“Wantok System” Defines whether or not I am Really a Melanesian Person

Many Melanesian leaders and thinkers have been brainwashed to think that “Wantok System” is nepotism, and therefore Wantok System should be wiped out from Melanesian peoples in all aspects of life.

I argue that it is “Wantok System that defines Melanesian peoples as Melanesians”. I normally say,

If you hate Wantok System, then you should definitely call yourself non-Melanesian, a foreigner in Melanesian body and Melanesian soil. That means that you hate your father, you refuse your mother, your deny your grand-father, you undermine your grand-mother. That is a curse to yourself. No humans ever done that. All humans do recognize their ancestral norms, values and systems and they fight for it to be recognized, protected and promoted.

Our Melanesian ancestors, from Raja Ampat Islands to Wallis-Futuna Islands have left us this invaluable asset for us to nurture, protect and promote, for our own sake and for the sake of our future generations.

When speaking to classes in western countries, Karoba always argue that Wantok System is a complex system of life and living, which Melanesian define themselves as a human race and human entity on this planet Earth.

Wantok System has many positive values. We can mention three of them here:

1. Wantok System is the only social-building for Melanesians that identify and define us as social-being. Imagine Melanesians outside or without this system? We will be individualistic individuals who live lonely in a crowded society such as those in western culture.
   
   We need our family relations, our kinships, our tribal connections in place in order to keep us live as social beings. Wantok System is the only tool that keep us from going too wild in our individualistic individualism that modernization brings to humanity all over the world.
   
2. Wanok System is the only tool that we Melanesians use to keep our moral standards. Religious values add to this original values inherent to our Melanesia-hood.
   
3. Wantok System is the only tool economic activities appropriate for scattered and isolated  as well as socially tribal Melanesians . We Melanesians invest in human beings, we practice social-business very well. We are social capitalist. And we need to develop our Wantok System of Economy in order to teach the world that economy is about food, and it is about food for human beings, and first of all food for ourselves, our families, our close relatives and then our extended families and finally for everyone in this world. It does not support food for greed, nor for individualist ambitions.
   
   We should teach the world a comprehensive Melanesian philosophical statement made by our former prominent Melanesian philosopher, Bernard Narakobi’s secret of life: “live well, love well, have something good for every person and die a happy death“

Only Wantok System will help us live well. Only Wantok System that help us love well. Only Wantok System that can have something good for every person. Only within Wantok System we do experience a happy death.