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Indigenous struggle for control of Bougainville, an island nation presently understood to be within the boundaries of Papua New Guinea (PNG), has continued for several decades. The current central struggle has largely concerned the huge Panguna copper mine that was dug in the middle of the foothills and mountains inhabited by some 14,000 Nasioi people and their neighbors. Indigenous struggle existed in Bougainville before copper-mining became an issue, however.
Australian colonial rule preceded domination by PNG on the island. When the Australians came, the kinship mode of production that had been practiced traditionally among Nasioi and other indigenous Bougainvilleans was destroyed through commoditization. Following World War II, cash-crop agriculture was initiated. There was a demand for coconuts and cocoa supplied by indigenous men and market vegetables from the women. Cash-cropping created increasingly serious land shortages at the expense of indigenous subsistence production. It provided low returns for labor input, and it threatened kinship relations of production among Bougainvilleans.
Australian plantation owners of New Guinea referred to the dark-skinned Bougainvilleans in the derogatory term "Buka." Their distain was returned by the Nasioi and their neighbors, who held a very low opinion of the Australian colonial administration. Eventually, they rejected plantation wage labor. By the 1960s, the Bougainvilleans had symbolically inverted the colonially imposed values and viewed themselves as a progressive people. Rather than incorporating the native people into its colonial political economy, Australian intrusion had emphasized Bougainvillean distinctiveness and separateness. The Bougainvilleans rejected identification with the colonial state as an issue of importance; they replaced that with their own aspiration for control over the land, economy, culture, language, social forms and value systems.
Australian geologists found copper on Nasioi land in 1960. The transnational Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL), an amalgamation of the Australian-based companies Conzinc Rio Tinto and Broken Hill Corporation, began prospecting in 1963. When BCL started test drilling in 1964, the Nasioi reacted to the prospectors as trespassers. They and their neighborsthe Torau, Eivo, Banoni, and Nagovisi peoplesassertively opposed the alien land grab; however, their weapons were then limited to physical threats against company personnel and the removal of survey pegs.
In a telling incident that took place in Rorovana, the women, whose traditional clan role was to be the landowners, led the resistance against a compulsory leasing order. The Australians reacted by calling in a hundred riot police. The women defended their land with non-violent resistance, though they were physically attacked by the riot police who were armed with clubs and tear gas. Although the women were driven off, twenty of them managed to remove a single survey peg.
BCL pushed for fast-track development of the mine, in order to catch a predicted upturn in copper prices. Although the company itself was willing to pay substantial compensation to the indigenous landowners, the Australian administration was determined that landowners would receive only occupancy fees, even though the land "occupied" by mining would be totally destroyed. From 1969 to 1972, the Australians granted BCL leases on over 12,500 hectares for the mine site, access roads, and tailings dumps. More socially drastic was the relocation program that started in 1969 for the villagers of Dapera and Moroni. Between 1969 and 1971 there were 289 people resettled, and they were left virtually without any agricultural land. The operation required the creation of new towns, as well. By 1988, Arawa had reached a population of 15,000 and Panguna 3,500. The Bougainvilleans despised these commercial centers.
Although the Bougainvilleans received some compensation for their loss of house and garden land and A$200 each for the transition to modernity, they continued to make compensation claims up to 1988. Between 1968-74 the median amount individuals received was only A$244, and almost 60 percent received less than A$100. Compensation provided cash, but it was a very contentious issue because of the severe consequences of land appropriation and environmental degradation. Compensation money continued to be distributed very unevenly over a wide number of people, and the sums received could have only made a limited impact on people's lives. Compensation for the horrendous extent of social and ecological damage was not even standardized before the commencement of mining, nor were the procedures for claims.
At the time the Panguna mine commenced production, no environmental impact study had been required or carried out. By 1990 the Panguna mine grew to be 2.5 kilometers across and 400 meters deep, making it the largest mine in Papua New Guinea and one of the largest open-cut mines in the world. Environmental destruction caused by mining seriously disrupted both subsistence and cash-crop agriculture. The 1970 Australian decision to flush all waste rock, silt, and chemical residue down the Karewong and Jaba Rivers was socially and ecologically disastrous. The tailings were chemically contaminated with 800-1000 ppb copper, and all the aquatic life in the Jaba River was killed. Future remobilization of the heavy metals ensures that ecocide will continue long after the mining operation is concluded.
Beginning with the exploration phase and continuing throughout its period of operation, the intrusion of the Panguna mine had a profoundly negative effect on the people of Bougainville. Only eight percent of the adult Nasioi men ever worked at the mine, and from the beginning Bougainvilleans created labor problems at Panguna and social protest against the large and uncontrolled influx of alien squatters. All Bougainvilleans soon shared a common resentment against Europeans and "redskins," the term of reference for PNG mainlanders.
Fourth World Bulletin • July 1994
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