Through Women's Eyes: Life In A Coral Eden
By Marilyn Hempel
Photographs by Taylor Miller
In April and May 2003, Monty and Marilyn Hempel took eight American students from the University of Redlands to study "women in sustainable development" in the tiny Pacific island nation of Palau. The Population Press sponsored two of the students to create a photo and essay book.
The students met with legislators and government officials-including the President and Vice-President-as well as environmentalists, scientists, and local citizens to learn about the opportunities and obstacles that Palauans face in their effort to balance their traditional way of life with the onslaught of economic globalization and the spread of western culture.
For many reasons, Palau is a fascinating place to engage in a sustainable development project. In this traditional matrilineal society, both the connection to the land and the concern for sustainable living is nurtured through the female line. Women hold and inherit the wealth and the land, a precious commodity in this water world. Women elders choose the chiefs, and may also remove them. Men are the chiefs, and they impose and enforce the laws, but authority comes from the women. Since its independence in 1996, Palau's national government has been democratically elected. It shares power with traditional clans.
In ancient Palau, while women held the sole power of choosing the chief, they could never become a chief. In modern Palau, they are not only choosing the President, but may become the President.
The election of Sandra Sumang Pierantozzi as Palau's fist female Vice-President and Minister of Health, is a visible demonstration of the changing power of women. She spoke candidly with us of her struggle to achieve esteem in the eyes of her fellow male politicians. Men offer to do the tough parts of her job. She reminds them, " I'm a big girl. I can do this myself."
She feels the strain of being the first woman to rise so high in an elected office. It's not easy living under close scrutiny and being a role model. She spends a great deal of time speaking to young women, in particular, trying to explain the reality of her job and the demanding work that greets her every day.
Palau lies between Micronesia and The Philippines. It is a breathtakingly beautiful Coral Eden, consisting of over 300 islands (only 9 of these are inhabited) rising up out of a turquoise blue lagoon protected by coral reefs. The reefs still support a stunning variety of life.
Palau feels great pressures from the outside world, from corporations who wish to overfish its waters, who wish to log its forests, who wish to build large resorts and golf courses for the wealthy-and from the very real threat of ocean rise and coral death due to global climate change. Palau's reefs are its life blood. Many Palauans realize that their very survival is at stake, even as they grapple with the desire to improve their standard of living and enter modern society.
The Palau national government has ratified both a population policy and a sustainable development policy. President Remengesau and Vice-President Pierantozzi are committed to sustainable development, and have indeed been brave enough to reject some foreign get-rich-quick schemes, such as oil exploration near their pristine northern islands.
With a fertility rate of 2.5 and 28% of its population under age 15, Palau needs improved family planning services and education. Improving health care is a top priority for Vice-President Pierantozzi, as the islanders continue to struggle against outbreaks of disease, most recently, the threat of SARS. Palau suffers from a "brain drain" epidemic as well. Palauans must go abroad to get a university education. Once educated, they often choose to remain outside the country. There is also social strain from an unstemmed tide of Filipino immigrants, filling cheap labor positions. The government estimates that as much as one-quarter of the people now living in Palau are from The Philippines.
What lessons are to be learned here? What insights gained? We introduced all these interconnected sustainability issues to the students. The students looked into the eyes of the Palauan people. This is their response, in photographs and words.
"I shudder to think of the example we are setting for others, Palauan kids for instance, who watch our pseudo-culture projected through the television and yearn for our lifestyles because they do see the underbelly of our western lives. Anthony Kiedis interjects in a song appropriately titled "Californication": "Space may be the final frontier, but it's made in a Hollywood basement..." Perhaps young Palauans did not yet see behind the scenes, and understand the consequences we have had to pay for all of our "progress", the often irreversible environmental damage we have inflicted on our land, the stress we have put on ourselves, and the more elusive but perhaps more significant price we are paying for the degradation of our internal faculties, the devaluation of our intuitions.
Culture is inherently based on changing tradition; like running water, culture must to an extent, keep flowing to retain a sense of vitality and avoid stagnation. Palauans must modernize to ensure their welfare of their people. But how? The question keeps haunting us all. How do you become part of the modern world and still preserve environmental and cultural integrity? The issue at times seems like the Gordian knot, so tangled, with so many loose ends."
- Joanna Arlukiewicz
The Pop!ulation Press welcomes your comments:
