At Nesian Kulture we do not sort Pacific people by borders. We recognise them by identity, ancestry, family and connection. Bougainville is one of the clearest reasons why.
Here is the fuller answer to the question in the title, with the history that makes the flag mean what it means.
Where Bougainville sits
Bougainville is an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea, a cluster of islands to the east of the PNG mainland.
Geographically and culturally it sits closer to the Solomon Islands than to Port Moresby. Many Bougainvilleans feel that affinity strongly, and it is part of why a distinct identity has held there for so long.
Panguna
In the 1960s one of the largest open-cut copper and gold mines in the world was opened at Panguna, run by a forerunner of Rio Tinto.
At its peak the mine made up a large share of Papua New Guinea's export earnings. Bougainvilleans saw little of that revenue, watched their land and rivers damaged by the operation, and felt dispossessed on their own island.
That grievance did not stay quiet.
The war
In 1988 it broke into armed conflict. The Bougainville Revolutionary Army against Papua New Guinea forces, with foreign mercenaries brought in later.
The mine closed in 1989 and has never reopened.
The fighting lasted until a ceasefire in 1998. Estimates of the dead run from 15,000 to as high as 20,000, up to a tenth of the population. It was the worst conflict anywhere in Oceania since the Second World War, and much of the dying was from a blockade that cut off medicine and basic supplies.
Most people outside the Pacific have never heard of it.
The referendum
The 2001 Bougainville Peace Agreement ended the war, set up the Autonomous Bougainville Government, and promised a vote on independence.
That vote came in late 2019. Of 181,067 votes cast, 98.31% chose independence over greater autonomy.
The result is non-binding. It has to be negotiated with Papua New Guinea and ratified by its parliament, and that process is still unfinished. But the will of the people was not ambiguous. It was one of the most decisive independence votes ever recorded anywhere.
What the flag carries
The Bougainville flag centres on an upe, the traditional woven headdress worn by young men at initiation, in red, blue, green, black and white.
So the symbol at the heart of it is not a political party or a slogan. It is a cultural object, a mark of coming of age. That is the point. For Bougainvilleans the flag is identity first, and everything else second.
Why we include it
When we include the Bougainville flag, it is not a comment on the negotiations between Bougainville and Papua New Guinea. That is for Bougainvilleans to lead, not for a clothing brand in Australia to referee.
We include it because a people who survived that, and voted the way they did, should never be left off a Pacific map. Recognition is the least they are owed.
To our Bougainville family
If you are Bougainvillean, or connected through family and ancestry, you should never feel invisible within Pacific representation.
Your history is not a footnote to Papua New Guinea's. It is yours.
One Family. Many Islands.
Referendum result and vote count from the Bougainville Referendum Commission via Al Jazeera. Conflict and Panguna history from Conciliation Resources and The Diplomat.
