 So Jack, wakam every body to another car seminar, this is a very special one I think that we have Richard Qing from Vanuatu, new Vanuatu archaeologist and these sorts of occasions are very very rare at the ANU, of course there's very few Pacific Island archaeologists of course but we're very privileged today to have Richard here with us. Richard is from the southernmost island of Vanuatu at Naitiam and was inspired at high school to be involved in archaeology, I don't know why he was but because there certainly wasn't any particular jobs going in Vanuatu at that time but he joined excavations with us, Matthew Sprex and myself in 1996 as a high school student. He tells me that he decided then that archaeology was what he wanted to do, then went off, we tried to line up a scholarship here at the ANU but those were developed at the time, we went off to UPNG for four years as the archaeological programme there began to dissolve and he came back to the cultural centre and has been essentially the resident archaeologist there since about 2000. It's been a wonderful time working with Richard, he's a very passionate about archaeology but one of his real forties is connecting with the wider communities, he's recognised by all sorts of people when you go to villages, his name or his work and for Matthew and myself it's been a wonderful sort of entrain to sort of get to that. He's also disseminating the research and connecting with those communities and I think having someone like Richard on a permanent basis at the Vanuatu Cultural Centre has really been a major benefit for that sort of programme and I would argue that the sort of grassroots knowledge in Vanuatu in relation to archaeology is some of the best in the Pacific. So anyway, I'll hand it over to Richard. Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I will be giving a short talk on the archaeological research, community collaboration and participation in my country, Vanuatu. To close with the Rapina Conference in New Caledonia in 2002, indigenous archaeologists saw that there was a clear need for further to promote archaeology more broadly at a community level to create wide awareness and understanding for Pacific Islanders young and old what archaeology involved, what it tried to achieve along with its associated implications. For a long time Pacific archaeologists have been wary of archaeology, sorry Pacific Islanders have been wary of archaeology, often as I say it would grave-dealing a practice that of course in many Pacific cultures is considered sacrilege. Over the last 15 years, the Vanuatu Cultural Centre in collaboration with a number of foreign researchers and guided by the Vanuatu Cultural Centre research policy has been running an active programme increasing public awareness in relation to archaeology. This is involved such activities as running training workshops for Vanuatu few workers, scroll tours of excavations, often include some level of participation, mounting exhibitions, producing publications in the form of booklets, posters and comic books in the three national languages and regular features on national TV, radio and newspaper. Though these collaborative awareness programmes, through these collaborative awareness programmes, an increasing number of new Vanuatu have gained a much greater appreciation of archaeology and its potential to contribute to a better understanding of the country's 3000 year history. Personally, just a sort of basis of what I want to talk about. I'll talk a little bit about the Vanuatu Cultural Centre. It was initially set up in 1957 and was called the New Hebrides Cultural Council. Its role was to assist and supervise researchers that were coming into the country to do humanities research. When the country gained independence in 1980, the name was changed to Vanuatu Cultural Centre and its task to preserve, promote and protect customer culture in Vanuatu. In 1985, the Vanuatu Government established a moratorium on all humanities-based research and, as distinguished Chair Kaufmann explained, this was because, mainly, one, the newly established government resented some of the early views of researchers and missionaries from the pre-colonial period to the early phases of the colonial period on the indigenous population. And that, too, they believe it was better for the Vanuatu themselves to be conducting their own research. Researchers and missionaries from the late 19th century up to the early 20th century would examine the local population from a very Euro-century perspective. And so the early literature was quite biased when discussing the lives of the indigenous population. This was quite common, not only in Vanuatu, but in a lot of places around the world in those days. And in Vanuatu and where Europeans were coming into contact with the local population and were portraying their way of life as being savage, non-civilised and quite backward. Whereas, in reality, these cultures are an evolution of thousands of years of living in their respective environments, coping with the stresses that transformed themselves to suit the social and environmental concerns they faced. To the early educated New Vanuatu, most of them became prominent leaders during the early phases of independence in that time. Many of these early accounts portraying our ancestors was equivalent to gross insult to our custom, culture, heritage and history. Vanuatu brought up to respect and cherish their cultural way of life and to consider the knowledge of our ancestors passed down to us as being paramount. And even today, people still view the white man way of life as being inferior. Growing up as a child, we were taught to work together as a community, to assist each other, to survive and it is custom that acts as a guideline to ensure prosperity for all. The couple of decades leading up to independence saw a gradual change in the views, perception and methods used by visiting anthropologists and other researchers when they began immersing themselves into the local communities in order to document the lives from the inside as in comparison to previous writers of our culture who stayed in the community but lived separately. Many of these later researchers would live with the local communities in their homes, eat with them and went to some extent partaking in the custom ceremonies and economic activities in order to be accepted as part of the group. By the time we obtained independence from England and France, the new government realized that some sort of guideline was needed for researchers to adhere in order for more of the research to be conducted correctly and that researchers would not disturb the way of life of the people they come into contact with. Thus the moratorium was enacted to provide time for the government to put together a policy for all researchers researching in custom culture and the history of Vanuatu to follow. The Vanuatu cultural research policy was endorsed in 1994 by the government of Vanuatu and subsequently the moratorium was lifted. You would think that after a decade of moratorium there would be a large influx of researchers into Vanuatu but that was not the case. It enabled a more collaborative effort and a better understanding between researchers and the communities they were working in. The Vanuatu Cultural Centre field workers, I'll briefly explain that. The field workers program was initiated by Kirk Hoffman in the late 1970s. One of the Vanuatu cultural centres in the 1970s initially involving just men. It was tasked to assist the Vanuatu Cultural Centre in sourcing and collecting all of tradition. They also have an annual meeting called the Vanuatu Field Workers Workshop where every year a topic was chosen, discussed, recorded and stored in the Vanuatu Cultural Centre's archives. The role has developed positively over the years with the assistance and cooperation from overseas institutions and agencies to include the collection and preservation of knowledge in traditional ceremonies, cultural rituals, genealogies and any other cultural practices and in the form of written accounts, audio recording, digital recording and visual recording. What started as a men-only program included women in 1989 now comprises of an almost equal number of men and women who assist the Vanuatu Cultural Centre and researchers coming from overseas and within Vanuatu in whatever they needed to do in the islands, especially with logistics and explaining the work of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre and the researchers and whatever they'd like to do. It was therefore imperative that these field workers went through regular training so that they could easily explain whatever work we wanted to do in the field. The Vanuatu Cultural Historical Site Survey of Vanuatu National Register, the Vanuatu Cultural Historical Site Survey of ECHSS in short was set up in 1990 by archaeologist David Roe and John Christof Gallipol to create and maintain a database of sites of cultural, archaeological and historical significance. Not only did they collect data from these sites but a major component of their mission was to inform and educate people in these areas. They visited on the importance of their cultural and historical and archaeological sites and why and how they should be preserved. Through tireless efforts of those who assisted in the early stages of the VCHSS, more and more people in Vanuatu have become more aware of issues surrounding these sites. It is common knowledge that a gradual flow of missionaries into the Pacific from the east to the west led to the extinction of many traditional practices and knowledge concerning the everyday life and the use of the land. As these early missionaries introduced the word of God to the people, most missionaries forbid the traditional way of life and the rituals and customary practices associated with them. Coupled with the mass reduction in the population size in the islands during and after the missionaries arrived, a cache of valuable knowledge of cultural sites was lost during that period up until the independence of the country in 1980. After the establishment of the Vanuatu cultural centre and eventually the VCHSS, a never growing number of people now understand the importance of these sites and the unappreciating value and relevance in the world today. Even though in the mid 2000s the VCHSS changed its name to Vanuatu National Register, its role remained the same. In 1996 a training workshop started in Mangas in the western side of Hepate in collaboration with Dr Stuart Bedford and Professor Matthew Spriggs from the Australian National University. Initially to train the VCHSS staff but as interest grew a number of few workers were included. From 1996 to 2003 training workshops were conducted annually and eventually all of the Vanuatu cultural centre few workers at the time including men and women went through training of basic archaeological excavation methods and also training on how to conduct cultural surveys and cultural sites. Further training workshops were carried out on offshore islands of Malikula, namely Orupif, Uri, Walla, Achin, Ramo, Waoh and Maskelin from 2001 to 2005. These few workers would then go back to their various islands and not only would assist in the dissemination of information about archaeology but also could identify potential excavation sites. A classic example is the discovery of the Lapida site at Teyoma, where Salco Nyona, a Vanuatu cultural centre few worker, correctly identified a piece of Lapida shawl brought to him by Charlie Natty, a bulldozer driver, who was working on the site removing dirt for the development of a prawn farm. This led to one of the most important discoveries of Lapida to date. Prior to and between and after archaeological training workshops, workshop excavations were also taking place in other areas and islands in Vanuatu. During these excavations, locals would be hired to assist, which provided opportunity for the archaeological team to talk about archaeology, to participate in locals, the schools within the vicinity of the excavation and all people who showed interest in archaeology. Archaeology also provided a good topic for calva time conversations. Archaeological projects and awareness. School visits. Young people constitute a large portion of the population of Vanuatu in most countries in the world. It is very important to educate this generation so more people can know about archaeology in the years to come. Being a very active component of the population, they can pass on their learned knowledge of archaeology to their friends, parents and extended families. We started to bring in schools to visit the archaeological sites during the pre-worker training in Manas in 1996. This was done primarily to increase awareness on archaeology in schools and for the students to get exposed to archaeology and to see archaeologies at work. During these early school visits, the students would be given a short talk introducing archaeology and the theories surrounding them. They would then be taken on a tour of the site. Schools in Port Vila and around Euphate, the Arnau Euphate, were invited to the dig and sometimes whole schools would turn up. In the beginning it was quite chaotic. Eventually we put together a programme whereby schools that intended to visit would notify us in advance so that we could limit the number of classes coming on a particular day and also space them out so that all of them could visit but in smaller groups. Students of all ages ranging from kindergarten to university levels would visit the sites and show great enthusiasm in archaeology. Mainly because most of what they learnt was relatively new to them but also due to the fact that not only do they learn about the history of the past and also about the subjects of geography, geology, biology to their view but that are used by archaeologists to assist them in analysing a site. Due to the delicateness of archaeology, as we all know, the groups that visited the excavations were allowed to view the work in progress but could not partake. An opportunity arose in 2008 that enabled students to get a hands-on experience on what archaeology was all about. At the Te Omo Lapida site there was a large mound feature you can see on the top corner up there, top left hand corner. It was a large mound created by bulldozers as they were working there prior to the discovery of the site. It consisted of a mixed material from the Lapida period up until just before European contact. When the mound was discovered in 2004 it was realised that there was much cultural material in it and it was decided that the mound would eventually be sifted to collect the artefacts of the final remains. In 2008 the archaeological team decided that it would allow students to dig and sift through the mound to find and collect archaeological materials from this mound feature. This would not only assess the team in retrieving cultural material from the disturbed mound but also students would have the opportunity to feel what archaeology is. The turnout of that year and the years to follow was quite amazing. A lot of students were very excited even though they took turns in digging, sifting, washing, drying artefacts and found the remains that they found. Most would really rush in there and try as much as possible in a short period of time on the site to find as much material as possible. Many schools would plan to stay for the whole day and would bring their own refreshments so that students did not have to go back to the school for lunch. Everybody had a great time from the youngest to the oldest and sometimes it was quite hard for the teachers to persuade their students to get back on the buses to get back to school. Most students that came to the excavation were very very interested and excited in what they learnt because part of the curriculum of the school also archaeology was part and partial of the curriculum. Due to the ever increasing interest shown by schools and the general public, including many prominent government officials, the Banuatru Cultural Centre decided to start putting out short publications on the archaeology work that we were doing and the finds that we were coming up with. At that time it was important since most of the literature available in the schools and the public was very outdated or in a language or in English that was quite difficult for the ordinary person to understand, to fully comprehend. Another equally important reason as to why the Banuatru Cultural Centre started printing materials was to hand out to the schools and the general public so that when they left the site they could still have an idea or memory of what they saw when they were there. One very important feature of these publications was that the language we used in them was very simple so that people of all ages, backgrounds would read and easily understand it. We began by creating this 6-page booklet in 2005 in Bishlama, which is the local lingual ranka, titled Banuatru Archaeology, What is Archaeology? That briefly explained archaeology at Lapida and introduced some of the findings in Teoma and answered some of the most common questions asked by the students and for example how to identify sites and so on and so forth. This book was handed out to all the students and we do not have any copies of this anymore. It was so successful that in 2008 we did reprints of it. The updated version in 2008 we increased the number of pages to eight pages and thanks to the funding from AusAid we were able to do it in three different languages. For those who do not know Banuatru much, we were colonised by Britain and France so we have English, French and Bishlama as our official languages. The reason why we included English and French in the first place was because it was the language that we used in the schools and so if we could incorporate this kind of information into the classroom we have to put it in these languages. I remember from my old school time we were not allowed to speak Bishlama in schools and Bishlama literature was banned from school. The AusAid funding for the school program in 2008 also enabled the cultural centre to document and prepare individual school reports. What's just coming up is the three languages of the booklet which we produced later on. The first part of the report which we produced for the schools, individual reports for the schools, consisted of an introduction to archaeology, outlining the basic archaeological methods, ideas and theories. The second part summarised in a very basic kind of way the findings we had of Te Omusai to that date. The last part of that report talked about the school visit, that particular school where they visited, what they did and including lots of pictures and the findings which they showed. The one which was just up earlier are reports which we did in Bishlama and English for excavations conducted in the various sites of Mangas, Te Omu, Malikula and the northern part of Vanuatu. Eventually we distributed these reports back to the places where we actually conducted the excavations from. In 2009, we put out a booklet titled Olbubu, Oliplasi Boti Blamorgata, Body Decorations and Ornaments, in the three languages to coincide with an exhibition which we were having at that time, which I will talk about later on, exhibitions. And also in 2010 we produced another booklet, Lapida Peoples, which we were very fortunate to have an opportunity to go to Paris to do a very big Lapida exhibition and that book was done because of that Paris exhibition. In 2005, the Vanuatu Contra Sender released its first poster in Bishlama on the findings of Te Omu, titled Archaeology, Malapita no Te Omu, Archaeology and Lapida in Te Omu. We got a lot of positive response from this poster, but also one thing which we found out which was not really good about this poster was there's too much information cramped into the poster. We realised this so that in 2007 we released the second lot of posters in three languages called Lapida in Vanuatu and we tried to minimise the text, put more pictures in so it would look more attractive. In 2010 we held a two week exhibition titled 30 Years of Independence, 3000 Years of History and created a poster to commemorate the event. I will talk about this exhibition later on. While the materials that were produced for educational purposes and we tried to distribute them to as many people as possible, especially in schools because when you pass them off to schools you cover a more wider audience in comparison to give them out to single individuals in the public. Exhibitions are very efficient means of educating and attracting public interest. Even though we are a small unit at the Vanuatu Cultural Centre, we have put together and taken part in a number of exhibitions. In 2010 we launched the Old Boobu Wally Plus and Molkata exhibition, like I mentioned before, where the decoration is an ornament. We display different ways that people in the past adorned themselves or beautified themselves. From the beginning during the Lapida periods of 3000 years ago up until the period after we became colonised by France and Great Britain. This exhibition comprises a wide selection of archaeological artefacts, old ethnographic photos and artefacts from the ethnographic period. To coincide with this exhibition we produced a small book and a set of four posters in the three languages so that we could send out to the schools who could not visit the exhibition and they could display them in the library or any public area. The students kind of access to the information we have on the exhibit. The 30 year independence on 3000 year of history exhibition in 2010 was a means to again stress the importance of Lapida in our history. We held the exhibition a couple of weeks before the country's 30th independence celebration and we want the public of Vanuatu to realise that compared to the 30 years of being independent from the two colonial powers, people have been living, surviving and flourishing independently from all outside contact for the last 3000 years. The Oceanic Ancestors Exhibition House of the Cavallee Museum for three months from November 2010 was a collaborative effort between the Vanuatu Cultural Centre, the Institute of Archaeology for New Caledonia and the Pacific, the Australian National University through Professor Matthew Spiggs, Dr Stuart Bedwin and the Cavallee Museum. It is probably the largest Lapida exhibition ever held today and not only do we have archaeological materials from Vanuatu and New Caledonia but we have samples of Lapida materials from throughout the Lapida area from Papua New Guinea right down the Tonga and Samoa. To coincide with this very big exhibition we published a book Lapida People which was not only a big hit in Vanuatu but also Paris where we first started distributing them. Just for the information the book was printed in the morning before we took off for Paris. We took them out and printed them straight to the airport. Another very easy and free mean of disseminating information of archaeological issues and findings is via the newspaper and through the radio and TV. We make it a must that every time after an excavation we put together a couple of articles to send to the newspapers around town. This is in order for the public to be aware of our work and what we are doing and the results of the excavation we have conducted. As you can see this is some of the extracts from the newspapers and the excavation we have been doing. This last one I just have to show is a Nitron Lapida discovery. We didn't actually find Lapida in Vanuatu sorry in a Nitron but I just put this up so we have to understand when we put out information to the public we had a journalist come and interview us on this and he wrote it up. Lapida is a name that is quite well known in Vanuatu. People associate Lapida with every kind of part of it which is quite wrong but I just put this up so probably in the future when we want to disseminate information especially to newspapers. We know how journalists like exaggerating and things and so on and so forth try to make dramatic whatever information they put out. We have to be very careful in what we tell them and I think from now on what we will be doing in Vanuatu is we will be writing the stuff ourselves. Most of the newspaper articles up there we actually wrote but for this one they came and interviewed us and unfortunately the typing was quite dramatic but not really correct. The Vanuatu Country Centre also has a weekly power program in the National Broadcasting Corporation which readers from nearly all the islands in Vanuatu read. A few weeks before we venture out to the excavations we go on air to let the people in the areas know about our arrival and know what we are going to do. Also after each excavation we do another radio broadcast to thank some of the communities which we welcome with us and who are the sisters in the excavations and also to give some preliminary feedback on the findings we make in these excavations. Also I have this nice picture here of the distinguished Matthew Spreex and he is there with a new MP of ours Ralph Reganvanu doing a live radio broadcast at one of the radio stations. Also more than two documentaries have been prepared by the cultural centre like video documentaries and have been airing every now and then in the local TV station. In addition we have had all the years visits from TV stations overseas, we have had the catalyst from ABC come visit us, the documentary TV cruise from New Zealand and also before the year before last we had a South Korean TV station coming into the US during one of the Lapida excavations. As a conclusion, I would like to say this, as an individual trains to become an archaeologist he or she is taught how to plan an excavation, execute the plan and analyse the findings. Equally important to these archaeological discoveries is the dissemination of these findings back to the people from these places where the discoveries are made. In this way not only are you assisting in the education of the people, you come into contact within the communities you work in, but also once they begin to understand the nature of your work, you are doing an importance of it in their life, the people will appreciate your work and will look forward to your return. You establish this link between yourself and the communities and when nurtured you will always be supported by these people whenever you go back to the respective communities. Due to the extensive awareness program carried out by the Vanuatu Cultural Centre over the past years, an ever increasing number of people in Vanuatu are becoming more aware of the importance of archaeology. The reaction we get from many people when we talk about Lapida are one of shock, surprise and excitement and I was keen to know more. Sometimes you think we know all the answers archaeologists about the past, but we always tell them that there's always limitations in what you can interpret from the findings you have under the service. For example, we are regularly approached by people asking if we can dig up a grave to prove the person buried there is one of their ancestors. They want us to do this so that they can claim to the land and of course we kindly tell them that such things are not really possible. The Vanuatu Cultural Centre Archaeological Awareness Programme has come a long way and has proven that a country like Vanuatu in the Pacific with limited funds but with a lot of effort from our one small step at a time approach can achieve a lot in a long run. It is far from over. For us at the Vanuatu Cultural Centre it is only the beginning to make the whole of Vanuatu understand and appreciate the rich and valuable past and to share it with the rest of the world. Custom culture and tradition are very important to the people of Vanuatu and to the Pacific as a whole. It defines who we are, where we stand in the world today. The rules, regulations, guidelines and oral traditions that defines one culture from another are based on age old knowledge passed down from generation to generation, ever evolving and though much has been lost that which remains are highly guarded and continue to pass from generation to generation. Archaeology is therefore a very important aspect to the people of Vanuatu in that it provides this tangible link, something you can hold that connects the people with their past and it can work in collaboration with oral tradition to assist in giving a better picture of how ancestors lived in the past. Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for your time. I just want to flash up this picture as a result of our work in archaeology. We have last year had, very fortunately, our illustrator, his cousin, who is a carver, carved this carver ball with a lapela motif on it. That is probably one of the first really good feedbacks from the community and I believe in the near future we will have more and more positive feedbacks from the community and more interesting things from the community. Thank you very much.