Frayed Threads Still Bind

- Commissioned by the Australian War Memorial and on display in the ANZAC Hall permanent Peace Keeping Gallery - For the Solomon Islands and Melanesia, the Wantok system has always been about looking out for your tribe: care and support. Many generations ago, this network was made up of the people in your language group; '1 talks' (wantoks). After colonial lines were drawn to create neater administrative districts and people shuffled from islands to districts, these wantok language groups were sorted into the nine provinces the Solomons have today. For my parents the wantok system is still about care and support, though the circle has become tighter, encompassing direct family rather than the village. In my life the wantok system has been about connection. Care and support comes in the form of a closeness between strangers. With modernisation and migration, my wantok system has stretched and evolved. While a system of connectivity is largely positive and essential to the human experience, it can become a driver of division if we become too entrenched in it. Extreme provincial affinity leads to and perpetuates national division. The tensions were a severe example of this. In making this work became interested in division as a counterpart to my wantok experience of connectivity. Stretched and indirect. While the conflict happened between two specific groups -Guale and Malaita-the Solomon Islands as a whole suffered great setbacks. Speaking with Solomon Islanders in the South East Queensland diaspora who grew up in Honiara during the tensions, I found in them a reluctance to explicitly feel affected by the conflict; this despite childhood memories of very real threat and violence that many would consider traumatic. Bedtimes ringing with gunfire, show of force neighbourhood drive-by's, school evacuations, armed road blocks, and splitting up of family members- to name a few. Solomon Islanders, like many in the Pacific, are humble and self-effacing. Dismissiveness is a symptom of division. When comparing personal experiences to those who were directly affected during the tensions, it is easy to dismiss them as insignificant. But we know now more than ever that to understand and move forward from a past event, we need these stories from the fringes. The ones from those who were from a different cultural group or province. Those who were too young to have to make any tough decisions. Those who were lucky enough to leave the country, or leave Honiara, or move to another house in a less volatile location. These experiences add to the collective inherited memory of these conflicts. When we strip away the humility, what stories and lessons will come to light and how will this be passed down to the next generation? It can feel like privilege, geography, and culture sever ties; but frayed threads still bind.