QM exhibition Say Our Name acknowledges

Joseph Guenzler, Exhibition honours Australia’s South Sea Islander history, National Indigenous Times, 21 January 2025

The Say Our Name exhibition honours Australia’s South Sea Islander history. (Image: Queensland State Archives).

The Queensland Museum is marking 30 years since Australian South Sea Islanders were formally recognised as a distinct cultural group.

From 1863, approximately 60,000 South Sea Islanders were brought to Australia as slaves or cheap labour.

Their work played a key role in developing Queensland’s sugar and cotton industries.

Rugby league great Mal Meninga, whose family originates from Tanna in Vanuatu, credits his South Sea Islander heritage with shaping his values and success.

“I’ll always identify with being an Australian South Sea Islander. It’s right to my core,” Mr Meninga told the State Library of Queensland.

“It’s how I live my life with the values I was brought up with as an Australian South Sea Islander.”

Mr Meninga said his ancestors were chief warriors responsible for protecting their people.

“So ironically enough, I ended up being a policeman,” he said.

While some South Sea Islanders, like Mr Meninga’s great-grandfather, voluntarily migrated to Queensland’s cane fields in the late 19th century, many others were forcibly removed from their homelands.

Australian South Sea Islanders attend the Queensland Government’s Australian South Sea Islander Recognition Ceremony, 2000. (Image: Imedla Miller).

Say Our Name exhibition curator, Imelda Miller, said workers faced discrimination and exploitation.

“The treatment of those people was legislated with lots of different policies to control the movement of people, how long they worked here, what they wore, what they were given to eat,” she said.

The exhibition explores this history through historical records and contemporary artworks.

One piece by Yugambeh and South Sea Islander artist, Luther Cora, features a timber cane cart with knives used to cut crops suspended above it, symbolising the complex legacy of South Sea Islanders in Australia.

Luther Cora, Double Edged Blade – Blessing or Curse, 2024. (Image: Instagram).

“He talks about our history in an interesting way. Is it a blessing or a curse?” Ms Miller said.

“Some people wanted to stay because they had families or had made this place their home.”

More than a century after many South Sea Islanders were forced to return home, concerns are emerging over the treatment of Pacific workers under Australia’s current labour mobility scheme.

New South Wales Anti-Slavery Commissioner, James Cockayne, said allegations include forced labour, debt bondage, deceptive recruiting, and in some cases, servitude.

“Many of the people who come forward to me for support and assistance tell me that they consider this modern-day blackbirding,” Dr Cockayne said.

“These are people from the very same islands that people were kidnapped and enslaved from 150 years ago.”

Dr Cockayne has called for reforms to ensure Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) visas outline workers’ rights and provide greater job mobility.

A spokesperson for the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations said a review of the guidelines will be published early in the new year.

The Say Our Name exhibition is open at the Queensland Museum in Brisbane until July 13.