The plan for Volume Two takes an altogether different approach. Because of its time-period, it will consist primarily of entries on citizens of the Solomon Islands and would be written mainly by Solomon Islanders. The problem is how to gather the material. The various newspapers since 1978 will still be a basic resource, but the second volume is intended as a people’s history, gathered largely through public cooperation and as a nation-building exercise. Its level of success will depend both on local support and on obtaining funding.
Gathering a new set of biographical pieces, provided by the citizens of today, along with support from foreign academics, clergy and others who work or have worked in the Solomon Islands, will be a crucial part of the project. Although some entries will be about the rich, famous, illustrious, dreaded, or in some other way well known, many of the entries for Volume Two would not be about national Bigmen and Bigwomen. Along with the national personalities, a regional/provincial focus will be necessary, as would be a fairly proportioned emphasis on women’s entries. Medical Dressers, Native Medical Practitioners, District Headmen, teachers, nurses, clergy, and traditional leaders of all sorts have made the nation what it is today and deserve fair mention. My suggestion of a way to achieve this balance and spread has three essentials: local autonomy; local involvement and agency; and incorporation of and assistance from the local media.
There needs to be a local committee to oversee the process. I suggest that the committee should be chaired by the University of the South Pacific (USP) Centre Director or his nominee. The committee would be responsible for organising the local collection of material, and ensuring standards and accuracy of the pieces that are published in the Solomon Star or aired over the radio. The committee would include representatives of USP, the Solomon Islands College of Higher Education, churches, some NGOs, the national government, all provinces, as well as the Solomon Star and the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation (SIBC). This would not be a paid committee, and I am presuming that all members would be Honiara-based, which would allow easy communication. Much of the minor communication could be via email. Members would take on the task for love of their nation, not love of money.
The cooperation of the Solomon Star and the government radio stations will be a crucial part of the project. At the beginning, to get the project rolling, public interest could be gained by publishing a weekly column in the Solomon Star that included draft entries from Volume One. This would enable trialling of the entries and correction of any errors through public responses. Then, I envisage a national competition, the best material from which would be published in the Solomon Star. Each week for a year or two, a biographical or historical place or event entry could be published in the paper in a regular column. These would vary in size from 200 to 700 words, depending of the importance of the subject. Once the Volume Two series has begun, there would be a prize offered for each new entry published, probably of about SI$150 to SI$300, as it has to be worth winning, but not so large as to be too expensive for donors. Fifty historical columns paid for at SI$300 each would cost SI$15,000, which is less than A$3,000 for a year, or A$6,000 for two years. Publishing about 50-100 pieces in the Solomon Star would generate many more, which might not be of sufficient standard to publish, but would also contain valuable historical information which could be followed up to make other entries. Perhaps the committee would end up with 500 entries, of various standards, which would all be deposited in the National Library as a record for the future. The committee and the newspaper would have the final veto over publication of any entry, to ensure standards are met and defamation avoided. The Solomon Star would benefit from free copy every week, and presumably through sales.
At the same time, a wider coverage could be achieved by using the SIBC. The newspapers really only reach the urban areas, but the medium wave and short wave radio stations reach out to all parts of Solomon Islands. There are also FM stations, which can be heard over quite surprising distances (the east coast of Malaita, for instance), but generally the SIBC and commercial FM stations only tap the urban population. Radio is the premier media in the Pacific and would need to be used to supplement the newspaper.
Hopefully, these first pieces would generate the interest of the newspaper’s readers, and prepare them for a bigger, national competition. The Committee could offer different types of prizes for entries on national, provincial, area council, business, church leaders, village and customary leaders, and teachers and health workers etc. Women’s biographies would be a special, lucrative category to encourage as many entries as possible. There could also be a section for places and events: cathedrals and major church buildings, sports, institutions, towns, companies, schools, and industries etc. The committee could offer prizes in many different categories, making sure that all provinces are covered and that as many women as possible are included. The prizes could vary in size: SI$1,000 for the best entry; SI$500 for the next 10 best, down to SI$200 for worthy entries. SI$20,000 worth of prizes would only cost A$4,000.
So far, the suggested costs are no more than A$10,000. The Committee could approach the various High Commissions and Embassies for supporting funds to an initial level of about A$25,000, which should be easy to obtain for a nation-building exercise that has spin-offs for education. One problem will be that that many of the entries will be handwritten, not typed. The Solomon Star and the SIBC are going to need their material typed up and on computer disk, and there will be expenses involved in this. All entries should be typed up for posterity and possible use in the Historical Dictionary. The Committee would have to decide on the level of funding necessary. Permanent secretarial staff are not envisaged in the early stages, but this would become a cost in final preparation stages.
Through its Institute for Pacific Studies, the University of the South Pacific has produced an extensive set of publications from its member countries. Although the nature of IPS has changed in recent years, I see the USP as the natural home for the publication, both as a book and in electronic form. The involvement of the Honiara USP Centre is crucial in planning, as the conduit back to the main campus, and with present plans to upgrade the Honiara campus into a central part of the USP hub, this project could become a focus of community outreach. At a later stage, the Committee would have to choose an editor/editors for Volume Two, and negotiate with the USP over methods of publication. Outside referees would ensure that standards were maintained.
There is a large group of academics, church and NGO leaders, and tertiary educated Solomon Islanders who have material that can be used. Any anthropologists could easily provide several entries on traditional leaders and institutions, and historians, geographers and political scientists can also be asked to participate. A refereeing practice would be followed, using knowledgeable Solomon Islanders at home and abroad, and other experts. The bibliography for Volumes Two can be compiled with co-operation from the National Library, but essentially it will probably be an extended version of the one prepared for Volume One.
All of the project materials would be deposited in the National Library for long-term storage, preferably in digital and paper format. Photographs could also be gathered and copied at the same time. Digital cameras and computers now make copying much easier than back in the days of negative film. An accompanying part of the project could be to ask permission from institutions with photographic collections on the Solomon Islands, copies of many of which are held by the National Museum and Library, to allow these ethnographic and historical photographs to be made easily accessible on a webpage. The speed at which the electronic world is developing may make this quite easy within the next five years or so, and although I am not as naive as to envisage villagers using solar electricity and laptops to access this material, the resources could easily be made available in all towns and to many schools.
Finally, let me discuss the pitfalls of writing entries. Writing entries for historical dictionaries of Pacific nations is fraught and an excellent test for the skills of any historian. I have become quite fascinated with the art of writing concise, accurate but interesting entries, and have been on a steep learning-curve when it comes to balancing entries and chasing contacts. The example of the major Christian denominations is the best. The Anglican Church of Melanesia produced a rich secondary literature during the colonial years, far better than that available on the Catholics, the South Seas Evangelical Mission, the Seventh Day Adventists or the United Church. There will be criticisms if the Anglicans dominate Volume One, but at the moment this certainly is the case. But sources have to be reasonably readily available, and I am not planning to brush up my school-boy French and head off to the Vatican archives to improve the Catholic entries. There are often no supporting rite of passage documents such as the birth, marriage and death certificates, on which other similar projects such as the Australian Dictionary of Biography or the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography rely. In the end, Volume One may have some flaws that can be improved upon in a second edition. There will be a fine line between delaying because there is not enough material, and going ahead, knowing there are still some problems with balance.
And as any historian knows, information in the public record can be misleading, even downright wrong. A good example would be any entry I began to write on Petero Ara‘iasi, a traditional ramo (warrior and bounty-hunter) at Tarapaina in the ‘Are‘are language area, Hauvarivari Passage, Small Malaita. His age can only be estimated, based on the first written references to him when he was in his 20s. We can presume that he was born in the mid-1880s, the time when Malaita was the chief source of indentured labour for Queensland and Fiji sugar plantations.
When he died in died on 11 February 1963, at about 80 years of age, the British Solomon Islands News Sheet granted him a paragraph obituary, which is how he first caught my eye.[18] In it there is a claim that in his youth he had killed 80 men while a ramo, which I must admit rather impressed me. The News Sheet said that Ara‘iasi first met Father Jean Coicaud, a long-serving Catholic priest in the Solomon Islands, when Ara‘iasi was exiled to Marau, Guadalcanal, and the two became friends. Ara‘iasi is supposed to have invited the Catholic priest to return with him to begin missionary work at Tarapaina. Claire O’Brien believed this story, which she dated at 1911.[19] Soon after Ara‘iasi teamed up with Father Jean Coicaud, Ara‘iasi is supposed to have killed a man from Rokera, was hunted by the police and captured but managed to escape. The News Sheet said that Coicaud made a deal with District Officer William Bell that he would hold Ara‘iasi as his personal prisoner for at least 10 years, to which Bell supposedly agreed, but impounded Ara‘iasi’s large collection of shell money and kept it at Auki as security. After some years, Ara‘iasi was said to have captured a South Malaitan who had escaped from Tulagi, and was rewarded with release from detention, returning to Tarapaina, where he became a Christian. Not able to stop his old ramo ways, he murdered another man, but as he was now a Christian, he went to Auki to report his crime. At the same time he brought with him another man who had shot his own sister, after which Ara‘iasi was supposedly pardoned. The News Sheet also said that after the death of Bell at Sinerango in 1927, Ara‘iasi was appointed Headman of Tarapaina for three years, and thereafter lived a Christian life, much respected as a hereditary chief and ex-ramo.
My further explorations have not confirmed this tale, which had obviously been gleaned from Catholic sources on Malaita when Ara‘iasi died. He was the son of a ramo, and was also the spokesman for Iava‘o, the hereditary araha (paramount chief) for the area. Hugh Laracy, using church sources, records that in 1909 Ara‘iasi was offended by Florence Young, founder of the SSEM, who wanted to establish a base in ‘Are‘are, but he and Iava‘o recognised that there were benefits from having a missionary presence, and invited the Marists to begin a station. The Catholics chose Tarapaina as the site in 1910, but due to poor soils, moved to Rohinari in 1912, where Ara‘iasi had arranged a contact with the local ramo Aris‘imae.[20] Catholic records contain the following explanation by Father Raucaz:
The old man-eater had already met him [Aris‘imae] at Marau. But he wanted details about his generosity: the quality of tobacco, pipes and matches that he would bring with him. Religion was of no account to him; he would not touch it at any price; what would his spirits think of such an idea? He therefore questioned the crew and also Ara‘iasi, his rival from the south isle. The report must have been favourable, for the old bandit immediately agreed to sell the small isle of Rohinari with a good portion of ground on the mainland.[21]
Father Bertreux purchased the Tarapaina land in 1910. Florence Young made another attempt to establish the SSEM in the area in 1911, but once more managed to insult the local people. Certainly, a relationship of mutual benefit developed between the Bigmen and the Catholic mission: Ara‘iasi extended his power through access to medical aid and European goods and the missionaries received protection. In 1916 Ara‘iasi was accused of another murder and was paroled for four years to Rohinari and Visale on Guadalcanal, where he was baptised in 1922. Aris’imae was less beholden to the mission, but was also baptised on his deathbed in 1947.[22]
Another complication is working out which Father Coicaud one is talking about? There were two brothers from Le Regrippiere, Loire Infoieure, France, in the Marist order on Malaita, Jean-Baptiste (born 1878) and Donatien Joseph Pierre (born 1881), both bearded, and both worked on Malaita. It would be very easy for memories of the brothers to get mixed up over decades. Father Jean Coicaud was in BSIP from at least 1902 and stationed at Marau, Guadalcanal from 1905.[23] He arrived at Tarapaiana in 1911, after the second SSEM fiasco. His older brother, Father Donatien, came to the Pacific from France in 1910 and was first appointed to New Caledonia. In 1912 he was transferred to BSIP, first posted to Rua Sura and Visale on Guadalcanal. One 1913 record suggests that he was sent to Rohinari Mission on Malaita, but all other evidence suggests that this was his brother Jean. That year the Coicaud surname appeared in a list of the 32 foreigners on Malaita, and there is another unnamed Marist priest as well, which presumably means both brothers were present.[24] In 1914 Donatien was posted to Buma mission station on the west coast of Malaita where he remained until the time of his death on 11 January 1957. From 1914 until the early 1930s, Father Donatien made frequent journeys along the Malaita coast, north of Buma in the Mission ketch Hambia, and later on a smaller vessel. He established a reputation for his medical work and for his knowledge of Malaitan custom and languages. In 1918 he was in Auki, trying to obtain a lease on land at the mouth of the Kwareuna River in north Malaita. In 1917 ‘Jean-Baptiste Coicaud’ was at Auki, the headquarters for Malaita District, wanting to purchase land at Bira River, at the head of Su‘u Harbour, for the site of a mission. They were certainly both on the island in 1918 when a census of foreign residents was held: a ‘Jean-Marie Coicaud’ was at Rohinari and ‘Donatiey Joseph Pierre Coicaud’ was living at a mission base in Langalanga Lagoon [Buma].[25] Donatien Coicaud spent 39 years in BSIP, broken only by four years in Australia during the war. Jean Coicaud remained at Rohinara from 1912 to 1942.[26]
The BSIP officers on Malaita had been trying to curb Ara‘iasi’s murderous ways for many years. William Bell said that at the time when the SSEM had first tried to establish a mission post a Tarapaina (when Florence Young insulted Ara‘iasi), Ara‘iasi had taken part in the murder of two men and maimed a woman at Pau. This was before there was a government station on Malaita, and although the SSEM’s Dr Northcoat Deck had informed Resident Commissioner Woodford, the government as unable to do anything. At about this stage, probably in 1905, Ara‘iasi turned against the SSEM mission and invited the Catholics to take their place.
In about March 1916, Manihuot was killed at Nusi by Ahau and Hoa from the inland village of Weisiala‘ala, and the Administration thought that Ara‘iasi was behind it all. Manihout was from the same village as Ara‘iasi, and in late 1915 he was accused of using sorcery to kill a man and his son, which caused him in mid-1916 to seek protection at the Catholic Mission at Tarapaina. While there he had an affair with a woman, which caused Ara‘iasi to demand compensation from the man’s relatives, who refused to pay and gave Ara‘iasi permission to kill Manihout. In fact they helped catch him and gave him to Ara‘iasi, who told Ahau and Hoa to take him away in a canoe and kill him at Nusi. When the murder of Manihout occurred, Bell was on leave and F. M. Campbell and the Native Police went to Tarapaina to arrest Ara‘iasi, but he eluded them. At the time Father Jean Coicaud just ‘spread out his hands and shrugged his shoulders’, which Bell believed indicated that he thought it was the government’s problem and that Ara‘iasi was welcome to continue to live at the mission. In 1918 Bell had been talking to the other Coicaud, Father Donatien, who was in charge of Buma mission. Father Donatien indicated that Araiasa had been involved in at least 10 other murders.[27]
In 1918 District Officer William Bell was still trying to get control of Ara‘iasi. He reported to the acting Resident Commissioner:
On this occasion [1916] I passed through the Maramasike Passage at night with the police. We surrounded the house of Alaiasi before daybreak and demanded the surrender of Alaiasi, Kope and Lamamatawa. Two men from the house broke through the police to the bush. On my instructions the police broke in the doors and we entered the house and detained the people in it. We searched the house and collected the property above-stated, and also a Snider rifle, some native weapons which were destroyed, and some cooking utensils, which were handed back shortly after on the same day. The same day Lamamatawa was brought in by two natives and the people detained were released with the exception of a man named Kope. Later I found out that the Kope I had in custody was not the Kope I wanted. The man wanted is Kope (Pipiala). The people who saw the shooting at Pau told me that one of the men who did the shooting was Kope a piccaninny of Alaiasi. Kope Pipiala was adopted by Alaiasi when a child and brought up by Alaiasi at Tarapaina, which accounts for the natives considering him also as a piccaninny of Alaiasi. Since he has grown up I am informed Kope Pipiala has lived most of his time at Tarapaina and sometimes at Iorailamu. Alaiasi is not really a chief but he has acquired power through his murderous habits. The Tarapaina and the Iorailamu people are practically one and the same community. In my efforts to arrest the murderers of Hiruaru‘se and Laokeni I have been handicapped by the natives being afraid to give information and other assistance, and the man they say they are most afraid of is Alaiasi of Tarapaina, not Ala‘aiasi of Iorailamu.
In the process Bell and his police confiscated a large amount of property: 48 strings of red money, 127 porpoise teeth, two cane knives, one sheath-knife and sheath, one davi, and 28 sticks of trade twist tobacco. These were held in pawn until Kope Pipiala was surrendered for the murder of Hiruatu‘e and Laokeni, and Ara‘iasi was charged with being an accessory to the murder of Manihout in 1916. This seems to be the origin of the story that Bell confiscated Ara‘iasi’s wealth. However, the police appear to have been over-diligent in their seizures and had taken more than Bell knew. Constable Bera had a new waistcoat, Constable Abanakona had purloined a singlet and a pair of knickerbockers, and a complete case of trade tobacco belonging to Father Jean Coicaud had also gone missing from Ara‘iasi’s house. The police also insisted that Ara‘iasi feed the patrol and had consumed about two hundredweight of yams.
Three weeks after his raid, Bell was back in Tarapaina, and reported to acting Resident Commissioner Workman that Ara‘iasi had laid traps around his house at the mission—slanted bamboo stakes buried in the ground in hidden ditches. Workman advised Bell to pay for Ara‘iasi’s yams at the current price and to continue to pursue him.[28] My investigation is continuing, but at the least I have learnt not to put to much faith into obituaries written 50 years after the events being described.