Hi, my name is Patrick, and I am a 12-year-old Samoan. In my opinion, racism means the world will never be equal. People will always have opinions and judgements on other people. Today I want to talk about slavery and racism. Blackbirding was used to describe the practice of coercing people to work as labourers, usually through force. For kids that didn’t understand that, basically, they would trick us into coming on their boats and then steal us and sell us to other countries where we would pick cotton and other products. Blackbirding was very common in the Pacific in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century. The islanders were first introduced into Queensland in 1847 for employment on cotton plantations. By 1900, more than 60,000 islanders had been recruited in a manner that often amounted to kidnapping. Now let’s talk about Kanakas. Kanakas were workers from various Pacific Islands employed in British colonies, such as British Columbia, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and Queensland in the 19th and early 20th centuries. They also worked in California and Chile. ‘’Kanaka", originally referred only to native Hawaiians, from their own name for themselves, kānaka ʻōiwi or kānaka maoli, in the Hawaiʻian language.
