Pacific islanders come to Sask.
Help bring back traditions, World Indigenous Business Forum hears
Many employees of Nanette Tutua’s organic gardening company, used clothing store and timber company in the Solomon Islands are “wounded” women — widowed, divorced, or single mothers struggling to get by on their own.
She also hires men to select and cut trees in the wild and get them to the city. Unlike foreign companies that clear-cut the forest and ship the wood overseas, Tutua creates local employment and cash flow in the community.
Her family includes her husband and their two children, but their household includes more than a dozen employees who live and eat with them.
Jennifer Baing-Waiko and her husband also feed their children, and about 30 extended family members, employees and drop-in guests every day at their smallscale farm in Papua New Guinea, where they are leading a movement back to traditional, healthy foods.
“We’re encouraging indigenous people everywhere to go back to their traditional foods ... our bodies are built for those foods and they expand our lifespan,” BaingWaiko said Thursday at the World Indigenous Business Forum at the University of Saskatchewan.
They can support local farmers and women in the markets, improve their health and teach the younger generation about their food culture, which strengthens bonds among the people, she said.
Amanda Donigi had long been irked by the absence of indigenous women in fashion magazines sold in Papua New Guinea. She was also dissatisfied with the mainstream media mentioning indigenous people only in negative news stories, she said. As an experienced tourism magazine editor, she created Stella, a woman’s magazine.
“We enjoyed magazine pictures but we never saw ourselves reflected back. We grew up with this idea of what beauty was,” she said.
The four-year-old publication features indigenous models shot by local professional photographers. Many of the writers began as bloggers. The magazine hosts a major fashion show each year featuring local designers; its success is keeping the magazine alive during tough economic times.
When geologist Malai Ila’ava wanted to explore for gold in other indigenous peoples’ territory in Papua New Guinea, he drove for days over muddy, rutted roads to visit and walk over the land with the people.
He spent the night hearing their stories; the next day, he gave them a presentation about his plans. Then he walked to the next village and did the same thing there.
It meant a lot to the people in the mineral-rich island nation, where the exploration industry is dominated by foreign companies that usually just rent helicopters to fly over the desired land, he said.
“It shows I value them, I value their knowledge of the area and we do share appreciation of each other’s cultures and for the land we live on,” Ila’ava said.