From mosa@netcom.com Tue Aug 15 21:29:12 1995
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Subject: "We are Tahitians"
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Date: 15 Aug 1995 16:25:15 GMT
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From: the guardian <guardian@peg.apc.org>
Subject: "We are Tahitians"
"We are Tahitians"
(The following article was published in "The Guardian", newspaper
of the Socialist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday,
August 9th, 1995. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry
Hills. Sydney. 2010 Australia. Fax: 612 281 5795. Email:
<guardian@peg.apc.org> Republication is permitted with
acknowledgement. Subscription rates on request)
Two independence and anti-nuclear activists from Tahiti
-- Etienne Teparii and Chantal Spitz -- arrived in Australia last
week at the invitation of the Sydney Anti-Bases Action Committee,
in collaboration with the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific
Movement and Pax Christi Sydney. During their stay they took part
in Hiroshima Day activities, visited ports and unions to thank
those who had been taking solidarity actions against French
nuclear tests. The following are extracts from the story they
told a public meeting at the Tom Nelson Hall in the offices of
the Maritime Union of Australia and later at a meeting with "The
Guardian" and other left papers.
***************************
Chantal: I come from a little leeward island called Huahine,
about 170 kilometres from Tahiti. I live in a small village of
about 300 people. It's just a simple life. Not many cars. I don't
have electricity, I don't have a telephone, I don't have a fax.
I am a teacher. I teach in my little village. Our kids begin
school at three years old. A kindergarten school. I have them
from three to six years old. Of course, I try to teach them in
Tahitian language, but we have to teach them in the French
language.
Even if French and Tahitian languages are the two official
languages in French Polynesia, it's so long now that we teach
everything in French. It's very hard now to just teach in
Tahitian language because we don't have books printed in Tahitian
language so we have to prepare all the materials for the kids, to
try to translate all the lessons. So it's very hard.
In my village we are trying to do something like an alternative
school, so the kids can come after the official school, and we
try to teach them the legends of the island, and the culture. The
old women would come and teach the children to weave. The men
would come and teach them to play music and to carve. We are
trying to keep our culture still alive.
And of course, we fight for our freedom because we are not
French, we will never be French: we are Tahitian for more than
1,000 years, and we will be Tahitian forever.
We are teaching our kids to be proud to be Tahitians, because we
were taught that to be Tahitian was really a bad thing. Because
(we were taught) all non-white people are stupid and don't think,
and that we need the white people to come and to teach us how to
speak, how to think and how to express ourselves.
It took us 20 or 25 years to get rid of these ideas which the
school and colonialism put in our heads. So now we are teaching
our kids to be proud to be Tahitian.
I have three kids: 22, 18, and 13 years old, and they are very
proud to be Tahitian. As I was forbidden to practice my language,
Tahitian, because it was forbidden when we were kids, I chose to
live in small villages with my kids so they were right in the
middle of the Tahitian people, so they could learn the language
and the customs. The two older ones join us in the struggle for
freedom and the struggle against the nuclear testing.
Actions against French tests
For the last 20 years we were just a few people marching against
the nuclear testing. In 1992 when (France) decided to stop the
testing in Mururoa, people in French Polynesia thought that never
more would there be danger for them, and never more would they
have to worry about what will happen to the kids tomorrow.
Since President Chirac decided to resume the testing, never
before have we seen as many people as we saw marching in the
streets. We marched around the island. That was the pro-
independence party (Tavini Huiraatira) march.
We marched during six days around the island and for the first
time we were about five or six thousand around the island during
six days and five nights.
On the last day, June 29, we reached (Tahiti's capital) Papeete.
On June 29, 1880, we became a French (colony). This day everybody
joined the march in the city and we were like 15,000 people. We
saw people who never dared to march in the street. In most of the
islands there were protest marches on the 29th, on every island,
and that is the first time.
And when the Rainbow Warrior (Greenpeace protest ship - Editor)
came back from Mururoa ... we were something like five or six
thousand people on the harbour and the French army was marching
in the town because it was Bastille Day.
Now it's getting so strong and people are getting so concerned.
For the first time we feel the people just want to be free and
just want to express themselves.
When we reached the two entrances of Papeete we heard that the
Rainbow Warrior was not allowed to come to the main harbour
and had to go far down. So we decided to stay on the beach in the
town and there were meetings. But when we (Tavini and its
supporters) stopped at the edges of the town all the other
movements went and welcomed the Greenpeace group.
We blocked Papeete for three days and only decided to go back
home because Oscar [Oscar Temaru is the leader of Tavini
Huiraatira] was leaving on the Rainbow Warrior. So we all went
home and waited for the next step which was on Bastille Day.
The new association against nuclear testing held a march in the
night with candles on the 10th of July on the 10th anniversary of
the (French Government's bombing of the) Rainbow Warrior.
Something to hide
Etienne Teparii is on the Management Committee of the Polynesian
Liberation Front, Tavini Huiraatira, the anti-nuclear, pro-
independence party in Tahiti. He comes from the island of Hao in
the Tuamotu Archipelago, in the nuclear testing zone, one of five
Tahitian archipelagoes. Etienne works regularly with Free
Nuclear-Radio Tefana in Tahiti.
Etienne: We must consider the period from 1966-1974. During these
eight years, all the statistics have been hidden by the French
army. These statistics exist, about the health of the people who
worked on the sites of Mururoa and Fangataufa. These statistics
are under Defence Secrets. It is a law voted by the national
French Parliament.
What does it mean, this Defence Secrets? For example, when in
Mururoa someone dies, automatically the doctor must be a military
doctor. That's a law. And the papers are secret, even the family
has not the right to know anything about the death. Sometimes
they are sent to Paris to the Military hospital.
When I was in Paris. I was there for around 25 years, I created
an association to welcome people coming from Tahiti to France.
I was prohibited from meeting these people and the rate was about
100 people per year attending for medical purposes. Later I heard
there were about 200 people per year.
What disease they had, nobody knows. And why? Because the
statistics are under Defence Secrets.
Sometimes people tell us about the disease. Oscar has 54
people who will sign the testimony. We have a very serious
problem concerning this question of silence. It is important, and
we have only 54 persons and we know that since 1966-1992 there
were around 20,000 people (affected).
Affect on people
Chantal: It seems to me there are too many cancers for the style
of life we have -- no stress, no traffic ... Cancer is a disease
for a civilised people.
Our society is changing. When I was a kid, we were raised right
in the main city, Papeete. We planted our coffee. Really the
traditional life, right in the city. That was 30 years ago. We
were self-sufficient. We exported coffee, oranges, vanilla... We
did not import many things. We ate fish. We had maybe four ships
a year from France. We grew traditional food like taru, umara and
had our own milk, and so on...
(The military) needed many, many people to build the airport in
Papeete. If we did not have the bomb, we would not have an
international airport. They took all the men on the island of
Tahiti, and that was not enough, and so they took the men from
the outer islands to come to Papeete and to Mururoa, to build all
those big roads, airports, houses for the military.
So everyone came to Papeete, to the main city. There was then no
more agriculture, no more fishing, coffee, vanilla. Now we don't
have anything. Everyone wants a salary at the end of the month.
Everybody wants to be in the big city because there is TV, video,
the modern life. You cannot ask these kids who were born in
Papeete but are not from Tahiti to go back to their islands
because there is nothing.
We are 200,000 in the whole of French Polynesia. In Papeete there
are 180,000 -- only 20,000 people live in the outer islands.
In the traditional way of life, the way we lived, you had the
land of the family and all the big families owned the land.
You had many houses, all the uncles, the grandfathers, the
grandmothers, everybody was on the land.
The modern way of life is just like here (Australia) -- the
mother, father and the kids. When they have 10 kids and no money
to feed them, it's really a big problem. So they fail at school.
They drink, they plant and conceal drugs, they beat people, they
go to jail, and when they come out from jail they are more
violent.
I am sure that in the coming years it will explode in Papeete.
Young people have nothing.
Ten per cent of the population are really rich, rich, rich
because of the nuclear testing.
Thirty or forty per cent are middle class, and the rest don't have
nothing.
The Guardian | Phone: (02) 212.6855
65 Campbell Street | Fax: (02) 281.5795
Surry Hills. 2010 | Email:guardian@peg.apc.org
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