Solidarity and Dilemmas: Tranby, Indenture and the Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific Campaigns, 1980s

The 1983 call by the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) campaign to end imperialism built strong alliances between disempowered Indigenous peoples and descendants of the unfree, indentured labourers who had been moved between colonies. The colonies and new nations of the Pacific, including Australia, had been left with populations that included both Indigenous and non-Indigenous (formerly indentured) people, all damaged in different ways by colonialism. There were unresolved tensions between these two groups, particularly in Fiji where the NFIP campaign was established. This paper traces responses in Tranby, an organisation that demonstrated the dilemmas of these tensions for Australian Indigenous people. Tranby, the Aboriginal-led Adult Education Co-operative, took a strong anti-colonial position in the 1980s, advocating land rights as well as endorsing the NFIP campaign. Yet Tranby’s support wavered over the tensions between Indigenous people and those displaced by colonialism through indenture. Tranby’s history demonstrates how its links had continued with colonised peoples damaged in both ways across the Indian and Pacific Oceans, suggesting why it reshaped its support for the NFIP campaign after the 1987 Fiji coups.