Never (Again) the Twain Shall Meet? Some Reflections on Australian and Papua New Guinean Shared Histories

Abstract

Ethnographic research with the Kerewo-speakers in the Kikori area of the Gulf Province shows that they refuse the severance of Australia’s and Papua New Guinea (PNG)’s histories. From the Kerewo perspective, PNG’s national independence cannot erase valued social relationships forged through past contact with Australia. Drawing on the work of Frederick Cooper and John Pocock, this article contends that Australia’s and PNG’s shared past should be considered within a single analytical framework that highlights the legacies of colonialism in shaping Papua New Guineans’ perceptions of themselves and their place in the world. For Kerewo, recognising a shared past is a necessary (albeit frustrated) basis for re-forging relations in the present. The efforts of historians today to reconnect these stories is political insofar as it seeks to undo the efforts of colonial administrators – in the pursuit of a self-serving decolonisation process – to forget these links.