Patrick Nomos | 16/06/2026
Growing up in a village in the Solos Region of Buka Island, Bougainville, Papua New Guinea (PNG), I was aware of the relatively large number of villagers with family connections to Manus Province, situated several hundred kilometres to the west, in the north of the Bismarck Sea. My mother told me that the villagers with Manus heritage are the descendants of Solos men who were recruited in the early 1900s to work on coconut plantations in German-controlled Admiralty Islands (Manus).
At that time, the Danish explorer and anthropologist, Richard Parkinson, based at Ralum Plantation near present-day Kokopo, East New Britain Province with his wife, Phebe and her sister Emma Forsayth (aka “Queen Emma”), made frequent visits to Bougainville and Buka, trading and recruiting labourers. When describing his exploits, Parkinson states, “The island of Buka is densely populated, and for that reason alone might not be suitable for plantations to any great extent. The inhabitants of Buka belong to the same tribe that inhabits the island of Bougainville and have for many years been accustomed to hiring themselves out as workers.”1
By 1914, large numbers of Bougainvilleans were employed as labourers in coconut plantations dotted along the Manus coastline and atoll islands, engaging with Manus villagers in a semi-formal market economy where money, black tobacco (“stik tabak” in Tok Pisin) and cloth (“laplap” in Tok Pisin) were exchanged for food and other necessities of life. Over time, trading partnerships developed between the Bougainvilleans and Manus villagers, resulting in the Manus word “kawas”, a term defining exchange and friendship, being reciprocally applied to each other. This term is still commonly used in Papua New Guinea when individuals from Bougainville and Manus greet each other, regardless of whether or not they have previously met.
Many of the Buka labourers in Manus took local women as their wives with whom they established families. Once these labourers had completed their period of indenture, many of them returned to Buka with their Manus wives and children. Parkinson notes, “After they have served out their indentures and returned home they will probably, through their example, influence a large number of their fellows to engage in works away from home”.1
The prevalence of family connections with Manus Province in our village wasn’t a topic of discussion when I was young. It was only later I learned that the reason for this taboo was that those with family connections to Manus may have had their claims for land use questioned because their grandmothers were from Manus, potentially making them ineligible to access clan land for subsistence food gardens and coconut/cocoa plantations in Solos’ matrilineal society.
1Parkinson, R. 2010. Thirty Years in the South Seas: Land and People, Customs and Traditions in the Bismarck Archipelago and on the German Solomon Islands. Sydney: Sydney University Press.