South Sea Islander Blackbirding Slavery : Blog :
South Sea Islanders mark Sugar "Slave" Days.
Vanuatu is calling for an apology over the practice known as "Blackbirding", when Pacific Islanders were used as Laborers in Queensland.
Descendants of the tens of thousands of workers marking the notorious episode in Australian History with events across Queensland.
They came from 80 Pacific islands, mainly in Vanuatu and the Solomons.
The 40-year-long indentured labour program was the backbone of Queensland's Colonial-era Sugar Industry. Professor Clive Moore from the University of Queensland is a leading historian on the Pacific.
"I don't think there is any immigrant group in Australia who were treated worse than Australian South Sea Islanders, and if you think about it right through the process, there is only one people who were at least partly kidnapped and brought here illegally, that's the Australian South Sea Islander's", said Professor Moore.
"The death rate was higher than any immigrant group to ever come to Australia, and are a scandal, and they're the only immigrant group that ever had an act of parliament passed by the Federal Government to totally deport them. You put those three things together and it explains a lot of the problems we have a century later in the South Sea Islander Community", he added.
In August, 1863 the first 50,000 men, women and children arrived on the ship Don Juan in Morton Bay off Brisbane. Many that came were kidnapped from the islands, known as Blackbirding, often to conditions that have been described as slavery.
As the Global Human Populations are expected to reach 9 Billion by 2030, empathy toward Humanity may be a critical concern. Learning from history of Human suffering and mistreatment. All humanity can better ease the future tensions of an overpopulated Planet and vital resource depletion.
