The Tatana villagers’ most prominent representative in the Daugo and other claims was Bobby Gaigo, himself from Tatana village, who died in 1987, shortly after victory in the Daugo claim. Bobby Gaigo had no legal training, but he had developed the ability to read and interpret legal texts, and commonly represented fellow villagers in court cases.^[43] During the 1970s while the land claims were in process, Bobby Gaigo started to produce written accounts of the history of Tatana Island and the social practices of its villagers.^[44] In all of them, beginning with a short paper on fishing practices, his introductory section included a claim of extensive land holdings. The first of these was as follows:

In subsequent papers he elaborated by listing specific mainland sites comprising the northern and western sides of the harbour and beyond to Malara. He also listed various islands scattered through fishing grounds around Port Moresby and along the coast to the east and west: for example, ‘Tatana owned large traditional fishing areas, including Daugo island, Nadera reef, Gavera islands, Walter Bay, Gemo Island, Hesede reef, Nonorua Island, Konebada and Port Moresby harbour’.

In marked contrast to the oral traditions of migration and movement commonly offered by Motu-Koita, including Tatana islanders in the past, Bobby Gaigo’s writings represented Tatana people as the original people of the area. Indeed he stated that other Motu negotiated with Tatana people to be allowed to settle at sites such as Hanuabada. The significant difference between the conventional wisdom informed by the collective oral traditions of other Motu-Koita groups and Gaigo’s own claims of territorial priority and extensive landholding by Tatana people was attributed by him to the selectivity of European researchers, whom he claimed never consulted Tatana people. In elaborating this claim he revealed the extent of his own reading, for he listed individuals he considered complicit in the misrepresentation of local prehistory. These included Governor MacGregor, prominent early missionaries, later churchmen and writers, anthropologists, their local informants (specifically, Ahuia Ovia), linguists and colonial officers. He even included publication dates.

While Gaigo’s writings contradicted much of the historical evidence about the Port Moresby area, as well as being self-contradictory, and contained a number of anomalies such as attributing some of Owen Stanley’s exploratory activities in 1850 to John Moresby in 1873, they are evidence of considerable documentary research on his part. For example, the claim that his forefathers saw ships which may have been Spanish or Portuguese relates to a debate among historians about whether the Spanish expedition of Torres and de Prado sailed close to the area in 1606. Gaigo even includes a reference list in one document, an indication of his acquaintance with academic literary convention.^[46] In addition to discursively shifting Tatana islanders from a marginal position in local history to a foundational and central position by claiming that Tatana islanders, and his own genealogical ancestors, were the original inhabitants of the territory, Gaigo provided autobiographical information, particularly in a document entitled ‘The Young Bobby Gaigo of Tatana Island’, which was clearly produced without editorial assistance.^[47]

By his own account, Bobby Gaigo was born at Malara, which is where Tatana villagers were evacuated to during the Second World War, inviting the inference that he was born between 1942 and 1945.^[48] His parents were both from Tatana and his father was a village councillor. He attended a London Missionary Society school and then a primary school, but left before completing primary education, due to ‘family problems’,^[49] and obtained work as a tea boy and messenger in the Department of Native Affairs. He worked intermittently in a number of administrative departments as a clerical assistant, and for some private firms as a storeman, frequently leaving his employment—or being sacked for non-attendance—to attend the land-claim hearings in which he was involved for two decades.^[50] After dropping out of school he continued to try to educate himself by reading local and overseas newspapers when he could obtain them and, significantly, by spending time in the public library and (from the late 1960s) the library at the University.^[51] He also learned the rudiments of typing.

In the 1970s, he attended the University of Papua New Guinea’s academic conferences known as the Waigani Seminar, where he gave short seminar papers.^[52] Bobby Gaigo was a supporter of the Pangu Party (the party of Papua New Guinea’s first Chief Minister, Michael Somare) and later of Papua Besena, the party led by Josephine Abaijah, switching allegiance, he wrote, because Pangu failed to support Tatana’s local land claims.^[53] He served as a ‘village court’ magistrate on Tatana in the 1970s and campaigned unsuccessfully as an independent political candidate in the 1977 elections.^[54] He spent two periods in gaol during the time he was active as a representative in court cases—one for ‘contempt of court’ and the other for ‘fraud’—implying in his account that he was a political prisoner.^[55] He went on to claim that in his youth he lived at Daugo, made gardens and planted coconut trees. The document re-visited the testimony of Tatana witnesses in the land claim, some of whom Gaigo represented as being centenarians, and included a reference list of documents tendered during the hearings of the Daugo Island claim.^[56]