Content area
Full text
Manus Province in Papua New Guinea (PNG) has become well-known over the past few years for an Australian offshore refugee detention center that was set up on Los Negros Island in 200i and then expanded to include facilities on both Los Negros and Manus Islands in 2012. However, as someone who is Manusian, from Lou Island in Manus Province, I think it is crucial for people, including the peoples of Manus, to remember that Manus is much more than simply the location for an imposed Australian detention center. Manus culture has developed over several thousand years, since Lapita seafarers began settling the province's many islands.1 With a current population of over sixty thousand, it is vital that Manusians keep alive and pass on the histories and cultures that make us who we are. So, in the midst of the ongoing developments that surround the controversial refugee detention center and military base, I turned my attention to a completely different issue that is of urgent importance for my people on Lou and for the people of Manus as a whole-the fate of our Indigenous languages.
There are twenty-eight languages spoken in Manus Province (map 1; sil Papua New Guinea 2020). The cultural heritage and languages of Manus have been described as resilient, surviving multiple waves of colonization: German colonization, Australian administration, Japanese occupation, American "liberation," and a second wave of Australian administration (Case, Pauli, and Soejarto 2005; Minol 2000). Since PNG gained its independence in 1975, Manus has been used twice as the location for detention of asylum seekers aiming to get to Australia-from 2001 to 2003 and then again from 2011 to 2019. Under the pressures exerted by these waves of colonization, including our contemporary neocolonial education systems and continuous devaluation of Indigenous ways of life, how are the languages of Manus faring today? While living in my village on Lou Island for several months in 2018-aiming to learn my language, Ngolan Lou-it became clear to me that our language is in serious decline, and I imagine that this may be the case in many other Manus communities, too. In making the video Holim Pas Tok Ples (Holding on to Our Indigenous Languages),2 I explored the issue of the health and current neglect of Indigenous...