Kidnapped

The poem ‘Kidnapped’ by Ruperake Petaia is a very powerful and mood swaying piece. What I believe the poem is about is the education being supplied by the white people. I think this poem is against the education as the author doesn’t feel it is a part of his culture. The author talks about being kidnapped by “western philosophers armed with glossy pictured textbooks”. What I get from this line is the idea of the white people coming in with their rich things like textbooks thinking they were smart and powerful with their BA’s and MA’s and forcing the islander children to learn what white people learnt in the way they learnt it trying to make the islanders smart. The author also mentions the parents having to pay lots of money for their kids to keep learning.  This is very new and different for pacific islanders as at this time they were used to living off the land and their society wasn’t about money.  At the end of the poem Ruperake Petaia mentions after 15 years all he got was a piece of paper. This gives out the idea that all those years of work and money spend he got nothing out of it. I think after reading this poem it really makes you think about the way white people came into the pacific islands and took over think they were better than the islanders just because they had money. They ruined the children’s island upbringings and wasted all the money those family’s had leaving them in poverty.