Thinking Like an Archipelago

I recently returned from an international islands conference at Rutgers University that I attended with some skepticism. Eric Hopkins, North Haven’s great painter and glass sculptor, and I came from Maine. The conference aimed to bring together a small handful of writers, artists and academic historians and anthropologists from disparate parts of the planet’s islands – the Caribbean, Hawaii and the southern Pacific, Malta and Prince Edward Island, Scotland’s Hebrides, the Swedish and Danish archipelagoes and the Maine islands to share experiences.

What does such a geographically disparate group really have in common apart from some bland generalities about islands and islandness, I wondered? As I learned, Maine islanders have a great deal in common with island cultures around the globe. The stories from the Caribbean and many Pacific islands, for example, demonstrate how island culture has often been appropriated by “continentals” who do not understand or appreciate indigenous island culture – hence there are two historical traditions, the well organized written history of colonial settlers and the nuanced but largely inaccessible oral histories and traditions of those who pre-dated and served them.

Mainland pressures, primarily in the form of relentlessly increasing tourism, continually squeeze the natural resource based economies that once sustained island life. Fishing is in decline nearly everywhere due to the increasing size and sophistication of fishing vessels that have depleted local stocks. With the decline of fishing, other maritime traditions of boatbuilding and navigation become more and more alienated from more and more island cultures, as well as the kinds of experiences that reinforce independence and other maritime competencies. Agriculture is nearly extinct, replaced by expensive imports of food. Young islanders leave the islands as their communities become more dependent on the stressed economics of seasonal enterprises. All these pressures are damning by themselves, but also become more psychologically debilitating when hordes of tourists are sold a packaged island experience with the lure of “remoteness” and the prospect of solitude where there is less and less of either.

But I also learned that islands have developed many responses and strategies, similar to what Maine islanders have evolved in response to the pressures and threats to island culture. Caribbean islanders have been collecting and recording oral histories that reinforce the pride of place and capture important stories in island libraries that otherwise might pass into oblivion. Islanders off Sweden in Gotland and Res are investing in local schools to halt the drift of young island families to the mainland. Determined mothers start new schools or new programs the old timers grumpily declare will never succeed, but succeed they have. And islanders have effectively organized themselves politically and mobilized friends on the mainland, as Monhegan recently did, to help them win their fights against more powerful interests.

The stories of Maine’s 15 year-round island communities that Eric and I shared at this conference resonated deeply with the stories of island communities from around the world. The good news is that Maine’s islands are actually well known and well regarded, especially among islanders on both sides of the North Atlantic. Linda Greenlaw’s Lobster Chronicles, for instance, (not The Hungry Ocean) is must reading for islanders throughout the Swedish archipelago. Who would have thought?

Here in Maine, the newly organized Island Coalition in which ten island communities have sent official representatives to several organizing meetings to develop a common voice on island issues may represent something of a turning point. Islands are, by definition on the periphery. Based on their numbers alone, islanders rarely win important political battles. But when bigger issues are at stake and when islanders speak with common voices, their very smallness can result in much more favorable outcomes much more political power than their small numbers alone would otherwise generate.

In this sense, the Island Coalition may represent a growing consciousness of what island communities and island culture have to offer the world; it is a shift from thinking like an island to thinking like an archipelago. And Maine islands are in the international vanguard.

Philip Conkling is president of the Island Institute.