"To Bougainville" Becomes a New Verb

From: The Bougainville Crisis: A South Pacific Crofters' War

by Alastair McIntosh

Published in Radical Scotland, 44, Apr/May 1990.

"Potential and actual Bougainville-like situations abound throughout Melanesia...to the extent that a new verb, 'to bougainville' is gaining currency in situations where local people have found environmental, social or economic aspects of a development to be unacceptable and have taken direct action to block operations.

For instance, in 1987 after 20 years of land disputes and rainforest devastation, villagers exercising civil disobedience forced a Unilever subsidiary,  Levers Pacific Timbers, out of the Solomon Islands. But none better illustrates the consequence of ecocide than the Bougainville Copper Ltd (BCL) mine at Panguna.

The trouble dates back to 1963 when the parent company, Conzinc Rio-Tinto Australia (CRA), was granted a prospecting licence by the Australian colonial government to develop what Sir Val Duncan, chairman of Rio Tinto-Zinc, was to describe in 1969 as "the jewel in our crown".

Local people objected to the presence of geologists in their area, there having been no consultation with the elderly women who held land on behalf of the matrilineal clans.  Harvard University anthropologist, Prof.  Douglas Oliver, advised BCL they were dealing with a primitive and superstitious people, "who would probably get used to the company's presence".

Read the entire article on AlastairMcIntosh's site.