The Tree and the Canoe : History and Ethnography of Tanna

''':'''' . '.1.' . History and Ethnogeography ofTanna JO EL BON NE MAISON Translated and adapted by JOSEE PENOT-DEMETRY Swooping down on the world like a scythe, westernization has devastated local cultures and made uniformity commonplace. The Pacific islands sustained the shock with a force per haps unequaled anywhere else in the world. Their limited size and small population, coupled with the violent epidemics tha t took thousands of lives, lowered Islanders' ability to resist. To keep the external world at bay, they had to create a world of their own. This personal observation of Tanna, an island in the southern part of the Vanuatu archipelago, presents an extraordinary case study of cultural resistance. Based on in terviews, myths and stories collected in the field, and archival research, The Tree and the Canoe analyzes the re silience of the people of Tanna, who, when faced with an intense form of cultural contact that threatened to engulf them, liberated themselves by re-creating, and sometimes reinvent ing, their own kastom. Following a lengthy history of Tanna from European contact, the author discuss es in detail original creation myths and how Tanna people revived them in response to changes brought by missionaries and foreign govern ments. The final chapters of the book deal with the violent opposition of part of the island population to the newly established National Unity government. Ultimately Tanna's story may well be a living symbol of resistance for (continued on back flap) The Tree and the Canoe ,I /I I ,/ ,;// I; ". r _ SOUTH SEA BOOKS Robert C. Kiste, general editor Linley Chapman, manuscript editor Editorial Board David Hanlon Karen M. Peacock Renée Heyum Donald Topping Alan Howard Deborah Waite Norman Meller South Sea Books are published jointly by the University of Hawaii Press and the Center for Pacifie Islands Srudies, University of Hawaii. They include books of general interest that deal with the islands and peoples of the Pacifie Ocean. Lee Boo of Belau: A Prince in London, by Daniel]. Peacock, 1987. Out of print. Nuclear Playground, by Stewart Firth, 1987. France and the South Pacifie: A Contemporary History, by Stephen Henningham, 1992. Cargo Cult: Strange Staries of Desire from Melanesia and Beyond, by Lamont Lindstrom, 1993. The Tree and the Canoe History and Ethnogeography ofTanna .. JOEL BONNEMAISON Translated and adapted byJOSEE PENOT-DEMETRY South Sea Books Center for Pacific Islands Studies School of Hawaiian, Asian & Pacific Studies University of Hawaii University ofHawaii Press, Honolulu English translation © 1994 by Joël Bonnemaison and Josée Pénot-Demetry AIl rights reserved Originally published as La dernIère île. © 1986 ARLEA/ORSTOM, Paris English translation published by UnIversity of HawalÎ Press 1994 Printed in the United States of America 99 98 97 96 95 94 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bonnemaison, Joël, 1940- [Dernière île. English] The tree and the canoe : history and ethnogeography of Tanna / Joël Bonnemaison; translated and adapted by Josée Pénot-Demetry. p. cm. - (South Sea books) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-8248-1525-4 (acid-free paper) 1. Tanna (Vanuatuan people)-History. 2. Tanna (Vanuatuan people)-Government relations. 3. Tanna (Vanuatuan people) Cultural assimilation. 4. Human geography-Vanuatu. 5. Vanuatu Discovery and exploration. 6. Vanuatu-History. 7. Vanuatu Soclallife and customs. I. Pénot-Demetry, Josée. II. Title. III. Series. DU760.B6713 1994 995.95-dc20 94-14319 CIP S;§S3~Publication of this volume was supported III part by ORSTOM and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Line drawings by Georges Kihm .1- Cartography by Manoa Mapworks, Inc., Honolulu, Hawaii University of Hawaii Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the gUidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources Designed by Kenneth Miyamoto Editor's Note Joël Bonnemaison's The Tree and the Canoe is the fifth title in the South Sea Books series published by the Center for Pacific Islands Studies, Uni versity of Hawaii, in association with the University of Hawaii Press. While the series is designed for the general reader with interests in the Pacific, this volume will also command the attention of a wide range of social scientists and historians. The book is about the people and the Island of Tanna, one of the eighty-some islands that make up the Melanesian nation of Vanuatu in the southwestern Pacific. The archipelago was among the earliest to be discovered by Europeans, when the Spaniard Pedro Fernandes de Quiros came upon its shores in 1606. Over a century and a haU were to elapse, however, before the islands were charted and called the New Hebrides by none other than Captain James Cook, the titan of aIl the European explorers. The subsequent colonial history of the archipelago has been unique, troubled, and among the most fascinating in the region. The New Hebrides became a pawn in the European power struggle over the parti tioning of the Pacific, and the islands were the last to experience formai colonial rule. An even three centuries after Quiros, in 1906, Britain and France jointly established the Anglo-French Condominium of the New Hebrides, the most bizarre colonial administration in the entire history of the Pacific. At its best, the arrangement was awkward, and in the end, it complicated the process of decolonization. Of aIl the Pacific nations that have achieved unfettered political independence, this was the last to regain its sovereignty: a new nation was born from chaos when the New Hebrides became Vanuatu in 1980. A French cultural geographer, Bonnemaison has had extensive expe rience in the South Pacific. Between 1968 and 1981, he lived and worked v VI Editor's Note in New Caledonia and Vanuatu. Bonnemaison now resides in Paris where he is a researcher with ûRSTûM (Scientific Research Institute for Development in Cooperation). The work at hand is a translation and revised version of his La dernière ne, a book based in part on his doctoral dissertation and first published by ARLEA-ORSTOM in 1986. As this work makes c1ear, island societies are necessarily different from those of continents. As part of this difference and perhaps more than others, contemporary Pacifie societies cannot be understood from the vantage point of any single academic discipline. Appropriately, Bon nemaison views his topic through multiple lenses, and he writes as an anthropologist, geographer, and historian. Moreover, and with the col laboration of his translator Josée Pénot-Demetry and the series' manu script editor, Linley Chapman, Bonnemaison's work reads like a good piece of literature. A good story weIl told. Bonnemaison anchors Tanna in the sea of Vanuatu's larger history. His analysis of the ethos of Tanna society is an eloquent exposition that raises questions about the fundamental nature of island societies in gen eral. In Tanna, culture, society, and identity are rooted in the land, divi sions of the land, and features of the landscape. Notions about time and space are about an eternal ordering of things that gives meaning to both past and present. These notions evoke comparisons with the Dreamtime of Australia's Aborigines. One of the major themes of Bonnemaison's narrative is found in other analyses of contemporary Melanesian societies-the power or resi lience of custom or (more commonly in the anthropological literature) kastom. The path or road of custom represented local autonomy, and in the face of external forces for change that threatened obliteration, the Tannese fought back by a reexamination, a reinvention, and a return to custom that has provided them with the strength to endure. The story of Tanna involves the well-known John Frum millenarian movement and has much to say about the problems of modern nation-building in the Pacifie, especially Melanesia. Bonnemaison also suggests that certain ele ments of Tannese society and history may provide lessons for human kind's exploitation of and relationship with that ever-shrinking larger island, the planet Earth. The Tree and the Canoe is complemented and enhanced by the most recent volume in the South Sea Books series, anthropologist Lamont Lindstrom's Cargo Cult, which draws heavily on Lindstrom's own research on Tanna. ROBERT C. KISTE Contents Illus.trations ix Translator's Note Xl Preface to the English Edition xv Acknowledgments xix Conventions xxiii PART ONE The Invaded Archipelago 1 1 On the Path to Myth: Quiros's Great Voyage 3 2 Happy "Savages"? 22 3 Wild Contact 39 4 The Gospel and the Kingdom 52 5 Catholic Peasant Missionaries and Marginal Churches 67 6 "Gone with the Wind" 81 PART Two Tanna: Stones within Canoes 103 7 Isle of Resilience 105 8 Enchanted Space 113 9 Society ofthe Stones 130 10 Society of the Hawk 146 11 AtWar 157 12 The Return of Magic 170 Vil Vlll Contents PART THREE Fighting on the Island 193 13 The Pagans' Resistance 195 14 John Frum People 220 15 The Bible Revisited 241 16 Kastom and Nation 257 17 The Revoit 276 18 The Meaning of Tanna's Kastom 302 19 Conclusion: The Men Pies 320 Notes 327 Clossary 347 References 349 Selected Works byJoël Bonnemaison 359 Index 361 Illustrations MAPS 1 The Pacifie Islands 6 2 Vanuatu Il 3 Tanna 107 4 Language areas of Tanna 110 5 Nikokaplalao. Roads created by the kapiel stones during Dreamtime 117 6 Kapiel stones in Loanatom 120 7 Magical space in the northern and central parts of Tanna 128 8 Tanna's mythical geography 134 9 The land canoes. Traditional territories

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