An iPhone application where the aim is to kill off islanders has been criticised as racist by members of the Pacific Island community.

Pocket God opens with a “meet the islanders” screen, before brown-skinned men wearing hula skirts are shown on an island with a volcano in the background.

To score points, the player kills off each islander by drowning them in the sea, shooting them with lightning or burning them in the volcano.

A blogger on Spasifikmag.com said: “This game is very racist, yes. But what I can’t get over is people finding joy out of killing people … It’s really scary to think that people – and most likely young people – can use the game to torture and kill.”

Karlo Mila-Schaaf, a Tongan currently studying for a PhD in sociology, said the game was offensive and degrading. “Virtual torture of Pacific Islanders is where I draw the line.

The makers of the product say that it doesn’t represent any race or nationality.

“But it is fairly clear that these supposedly non-human islanders with their brown skin, grass skirts and Easter Island statues in the background are not aliens from outer space.”

 

Created by Bolt Creative – based in California, San Francisco – the application costs US$0.99 cents and has proved popular.

Pattie Lees from Mount Isa. I’ve been here about 32 years. I’m considered a transplant, you know, you’ve got to actually be born here sometimes before you’re accepted but my original thing is on the coast. My mother’s a Torres Strait Islander, Murray Islander. My father’s an Irishman. So I’m just happy to, you know, be me I think.

I was actually invited to, down to Canberra, one of the hundreds. Rang up and said, “would you like to?” like that. And I declined, which was a bit of a shock to them and I said, “no I just want to offer solidarity with a lot of people I know that were similarly involved in that way.”

………….

We weren’t responsible for what happened back then but we are responsible for the future. And even just yesterday when I come home my little grand-daughter’s sitting on my lap. And she had a beautiful t-shirt on which made me really. She had a little t-shirt on said, “save the future for me.” Now isn’t that what it’s all about?

The problem with Dodson’s idea is that it is essentially divisive. What Dodson, and other leaders both black and white, need to do is to take a page out of President Obama’s book.

Obama talks about the past only in terms of how problems have been overcome, and will be overcome. Obama, like Martin Luther King, seeks to include people in the American mainstream and not to perpetuate separate identities and histories. 

It would make more sense to include reconciliation and indigenous Australians in all major national celebrations, symbols like Australia Day are always evolving and Dodson could make a big impact in that over the next 12 months as Australian of the year but not by emphasising ‘invasion’. 

We need to do a lot more about celebrating, and encouraging, the achievements of indigenous Australians. As Obama showed, the mainstream will embrace a candidate who is black but not one that projects that difference as separateness. Dodson’s comments, and the political response to it, just underscore that point in the Australian context.