Sir Albert Maori Kiki

Who is Sir Albert Maori Kiki?

Sir Albert Maori Kiki was born on 21 September 1931 in the Kerema district on the Papuan coast and raised in the Protestant faith of the London Missionary Society. Selected as a promising student, he trained at the Suva Medical School in Fiji, and after failing his medical examinations retrained as a pathology technician, later working in Papua New Guinea's health service. He became a leading voice for independence in the 1960s and was among the founders of the Pangu Pati, the political party that led Papua New Guinea toward self-government. He won election to the House of Assembly in 1972 after an earlier unsuccessful attempt in 1968, representing the Moresby Inland Open seat, and served as the country's first Deputy Prime Minister from 1975 to 1977 under Michael Somare. He is also remembered as an author: his 1968 autobiography, "Kiki: Ten Thousand Years in a Lifetime," dictated onto tape and transcribed with the help of editor Ulli Beier, described his childhood in a semi-nomadic tribal community, his first encounters with colonial society, and his political awakening, and was praised for its candid critique of colonialism and its portrait of traditional Papuan life. He died on 13 March 1993.

Sources: Albert Maori Kiki — Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Maori_Kiki) · Australian Dictionary of Biography, "Kiki, Sir Albert Maori" · Ten Thousand Years in a Lifetime — Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Thousand_Years_in_a_Lifetime)