PACIFIC STUDIES a Journal Devoted to the Study of the Pacific-- Its

PACIFIC STUDIES a journal devoted to the study of the Pacific-- its islands and adjacent countries JUNE 1992 Anthropology Archaeology Art History Ethnomusicology Folklore Geography History Sociolinguistics Political Science Sociology Published by THE INSTITUTE FOR POLYNESIAN STUDIES (Brigham Young University-Hawaii) Funded by the Polynesian Cultural Center EDITORIAL BOARD Paul Alan Cox Brigham Young University Roger Green University of Auckland Renée Heyum University of Hawaii Francis X. Hezel, S. J. Micronesian Seminar Rubellite Johnson University of Hawaii Adrienne Kaeppler Smithsonian Institution Robert Kiste University of Hawaii Robert Langdon Australian National University Stephen Levine Victoria University Barrie Macdonald Massey University Cluny Macpherson University of Auckland Leonard Mason University of Hawaii Malama Meleisea Canterbury University Norman Meller University of Hawaii Richard M. Moyle University of Auckland Colin Newbury Oxford University Douglas Oliver University of Hawaii Margaret Orbell Canterbury University Nancy Pollock Victoria University Karl Rensch Australian National University Bradd Shore Emory University Yosihiko Sinoto Bishop Museum William Tagupa Honolulu, Hawaii Francisco Orrego Vicuña Universidad de Chile Edward Wolfers University of Wollongong Articles and reviews in Pacific Studies are abstracted or indexed in Sociologi- cal Abstracts, Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts, America: His- tory and Life, Historical Abstracts, Abstracts in Anthropology, Anthropologi- cal Literature, PAIS Bulletin, International Political Science Abstracts, International Bibliography of Periodical Literature, International Bibliogra- phy of Book Reviews, and International Bibliography of the Social Sciences. Volume 15 June 1992 Number 2 CONTENTS Articles Graun Bilong Mipela: Local Land Courts and the Changing Customary Law of Papua New Guinea JEAN G. ZORN . 1 When Unity Is Torn Asunder: The Distressing Case of Thomas and Lucia Holman SANDRA WAGNER-WRIGHT . 39 Revising the Revisionists: The Historiography of Immigrant Melanesians in Australia CLIVE MOORE . 61 Editor’s Forum The Politics of Race and Ethnicity: Theoretical Perspectives on Papua New Guinea P ETER LARMOUR ........................................ 87 Book Review Forum Nicholas Thomas, Out of Time: History and Evolution in Anthropological Discourse JONATHAN FRIEDMAN . 109 DAVID HANLON . 118 BRADD SHORE . 122 RICHARD J. PARMENTIER . 135 Response: NICHOLAS THOMAS. 142 Reviews Bambi B. Schieffelin, The Give and Take of Everyday Life: Language Socialization of Kaluli Children (TERENCE E. HAYS) ...................................... 159 Elinor Ochs, Culture and Language Development: Language Acquisition and Language Socialization in a Samoan Village (JEANNETTE MARIE MAGEO). 162 Ron Brunton, The Abandoned Narcotic: Kava and Cultural Instability in Melanesia (MAC MARSHALL)....................................... 168 Davida Malo, Ka Mo‘olelo Hawaii (Hawaiian Antiquities). Ed. Malcolm Naea Chun Malcolm Naea Chun, Hawaiian Medicine Book, He Buke Laau Lapaau (JOHN CHARLOT) ....................................... 173 John Wilson, ed., From the Beginning: The Archaeology of the Maori (IAN G. BARBER) . 178 Peter Tremewan, French Akaroa: An Attempt to Colonise Southern New Zealand (ALAN CLARK) ...................................... 183 David Robie, Blood on Their Banner: Nationalist Struggles in the South Pacific (JOHN CONNELL) . 185 Arnold H. Leibowitz, Defining Status: A Comprehensive Analysis of United States Territorial Relations (ROBERT F. ROGERS AND DIRK A. BALLENDORF) . 188 Books Noted Recent Pacific Islands Publications: Selected Acquisitions, September-October 1991 RILEY M. MOFFAT . 191 Contributors . 199 PACIFIC STUDIES Vol. 15, No. 2 June 1992 GRAUN BILONG MIPELA: LOCAL LAND COURTS AND THE CHANGING CUSTOMARY LAW OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA Jean G. Zorn CUNY Law School at Queens College, City University of New York Despite repeated attempts by the colonial administration to change the nature of traditional land tenure, Papua New Guinea attained indepen- dence with approximately 97 percent of its land still held by indigenous Papua New Guineans, and the rights to use and transfer that land still governed primarily by customary law.1 The customary land-tenure rules of each of Papua New Guinea’s more than seven hundred language groups are woven from a complex web of traditional norms, kinship relations, and social obligations. Customary norms about the acquisition and use of land have their roots in precolonial Papua New Guinea, but they have changed over time, in part to meet changing economic and social conditions. The economy of Papua New Guinea was, and is, predominantly agricultural. More than 85 percent of the nation’s adult population lives in rural areas. The precolonial subsistence economy was characterized by slash-and-burn cultivation in which plots of arable land were developed as food gardens for a few years and then left fallow for as much as a gen- eration. Even today, those Papua New Guineans who obtain all or most of their subsistence from traditional gardens significantly outnumber those who depend primarily on cash cropping or urban employment. Although cash crops account for 35 percent of gross domestic product and are the primary focus of the government’s agricultural research and support services, subsistence gardening on customary land continues to be a mainstay of the economy.2 The myth that every worker has custom- 1 2 Pacific Studies, Vol. 15, No. 2--June 1992 ary land to which he or she can at any time return permits the formal sector to pay low wages and the government to offer few social services. Given the economic dominance of agriculture, it is not surprising that land is, and has always been, centrally important to most Papua New Guinean cultures. But, with changing economic conditions and changing uses of land the cultural meanings ascribed to land and the relations of persons to their land change as well. In traditional Papua New Guinea, the clan and the land are one. Graun bilong mipela (“the land is ours”) transposes to mipela bilong graun (“we are the land’s”). The land feeds the people who name it and its features. Many Papua New Guineans believe that land cannot be alienated from the clan. It belongs not only to the living but to their ancestors and descendants as well, and they belong to it. Land is not a commodity that can be bought and sold but a source of clan identity. It is also a source of shelter and subsistence, and, as such, the rights of individuals and households to use clan land can be, and frequently are, redistributed to take account of changing needs for land and changing social or political relationships. In a market economy, land takes on different connotations. It becomes a source of wealth for individuals and households who use it to plant cash crops or for logging, mining, or industry. Like any other product, it can be sold or leased for immediate gain. It loses permanent identification with the clan but gains another kind of permanence in the finality of freehold titles and sales. Although subsistence gardening continues its central role, everyone in Papua New Guinea has been touched by the market economy. There are few areas of the country where some cash cropping is not going on. Min- ing and timber companies compete for access to customary land. The meaning of land for the people it supports, and the relationships of individuals to one another and to the land, are growing more complex. Customary law, which was predicated on the premise that land provides subsistence, must deal with situations in which land provides wealth. Customary law was developed to be flexible, to take account of shifting gardens, changing household needs, and shifting sociopolitical alliances; now it must deal with individuals and groups who want the law’s decisions to be final so that they can assert permanent control over areas of land. In precolonial times, customary law sel- dom had to deal with population pressures, absentee landowners, land- less workers, the use of prime gardening land for cash crops or other industries, or ecologically disastrous agricultural, mining, or logging practices. Land Courts and Customary Law in Papua New Guinea 3 Because customary law is, and always has been, constantly changing to meet new needs and conditions, it probably can change again to resolve the conflicts (both those between disputing claimants to land and those between differing views of what land is and how its uses should be managed) that have arisen as a result of these new pressures on land. However, not everyone agrees that these issues should be left to custom to decide. During the colonial period, a parade of administra- tors and experts attempted to transform Papua New Guinea into a market economy. They announced that land should be converted into a commodity, that market notions of individualized ownership and control should replace communitarian values, and that interests in land should therefore be removed from the aegis of customary law and governed instead by the statutes and common law that the colonial authorities had imported into Papua New Guinea.3 Although this view has not been put forward so starkly since 1971, when the colonial authorities’ last attempt at wholesale conversion of customary land into individualized freehold ownership was defeated by Papua New Guinea’s first elected legislature,4 many of the people influential in today’s government are among those who would benefit

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