Voices from Yaga Village, PNG were presented at the biennial international development conference where Mrs Lorna Saguba presented her Mana Pacific 'Rising Stories' case study
DevNet conferences have been held biennially since 1998. Aotearoa New Zealand's largest, regular conference on international development, provides a great opportunity for people from Aotearoa, the Pacific and elsewhere to learn from each. 2024's conference was hosted at the University of Otago in Dunedin from December 4-6, focusing on Shifting Landscapes of Development: Future Possibilities for Change.
Mrs Lorna Saguba from Papua New Guinea, with maternal links to Yaga Village people, was one of five presentations for the Mobility Justice session at the conference. Lorna's presentation "Rising Stories: Resettling of Patnav Clan Case Study" expanded on her work on the case study Resettlement of Patnav clan families in Yaga village on Umboi Island, Siassi, Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea. The case study was part of the larger Rising Stories project investigating climate (im)mobility in the Pacific through multigenerational family stories.
One thing that stood out for Lorna at the conference was the concentration on small island nations. As Papua New Guinea is the largest island in the Pacific, "People don't really think PNG will have issues with relocation. But in Papua New Guinea we have traditional land, you can't just move people, it is not as easy as people think." You can't just move people from one place to another, without taking into consideration tradition and peoples' skills. An analogy she gavie was moving people accustomed to planting rice to a place where it's a struggle for rice to grow and expecting them to know how to plant taro.
Lorna found the conference very empowering, a space to share through Pacific stories. The session on Mobilities Justice, which Lorna presented at, encouraged a move away from European-centred views towards listening to indigenous voices and grassroots perspectives, and engagement with cultural diversity. While Lorna said she was both nervous and excited going into the first day of the conference, she found, "You don't always know that you can do something until you try."
Congratulations to Lorna Saguba for her contribution to the conference, respresenting Mana Pacific, and for shedding light on the intricate issues surrounding community resettlement in Papua New Guinea.
