The Happy Isles of Oceania

ensely wooded with old-growth forest as well as coconut palms.

It was a perfect area for paddling a kayak – perhaps the best in the Pacific.

Maybe they sailed there,” Ataban said. “But we came from birds and sharks and snakes.”
And, he explained, after death they turned back into sharks. It was a belief on Savo that sharks were the ghosts of dead people. For this reason sharks were often spoken to and given food.

The great canoe route of migration, which was my itinerary, cut through the mountainous islands and coral atolls of Milne Bay and headed east to the Solomons

What I find is that you can do almost anything or go almost anywhere, if you’re not in a hurry.”

hundred years passed. Then gold was found on their land. They were slaughtered for being cannibals. They fought back but when their numbers were reduced they dispersed.

I bought the rifle and thought: Two-hundred-pound pigs, hundred-and-eighty-pound mackerel, fourteen-foot seagoing crocodiles, man-eating sharks. Some camping trip this was going to be.

There was surely something amiss when almost no white person spoke an Aboriginal language, and this in a country where a good two-thirds of the place names had Aboriginal roots. It made for alienation and hard feelings.

White people need permits to go on our land. Now they’re saying that we’ll need special permits to come into town

This powerlessness he saw as the condition of many other native peoples—Maoris, Fijians, Inuits, black South Africans.

Aboriginal languages are not taught in Australian schools,” Darryl said. “Why not? Because it would empower us. We would have to be taken seriously. It’s ridiculous. An Australian student can choose between French, German, Italian, Greek—even Japanes