PAMBU NEWS
The PMB has been
carrying out
its usual vigorous programme of archival projects in the Islands and in
Australia:
·
working
with Sr Margaret Sullivan on the archives of
the Catholic Diocese of Tarawa and Nauru;
·
microfilming
the English translations of the Hawaiian
language documents in the Micronesian Collection at the Hawaiian
Mission
Children’s Society Library in Honolulu;
·
microfilming
archives of the Rabaul Volcanological
Observatory;
·
organising
archives of the Unevangelized Fields
Mission at the Bible College of Victoria;
·
microfilming
Melanesian Mission archives at the
National Archives of the Solomon Islands.
In Canberra the PMB has microfilmed two major
record
groups: CSR Fiji correspondence, 1880-1947; and the Cooke Collection
documenting volcanic activity in PNG before 1944. All these PMB
projects are
made possible by close collaboration with enthusiasts seriously
concerned
about long-term preservation and accessibility of Pacific Islands
documents. To
such people and to Pacific researchers in general the destruction of
records
held in the Court House in Port Vila on 6 June is an immense tragedy.
If the strong room and adjacent records room
at the
back of the Court House were destroyed, we have lost all the records of
the
Joint Court (Supreme Court of Vanuatu), including its minutes,
judgements, registers,
correspondence and the complete series of procédure files,
consisting of
several thousand files detailing cases before the Court, 1910-1979. Not
to
mention the loss of Native and some Land Court records. A large number of company registration case
files
dating from the late 1980s to 2000 were also stored in a disused cell
underneath the main Court building. In total, about 300 shelf metres of
records
may have been burnt, the patrimony of France and Britain as well as
Vanuatu.
Of this material the PMB had microfilmed a
tiny
proportion, possibly 5%: the civil and criminal judgements of the Joint
Court,
1911-1977, microfilmed in 1999 at PMB 1145/Reels 1-7; and archives of
the Tribunaux
français des Nouvelles-Hébrides, the French side of the Joint
Court,
microfilmed by the PMB in collaboration with the Territorial Archives
of New
Caledonia in 2005, consisting mainly of arrêtés et décisions
1910-1978, conférences
1910-1939, and correspondance 1915-1979, at PMB 1254/Reels
1-17. With
regret, I report that the PMB was due to continue microfilming at the
Court
House in 2006, but our tiny resources did not enable us to pursue the
opportunity.
While reporting on this archival tragedy, it
should be
noted, more optimistically, that there are signs of an increasingly
broad
interest in helping to preserve Pacific archives. The Government of
Fiji is
proceeding with construction of a new Archives building for the National Archives
of Fiji and the refurbishment of its existing building. AusAID is supporting records preservation
programs in
the law and justice sector and in radio archives in PNG (see articles
by Sam
Kaima and Jordie Kilbie in this issue of Pambu). AusAID and the
National
Archives of Australia are also supporting appointments of advisers to
the
National Archives of the Solomon Islands. A team of New Zealand
archivists have
been working in Niue this year to help re-establish its National
Archives. The
British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme is supporting several
projects
in the Pacific, including a major project at the Tuvalu National
Library and
Archives in which the PMB is participating. The German government is
supporting
a reformatting and training project in Apia aimed at preserving Samoan
German
Colonial administration archives. The UNESCO, Pacific Office, is
funding
support for the establishment of an archives of the Daughters of Our
Lady of
the Sacred Heart in Tarawa, Kiribati.
Reflecting this increased interest in the
preservation
of Pacific documentary heritage, the Australian National University has
appointed a Pacific Archivist and a Pacific Librarian, to administer
and
develop its magnificent Pacific collections (as Karina Taylor reports
in this
issue of Pambu).
Ewan
Maidment, PMB Executive Officer
2nd edition update.
The
PMB has received news from Ismet Kurtovitch and Adrian Cunningham that
the Port
Vila Court House strong room did survive the fire.
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COURT HOUSE
FIRE
After the Court House fire, the
Vanuatu National
Cultural Council calls for:
(a)
urgent building of a new
National Archives building;
(b)
reconstruction of new
Court House building in its original historical architecture style on
the same
site.
In response to the recent
Court House fire, the Vanuatu National Cultural Council, the body
responsible
for the preservation, protection and development of the country’s
cultural
heritage, has called on the national government to prioritise building
of a new
National Archives building to preserve the invaluable and irreplacable
documentary memory of the nation and to rebuild the Court House in its
original
style on the same site, to preserve the historical character of the
building
and site.
The National Cultural
Council, which is comprised of the President of the Malvatumauri, a
Director,
the Director of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre, the CEO of the Vanuatu
National
Council of Women, a representative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs,
the
Chief Librarian of the University of the South Pacific Emalus Campus
and, until
his death at the end of last year, the Chief Archivist of the National
Archives, points to the recent destruction of the Court House as a
“wake up
call” to the Government regarding the ongoing loss of Vanuatu’s
irreplaceable
historical site and documentary heritage.
a)
Need to prioritise construction of a National Archives of Vanuatu
building.
The loss of irreplaceable and invaluable
historic
court archives dating back to the earliest proceedings and decisions of
the
Joint Court at the beginning of the 1900s in the recent Court House
fire have
reinforced and vindicated the repeated calls by the National Cultural
Council
for the Government to construct a new purpose-built National Archives
building
to safely keep all the Government’s archives.
The plans for a new National Archives
building have
been in existence since the early 1990s, when the masterplan for the
National
Cultural Complex was approved by the Government. This plan situates the
National Archives building in the existing space between the National
Museum
and the Chiefs’ Nakamal. The project profile for the project to
construct the
new National Archives building was first approved by the Government’s
Ministerial
Budget Committee in 2002. The budget for this same project was revised
last
year and now is roughly 150 million vatu.
Appalling situation of the current National
Archives:
The situation with the
National Archives is now
completely unsatisfactory. The bulk of the nation’s archives are housed
in the
converted colonial asylum (“depot”), which was not built for the
purpose of
keeping national records and is now over 50 years old and cracked and
crumbling
in places. If a severe cyclone were to hit Vanuatu and remove part of
the roof
of the building, almost all the records kept there would be damaged
beyond
repair, as the records are stored all over the floor as well as piled
to the
ceiling. Another strong earthquake like the one in 2002 will destroy
the
building and destroy many records also. These records include many
unique and
irreplaceable documents relating to the administrative history of the
colonial
and independent governments, including unique documents relating to all
the
important events and transactions in this country’s history.
The appalling situation of the National
Archives
reflects the very low priority the Government has given to this
important
national institution: for the last decade the National Archives has
been
allocated an operating budget of next to nothing and budget allocation
for only
one archivist. None of the Chief Archivists appointed to this position
since
Independence have ever had the necessary qualifications or support for
this
job, including the latest Chief Archivist, the recently deceased Mr Tom
Sakias.
Since Mr Sakias’ death in December 2006, no new Chief Archivist has
been
appointed.
Completely unsatisfactory situation of
archives kept
in various Government departments: Due to the inability of the National Archives
to
properly keep the Government’s historical records, each Government
department
was requested in the late 1990s to store their own archives until such
time as
the National Archives had its own building. The National Cultural
Council is
aware that these important national records being kept by Departments
are often
kept in a very unsatisfactory state: often the records are simply
shelved or
heaped up in a room, not catalogued or indexed and kept in
non-air-conditioned
conditions. For example, the archives of the National Parliament and
the State
Law Office are all currently kept piled up in a room in each of these
Departments and no files can be accessed because they cannot be found
in the mess.
What this means is that important Government records are being damaged
and are
deteriorating and access to particular documents is impossible because
there is
no way of finding them again.
Preparation by the National Cultural Council
for a new
building:
The
Council is currently putting some of the staff of the National Library
and
Vanuatu Cultural Centre through the Librarianship Diploma at the
University of
the South Pacific in preparation for staffing a new building. In
addition,
almost all the records of the National Library are now properly shelved
in the
National Museum building and catalogued in a new purpose-built computer
database, which means that the records held by this institution at
least are
safe and accessible. The Council has also secured promises of support
from the
National Archives of New Zealand and Australia and other record-keeping
institutions overseas for the additional skilled manpower required to
do the
work of sorting through all Government records and cataloguing them
once a new
building is in place.
A new building and an increased budget and
staff for
the National Archives will ensure that the records now held in the
National
Archives building, the National Library and various Government
departments will
be able to be centralized into one purpose-built facility, sorted out
and
properly catalogued and properly cared for in appropriate conditions.
This will
mean that these records will then become accessible to the Government
and the
people of Vanuatu for the foreseeable future.
Recommendation: On the 18th of January this year,
the
Council wrote to the Minister for Internal Affairs requesting that the
Government make construction of a new building for the National
Archives of
Vanuatu a national priority for 2007. In this letter, the Council
specifically
recommended that:
1)
the
Council of Ministers make a decision that the
Government’s aid management unit (DESP) make obtaining funding for a
new
National Archives building a priority
2)
additional
Government resources need to be allocated
as soon as possible to employ and train additional staff in preparation
for
staffing this new building.
With the loss of the Court House archives,
the urgency
of constructing a new National Archives building has been made even
more
starkly apparent.
b) Call to rebuild the Court
House in its original historical architectural style on the same site.
The Vanuatu National
Cultural Council is calling upon the Government to rebuild the Port
Vila Court
House in its original historical architectural style on the same site.
The Court House was
Vanuatu’s most famous historical building and was classified as one of
Vanuatu’s first protected historical sites by the Minister of Internal
Affairs
under the Protection of Sites and Artifacts act in 2005.
The significance of the
building and site: The Court House
was one of the first big administrative buildings built by the
Condominium
Government in the New Hebrides. It was completed in 1910, four years
after the
New Hebrides officially became a colony of Britain and France, and was
originally built as the residence of the President of the Joint Court.
The
other big administrative buildings built in the same era were the
original
Joint Court (once located where the Reserve Bank now is) and the
residences of
the British and French judges (now also gone: the French Judge’s house
was
where the residence of the Prime Minister now is). These buildings were
all
built on the top of the hill facing the entrance to the harbour as a
way of
demonstrating the rule of colonial law to all who entered the harbour.
The
Court House was the last of these first big colonial administrative
buildings. During World War II
the building provided the
headquarters for the American forces in the New Hebrides and after the
War it
became the Joint Court, a function it retained until it was burnt down
earlier
this month.
The Court House had been extensively repaired
over the
years, particularly after the 1959 cyclone that hit Vila, but always
with a
view to retaining the original architectural style and historical
integrity of
the building.
Recommendation: Given the extraordinary historical value of
this
building and the site on which it stands, and given that the original
historical architectural character of the building had been faithfully
preserved with extensive maintenance work for over 55 years (both
before and
after Independence), the National Cultural Council is calling on the
Government
to rebuild the building in its original architectural style on the same
site.
By doing this, the Government will be demonstrating not only its
commitment to
maintaining all the historic, heritage and national values and meanings
embodied in the original building and site, but also its commitment to
ensuring
these values continue to be instilled in future generations of
ni-Vanuatu.
While this may be an opportunity for building
a new
Court House which is more architecturally suited to the current needs
of the
judiciary, the Council believes that such needs can be accommodated by
a
building with a modern interior, but which retains the same façade
(outside
appearance) as the original court house building.
The Council is writing to the Minister for
Justice,
the Minister for Internal Affairs and the Judicial Services Commission
with
this request.
Vanuatu National
Cultural
Council / Vanuatu Cultural Centre, Press release, 18 June 2007.
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