Depends on how you look at it,  is a phrase that many other people identify with and Papua New Guineans more so, because we have a massive number of ways to go about doing (900+ tribes) and saying (800+ languages) things. This in itself is a challenge in ‘building a nation’ but we have managed to do just that, despite the challenges. In the last 6000 years we have inhibited the lands that we now call Papua New Guinea (PNG), we traded, shared, taught, cared for and lived in harmony with our neighbors, in fact  mother-nature is the only one that has taken many lives at one moment.

Yet certain people from certain 'real' nations have the nerve to say that we are poor, ignorant, lazy, like this dimwit on Martyn Namorong’s article in PNG Mine Watch who commented: “Yea, try telling the people of PNG to get their f*cking act together and become a real nation. Sad to have to call it like it is. But its almost as if the people of PNG don’t know what it means to be a nation…”

So-we are not a real nation. What constitutes a real nation? Those certain people believe a ‘real’ nation is a nation where everyone at one stage of their life, sits in a classroom and learns things that may not be relevant to their future lives. Where the citizens earn money so they can buy ‘things’ (that are not in the least bit necessary) to living a fulfilling, harmonious and healthy life. Where everyone strives to be a better version of themselves (or some other fake spiritualism like that) and not care that in their effort to better themselves they’re ignoring people around them who could genuinely help them to be a better person. These people think that a certain location, type of house, electricity, water coming to your home in pipes, vehicles for transport, certain dress standards and certain ways of speaking should be a ‘standard’ of living!!!

Yet in PNG history, we DO NOT have stories of one tribe or clan completely suppressing, brutalizing and/or wiping out another tribe or clan. We DO NOT have stories of one clan or tribe enforcing their faith through bribery, intimidation, misinformation, or threat on another clan or tribe. We DO NOT have stories of one clan or tribe completely annihilating another clan or tribe simply because they wanted their land. Even to this day, we respect, treasure and look after our elderly, a new mother is given advice, support, love and is rarely left on her own in the first months of motherhood - we seldom get post natal depression! Children have a lot more than two people that provide for, love, care and parent them.  We share what we have (and yes, what we don’t have too) and we know how to be a family - be together without having to gather in front of an idiot-box-television.

These so called ‘real’ nations preach about education, democracy, equal and fair rights for all and freedom from all forms of oppression. Yet they are not educated enough to realize that their enforced democracy does not work for all of us, and is not necessarily what is good for us. We have always had a way of organizing ourselves so that everyone benefits from resources. We have always had our own ways of dealing with wrong doers that not only made them pay for their mistakes but healed whatever relationship was broken when that wrong or crime was committed.

There is one word that can pretty much sum up most Papua New Guineans philosophy to life, this one word has many meanings and there are many ways of 'doing' this word, which determines whether it’s positive or negative *pasin!!! *Pasin em bikpela samting! And it worked for more than 4 000 years before outsiders came and lied to us that their ways were better than *pasin bilong yumi.

It’s about time we told those ‘real’ nations – GET REAL!!