Pp.155-171 Pitcairn Heritage
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Australian Folklore 31, 2016 Australian Folklore 28, 2013 155 Pitcairn Island: Heritage of Bounty Descendants Maria Amoamo ABSTRACT: This article adopts the method ‘tensed ethnography’ to describe aspects of Pitcairn Island folklife and the symbolic meaning of community. Such meanings emerge in the empirical field whereby ‘community’ is viewed as a cluster of embodied dispositions and practices. Described as one of the most isolated islands in the world and accessible only by sea, Pitcairn is the last remaining British Overseas Territory in the Pacific, notable as the home of Bounty mutineers and Tahitians who settled the island in 1790. It is from this unique heritage and present-day fieldwork that the collective manifestations of social life and folk expression are herewith discussed. KEYWORDS: Pitcairn Island, folklife Heritage of Mutineer’s Sons and Daughters Evening shadows lengthen on fair Adam’s Town. Day is all but gone; the slow declining sun Leaves tinctured coloured evening shades all around Pitcairn’s village—King Sol’s daily race is run Semi darkness now covers both land and sea— Pitcairn’s inhabitants pause from daily toil. Cool winds from windward—sheltered homes in island’s lee Bring peace and rest after toiling on sea and soil. Thus nestles Adam’s Town—an Elysium dream. A jewel setting in Pacific waters Where contentment, serenity, reign supreme Heritage of mutineer’s sons and daughters. A poem by Roy Clark (Pitcairn Miscellany 1966). * * 156 Maria Amoamo Introduction Roy Clark’s poem illuminates a cultural embedding and connectedness to (is)land and an aesthetic appreciation of Pitcairn’s place and identity within the Pacific. This paper articulates this connection by describing aspects of folk-life, past and present, of the Pitcairn Island community. I draw on the definition of folk-life/folklore as ‘tradition-based and/or contemporary expressive culture shared within a community and deemed a reflection of its cultural and social identity’ (see Folklife, 1987, p. 65). This definition embraces a wide range of creative and symbolic forms such as custom, belief, mythology, ritual, language, literature, music, song, behaviours, actions, narrative, architecture and art and craft (Ryan, 1998). In this, I am influenced by Clark’s references to ‘Adam’s Town’, ‘land and sea’, ‘daily toil’, ‘sheltered homes’ as constitutive of group-oriented and tradition-based action; while reference to ‘Elysium dream’ and ‘heritage of mutineer’s sons and daughters’ allude to the mythic image of Pitcairn as refuge to mutineers of the ship H.M.S. Bounty. Pitcairn, along with its uninhabited dependencies Oeno, Henderson and Ducie, is the last remaining British Overseas Territory in the Pacific. Pitcairn’s nano economy is heavily dependent on a small number of activities and almost wholly on UK budgetary aid. Much of the islander’s day-to-day life is committed to maintaining roads, building homes, upkeep of basic infrastructure, gardening, and government jobs, fishing, trading on ships, and taking care of family and household duties. With a current resident population of just over forty, Pitcairn is often described as one of the smallest and most isolated places in the world, accessible only by sea and visited annually by a handful of ships and passing yachts. As such, the extent of knowledge about Pitcairners’ expressive culture is limited; oft provided by authors who have never visited the island. Based on longitudinal fieldwork this article describes some of the traditions of Pitcairn culture through a lens of ‘tensed ethnography’. An ethnographic tense enables the ethnographer to review relevant data that contains descriptions of past events and measure these against present fieldwork experience. * * Pitcairn and the Bounty Story It would be fair to say that Pitcairners have not paid much attention to documenting their history; the only widely circulated book by a ‘native’ of the island, Mutiny of the Bounty and Story of Pitcairn from 1790 to 1894 was written by Rosalind Amelia Young (1894). Those acquainted with knowledge of Pitcairn Island are most likely to connect Pitcairn with the Pitcairn Island: Heritage of Bounty Descendants 157 story of the mutiny on the Bounty.1 Settled in 1790 by nine English mutineers and their Tahitian companions the Bounty story has served to mythologize Pitcairn and its people. Following settlement and burning of the ship to hide any trace of their location, murder and conflict over land and women underpinned the early development of this bi-cultural community. By 1800, only one mutineer, John Adams was left with a number of Tahitian women and mixed race children. Adams transformed these murderous beginnings by turning to the Bible in order to inculcate the principles and moral values of a Christian life to the growing community (Shapiro, 1929); a disposition that was subsequently fostered by like-minded patriarchal leaders after his death. In the late nineteenth century, persuaded by literature sent by the Seventh-Day-Adventist (SDA) mission in the USA, and subsequent visits from SDA elders, the community converted to the faith in 1886 (Clune, 1966). From such transformation, Pitcairn came to represent an icon of Pacific ‘paradise’ and Christian morality. Thus, religion, isolation, protectionism (restricting who can settle on-island) and a sense of exclusivity attached to their Bounty heritage has in turn shaped the cultural identity of Pitcairners. As such, there are distinct insider/outsider characteristics that delineate boundaries of identification evident in today’s Pitcairn community. * * Methodology: Tensed Ethnography My fieldwork experience draws on three extended periods living on Pitcairn between 2008 and 2013 (in total two and a half years) while accompanying my husband, a doctor, contracted by the UK Government. A wide range of sources (informal, formal and official) informs my tensed ethnographic study of Pitcairn. Of these, the most insightful is Ford’s Pitcairn Port of Call (1996) detailing the maritime history of the world’s ships calling at Pitcairn from 1790 to 1990. This dot of volcanic outcropping about midway between Panama and New Zealand has drawn thousands of ships to her cliff-ridden flanks. The ships come because Pitcairn is the remnant of one of the world’s great sea stories. For many a captain the Island’s colourful past has caused him to divert his ship scores, even hundreds of miles from its planned course. ‘We’ll give the crew a look-see’, he’ll mutter, while it is his own look- see he’s thinking about most (Ford, 1996, p. I). 1 It is estimated some 1200 books, 3200 magazine and uncounted newspaper articles, documentary films, and three major Hollywood movies relating to the mutiny on the Bounty have accounted for Pitcairn’s iconic status (Hayward, 2006). 158 Maria Amoamo My own visits to Pitcairn bear out Ford’s comment. Indeed, many a captain did divert his ship for a ‘look-see’ at this ‘fabled’ island and its inhabitants. More contemporarily, one of the most influential sources is the Pitcairn Miscellany (PM) (Figure 1) produced monthly since 1959.2 PM serves as a social network of family, friends, and interested Bounty ‘buffs’ worldwide. Its most significant feature is in recording the routine of Pitcairn life; the minutiae of day-to-day social behaviour is documented in the emotive, (via islander narratives, poems and stories, obituaries), the political (via Council meeting reports), communal (public work, school events, church activities), food gathering activities (gardening, fishing) and economic (carving and weaving, trade with visiting ships) as well as observations of opinion, gossip, rumour, innuendo, disagreements, humour, alliances between kin groups, friendships and interactions. These are the socially shared means whereby Pitcairners construct their social worlds and from which the ethnographer interprets Pitcairn society. Figure 1. Masthead of Pitcairn Miscellany newsletter depicts image of ‘land and sea’ and Bounty heritage. Pitcairn’s small size, isolation, close-knit community, developmental trajectory and unique Bounty heritage motivated me to examine the ‘symbolic meanings’ (Cohen, 1985) of community; how such meanings are constructed, maintained, and alter over time. Such trajectory operates through temporal stages of past, present and future, thus acts of ethnographic discovery are grounded in the empirical field. Of note, my 2 I have read over 500 copies of the Pitcairn Miscellany housed at the Hocken Library in Dunedin NZ (one of two institutions in the world that house an almost complete record of the publication). Pitcairn Island: Heritage of Bounty Descendants 159 field experience encompassed observation of the effects of ‘Operation Unique’—the UK’s investigation of historical sexual abuse of women on Pitcairn culminating in the well documented ‘trials’ held on Pitcairn in 2004. This event divided the community and instigated much socio- political change by the UK. It is not this article’s intention to expand on this topic (see Marks, 2008; Oliver, 2009) but to acknowledge its influence on cultural lifeways on Pitcairn today. Pitcairn Culture: The Place and People The mutineers and their Tahitian wives brought with them to Pitcairn no idealistic theory for the foundation of a new society. An account of their life and customs is the story of the development and growth of an unconscious social experiment (Shapiro, 1929, p. 9). Islands are typically shaped by their remoteness or insularity, which produces ecologies and cultures that are unique to their location (Hall, 2012). An important feature of ethnographic inquiry is a concern with action, with what people do and why. Pitcairn’s isolated and subsistence- style life has largely necessitated formation of an integrated and cooperative society. ‘Society’, Barth (1992, 20) contends cannot be abstracted from the material context: all social acts are ecologically embedded. Hence, emphasis on social action demands analysis of the socially shared means whereby people construct their social worlds. This is evident in how Pitcairners spatialize place through the intersubjective naming and mapping of landscape.