It has taken a round-trip to Australia for a Maltese prime minister to realise that (as I and various others have been saying for the past 20 years) cultural survival among Maltese overseas, even there, is in peril; and now to promise that he would do something about it. It is not too late.

My article 'Maltese overseas: problems and prospects' (The Sunday Times, January 29, 1989, p. 21) addressed this need precisely, as had my three earlier articles in Sydney's The Maltese Herald asking what future Maltese culture in Australia had. This, too, was one strident message that had emerged from the Convention of Leaders of Associations of Maltese Abroad and of Maltese Origin, held in Valletta at the turn of the millennium (see the proceedings, eds. G.N. Busuttil and V. Pace, 2000).

My keynote speech at that convention querying the survival of a Maltese ethnic identity overseas, if the current indifference and mediocrity continued, and my later critical appraisal and content analysis of that event, turn around the same issues and offer some so far apparently ignored recommendations (see, for example, my chapters 'Is-Silta tan-Nisel: Maltin fid-Diaspora u l-Identità Etnika', in Malta: Esplorazzjoni, ed. D. Massa, 2001; and 'Storja u Gharfien: Il-Maltin min huma?', in L-Identità ta' Malta, ed. T. Cortis, 1989).

Shortly after my repatriation from the emigration in 1988, the only tertiary level Maltese studies course in the world, at the Phillip Institute in Melbourne, was wound up because there were more Vietnamese than Maltese interested in learning about their self-identity, although the Maltese in Melbourne were numerically far superior to them but, comparatively, culturally inert.

One of the most painfully revealing discoveries I made while teaching ethnic and multicultural studies at Phillip was that my students of Maltese descent were under the impression that the only existing form of Maltese music and song was ghana; an orchestrated Charles Camilleri rendering of Maltese folk-tunes and Oliver Friggieri's text in Pawlu ta' Malta had them in tears; they all wanted to borrow the recordings from me.

But when the producer and director of an SBS TV series entitled The Maltese Connection had come to see me at the Victorian Ethnic Affairs Commission, where I then worked, they too had never heard of this Camilleri or indeed of other Maltese creative artists and writers I mentioned to them; they had only heard about Joe 'Zepp' Camilleri, the admittedly brilliant Maltese-Australian jazz star.

After the promising series had been broadcast, showing inter alia a Gozitan family drawing up water from the well in their scruffy kitchen for breakfast, and half-naked men jogging in traffic-ridden alleys, starting and ending with a newly-arrived, semi-articulate Maltese couple in culture shock buying a dustbin from an Australian supermarket, 14 Maltese residents, including myself, had written to The Age complaining that this was not quite the Malta we knew. The Age, Melbourne's leading daily newspaper, never published the letter; it may have seemed to the self-respecting editor a criticism of Australia's civilising influence on (Maltese) immigrants.

I remember one case where a Maltese-Australian mother from the western suburbs of Melbourne had complained in the press that Maltese was being taught to schoolchildren, which she regarded as misguided and useless.

The causes for such a persistent forma mentis are historical and neo-colonial, psychological and geographical, social and educational, practical and personal. Are they being addressed?

My own migration studies course at the University of Malta, which I had started on my return, was downgraded from a core to an optional subject, although it has somehow survived to this day. I anticipate, however, that this subject will form an integral part of a curriculum for post-graduate or other degrees in Maltese Studies, which are currently envisaged under the aegis of the Institute of Maltese Studies, which I have been asked to run.

An Internet-based 'Roots' programme started by the Ministry of Tourism, through the Foundation for International Studies, had a rather still birth; as did, it seems, the supposed Maltese World Federation, of which Laurent Ropa had dreamed in Algeria as long ago as the 1930s but which was 'kick-started' in 2000; while the illustrated kaleidoscope expert anthological volume Malta: Culture and Identity (eds. H. Frendo and O. Friggieri, 1994) never had the promotion or marketing that it deserved.

The broadcasting field has left much to be desired, particularly if the better educated and more socially mobile second and third 'migrant' generations are to be targeted, as they should, away from the traditionalist umpappà and fossilisation.

Given the negative attitude of PBS to even cultural-historical documentaries reputed by independent observers to be of the highest order, that is hardly surprising. Nor is that surprising in a country, one of the smallest still surviving linguistic-ethnic minorities in the world, where its own history is barely taught in its schools, including particularly its secondary schools, 43 years after its constitutional progression from colonialism to statehood.

Due to lack of resources or interest so far, the Maltese may not feature in a currently planned Australian inter-university project on 'Diaspora and Homelands: Linkages, Identity and Political Representation'.

More sobering and compelling than timely rhetoric and familiar reporting, therefore, was Margaret Blackman's angst as expressed to Pamela Hansen in a Sunday Times interview on January 30, 2000: "My sadness comes when I see our culture dying. Our children are not keen to learn Maltese.

"They have no identity problem; they belong to a country they were born in. Unless our generation generates some kind of interest or pride and belonging, then, when our generation ceases to exist, our culture and customs will succumb with us." (H. Frendo, 'Maltin fid-Diaspora', op. cit., p. 47).

On the other hand, there have been encouraging signals, such as the unrelenting work performed over the past 20 years by the Melbourne-based Maltese Historical Association of Australia, currently chaired by Frances Bonnici, with Dr Brian Zammit as its secretary.

Although limited, there has continued to be a trickle of young Maltese, born overseas, who learn Maltese or try to; occasionally overseas-born Maltese whom I have met managed to acquire an admirable command of the language, one vital key to history, culture and identity. Maltese cultural centres and, in some cases, as in Toronto, a band club, have been roaring successes and become viable commercial enterprises, catering to other communities.

What needs upgrading above all is probably discourse and exchange within a structured incoming-outgoing framework; this could or perhaps should be university-based, with government and other support or sponsorship, or joint, provided that backup and resources are forthcoming.

Our language, history and culture are sometimes of much interest to non-Maltese persons locally and abroad, while other 'national' cultural institutes ideally could interact comparatively both regionally and globally.

It is a tall order and an additional workload all to itself, but I believe that today this is more necessary than ever, for various reasons. One is, as I had noted in the editorial of Storja 2001, that "joining the EU without an acquired sense of history, including a consciousness of our own, would be a sure recipe for getting swamped as a nation".

Another, since 2002, is the ever-growing ethnic-cultural mix with persons from what at least so far have been altogether alien backgrounds. Still another is globalisation, where individuality and uniqueness have to struggle against uniformity and sameness, if they are worth their salt. Hence the need to pursue and to celebrate excellence.

Malta remains necessarily the matrix of Malteseness and as such should reach out to the diaspora, a prospect which dual citizenship across generations should render less difficult if the 'product' is right. However, there is much to learn from the migrant and returned migrant experience, as well as from many success stories of individuals and groups around the globe in a wide variety of fields, if only they had intelligently funded networking possibilities on an ongoing basis.

Time will tell, but we can try.

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