Word: papua
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Gough Whitlam and Britain's Prince Charles stood at attention with a crowd of 10,000 in a Port Moresby football stadium, the Australian flag was hauled down for the last time and replaced by the black, red and gold standard of the world's newest nation, Papua New Guinea. Said solemn Michael Somare, 39, a policeman's burly son who is the new Prime Minister: "This is just the beginning. Now we must stand on our own two feet and work harder than ever before...
Bush Pilots. That is an understatement. The football-field ceremony ended more than 90 years of mostly benevolent foreign rule by, in turn, Germany, Britain and Australia. Except for a few years during World War II, when Japanese troops overran much of the island, Australia had governed Papua-the island's southeastern quadrant-since 1906, and adjoining northeastern New Guinea since World War I under League of Nations and U.N. mandates. Prodded initially by the U.N. and by its own dislike of the colonial image, the Whitlam government fairly rushed the reluctant colony into self-rule...
...size (181,000 sq. mi.) and population (almost 3 million), Papua New Guinea is roughly equivalent to New Zealand, but there the resemblance ends. The population is scattered among more than 700 tribes, each of which has its own dialect. Most of the people hack out meager livings as subsistence-level farmers in remote rural areas. The country has no railroads and few paved roads, relying for transportation on bush pilots and 476 air strips...
Somare bristles at the suggestion that Papua New Guinea may not be ready for independence. "We are civilized in our own way," he says tersely. "We are a people with our own pride and culture. Are we primitive because our women don't cover their breasts and our men don't wear trousers? This is our way. This is our society...
...Somare also must deal with budding separatism on a larger scale. Papuans, for instance, charge that Australian aid-$760 million over the past five years-has gone mostly to New Guinea. Tempers grew so hot over this issue recently that a two-day riot broke out at the annual Papua v. New Guinea soccer match. On the island of Bougainville, which is part of the new nation, there is a growing feeling that the islanders should get a greater share of the $150 million in profits expected this year from an immense Australian-operated copper mine...