Australian Society of Archivists
1999 Conference

Archives in Kiribati

Pat Jackson

This paper is more an attempt to provide you with an overview of archives and recordkeeping in the developing country that is the Republic of Kiribati, rather than giving you any concrete answers to recordkeeping questions. By way of introduction to the oral culture of the Republic of Kiribati and to act as a metaphor for the effects of colonisation and decolonisation, I will take you on a journey of the imagination. So, please bear with me as I wander off into the land of purple prose.

Let us pretend that Sir Hilary Jackson, an eminent English archivist but not the eminent English archivist, decided that after his retirement from the Public Records Office in 1958 he longed for the Great Britain of Empire, the Great Britain of colonial possessions, and the Great Britain of his youth. He longed to preach his archival message and to spread the archival word in remote lands that were still coloured pink on maps of the world. He longed to end his days surrounded by warmth, in sunlight, with gentle people. Sir Arthur Grimble’s books “A Pattern of Islands” and “Return to the Islands” ⁽¹⁾ conjured up for Sir Hilary, images of laughing, smiling, gentle people. Sir Arthur’s BBC radio programs did the same. So much to the horror of his middle-aged children, the widowed Sir Hilary left his family behind and made the long journey to the Central Pacific British colonial possession of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands.

At first, the British civil servants welcomed Sir Hilary, for he was one of them, he had published books and he was titled. But he grew detached from them, and began to spend more and more time with a Gilbertese girl, Teretia and her family. The expatriate community was somewhat shocked when Sir Hilary, now renamed Tiiriralee⁽²⁾ by the Gilbertese people, married the young Teretia in a traditional ceremony and lived with her family in Bairiki, in a traditional Gilbertese house.

Tiiriralee and Teretia were very happy and in the fullness of time Teretia presented Tiiriralee with a son, who Teretia named ‘Abraitiell’ (Appraisal) after a word she had liked in her husband’s book. Abraitiell grew up to be a strong and proud Gilbertese youth, steeped in the oral traditions of his mother’s culture. A fine fisherman, a magnificent dancer with a strong physique, a singer with a resonant voice, he was much sought after for traditional group performances of songs and dances. Yet, in his heart he was unhappy. His father, the I-Matang Tiiriralee had not passed onto him, in song or by chant, the skills that he had accumulated over his lifetime. He had not told him anything of the magic contained in ‘Te Manual’. Did he not see his aged father take the Manual and read it during the hottest part of the day, did his father not close his eyes and speak the I-Matang words from the Manual, did his father not speak his own name ‘Abraitiell’. Did his father not open the book with reverence, his old eyes growing misty with the tears of remembrance, the tears of a long life that had seen much? Abraitiell had taken the book once and had tried to read it, his primary school education allowed him to read the words, but Abraitiell had replaced the book in its hiding place in the kiakia with disgust. For he could not understand it, he did not know its meaning. Obviously the meaning, the memory, the magic was still inside his father’s heart and his father’s mind. Could it be that his I-Matang father would be like the Gilbertese elders and would not pass on his knowledge until he thought that his son had earned the right the knowledge? So Abraitiell worked hard to become the model son, to try to show his aging and by now dying father that he had earned the right to the knowledge, the magic, that was in his mind and that to which ‘Te Manual’ held the secret. It came to pass that as he lay dying in his kiakia, listening to the sounds of the waves meet the shore, Tirriralee gathered his son and his wife to him and in a voice that was weak and with a mind that was wandering, he spoke his last words. He spoke of records, of documents, of evidence, of the public, and of the civil service and in moments of panic, again and again he muttered the dread word, ‘Schellengold’. As he grew close to drawing his last breath, Teretia placed the brittle yellowing book, ‘Te Manual’ with its mildewed, cockroach eaten pages into the hands of her husband and he died quietly and at peace.

Abraitiell Tirriralee mourned his father and mourned the loss of what was in his mind; he mourned the loss of the magic, of the knowledge, of which he now only had a portion represented in ‘Te Manual’. His father had not sung any magic, he had not chanted any words, and he had not passed on any memory in a form that Abraitiell or Teretia understood. Abraitiell shook his head in sorrow but he understood that it was often the way of the elders, the unimane. They did not pass on knowledge until they were on their way to join the ancestors in the West and by then, it was often too late.

Now, the question remains is it too late for the Kiribati National Archives to eke out a meaningful place in the cultural, social and political life of Kiribati? I use the term ‘eke out’ in the sense that my Macquarie Dictionary defines it as, “to contrive to make (a living) or support (existence) by various makeshifts.”⁽³⁾ For it is my observation, that given the current state of government recordkeeping in Kiribati that the best the Kiribati National Archives can do is to ‘eke out’ an existence. Like the dying British archivist, lying in his kiakia muttering words of which no-one knew the meaning, holding onto a decaying book of words, the Kiribati National Archives is in danger of becoming just as irrelevant to Kiribati society. I do not intend to make this paper a tale of archival woe, for there are positive aspects to recordkeeping and archives in the Republic of Kiribati. However, it must be remembered that the Republic of Kiribati is a poor, developing country with a strong oral tradition, operating under inherited colonial systems that have modified, decayed, and calcified.

The Republic of Kiribati is very small by world standards in terms of population. It is an independent nation with a population of approximately 80 000. Think of that and its implications for the management of government infrastructures and services. 80 000 people. It is highly likely that there will be more people crammed in the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Boxing Day for a Test Match than living in the country of Kiribati. It is a very poor country and it is heavily reliant upon aid. If you happen to look quickly at a globe of the world, the chances are that you will not find the Republic of Kiribati, the islands appear as flyspecks scattered over the blue of the Central Pacific.

The country is small, isolated, an ex-colonial possession of the British Empire and has an oral culture. So what, you may ask? How does that affect the Archives? How does that that affect government recordkeeping? Moncef Fakhfakh sums the situation up neatly in his UNESCO RAMP study. He identifies that government archives systems are especially hampered in “countries where oral traditions and practices often prevail over writing and documents, which have little or no archival experience, and where this sector has remained relatively undeveloped.”⁽⁴⁾ I believe the Republic of Kiribati is one such country.

I hope to avoid the impression that Kiribati is a country where the majority of people can not read or write. That is simply not the case. However, the ability to read, as I have tried to demonstrate in my Tiiriralee family vignette, does not automatically confer understanding. Kiribati can still be predominately an oral society when some of its members can read and write. However, while there is universal primary education in Kiribati, less than half the workforce has secondary education.⁽⁵⁾

When I speak of an oral society, tradition and culture, what do I really mean? In the Kiribati context, I am speaking of a culture where the memory of events in the past, the memory of events that have meaning to the I-Kiribati people have been passed down in songs, chants, and incantations. A country where magic and spells still accompany everyday activities such as fishing, boat building, cooking, and preparations for dancing and singing competitions. Performance and ritual is a very important aspect of I-Kiribati life. There are songs and oral traditions that establish genealogies, which determine rights and privileges and reaffirm the role and function of island life.⁽⁶⁾ Songs particular to one island may have no meaning to members of another island, but the form and the delivery of the song is in itself important. It identifies those that have the right to know from those that do not have the right to know. In reference to the genre of Kiribati stories called karaki aika rabakau, stories that function as a method of passing down manual skills, the I-Kiribati historian, Kambati Uriam states that:

“As vehicles for transporting and preserving accurately knowledge of skills, the stories help the skills to be remembered quicker and better. The stories and the details of methods of the skill are not easily accessible, as, family secrets and property, they are guarded jealously….When a foreigner is viewed with suspicion even if he gains nothing from the art, how much more would the masters be suspicious of a Gilbertese researcher! Knowledge is power, and this the people know very well.”⁽⁷⁾

The I-Kiribati people are very forthcoming when discussing the fears that they have for their oral culture, which they quite rightly view as being unique, strong and such an integral part of their society. They are concerned with the loss of stories and tales that disappear when their elders die. However, when I ask I-Kiribati public servants how they are protecting their post-Independence history, the stories of their government, its achievements and its disappointments, I am met with amazement that documentation that is produced everyday could actually have any long term meaning or value. It is understood that Lands Records are extremely important and should be cared for, but the records of the Public Service Office, Education records, the functional records of the Public Utilities board? Why should anyone worry about them? The term ‘Accountability’ is also met with some confusion. After all, Kiribati is a small place and everyone knows what is going on, don’t they?

This is of course suggesting that records are kept in the first place and that they can be found when needed. A former Vice-President of Kiribati, Taomati Iuta wrote in 1993, discussing the successes and failures of various aid projects since independence that:

We must admit that the I-Kiribati public servants and government agencies that implement such [aid] projects sometimes leave much to be desired in their performance. The supervision of the accounts and actual execution of the work for the project, are more often than not, a cause of frustration due to cumbersome and outdated government procedures…Often a delay happens because the responsible officer is away on leave or on an overseas mission and has not left instructions or adequately briefed the officer left in charge. It is also not uncommon to find that project documents are lost in the filing system of the ministry concerned.”⁽⁸⁾

What this quotation indicates is that bureaucratic procedures are a source of frustration and financial recordkeeping and project implementation can be a problem. It indicates, and I have had this confirmed verbally by frustrated Kiribati Public servants, that some members of the Public Service are reluctant to provide information about a project or to leave paper work behind documenting the status of the project. The loss of project documents in the filing system frustrates both the aid donors and the aid recipients. All the points mentioned above have repercussions for the Kiribati National Archives.

As mentioned previously, the Kiribati National Archives was an Independence gift from the departing British colonial power. The Archives repository is situated in a two story, besa brick building in the administrative heart of Bairiki. The archives is on the ground floor, underneath the Lands Management Division. Physically the Archives is at risk. The building in which it is located is suffering from concrete cancer, a problem affecting many buildings in Tarawa. The Lands Management Division’s toilet exploded over the records stored in the ex-fumigation room. The compactus shelving is collapsing under its own weight, so much so that it is risky to try and retrieve material from the middle bays on your own. Rat and mouse faeces are a not too pleasant feature of the holdings. The electricity supply is such that the air conditioner in the repository is not on all the time, and the budget of the Archives does not allow for 24 hour cooling. The reception area of the Archives is no bigger than an Australian domestic bathroom, and it is common to step over unimane and uniane as they fall asleep waiting for a copy of their land records. The Archives has one over-charged fire extinguisher. There is no fire alarm and the fire tender operates on water pumped from the ocean. If the tide is out, you burn down. If the fire tender is at the airport, thirty kilometres away to greet the international flight, then you burn down

Fire is a great risk in the Republic of Kiribati, especially in the densely populated areas of Bairiki and Betio. Cooking on open fires occurs no more than ten metres outside the Archives, and smoking inside the building is still allowed. The physical risks to the building, let alone to the records are considerable.

The intellectual risk to the Archives is even more frightening than the thought that it might burn down in a tropical inferno. The Kiribati National Archives inherited a rich body of material from the Western Pacific Archives based in Suva, material that dealt with different aspects of running the colony. The people involved obviously were careful to ensure that the records were documented, boxed and returned to Kiribati. The records were not subjected to any in depth arrangement or description. It may very well be that the archival processes chosen were done so in order to be as simple and as sustainable as possible. The British Archivist in the immediate pre-Independence period and in the early post independence period, Richard Overy, now a resident in New Zealand, was a driving force behind the Public Records Act 1981. The Public Records Act, modelled closely upon Fijian legislation,⁽⁹⁾ is a piece of legislation that relies upon a strong and powerful Archives and an Archivist with a much higher profile in the Public Service than the Public Service bureaucracy allows. The Act is strong on what an Archivist can do theoretically, but the Public Service structure is such that it does not provide the Archivist with the resources or political clout to implement much of the rights and obligation that the legislation specifies. To illustrate this point, the entire budget for the Kiribati National Library and Archives for 1999 is a little over AUD133,000.⁽¹⁰⁾

The Kiribati National Archives is subservient to the Kiribati National Library, an area of concern raised by Peter Orlovich in his 1994 ASA conference paper titled ‘Archival Training in the Pacific’⁽¹¹⁾. The dual position of Chief Librarian and Archivist works as long as that individual has an understanding and appreciation of the importance of archives, and their different nature from library materials. For the past five years, this has not been the case. The Chief Librarian and Archivist, Kunei Etekiera, a former office holder in PARBICA, was suspended on half pay and was replaced with an officer whose substantive position was as the Librarian at the government high school. While I do not wish to question the professional capabilities of the school librarian, his temporary appointment for five years as the Chief Librarian/Archivist, did much to undermine the morale in the Kiribati National Archives. When I first visited the Archives in March 1997, I found the Archivist, Tarawa Natau to be depressed and professionally isolated. He expressed concern about the wisdom of appointing a Chief Librarian/Archivist who had never dealt with records. My visits soon indicated that the Archives was being physically and intellectually neglected. The microfilm reader and camera no longer worked, the typewriter no longer functioned. Records had been covered in sewerage in the Great Toilet Explosion and not treated. The Archives was being treated as the dumping ground for government records. There were no funds for consumables such as archives boxes or folders. Intellectual control of the records that were transferred into the Archives consisted of adding in pen to the major accession list titled Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony, Bibliography of Lists of GEIC records in the Western Pacific Archives. As indicted by its title, this is the original list provided in 1979. Descriptive comments have become more concise as time goes on, to the point where one now wonders what descriptive function it is that they perform. In the course of my Graduate Diploma I was asked to investigate how well the Kiribati National Archives descriptive systems measured up to ISAD(G). Needless, to say they did not.

Now the good news. Things are changing, slowly. Kunei Etekiera has been reinstated and his presence has reinvigorated the Archives. It is somewhat tidier and cleaner than before. Work is about to done on the Toilet Records. The Archives now has computers, used for word processing now, and the hope is in the future, an archival database will be purchased and implemented. There are moves to fix the microfilm reader and camera and to microfilm more of the Lands records so that the originals remain safe, protected and inviolate. The morale in the Archives has improved markedly and Tarawa no longer talks about retirement.

Whether Kunei can address the problem of government agencies not transferring records to the Archives after fifteen years is another problem. He is aware of the number of government agencies now setting up what they call their own ‘archives’ rather than transfer material to the Kiribati National Archives. The Lands Management Division is one such agency, and I must confess to agreeing with their decision to retain their records, especially given that the Kiribati National Archives remains as resource strapped as it is. It frankly does not have the space to store any more records.

Therefore there is a danger that records will continue to accumulate in government agencies, and without any disposal authorities or schedules, it is difficult to control what is kept for how long and what gets destroyed. There are no records managers in Kiribati, there are registry staff or records clerks, who do not have tenure in the agency and are moved on every few years. There is little understanding of the accountability function of government recordkeeping. The risks to adequate recordkeeping in the government sector are many. Some of the areas I have identified include:

• An oral tradition where skills/knowledge are passed down to those that earn the right
• Knowledge is Power therefore Knowledge may not be documented in case others access that knowledge
• Actions may be documented but misfiled due to the lack of a clear understanding of departmental interrelationships and functions
• Recordkeeping systems that have eroded since implemented by the British. The shell remains, but cracks are starting to appear
• Lack of corporate memory
• No disposal authorities or consolidated government wide procedures concerning the value of records. (Appraisal is ad hoc)
• The introduction of electronic recordkeeping with limited data quality checks, maintenance of records or migration of records. The abandonment of such systems and reversal to manual systems when the implementers of the electronic recordkeeping systems depart the agency.
• The belief that records created and kept on the computer are less likely to be tampered with and are more robust and resilient than paper records.
• The physical risks of damage from cockroaches, rats, rust, and mould
• The physical risk of fire and the inability to suppress a fire in the Archives or government offices.

Nonetheless, the cultural risk to the Republic of Kiribati is probably not as dire as it might seem. For the oral culture is strong and is being captured by Nei Tabera Ni Kai, (The I-Kiribati Video Resource Unit). It is a visual and oral culture that translates well to video technology. It is a culture where performance is important. The I-Kiribati have not reached a point where they wish to document their history by writing narratives and researching aspects of their history. Some I-Kiribati do, but they are an extremely small minority. Historical analysis is not taught in schools. There is no investigative journalism. There is little call on the Archives by I-Kiribati for any thing other than Lands records, High Court records and birth, death and marriage records. These records establish a citizen’s rights to the precious resource of land. The majority of records currently in the Archives are the records of the colonial administration, and while they are interesting records and they document some priceless gems of colonial life, they are not viewed as being relevant to the I-Kiribati or their way of life. It is a great pity because the I-Kiribati are in those records, and the way that the British treated them is also documented in those records.

The Republic of Kiribati is small but the problems of providing adequate recordkeeping are large. It is not just a question of an I-Matang archivist coming in and ‘fixing’ the Archives. It a question of developing and implementing a sustainable and meaningful recordkeeping system across the entire public sector. It is a question of engaging the I-Kiribati people intellectually and emotionally so that they have a sense of ownership. I believe that Australian and New Zealand recordkeeping associations and societies as well as the national Archives of Australia and of New Zealand are ideally placed to take a more active role in the Pacific region. It is undeniable that Australia and New Zealand are the big girls and boys in the Pacific region. We can provide the recordkeeping theory, the organizational expertise, and training for Pacific archivists. We can assist with consumables. We can assist with the practicalities of archival management; we can educate, train and get involved. What we should not do is to sit back and assume that all recordkeepers across the Pacific region, whatever their titles maybe, are all going to enter into the new Millenium concerned with functional requirements for electronic recordkeeping. For many government recordkeepers in developing countries, that is simply not the case.

Appendix 1

I-Kiribati words and their meanings

I-Matang: foreigner or expatriate, usually European or Caucasian

I-Kiribati: native person or people of Kiribati; term used since Independence.

(Pre-Independence term is Gilbertese.)

Kiakia: traditional raised house

Unimane: old man or association of wise and respected old men

Uniane: a respected old woman

Karaki aika Tabakau: sacred texts with a fixed form that deal with wisdom and know-how or instructions.

Endnotes

(1) Grimble, A (1952) A Pattern of Islands, Reprint Society, London.
Grimble , A (1957) Return to the Islands, John Murray, London

(2) The I-Kiribati language does not have the full English alphabet. The Letters Ti together make a sound equivelent to the “s” in sun. As there is no “H” I have transliterated Sir Hilary into one word and given it an approximate I-Kiribati spelling. Teretia is Thérèsa; pronounced similarly to the French version of the name.

(3) Delbridge, A et al, (1997) The Macquarie Dictionary, Macquarie Library, Macquarie University, p.684

(4) Fakhfakh, M (1995) Emergency plan for dealing with accumulations of records and archives in government services: A RAMP study. [on-line]

Available WWW: http://www.unesco.org/webworld/ramp/html/r9504e/r9504e00.htm), point 1.1

(5) AusAID, (1997?) Country Brief: Kiribati 1997-1998 [on-line]

Available WWW: http://www.ausaid.gov.au/country/spac/kiribati.pdf

(6) See especially, Uriam, K (1995) In their own words: History and Society in Gilbertese Oral Tradition, Journal of Pacific History Canberra and Grimble, A (1989) Tungaru Traditions, Writings on the Atoll Culture of the Gilbert Islands, University of Hawaii, Honolulu.

(7) Uriam, K (1995) p40

(8) Iuta, T in Van Trease, (ed) Atoll Politics: the Republic of Kiribati, University of Canterbury and University of the South Pacific, Christchurch and Suva. p333

(9) Personal email correspondence from Richard Overy. My thanks go to Richard Overy and Bruce Burne for their comments and interest.

(10) National Economic Planning Office, (1999) Government of Kiribati 1999 Budget, Maneaba ni Maungatabu, Bairiki, p.125

(11) Orlovich, P (1994) Archival Training in the Pacific Region in Australian Society of Archivists, (1994) Proceedings of Australian Society of Archivists Conference, Australian Society of Archivists Inc, O’Connor.