Sami and the Panguna mine #3

In 2009, Bougainville-born artist Taloi Havini invited Australian photographer Stuart Miller to collaborate on a series of portraits dedicated to the people born during the ten-year war between Bougainville and Papua New Guinea (1990–2000). The series is called Blood Generation, which is also the term given to these young people by their elders, Havini’s father’s generation.

Sami and the Panguna mine (2009/2019) is a triptych from this series. It shows a young woman named Sami, a member of the ‘Blood Generation’, at the Panguna copper mine on Bougainville. The women in Sami’s family owned the land where the Panguna copper mine was established by Conzinc Riotinto Australia (CRA). CRA opened the mine in 1972 with the support of the Australian and Papua New Guinean governments, but failed to acknowledge or gain permission from the women owners of the site who belonged to a clan-based tradition of matriarchal land ownership on Bougainville. In protest against the theft and exploitation of their sacred land, Sami’s mother and aunties took their young children and chained themselves to equipment at the Panguna mine site. This triptych honours the bravery of Sami’s older female relatives in standing up against the miners and their bulldozers to protect their land and ownership system. Their resistance and other acts of sabotage eventually stopped the mine from operating in 1989. Sami’s relatives were the first group of Indigenous people in the world to shut down a multi-national mining site. Tensions on Bougainville and between Bougainville and Papua New Guinea escalated after this point, leading to the Bougainville war.

Known as ‘the bloody Bougainville war’, the war on Bougainville had many causes. While disagreements over ownership of the Panguna mine site and the distribution of its lucrative profits were central to the conflict, the legacy of European colonialism, history of clan divisions, and Bougainville’s claim to independence from Papua New Guinea were also contributing factors. The war involved bitter political and ethnic violence between Bougainvillean independence fighters, clan groups and the Papua New Guinea Defence Force, and included incidents of human rights abuses. The conflict killed approximately 20 000 people, or 10 percent of the island’s population and left lasting trauma.

Australia had a complex relationship with Bougainville during this time. CRA were an Australian company who established the mine with support from the Australian government. Australia supplied the Papua New Guinea Defence Force (PNGDF) with helicopters that they stipulated were to be used for non-violent operations, but which were used by the PNGDF in combat against Bougainville and to commit human rights abuses. Australian peacekeeping forces entered Bougainville in 1994 in Operation LAGOON to support peace talks, but the operation was compromised by poor communication before it had even begun and the peace talks were unsuccessful. Unarmed Australian peacekeepers entered Bougainville again from 1997–2003 as part of the Truce Monitoring Group and Peace Monitoring Group with New Zealand, Vanuatu and Fiji and helped to secure a truce that led to the Bougainville Peace Process.

Taloi Havini was born in 1981 in the Arawa District, Autonomous Region of Bougainville and belongs to the Nakas clan and Hako language group. Her parents, Moses and Marilyn Havini were leaders in the Bougainville independence movement. They bought their family, including Taloi, to Australia in 1990 where they continued to act as spokespeople for the Bougainville Revolutionary Army, Bougainville Interim Government and Bougainville citizens, including exposing human rights abuses committed against children.