Blackbirding

Content Note: Blackbirding was a horrific practice across the Pacific that left many Pacific families with long lasting trauma. We hope that in sharing a small set of information about Blackbirding that it encourages us to all learn a little bit more about our more untold histories. Please take care when reading and also please do further research in order to ensure we as Pacific people know exactly what our ancestors went through in order to honour them as best we can.

Blackbirding was the process of coercion of Pacific people from their homelands to work in colonial plantations (or the like) by deception and/or by force. Those that were blackbirded were kidnapped by colonisers and worked as slaves in countries that were distant to their home lands. Some of these places included Australia, South America, Fiji and New Caledonia. These were locations that had sugarcane, coffee and cotton plantations. Blackbirding has and continues to have a long lasting effect on Pacific people. We know that our people are innately connected to our vanua/lands and this connection was not only severed but it was done so in an extremely violent way. Families were torn apart and the majority were never reunited again. 

Blackbirding was the direct result of colonisation of the Pacific region. Where colonisers came and saw fertile lands to grow and take resources from the Pacific. They realised quite quickly however that they had no one to work for them in these situations for a myriad of reasons. One being that Pacific people had their own systems of living and trade and did not require ‘work’ in the western context of the word. Blackbirding was a disgusting practice that took Pacific people away from home and held them in extremely inhumane circumstances. The death rates across all places where blackbirding occurred were high. Queensland Australia is one of the more well known locations where the death rate for Pacific people who had been stolen was extremely high. The Peruvian location had an estimated 3000 deaths of Pacific people in a single year 1862-1863 before it is reported that the trade was shut down. 

The majority of Pacific people stolen, kidnapped and coerced into the blackbirding trade came from PNG, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Niue, Easter Islands, Tuvalu, Tokelau, however it is a common belief that every country in the Pacific region was touched by blackbirding in some way, shape or form. Blackbirding was a horrific practice. Blackbirders would torture and hurt Pacific people. They would starve them, beat them and murder them. Many Pacific people were abandoned in the countries they were taken to and never returned to their homelands. There are some stories across the Pacific of people who were stolen finding ingenious ways to return. Sneaking aboard ships and stowing away in order to make it back. All of these stories, as amazing as they are, all hold a line of violence in some way, shape or form. Whilst we celebrate the resilience of our people it is so so so important that we hold colonisers to account for such a disgusting, horrific practice. We must also understand the intersection of those who were blackbirders and Pacific e.g. those who helped the colonisers take their own people. There is a very in depth Talanoa to be had around how we view those intersections and how they are presented to us. 

Overall Blackbirding is such a tough topic to cover. The main point we wanted to get across as Tabu Tok is that WE MUST TALK ABOUT IT !!! It must be something that we all unpack across all forums in many different ways. There is no one story and there is no one right way to do it but we hope this is a good start, a tiny launching pad for us all. Sending all our Pacific whānau directly impacted by this practice all our love and hope for healing.

Shared with Love and Radical Hope*

Tabu Tok

*Radical hope is a term borrowed from the magnificent Dr Emalani Case. It is something we at Tabu Tok aim to carry in our everyday lives. Vinaka vakalevu Dr Case for your tireless mahi and activism for Indigenous people.