One who paints with earth – Vanuatu

I’ve been remiss in my postings of mp3s lately, so here is one for you all.

From Indigenous Resistance records, comes a track about resistance in the South Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu performed and composed by Micheal Franti and Carl Young (Spearhead). I lived for a year with a Ni-Vanuatu, John Damasing Salong, who was from Ambrym. John was at Trent University in the late 1980s with us and we had a great time together. I picked up some Bislama, the Vanuatu pidgin language and we spent many days and night singing, talking and cooking together. AT one point, encouraged by the success of the Jamaican bobsled team at the 1988 Olympics, John had the idea of going out for the 1992 Winter Olympics as the Vanuatu cross-country ski team. It never happened, but that was the kind of guy he was back then.

John came along with me to some pow wows and Ojibway ceremonies and he was always looking for connections with indigenous folks here. Once we sat around a drum with my friend James Whetung and talked about how to build a smoke house. John immediately started thinking about how he could bring traditional Ojibway smokehouse technology back to Ambrym to preserve food without relying on electricity.

Not surprisingly, John returned to Vanuatu to work in development and cultural and environmental preservation. So this track goes out to him, and hopefully the next time he Googles himself, he’ll drop by and leave a note here.