Melanesia’s Mau-Maus? Black Power in Papua New Guinea

This presentation is focused on Black Power in the South Pacific. It specifically highlights the activities of Papua New Guinea’s Nuigini Black Power Group (BPG). Founded in 1970 at the University of Papua New Guinea, the Black Power Group was a Frantz “Fanon-inspired African Negritude” movement. Through political demonstrations, lectures and art, it challenged Australian colonialism, Indonesian imperialism in West Papua and the exploitation of Papua New Guinea’s mineral resources by multinational companies. The BPG engaged the political thought of the broader Black Diaspora through African, African-American and Caribbean literature and Black Power media. The BPG’s membership consisted of a core of Black poets, politicians, playwrights and novelists. Their literary canon of Melanesian nationalism linked the diverse struggles of the Black and Brown Pacific to those of the global south. In doing so, they helped to transform the racially loaded term ‘Melanesia’ into a powerful reference of Black transnationalism.

BPG’s radicalism reflected a climate of radical Black political thought streaming through the University. Denounced as a “Mau Mau factory” by detractors, the institution became a crucial hub for Pacific anti-colonialism. While the most visible expressions of Black Power in the Pacific have been Australia’s Panther Party and New Zealand’s Polynesian Panthers, this presentation shows how the threads of the Movement significantly impacted Melanesia. Melanesia’s Mau-Maus is based on newspapers, print media, photographs, interviews, literature and archival research conducted on a 2014 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship.