How to kill inferiority complex in Papua New Guinea

Until recently, most Papua New Guinean societies were characterised by a patronising culture where questioning the authority has been unheard of. Our big man culture fostered such a deep-seated mentality that no member of the community is bigger than the one individual figurehead.

This person, usually the tribal chief, would be law unto himself and anyone who was seen to be not acting in accordance with his rules was made to face drastic consequences and even death.

Such a culture suited our traditional ‘enclosed’ societies at that time. I use enclosed for want
of a better word to describe a social grouping whose political, social and geographical
boundaries were relatively limited.

Tribal and clan hostilities mostly over geographical territory and land ownership were common occurrences then and so it made sense to organise ourselves in the manner that we did. There was a great need for an individual figurehead, the big man, who was allowed to rule almost like a dictator for the greater good of our individual tribes and clans. Such a system ensured social order prevailed within our little tribal nations at that time.

Then came the intruders with their salt, axe heads, laplaps, firearms and a new belief system. They used these basic yet powerful tools with great effect and slowly went about creating a
new layer of social structure within our traditional cultures and imposed themselves right at
the top of the power pyramid.

They assumed the roles of our social, political and economic powers and also attained recognition and acceptance of their status as the new ‘powers’ in our social hierarchy. Our awestruck ancestors were too naïve to resist this new social imposition in a similar fashion to the Maoris of New Zealand. But our social structure was and still is quite different to the Maoris in that we are a country of more than 700 different tribes, unlike them, and so we could not put up a united resistance as they did.

So we ended up accepting their ways and allowed them to conveniently substitute themselves as the authority in the new social order. The development of derogatory phrases such as ‘yesa masta’, ‘bos boi’, ‘kanaka’ and so on in the colonial era are symptoms of this rather arrogant
imposition.

Because of our traditional big man social structure, it is in our sub conscious mind
to be a submissive people and the white man simply played along this existing cultural reality
to impose himself and caused as to submit to him. The acceptance of this new power has
sadly remained in our collective national intuition to this day.

And this is where the problem lies for us. I’ve always believed that the main reason our
country has made little progress in the last three decades, despite the large amounts of wealth we’ve had at our disposal, was because Papua New Guineans were too afraid to speak up, challenge the status quo and offer alternatives to issues.

For instance, I work in a professional environment where indigenous Papua New Guineas are too scared to challenge their expatriate colleagues. And if a fellow indigenous person is brave and intelligent enough to do so, they turn around and see him or her in a very negative light and brand him or her a ‘big head’. If this isn’t self defeating, then I don’t know what is.

My experience so far is that this problem is deeply rooted among Papua New Guineans, and
unless we break free from this repression of inferiority complex, we will never ever get
anywhere. We should respect people’s position and authority but should not be afraid to stand
up and hold our own regardless of whether that person is white, black, yellow or coloured. I
acknowledge that the ‘yesa masta’ culture has its roots in the way our traditional big man
culture is organised. But times have changed and our social hierarchy has changed substantially.

The new big man in the imaginary social structure in our mindsets today is not the same big man of our forefathers. He is not the great warrior that defeated our enemies and protected our tribes to warrant our unequivocal admiration, respect, trust and submission. So we must move on and move away from this delusion that someone is right simply because he or she has different looks than us and, therefore, appears to us to be the big man.

I have seen great indigenous talents wasting away and not reaching their full potentials
because they choose to be meek and submissive. When we go chickening around as individuals, our group, organisation and society misses out on something because we don’t get to consider things from a different perspective.

We narrow our world view and cause ourselves to be vulnerable to changing circumstances. In other words, our collective innovative abilities are being severely handicapped because we keep on doubting ourselves and are struggling badly to part with inferiority complex.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not advocating insubordination. Insubordination is born out of
arrogance and it is when someone deliberately chooses to not follow lawful directions
although he or she knows it is the right thing to do.

There is a fine line between arrogance and self confidence, and we can be confident without being arrogant. If you think there is a better way of doing something, then bring it up rather than saying ‘yesa masta’ and simply doing what you are being told to do.

Inferiority complex is ironically being reinforced in our consciousness today through our
education system. We are being taught predominantly about the arrival of aliens as ‘the’
history of our country. And it is not. All our history text books are filled with sketches and
photographs of steamships, bearded missionaries and ‘discoverers’ and their flags and maps.
But where are the stories about our true heritage?

Why can we not learn our true history about how our ancestors lived for thousands of years before the aliens arrived? Why can’t someone teach us about how good we have always been as architects, builders, agriculturalists and seafarers before the aliens arrived? Why can’t someone teach our children about our true identities as Melanesians?

Knowing our true history and how good we have always been will free us of the bondage of
inferiority complex and empower us to move forward with confidence. Please stop teaching
us this nonsense that some bearded loser came in some fancy vessel all those years ago and
‘discovered’ us and raised some stupid flag to ‘claim’ us.

We are a country of indigenous people and we must know our own indigenous history first
before learning about how other people illegally intruded into our lives and caused us to
unnecessarily submit to them.

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