ABSTRACT
Blackbirders used to slip into harbours and lagoons with promises of good things over the horizon . . . [they] would lure people aboard ships, seize them and sail them off into a life of slavery. These days the techniques are different, but the outcome is the same: white men are grabbing Pacific Islanders, not for the sugar cane fields of Queensland, or the mines of Peru, but for the rugby grounds of the old colonialists.
