By Zohl de Ishtar
Ainu Moshiri, now known as Hokkaido, has been the home of the Ainu people for at least 7000 years. When the Japanese arrived in the 16th century, first to set up a penal colony and then to take the land for farming, the Ainu resisted. Their rebellions, like others throughout the Pacific, were put down, and Japanese migrants flooded into the island.
In 1868 Japan seized Ainu Moshiri and renamed it "Hokkaido" in 1889. The Hokkaido Former Aboriginal Protection Act was imposed in 1899 with the intention of assimilating the Ainu into Japanese society. Ainu language and culture were banned.
But the Ainu have survived, and in 1991 Japan acknowledged to the United Nations that the Ainu were indigenous to the land, the first peoples.
The Japanese government has refused to acknowledge the Ainu as indigenous people, however. It is following the advice of a 1996 internal report which warned that if the Ainu were recognised as indigenous people, they would take the opportunity to reassert their sovereignty, claim land rights and the restoration of their resources and call for compensation for the crimes of colonisation.
The director of the Ainu Association of Hokkaido, Tokuhei Akibe, visited Sydney recently, where he attended a lunch hosted by Kathy Malera-Bandjalan (formerly Kum-Sing) of the Malera people. On a cultural exchange, a traditional Ainu ceremony of introduction to the spirits of the land was followed by Aboriginal dances and the presentation of a didgeridoo for the Ainu Cultural Centre.
"The Ainu have resisted the Japanese since the seventh century. If you want to know why, then ask the Japanese. The Ainu resisted because the Japanese fought with the Ainu, pushing us further north, taking our land", Tokuhei Akibe said.
"In 1899 the Japanese created the 'Former Aboriginal Act', which only stopped last year. The aim of the law was to make my people do jobs like farming. That was not our way.
"The Japanese people were doing farm work in Hokkaido for 30 years before the Ainu did. So they took the good land and the Ainu got only the rough, rocky land. The government gave equipment and food and money to the Japanese people, but they didn't give it to Ainu people. The Ainu were discriminated against. So that law was not good for the Ainu."
Akibe pointed out that the Ainu are a quite different people from the Japanese. "We have a different language, different culture, different way of life, so we don't want to be Japanese. We want to be recognised as indigenous people. We are human beings. We have a right to be a separate group.
"The Japanese last year recognised that we used to live on the land before the Japanese came. But they do not recognise us as an indigenous people. We want that recognition. We are indigenous to the land.
"When the Japanese government recognised Ainu as a culture, we were able to set up the Ainu Cultural Centre. We are working to make our culture strong again. Ainu culture hasn't been transferred to each generation; that is why I am speaking Japanese.
"We want to tell as many of our people as possible about Ainu culture so that they can realise their culture, so that they can be proud of it."
The Ainu's demands include "a place in the political arena, in government, for an Ainu representative, both in local and national government. We would like to make some politicians who agree with us.
"And we want land rights. About 120 years ago the Japanese government said that Hokkaido was a national land and they took it, suddenly. The Ainu want the land to be given back — not all the land, just where Ainu used to live.
"The Japanese government is scared that if they let some people have their land then they will lose the whole of Hokkaido. But we do not want the whole of Hokkaido. We only want those places which belonged to the Ainu."
Akibe said that other indigenous peoples appealing to the United Nations for their rights might help the Ainu to get their rights.
"It is important to us to know what other indigenous people are doing in the region", he said. "It helps us to have strength.
"We would like to have an international office in our cultural centre to make it easier for us to communicate with other people. We would like to work more with other Pacific people and struggles, but we are restrained because the information is always in English — that's the hardest thing."
[Zohl de Ishtar is author of Daughters of the Pacific, Spinifex Press, 1994. Keiko Kikuyama translated the interview.]