson

I talk about the situation in Tahiti. As in the Gilbert Islands, the radio is a very important means because we in French Polynesia have about a hundred islands spread over a very vast area. We have atolls like in the Gilberts. We don't have any direct communication with the centre, with Tahiti itself. So the people there rely on the radio. They go and make copra and they take the radio with them and they turn on the radio as soon as it comes on. We have a programme which lasts about three hours, two hours in the morning, three hours at noon, and three hours at night too.

But these radio and T.V. are controlled by the French government, so they are always turned to French customs and the French way of life and most of the programmes are in French. On the radio there is about one hour of Tahitian at night and a little before noon with the news. But all the rest is in French and the T.V., the programmes are all in French. Nothing is in Tahitian.

And when we have elections for example, the local parties in Tahiti are not allowed to use the radio or T.V. The only parties who are allowed to talk are the French parties. So we receive on the T.V. the French government party man, and the French Socialist party man, and the Communist party man, and nobody knows who they are because there is no Socialist party or Communist party in Tahiti, so it doesn't interest the people. We have to vote for one of them, but we should like to know what our leaders in Tahiti think of this and what it is for us simple people to do about it.

There is no programme for women in Tahiti, nothing at all. No special programme, never.

Jamaica Lucille Mair (Conference Resource person)

Our plans as well as our images are so dominated by the media, whether its the modern media or whether its the old media. Two specific aspects of it I'd just like to touch on and then hopefully touch briefly on two possibilities for the future. One is that as our panelists spoke, its so reinforced things which have been coming out in this conference - that we can't seperate, really, women's liberation from national liberation, because the echoes of what happened on the other side of the world came over so clearly - that is, the cultural imperialism which reinforces these images of us as women, and women belonging to subservient societies, subservient to other societies.

And as we listen to what is done to the image of the Pacific women, you can forgive me for recalling what used to happen and what still happens, although we are vigilant about it, to the image of the black woman in the colonial society of the New World.

When we were getting the images projected to us from two influences, the British colonial system and the American system which was sitting on our doorstep, and also the bombardment with the films etc., my hair wasn't supposed to look like this because this was not how it looked in Hollywood and you went to all sorts of agonising processes to get as much to look like the image. It was absurd - you used the skin whiteners and the hair straighteners and so on, all because there was this external thing being put on us in this oppressive way.

Now let us not make the mistake of saying that because we're independent politically, constitutionally, that we've thrown off that kind of imposition, and this is where I think, at so many levels, we're even more vulnerable when we enter into an independent status, because then, with the economic external forces, the multinational corporations, the big sales talks, come the images as well.

So it is reinforced that before we can begin to deal with the image of the woman, we've got to see where it's coming from, and it's coming from a whole context of oppressive forces. So that's one of the things it seems to me that is tying up so many of these things that we're talking about in this conference.

When, to look specifically at the media itself, one of the things that seems to us to come over loud and clear is that we're dealing with perhaps the most sexist institution barring perhaps the church and this is why I think that particularly women who appear to be given the rare privilege of getting into the media have to be so much on the alert. Men are particularly jealous of the fact that they control the means of controlling you and me what goes on up here in our heads. So they will embrace the talk of women into the media and Barbara Walters will, for instance, dominate NBC in New York with 1 ½ hour programmes etc., 1 ½ hours of key TV time in the States, which does not add up to very much because the pressures on the few women who get into any prominent position are tremendous. And they are seldom in a position to project anything like a woman's image. What they're doing is just perpetuating the whole thing. And I've seen so many women in the media utterly frustrated by the fact that they are there and they're as controlled as if they were outside.

What are the solutions? Can I tell you a little bit of what we have found possible and is beginning to make a sort of breakthrough at home? If we're talking about a tough and jealous profession, namely the media, controlled by the men, it means that we've got to think in terms of tough professional women who are invading that media, and I would emphasise ‘professional’.

We have recently set up a school, Institute of Mass Media, in our University of the West Indies, and I'm very proud to say that my own daughter was one of the first graduates of that school. And the very first thing that the young women who graduated from this school did, in conjunction with their male colleagues, (there's nothing like applying a little pressure at the right time and in the right place), was to have a media workshop for women, and there they had to do the research to check what the newspapers were saying about women, what the visual media was doing etc. They really got some serious material as the basis of their workshop and discussed guidelines and so on in the context of a newly independent country. You know, they're very hopeful about the possibilities of a growing number of young professional women who have identified the professional problems, as well as the women's problems as the national problems and packaged them for presentation. That's at the professional level.

At the non-professional level, what we have also found as a promising means of dealing with the problem is to look for instance, at the large numbers of persons who are exposed to the media, and as you spoke of them, a fantastically high percentage of people in Guam who watch TV. It would be interesting to know how many of these are housewives, how many of these are women.

Now, they needn't be passive peceivers of what the media is pushing at them. Could they not participate? Could these women, as they do their housework, mind their babies, have a transistor to their ears or the TV on or something, be motivated in their community groups to monitor the media?

We've attempted this in a modest way. We're saying, “Look, we know Janet that you're confined in your house for 5 hours every day. Could you make it your job for this week to take any 2 hours of the women's programme which is presented for your consumption every morning. Check it out. What is it advertising? Is it nice recipes and beauty aids and new draperies and so on, or is it involving you in the public issues of the community etc. Monitor it. Tell us what it is saying.” And somebody else is doing the other 2 hours in their home doing their responsibilities and so on. At the end of the week, at the end of a fortnight, these women who have had this responsibility, get in a huddle and examine the pap that they've been fed with from the media, and they decide how much of it they want and how much of it they don't want.

And we come back to another point to remember, and that is, in the final analysis, we women are the consumers and when the consumers indicate what they want, the people who are producing the goods, have to listen to the consumers.

Australia Margaret Briggs

I don't consider myself as a political speaker but all I can speak about, and I consider myself an expert on it because I lived the way of life, and my people lived the way of life - I can only tell you about our conditions and the legislation of the governments that we have to exist under. You can make up your own mind whether its political or not.

I'll start in what they call in Australia, the Dreamtime of the Aboriginal people, which is before the white man came to my country. Our people's religion was and it still is, a spiritual religion, whereby they communed with the spirits, and the earth was the base of that religion. I'm sure that you'll recognise this in many things that your people in the same way respected in the old days in your religions.

When Captain Cook came to the Eastern shores, as part of their settlement programme, they poisoned the flower that our people ate. They went on hunts at the weekend and they shot our people. They cut pregnant women's stomachs open. They poisoned waterholes. This is just a sample of what is the history of our people in regard to white settlement. So I'm sure you can understand our feeling of bitterness when we speak about our people, and the land.

The Government set up a Department for Aboriginal Affairs to deal specifically with us, in the way of funding for housing, education, legal needs, which is a new thing. Should the Liberal Government get into power, they are going to get rid of that assistance. The Department of Aboriginal Affairs is run, for the government, by the public service people, and they are the ones who make decisions in regard to anything to do with Aboriginal people and communities. We have one Aboriginal there, Charles Perkins, who was considered to be at the top, but because Charles didn't want to be just a public servant in the Department, he chose to speak out in issues, and for that he was hounded by the Public Service Board and at the moment he has taken leave and I doubt if he will return, because Aboriginal workers in the Department will never attain the positions where they will make decisions. It is always done by the white public servants.

When Labour got into power, (I'm not here to speak for Labour Party because as far as I'm concerned, they're all white, and we don't expect any better from them unless we know that they accept what people put to them for our needs), but when Labour did get into power, there has been an easing of a lot of the conditions, especially in the area of education, legal assistance.

When it comes to the tribal people, they live under the tribal law, so that when they come into the courts, they don't know why they are arrested and they can't understand English, a lot of them. We would like to see our own peers, the tribal elders, deal with anyone who came to the courts. There has been a move made by some of the courts in the Northern Territory, where the tribal people are being handled by their own people.

There has been a lot of delegations and demonstrations in Canberra, where the Government, the Federal Parliament, sits. We go there because there is no other way to get attention for many of the things that are happening. We demonstrate so that people will hear our voice. I'm gland to say that there are many things that have come out of taking radical action and demonstrations. We don't consider to lay down our bodies for the cause of our people is a big thing.

The organisations that get funded have to beg and scrape for whatever funds they get. We do have many women who work within the organisations at a national level, and they form the backbone of them.

The main thing we have to live under is the policies laid down by the Department, and the various political bodies who come into power. Most of these are not done with the consultation of the people. Therefore, there is never any relevance to our way of life.

Our land rights claims have yet to be fully understood. If they are understood, there is always a financial reason behind the government not accepting the people's request. In many of the tribal areas there are very rich minerals and this is where the mining goes on.

You might have heard about land rights being given to some of the tribal people. This is the way that they do it. The Department of Aboriginal Affairs buys the land, whatever land they give, from the government and the people hold it in trust, but they pay for it from whatever projects they are working on, so in actual fact, we do not and up to date have never had, any land rights.

Speaking of our people under the various governments runs to form because its a white system, outdated system even in regard to white people, so we don't expect to have any understanding or sympathy, until they change many of the laws that they brought out when Captain Cook came, and many of them are still in process today.

I would like to explain some of the things that many of our women have to exist under. As you know, we have a lot of social problems and many of our women end up in jail, either through drink, prostitution, or just for no reason at all they're aware of. And we have had over many years reports at our conferences that women have been raped and are being raped while they are in jail. Being bashed up by the police. We've had our people murdered while they are in jail. I had a report not long before I came over here of a man whose body was sent back to the place where he came from, (that's from Brisbane to another town), in a plastic bag. It was full of cotton wool and blood and his family never saw the body, they were not allowed to see him. This came from the jail. I'm sure our people will be doing something about that.

This is just one instance of a woman who had her children taken away from her by the Welfare department in Queensland. She was so depressed and upset that she lost her children that she poured petrol over herself and burned herself to death.

So when we come to a conference like this, I'm not here to speak about myself because I want you to understand what's happening with my people. And I consider it a privilege to be able to speak here.

The urban situation is very much the same, so I would like you to tell me if there is any future for our women and children when they live under these conditions? You are happy and you are very blessed because you have your culture, you have your land, you have your own way of life. You have never known what it means, and I hope you never will, to lose all of these things.

I would like to ask for your understanding and support - not if you feel you don't want to give it, but from your heart. So if we are going to help each other as women, for the sake of our children and our people, then I can go back and be happy and tell my sisters that it was good to be here with you.

Tahiti Ida Teariki-Bordes

The political histroy of modern Tahiti began in 1946, with Pounanaa o Oopa, when he backed the claims of the war veterans. He was elected to the French Assembly in Paris in 1949.

In 1956, thanks to a socialist government in France, a law called ‘lei-cadre’ was voted to push on the evolution of overseas territories, and this law gave a little more power to the territorial assembly, the number of members being increased to thirty. At the same time, a Government Council of five members was created, the President of which must always be the Governor. This law was promulgated in the Territory one year later on July 22, 1957.

In the following elections, Pounanaa and his party won the majority of the seats (17 out of 30) in the Assembly, and he became Vice-President and Minister of Internal Affairs.

In 1958, General de Gaulle, President of the French government, organised a referendum to offer to all French colonies a larger liberty and even independence, if they wanted it. But at the same time, the General exhorted the voters to say ‘Yes’ and stay with France. He even threatened those who would dare say ‘No’ to cut all future help and assistance from France. Pounanaa decided to support those who voted ‘No’. Because of the defection of some of his companions and, above all, because of the enormous difficulties he had to reach the people of the outer islands, since we didn't have very good means of transport nor communication, 64% of the population voted ‘Yes’. One must add that, for the first time, most of the French people living on the island or just passing through for a few days had been to the polls.

These elections took place on September 28, 1958. On October 11, Pounanaa was arrested and put in prison under the pretext that he had participated in a plot to set fire to the City of Papeete. The next year he was judged and condemned to eight years' imprisonment and he was exiled from his country for fifteen years after his imprisonment. (He was taken to France and put in a prison there).

In 1962, rumours were heard about the probability of testing nuclear devices in the islands. They were quickly refuted by France. It was only on 3rd January, 1963, that General de Gaulle himself announced to a Tahitian delegation which had gone to Paris to visit him, that he had decided to have a nuclear testing base in Polynesia.

Towards the end of the year, Teariki (brother), who had become deputy to the French Association, made his official protest during the seven minutes he was entitled to speak in during the year in that Assembly.

On July 2, 1966, the first bomb exploded. The same day, our new political party, the PUPU HAERE AI'A TE NUNAA IA ORA, had its first congress in Papeete.

On September 6, 1966, General de Gaulle came to Tahiti to observe the explosion of an A-bomb. My brother, John Teariki, took that unique opportunity to read and hand to the general a paper in which he protested energetically against the nuclear tests and asked for changes in the statutes of French Polynesia.

Every year, during the months suitable for the tests, fifteen thousand military people were stationed in Tahiti and the Tuamotu islands - that number was reduced to half for the rest of the time the nuclear testing was going on.

Thousands of Polynesians from the outside archipelagoes, Marquesas, Tuamotu, Australs islands, Gambies islands, came to Tahiti with their families to work for the new military installations. Without any proper land in Tahiti, they had to live in slums around Papeete.

Thousands of French citizens came from France to make a profit from the economic boom which followed. They opened new shops, built new breweries - the latter were the ones that profited most from the money made by the Tahitian workers.

In March 1966, Francis Sanford, who had founded a new political party, became deputy to the French Assembly. He united with Teariki to protest against the nuclear tests. At the end of 1967, the Territory Assembly was renewed and the Pupu Haere Ai'a won the majority with the Te E'a Api.

At the first working session, on November 3, 1967, Sanford and Teariki asked the government of the French Republic to give self-government to French Polynesia.

In july 1968, after the students' uprising in Paris put on a new referendum, Sanford and Teariki campaigned on the theme of self-government for internal autonomy. They won three-fifths of the votes.

Everytime they have had a possibility to do so, they asked for control of the radioactivity and the end of the nuclear tests. They never received a direct answer. The ministers for Overseas in Paris refused to receive them.

For example, when one of these ministers, Mr. Rey, left Tahiti for Paris, thousands of Tahitians autonomists came by the airport bearing the Tahitian flag, red, white, red. An angry French gendarme grabbed one of the flags from the hands of a Tahitian, threw it to the ground and stamped on it. A Tahitian replied in the same way with a French flag. If the two leaders of the autonomists parties had not been able to quiet down the crowd, there could have been a terrible fight. But the minister, on his arrival in Paris, told the press: “There is no political problem in that Territory”.

Since Pounanaa's deportation to prison in France in 1958, the Tahitian people have been asking for his return. In 1968, he had a slight stroke. (He was 73-years old). The French government was afraid that if he died in France it would be difficult to control the reactions of the Tahitians, so Pounanaa was sent back to Tahiti where he was received as a national hero. Little by little he recovered his health and he went back into politics. In 1971, he was elected representative for Tahiti in the French Senate. With Francis Sanford, the two Tahitian representatives in Paris now are autonomists and are against the bomb. Both, in 1973, put forward proposals asking for self-government. One of the minor parties, the Independent Party, did the same in 1974.

It was not until September this year that the French Government sent to the Territory Assembly its own project for a new statute for consultation.

This statute takes back some of the rights which had been given to us by the “lei-cadre” in 1956. Instead of a governor, we shall have a high commissioner who will go on directing the administration. We shall no more have our say on our dominial lands. Thus the local Assembly loses a great part of its importance. The only real right the Assembly still has is to vote the taxes - a most unpopular task.

This is only a very short resume of the political situation in French Polynesia. This situation concerns women just as much as does men. Since the end of the war, we have had the right to vote. We are affected by the consequences of that political situation. We give birth to children who will suffer from the political situation - physically from the radioactivity fall-out, and morally because of the dependence on a faraway colonialist country.

We have the right to speak up just as much as the men.

But this right for political evolution which is recognised formally by the French Constitution in its preamble and in its articles 53 and 74, it seems that this right has been forgotten by the French government.

This is why we need you - all of you - all those who have now the chance to live in a free country, and those who, like us, are still under the domination of a foreign nation.

Help us, through your government, or individually, or if it is necessary, through the United Nations.

Already, through international reaction against nuclear testing in the Pacific (atmospheric tests) the French military people have changed to underground testings.

It is no better, in our opinion, but it shows that the French government is afraid of the outside world.

New Hebrides Mildred Sope

My topic is down as ‘Women in the Struggle for National Liberation of the New Hebrides’. As introduction, I would like to put into your heads a picture of what the situation is like that the New Hebrideans are facing at the moment. I'd like also to point out that New Hebrides is a unique country in that it is the only Condominium country in the world. That means it is ruled by two different governments - two completely different-minded people with different ideas and aspects of life. The two governments are the British and the French. As a result of the two existing governments, we practically have two systems of everything, two systems of education, two different hospitals, two police forces. If you come to the New Hebrides, you'll see two New Hebrideans in two different uniforms and then two separate government departments. And then there's the Condominium office where both governments work hand in hand in matters regarding the water system, electricity, maintenance of roads and sanitation.

At the moment not only the women, are still struggling to get up, but also our men, are struggling to get into power, because without power we can't be recognised as New Hebrideans. The two governments want to be rich and be better themselves, so they keep the New Hebrideans under their thumbs because they want to be the big bosses up there. They are white. That's why they think they can keep the brown, black or any colours under them. They tell me and my fellow country-women or men to do this or that or else you know what will happen. So we have to do it.

On the other hand, I'm glad to say that education has led a larger awareness where some New Hebrideans are now looking into the situation more closely and trying to shake things up. Nonetheless, we can't change the whole system in a matter of hours or weeks or months and what's more, without having independence or a legislature in the country. But there will be a Legislative Assembly by the end of November.

My speech is “Women in the struggle for National liberation of the New Hebrides”.

I'm going now to the present political situation and the struggle against colonialism. I've already mentioned earlier how the two colonial governments are treating the New Hebrideans. In the French system of education, they've planned our syllabus whereby New Hebrideans can't get to Forms 4 and 5. About one or two get to the top, if any. Then the excuse is - the New Hebrideans are lazy, not clever, that's why they fail their exams. This is all nonsense. The white French colonialists themselves make sure that no New Hebrideans get to their level. But the few who manage to get to the top are taught in such a way that they become black French people with white French thinking. Looking at the British system of education, I can't say that it is better either. Better only in that New Hebrideans get to Form 5 in the secondary level, then to University if they are lucky. But the government still says it can't get anymore children into the secondary level or for further training because there won't be enough jobs for everybody, because the government knows that if it allows these students to progress, they will have a wider, more diverse knowledge that will decide what to do and will be a useful source in the years to come. They make excuses so that they can put a full stop to it all.

Because of this unsteady progress the New Hebrideans are saying: “Yes, we got two foreign bodies in the country, but we are not moving fast enough”. Changes have come out slowly. We have now in the New Hebrides, four political parties, three of which are led by the expatriates and one of which is the National Party to which I belong.

The National Party started in 1967 but changes came about in rather a slow manner. Up till 1973, it was shaking up the country and some changes began. As a result, another party was formed. This is the U.C.N.H. (Union Communite de Nouvelles Hebrides), the French Expatriates Party. M.A.N.H. was also formed but it had its installment in Santo - Mouvement Autonomiste de Nouvelles Hebrides - this is also the French planters' party. These two parties came about because the National Party was drawing up its forces to declare independence in 1977, no matter what happens, and to take back our lands that the white man robbed us of. If they gave anything at all, it was a stick of tobacco, a bottle, for so many acres of our land. And this is why the whites don't want to move away from our lands. They are very rich now that they're in the New Hebrides because the land is prosperous. Because land is the very first of our securities in the New Hebrides, we feel we are part of the country, and people can survive if they've got land even if they haven't got a single cent.

This year, 1975, is history for the New Hebrides because it's the first time, ever, that we have our first test of voting. We had the Municipal election which was in August. During the competition different parties came up with different policies. But the French Planters' Party and the French Expatriates Party, so they would stay on in the New Hebrides, worked on a bribery basis. U.C.N.H. won most seats in Vila Municipal Council and likewise M.A.N.H., in hand with a new Party which was formed just before the Municipal elections campaign, won all seats but one in Santo. However, all these tricks came out at the elections and as a result a lot of people have lost hope in the two parties.

Now we are looking forward to this coming elections in November, which is the representative elections. But again, the expatriates have made a law saying only people over twenty-one can vote, because if it were eighteen years and over, a lot of school students who can vote would vote for us [the National Party.] And the expatriates want to win and stay on in the New Hebrides.

Can changes for women be achieved within the struggle for national liberation in a country where colonialism exists? To me, it would be a hard task to tackle but in a Melanesian society people work to get what they want or to achieve their goals. They don't just sit and wait for it to come because it will never come. This is part of the struggle. Since the New Hebrides National Party started in 1967, the women were not involved within the circle, but rather involved indirectly. During rallies and public meetings, women were not involved in this. If ever they did, they asked one or two questions and that was as far as women could go. This year, the International Women's Year, and with elections being held in the New Hebrides, we, the women, the National Party Women's wing, we felt that this is the time for the women to speak up. This is not a movement but it is only a branch of the National Party. We feel that the women would sometimes want to discuss some matters where they wouldn't want the men to be around, so this is where they can turn to. But this National Party Women's Wing will eventually shift into the one National Party. As it stands now, we have four women in the New Hebrides National Party executive committee and this is where we help our women by going around and explaining to them how to vote, etc.

Is liberation of women just a change in role? I don't think it's the change of role, but rather that your opinions and ideas be put forward as women, - so that women feel they are part of something or part of the country. We are human beings so we have the right to voice our ideas to the public just as we are equal in the sight of God. That's why, this year, in August, we put up one woman candidate in the Municipal elections and she won the seat. So she's in the Council but this doesn't mean that her role as housewife and mother will be taken away.

We have actually put up another candidate for this coming election and we have high hopes that she'll get in. Since we have now a woman candidate in the Municipal Council we can now put forward our ideas and views to her and she takes them to the council to be discussed.

We must not only educate our women but our men too. We must educate our men in such a way that they see our reason because if they don't reason with us, we won't lead a happy life, those of us who are married. Tell your husband, or your boyfriend, “O.K., you're the big boss, but can you reason with me about this or that?” Make him understand you and trust you.

To conclude, I'd like to say that I've come across a few men who told me that women's decisions are not usually put into practice. I'd like to say that decisions and opinions are there to be considered whether they are good or bad.

Micronesia Salvadora Katosang

Micronesia - tiny islands, compose a unique and substantial part of the earth's surface north west of the equator and east of the Philippines. It has a land mass of about 700 sq. miles spread across an area which equals the size of continental United States, and is inhabited by more than 110,000 Micronesians. Six different ethnic groups speaking fourteen different languages are found in Micronesia.

Since 1521 when Portuguese-born Ferdinand Magellan “discovered” Micronesia, these tiny islands have been administered, that is, told what to do, by international salesmen, whalers and clerics from Spain, Germany, Japan and now the United States. At no time were Micronesians ever asked for an opinion or given a choice as to what country could administer their affairs. Worse yet, these administering authorities signed and sealed treaties, mandates and agreements without the consent and commitment from Micronesia's people.

Micronesia, is a unique and an unprecedented political entity - a United Nation's “strategic trust” under the control of the United States. Unlike the other United Nation's trust territories (all but one of which are now independent), the concepts underlying the formation of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands were based more on strategic considerations than on humanitarian concern for the resident population. In short, the United States as well as the United Nations have failed to promote one of the basic objectives of the International Trusteeship System. That is, it is a natural and fundamental right of every people to self-determine their own solutions to their own future.

The concepts of the United States administration are still dictated by strategic if not imperialistic and or capitalistic considerations. This approach is best described by the statement of the “most honourable” Henry Kissinger during a conversation which took place between him and the former Secretary of Interior, the ‘most honourable’ Walter J. Hickel, when Kissinger stated: “There are only 90,000 people out there. Who gives a damn?”

This approach is further described by the testimony of Admiral William Lemos before a Sub-Committee Hearing of the United States Senate: in which he stated the reasons “why the Department of Defense considers the Trust Territory important to our national security”. The islands could also provide useful bases in support of (military) operations, facilities for weapons testing, and it was important that the islands be denied to potential enemies. The islands also had United States military operational requirements, communication stations, active air and harbour facilities and test sites for operational and developmental-type missiles, and tests in support of the ballistic missile defence programme, are a few of the reasons why the United States government considers it important to maintain a military presence in the area”.

The United States Government did not waste time in getting down to business. As a matter of subtle military planning, and as early as 1946, a year before the signing of the United Nations Trusteeship Agreement, the United States evacuated the Bikinians (Micronesians inhabiting a small Bikini atoll) in order to make way for the operational missile and atomic tests. The first atomic bomb was tested on the island of Bikini in that same year. In March 1954, the first deliverable thermonuclear hydrogen bomb was detonated on Bikini. The last nuclear test known to the public was recorded in 1958. Between 1946 and 1958, the United States detonated 93 atomic and hydrogen bombs. During the past 30 years the Bikinians have been dispersed and relocated among the various atolls and islands of the Marshall district. One can imagine the cultural, psychological, social and personal dilemmas that the Bikinians have had to cope with. The rehabilitation, construction and resettlement in Bikini only began two years ago. Since then, the Bikinians have not been able to return to their homeland, because the environmental conditions are still unsuitable.

Germ warfare tests have been held on Eniwetok, another island, as part of a program to test germ-laden aerosols dispersed over water.

To reiterate, the United States strategic position regarding Micronesia - the United States military has since 1952 maintained control over 60% of Saipan as a military retention land area and almost all of Tinian is held in reserve. New projects and developments are being carried out on these islands to meet the United States thirst for power and might in the eyes of the world. But this is not the end of it. So far, the United States military, (under the alias of multinationals,) and their prudent military plans have not been carried out because planned timing has been politically inconvenient.

The social impact due to military presence and harassment, and military nuclear experiments and other related activities are far-reaching and beyond the experience and understanding the Security Council of the United Nations and, of course, the United States.

Micronesia's present status is rather uncertain. Only the Northern Marianas Islands have made a formal move towards closer ties with the United States. The move was accomplished on June 17, 1975, through an island-wide plebiscite in which 78% of these people approved of the covenant, officially known as The Covenant of the Northern Mariana Islands. The United States negotiating team assuared the Marianas Political Status Commission's representatives that once the covenant is approved by 55% of the people, the Northern Mariana Islands will have a governmental administration separated from the rest of Micronesia.

In August this year, the United States House of Representative approved the covenant. However, the Senate is still procrastinating over the approval of the covenant. Consequently, the Marianas people are quite dissatisfied with their elected leaders as well as the United States government.

The remaining five districts namely Truk, Ponape, Marshalls, Yap and Palau are still waiting for the outcome of the Micronesia's Constitutional Convention. Since the majority of the Micronesian people are politically uneducated, they place a great deal of trust in their elected leaders. What is happening is that the newly formed Micronesian Constitutional Convention has not come up with any concrete decisions. As a result neither the leaders nor the people know exactly in which direction they are headed. I would venture to say, however, that the majority of the Micronesian people would prefer the status quo as they are more familiar with this situation.

All that has been said sounds convincing but there are more problems facing Micronesians than just the issue of administration of the government. Micronesians as people are aware of the injustices (as well as the extinctions of island characters; culture, customs, languages, etc.) which have been demonstrated to them by the so called “civilized” powers of old. At the present time some concerned Micronesians leaders are searching and negotiating for an independent political status and it is my hope that it would be one that would obtain for Micronesians the freedom to determine their own future, be it unified or disunified Micronesia. My concern here is for Micronesia as a body of indigenous people rather than just a political entity.

To those islands of the pacific that had once been colonies of the European nations and the United States, this con-

“We are here at the conference representing many islands and many people who have never stopped fighting to survive.” Salvadora KatosangBlack and white photograph of a woman public speaking.

dition of being the object of colonial powers is nothing new. No doubt, you would sympathise with Micronesia's struggle to maintain its own island identity. Although most Pacific islands have gained their partial or total independence, there exists a great need for improvements. The greatest need that I see is to break the oppression of colonialism, militarism and imperialism with a new social system of nationalism, complete independence, and socialism. Otherwise, we will never be free nations. True, we are at a disadvantage for we are dispersed over a great body of water. However, that does not detract from the fact that we are people deserving justice and fair agreements.

We are here at the conference representing many islands and many people who have never stopped fighting to survive; whose land has been occupied continuously by strangers and a people who have been cheated by their own leaders - men, who, no doubt, were sincere in their efforts to serve their own, people, at least during the first stage of their careers. BUT because such leaders received neither encouragement nor support from their constituents they eventually changed their positions from that of, let's say, Western Samoa for Western Samoans to that of Western Samoa for their own self interests and that of the imperialistic power. The responsibility for what has happened in Micronesia comes back to us - for if we strive towards self-determination we must also be willing to face the resulting responsibilities.

Also, we are gathered here because we are convinced that unless we, as women, speak and do for ourselves, no one is going to act for us. For a long time we have blamed the society and in particular, men, for the various discriminations we suffered, when, in fact, we were not concerned enough to do something about these conditions - we were unwilling to give up our domestic security for the improvement of women's status. I am most pleased to be here with the rest of you and to share with you what I think needs to be done with respect to establishing self-determination, and ultimately a nuclear-free Pacific.

This is where I would like to draw the parallel between the struggle for women's rights and the struggle to free the Pacific islands from colonial influences. No longer can we blame the colonisers for our lack of progress or their failure to fulfill their obligations. If we cannot help ourselves, most certainly the colonisers would not give a damn about helping us. The time is fitting and proper for us women to do something about this.

I can offer neither easy solutions nor answers to the problem but I would like to suggest an approach. That is, we need to bring about political awareness in the people through unceasing education.

We as women have played an important role in education both in the home and as teachers in school. Therefore, we can utilize our influences to bring about this awareness. Our participation can only enhance our status and at the same time catalyse our self-determination.

Our input is in demand whether or not we realize it. Our problems here in the Pacific are much different than those of our colonisers. It was recognised on the first day of this conference that we must work together whether we are black, white, brown, or yellow women. Thus, I firmly believe that if we women could work closely with each other and with our counterparts, then and only then can we help to bring about a Free Pacific.

Ida Teariki-Bordes (left) Black and white photograph of Ida Teariki-Bordes.

Dewe Gorodey Black and white photograph of Dewe Gorodey.

Mildred Sope Black and white photograph of Mildred Sope.

Poko Ingram Black and white photograph of Poko Ingram.

Titewhai Harawira Black and white photograph of Titewhai Harawira.

Address given by Thais Aubry

Thais Aubry is an American of African descent also invited to the Pacific Women's Conference as a resource person. Thais is an educator who has taught and lectured in the United States, and is particularly concerned with working amongst her people to change their conditions of oppression.

I want to thank the organisers of this Conference for having invited me here and all of you for staying around and listening because I know you're very tired. And also, I want to thank Mrs. Rose Catchings of the United Methodist Church for making it financially possible for me to get here. I'll try to make this as brief as possible and then get onto any questions you might have.

These last three days have been for me – it's hard to find words. One can't say, certainly one wouldn't say, entertaining, because there was nothing entertaining about what's been going on; interesting is far too mild a word; moving, stirring – they're mild compared to what I really feel, based on what I've experienced here in the last three days. I've come from an awful long way and it may sound very, very presumptuous of me to say that in listening to every single one of you, as I'm listening, I'm saying: “I know, Lord knows I know”. I think it may not seem quite so presumptuous for me to say that “I know, Lord knows I know”, if perhaps I can share with you a bit of our process of re-definition because I think the theme I've been hearing throughout these three days has been re-definition and not just re-definition of women.

The African in America, in the United States, and the African, period, has probably been experiencing European colonialism and neo-colonialism longer than any other people in the world. That's nothing to be proud of, but it's a reality. So, I'd like to share a bit of that history with you because I'm sure you will find that in many instances, it's parallel with yours.

I'm sure that most of you know that European penetration into Africa began in the 15th Century and that the main powers involved in that were Portugal, Spain, France and England. Also, as our brother in Trinidad, Eric Williams has helped us in understanding, that capitalism and slavery came at the same time, or I should say, capitalism was the result of slavery. It was the capital earned from the sale of over 100 million people that produced the industries of Europe. In fact, in America, some of the first families began their fortunes on the slave trade. I'm sure you also know that, with the gun also went the Bible, and that the Christian religion was part and parcel of the enslavement of African people.

I'm going to jump now to the 17th Century, because the first Africans were brought to the U.S. (and I want to stick to the U.S. because I know most about that) in 1619. There's a book called Before the “Mayflower”. The “Mayflower” is the ship that, in the popularised version of American history, is pointed to as the ship with the ancestors of all the Americans. I think that was 1623, but we landed in Virginia in 1619 and from that time till 1865, we underwent the worst slavery known to mankind.

No man loves them shackles, be they made of gold, but then, there's ‘slavery’ and then there's slavery. I'm going to deal with two periods of our existence in the U.S. From 1519 to 1865 I'm labelling Colonialism; from 1865 to the present we have been undergoing neo-colonialism.

With respect to the family and tradition, under chattel slavery in the U.S., there was no family life. There were no traditions, on the surface at lest, allowed to remain. Chattel slavery means you are a piece of property. To find slave records, one does not look in the Census, but under human beings, one looks under Property, next to the pigs and the cattle. A mother did not control her children; a father did not control his children. Marriage was forbidden. I think the slave masters permitted certain kinds of ceremonies, (one of which was jumping over a pool and you're married). But your children weren't your own and seldom did families stay together on a plantation. In addition to that there were plantations in the U.S. that did nothing but breed slaves, just as one has cattle farms where you breed cattle, there were ‘people plantations’ designed to produce more, not cheap labour, totally free labour.

In addition, with respect to traditional customs, no group of people, no ethnic group, was allowed to congregate together, to remain together, because that was a potential threat. Consequently, the African peoples, were totally mixed up. They couldn't talk to each other, (one way to control them).

We are very, very musical people. In fact, music is a great part of our spirituality and we developed some very interesting instruments, especially talking drums. In Africa, the talking drums cut across semi-linguistic barriers. The drums were forbidden. Customs, religious customs were forbidden. On the surface, all of the customs and the family life were wiped out.

It's very difficult to disassociate religion and music in the history of the African peoples, especially in the U.S., and of course, in Africa. But those same hymns and songs - how many of you know “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds”, “Amazing Grace”? Both hymns were written by slaving-ship captains. But we took many, many spirituals and we used them in a lot of ways. They were our original protest songs. They were also used in the underground railroad (when slaves escaped to the free North) as signals. When you sang “Steal away to Jesus” you may not have been stealing away to Jesus, but you may have been stealing away, period. The spiritual was used in that manner, but even when it wasn't used in that manner, it was used as a much more important survival mechanism.

During the neo-colonial period, religion was again one of the most important survival mechanisms of African people undeniably, because by 1919 or by 1898, with the Plessy versus Ferguson decision, there was no more pretence by the U.S. that Africans were ever going to have any equal status. The Plessy vs. Ferguson decision in the “separate but equal” decision. All that it did was to codify an existing reality.

The educational system that we had in the early neo-colonial period, was either non-existent or totally segregated, with a curriculum designed to instill in us our inferiority.

The media, in the early neo-colonial period, was the way the media had always been - we were “coons”, we were “niggers”, we were “happy”.

Politics - in the early neo-colonial period, with respect to African people's involvement in politics, after 1880, there was none. In fact, it was only 10 years ago! - 1965, that Blacks in one-quarter of the U.S., where the majority of Blacks live, and still live, were permitted to vote. They had to pass a law in Congress, the Voting Act of 1965. To say second-class citizen does not adequately depict the situation; to say ‘no citizen at all’ is much closer to the reality of the situation. Yet in spite of that and up until the Second World War, in spite of lynchings that went on, the African continued to re-define the situation.

In 1909 was born the Niagara movement, out of which came the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People which was formed to try and change the law. That association is still functioning. In addition, in the 1920's and early 1930's, we had the largest mass movement of Black people in the U.S. to this day, and that was lead by Marcus Garvey of the West Indies. His movement was called the Universal Negro Improvement Association, sometimes called the Back-to-Africa Movement, but that's a misnomer. There was constant agitation, constant re-definition of one's condition. There was not an accepting of that condition.

There was, however, two streams running there, that have always run there. The one is of separation, and the other of intergration. A lot of black people were propagandised by the propaganda of the Second World War. When a whole people is told that they are fighting for freedom, democracy, etc., etc., the contradictions become more and more glaring to those people who are not citizens. After the Second World War and especially with the return of the Black troops who'd been fighting, the agitation for liberation became much more overt. Heretofore, what struggle there had been was a relatively quiet one, an attempt to change laws. After the Second World War, however, that began to change.

Now, after the Second World War, in 1954, and that's 21 years ago, the Supreme Court of the U.S. declared that “separate but equal” schools, I mean ‘separate’ schools (one school system for Blacks, the other for Whites), was no longer correct and immediately thereafter, there was much agitation, many, many mob demonstrations as Blacks attempted to integrate the schools. In 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, there was a move started to integrate the bus systems. I should also say that in much of the U.S. up till very, very recently, all life, much of Black life, was legally segregated. In other words, for example, if I and my family moved out of New Orleans, Louisiana, we'd have to get off the train at Texas and go in the back to the carriages reserved for us. So, I could go on - drinking fountains, sitting at lunch counters, all of that.

So, in the South, in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, there began the first of many mass movements, the Montgomery Association's Bus Boycott. The Blacks refused to ride the buses until those local buses were integrated. When I grew up in New Orleans there was a screen that separated us from whites as we came on the bus. And, should we be passing through a heavily-populated white area, the screen would be moved all the way to the back - which meant we stood up. The people of Montgomery, Alabama, began their mass movement to change this, and almost put the bus company out of business. The person who led that movement was Dr. Martin Luther King. Out of this movement grew the Southern Christian Leadership Council which still exists today and this Council led many of the moves to desegregate much of the South.

That movement of desegregation moved to a slightly different level in 1961. The students of N.C.C. (North Carolina College for Blacks) went into Woolworth's Department Store and sat down and refused, at the lunch counter, to get up. That began another mass movement that was going on at the same time as the other movement that was primarily adult, although many young people were involved in it. The student movement among Blacks began and out of that grew the Student Non-Violent Co-ordinating Committee.

Now, I'm sure most of the adults in this room can remember the period of say, 1955 to 1965. That was the period when we were waging a totally non-violent struggle and were brutalised, jailed in mass numbers. You may recall that Dr. Martin Luther King was in jail many times. Many, many people died in those movements, to such an extent that by 1965 a young black named Stokely Carmichael popularised a term during one of the marches, the March on Selma, he yelled: “Black Power!”

Now, that move has undercurrents in a lot that's going on, but in the early 60's and late 50's our move was for integration. We saw integration as the best way for us to achieve liberation for ourselves. As the movement got on, though, and so many died or were brutalised, and so little happened, there began another process of re-definition. By 1965, when Stokely said “Black Power” the struggle went to another level, not because Stokely said it but because we were ready to go to another level, and because by that time, after having submitted to so much brutality for so little, another process of re-definition began.

That process had to do with looking at our condition less as one brought about by big prejudice. Before, the liberal rights and the more educated Blacks would talk about ‘prejudice’ and ‘teaching people in learning to like each other’ and ‘brotherhood’ and ‘integration will come’ and ‘we shall overcome’, but by 1965, many Blacks, and not all of them young because Malcolm X was not young, had begun to look at the problem of our oppressed condition in a slightly different way. We began to look at it and say: “Wait a minute. You know, the philosophy behind the non-violent tactics for those who believed in it as a moral force was that you're superior. Moral stance would change the hearts of men”. I remember in 1960 we were debating violence versus non-violence. For some of us it seemed that some people would put their foot on your neck as long as you'd let them and you may be exercising greater moral force if you take this foot off your neck. By 1965 many Blacks had come to that.

Then something else happened. We no longer began to look to white, European values as our values. You see, the education that we did have was an education designed for us to accept our inferior position and also designed to assist the white child in accepting his superior position; works both ways.

By the late 60's however, we began to look at this problem somewhat differently. It was no longer a question of individual prejudice, of people not liking each other. It became a question of institutionalised racism. All societies have institutions. And what we began to realise is that from the beginning, racism had been institutionalised throughout the U.S. so that it would be knocking our heads up against a stonewall to be trying one-on-one brotherhood being. It was a luxury we couldn't afford. So we began to re-analyse, redefine our situation, which meant, though, that we were redefining all of the institutions in the U.S.

Now, obviously, all those years of oppression did their psychological damage. Yes, we had to always re-define our condition, re-define the institutions that controlled us in some fashion. But the psychological damage to us, I'm sure you may know something about. In some parts of the U.S. - at one point in our history, they had so many words to define the gradations of mixtures of white that it was absurd - there was octaroon, the mulatto, the quadroon, and I'm sure if you keep adding Latin prefixes you can get as far as you want to. I think Blacks in the U.S. have more terms of the colour of skin than anybody in the world and, as kids, if somebody called you ‘black’ that was immediate cause for fighting.

One good thing that existed and still exists today, (I can't find too much good in the U.S. experience for us) is the Jim Crow laws. (The Jim Crow laws are the segregation laws that came into effect after the liberation of Blacks, the so-called Independence, after 1865.) When the Jim Crow laws became finally firmly entrenched the one good thing that came about is that a Negro was defined as “anybody with one drop of ‘blood’”. And that may get turn out to be our saving grace because I don't care if you're as white as Thomas Jefferson's wife or as black as the Queen of Sheba, you were, and remain today, a black or a nigger. Probably the most integrated society in the world is the African peoples living in the U.S. of A. One other thing, I know you all know about the hair straighteners and the skin lighteners - I don't have to go through that, right?

But by the late 60's we had begun to appreciate ourselves as African people. I mean, Afros out to here. Black parents almost fainted - they spent all their time straightening that hair and there, their kinds came busting out yelling: “I'm beautiful and my hair is beautiful.”

But there was something else going on. The re-definition of self. Obviously the re-discovery of African history, the re-discovery of our very proud history under slavery. In the late 60's, a lot of the things started to be re-defined. When we started talking about history, and historiography, the writing of history, we began to realise that all the history of the U.S. was written from one point of view, the European point of view. We set out to do something about that. When we looked at the educational system, we realised that that institution was so racist, racism was so entrenched, that we had to somehow, control that institution in our neighbourhood. Here are just some examples - we began to look at I.Q. tests which are racial and class-biassed. They are there to see how well someone comes up to a racist and classist standard. That's all that that is. It's no judge of anyone's ability.

We began to look at the whole question of language. Even in the areas where the schools were integrated, black children were not coming out of those schools able to compete with anybody. So we began to look at the language used in the teaching of our children. Most people when they talk about Pidgin (I don't like the term) they say that it's not good English or it's not the Queen's English. But there is a problem in the U.S. of A. - the problem that our children have to go to school that is taught from kindergarten on in standard English. That language can be un-intelligible for a young child because Pidgin is used in the U.S. too. So we began to talk about translations for our people within the educational system of the young children and adults. We began to examine all the institutions in the U.S.

Now, I'm sure you've read about all the so-called riots - we prefer to call them rebellions - that occurred? Most people have heard of Watts; from 1964 to 1968, for four years, every summer, some city burned. Much of what I've been describing as the re-definition was occurring at one level among black people, that is, the so-called ‘educated’ level. The masses responded by burning down at least one city per summer - at least certain areas of those cities.

When we began to re-define ourselves, though, and when we said we would begin to defend ourselves rather than continue to be brutalised and killed, there was an immediate response and the response was: oh, violence is terrible; you can't have violence. That “black is Beautiful” is reverse racism; “you mustn't hate. Hate is terrible”. That came primarily from the Whites in the U.S. and it also came from a lot of our parents. In the last part of the 60's and early 70's, black parents and their kids were going at each other. But that was understandable because so many Blacks, black parents, black elders, had survived in another way. But it didn't destroy the relationship of black parents and their children.

A lot of people died in the sixties, a lot of people died. I'm talking of those actively involved in the movement, of those thrown into jail. The leading exponent of non-violence in the U.S., Dr. Martin Luther King, was murdered. It's curious because he was murdered when he moved beyond the Civil Rights, beyond attacking the problems of the so-called Civil Rights non-violently.

Going back to 1955, that was the beginning of the first mass movement of Blacks in the U.S. That same year, 1955, was also the year of the Bandan Conference - Bandan is in Indonesia - the first meeting of what today would be called Third World people. All of the first wave of great nationalist leaders - Sukarno, Nkrumah, Mao tse Tung, all of them - were at that meeting.

Very quickly, we began to re-define. That re-definition is still going on. But what has been the result of all this in the U.S., in the neo-colonial period? The result has been, according to the 1970 census, the economic gap between the which and the black in the U.S. is widening, not closing. In 1975 - the U.S. is having its little depression right now, and we have a saying: “When they get a cold, we get pneumonia”. They have an unemployment rate of 10%. That doubles by official statistics for us but it's more like 30%. The blacks in prison today are out of proportion relative to our numbers. The jails are primarily for blacks and other Third World, other so-called ‘minority people’.

I haven't talked about the economic institution. The U.S. was built on slave labour for the benefit of the very few, black or white. For the most part today, the U.S. still is being run for the benefit of a very few.

Now, I've heard a current for the last three days, that sometimes seems to be saying that colonialism somehow had its benefit and I can understand that because many black people in the U.S. still say: “Well, we're better off than the black people of Africa”, or whatever. But there's only one reason for that. Statistics say that the gross national product of black people in the U.S. is greater than the gross national product of many countries. But obviously, if you're living in the richest country in the world, then some of that is going to rub off a bit, but at whose expense is this great wealth? And that's when many of us began to look at these statistics. It is interesting because just about the same time the U.S. statistics came out we are now beginning to see statistics that indicate that the economic status of the so-called Third World countries and that of the European countries and when I say ‘European’ I mean America - that gap is widening.

Right now in the U.S., I wish I could be able to tell you there was a mass movement of black people for liberation and that we're out on the streets struggling everyday. That is not true. With one exception, there is no mass movement of black people in the U.S. for very obvious reasons. The repression during the 60's and 70's was so great that the survival instinct takes over and, in a sense, everybody's cooling it. But that does not mean that there is not a movement on. It is, in a sense, biding its time and I sympathise very greatly with the brothers and sisters of New Zealand, the South Sea Islanders, Australia when they said: “What is the future?” Right now among blacks, many of us are discouraged at this point. But others again, having somehow more accurately assessed our situation, see ours as part of a world-wide struggle against the domination of any one part of the world by another part of the world or the domination of one class over another. Those are some of the re-definitions that's been going on since 1619 until now.

Now, what has that got to do with this Women's Conference? Before I get into that, I want to talk about Women's Lib. in the U.S. Practically every Lib in the States today, whether it's Gay Liberation, Women's Liberation, grew out of the push for black liberation in the States. Women's Lib. in the States, however, is predominantly a white women's movement for many reasons. The Suffragette Movement after the Civil War, 100 yerrs ago, grew out of the Abolitionist Movement during slavery times. After many of those women got the vote they were just another oppressor. The overwhelming majority of black women in the U.S. do not adhere to Women's Lib. as defined by white women because for us it is primarily the liberation of the whole people. One has to establish priorities. Another statement I have to make: Black women have never had the luxury of sitting behind a curtain. A pedestal? Try a pit! We didn't have to agitate for employment. We're always employed. My grandmother began to work when she was eight-years old - she left school to go to work. My mother left school at thirteen to go to work in a garment factory - she's been working all her life. And we come from what would be considered a better economic family. Black women have always been right there. Slavery didn't permit you to sit behind a curtain, you see. You were preg- but you went back out into those fields. You had that baby and you went back to those fields.

So, much of this (‘Women's Lib’) is irrelevant to us. Much of what they're talking about is irrelevant to us. But one has to ask: “Why do we come together here?” I'm assuming most of us are about the liberation of all of our people as our priority. Then why are we meeting as women? You know, why didn't we invite everybody's husbands? The answer is obvious. Because women are, and I'm talking now about coloured women of the world, women of the world are on the bottom of the ladder, anywhere.

Now, what does this have to do with the whole process of re-definition? We say in the States among black women: “When you're on the bottom of the ladder, you see everybody else's dirty drawers.” And once you have dealt with yourself and re-define yourself, you may be the most important factor in calling to someone else's attention that they got some dirty drawers - especially since you don't want to be washing them. But if we are not about the liberation of all the people we may as well hang it up and go home.

We have to get down to specifics in some of the things, were're talking about, examining how racism and capitalism is institutionalised in all of our societies and doing something about that, concretely. What kind of society do we want for the world, for our children. We have to examine every single institution in our society and devise strategies for eliminating the racism, and I add, capitalism, in those institutions.

One other thing I've got to go back to is the question of violence. I've recounted a history that is. violent is too mild a word to describe that history. We weren't violent. We didn't enslave anybody. There seems to be among some of us still a fear of violence. But it's always a fear that it's our violence. I suspect that's a very sound reason. For the same reason the black parent would get very upset when his children started yelling: “Black Power!” They knew the possibility of reprisal. But let's be clear in our thinking. The most violent society in the world is the U.S.A. You cannot have… I don't know what you call the last ten years in Indo-China. And there's all kinds of violence. I can perpetrate as much violence on you if I take your natural resources, pay you a pittance for them, leave you there in no control in reality of your natural resources - they go to my land, to my benefit and I sell whatever I'm going to sell back to you and you pay twice what I paid you for and you keep getting lower and lower - that's violence. This is violating people's stomachs, people's health, people's lives. One man's violence is another man's self-defence.

What I'm suggesting here is that we begin completely to examine the institutions in every single country and even for those of you who are now in a colonial situation, and were devising strategies for political liberation, you have to also, at the same time, be devising the kinds of institutions that you want once you get that independence.

It has to do with re-definition. What kind of society you want - is it you and a few others or is it for everybody? If it is for everybody, then we as women who are pre-eminently in the position because of our bottom-of-the-ladder position, we are pre-eminently in the position to force these re-definitions and we cannot afford the luxury of even trying to decide whether we want to stay on a pedestal. When your people are not free, that pedestal has long since been pulled out from under your feet and events in the world today are occurring so rapidly that I don't think we have that much time and there are certain luxuries we just can't afford.

But I hope that we are dealing with institutions - how those institutions are infused with racism, capitalism and oppression and that we devise strategies, concrete strategies, for dealing with them. But after three days here, I feel very confident and as they say in Mozambique, and presently in Angola: “The struggle will begin.”

“We know that whenever there's a gathering such as this, it's usually men who are invited to attend. So to me, sometimes, it would appear that only men are the ones able to speak and that only men know how to speak, and that it would be men who know what is best for the home. Perhaps at the end of this conference, men will know that women are able to speak too.” Matakai Ariki Wichman (Cook Islands) Black and white photograph of women at the conference.