Phoenix rising from the ashes: Kuwae, the story in
na-Makir (Central Vanuatu)
Wolfgang
B. Sperlich1
Kuwae
[1] I
want to tell a little story about the Kuwae volcanic eruption.
[2] Once
there was a man named Semet. He was feeding his fowl at his place
called
Tanamalal. It was on the island of Kuwae.
[3] At
the time Semet was feeding his fowl at Tanamalal, he heard the
volcano
starting to erupt.
[4] Semet
looked towards the volcano erupting and saw the lava coming
towards
him.
[5] Semet
saw how the volcano buried the whole place and set it on fire, and so
he
got very scared.
[6] Semet
was scared of the fire and started running away until he came to the
village
of Lakalia which nowadays is on the island of Tongariki.
[7] Before
the volcanic eruption, the islands of Tongariki, Ewose and
Vale
were all part of the island of Kuwae.
[8] In
the village of Lakalia there was a tamtam
by the nakamal. The tamtam
is
a drum used for kastom dances.
[9] Semet
was so afraid of the fire that he went inside the upright tamtam.
[10] The
lava buried the tamtam with Semet
inside.
[11] Then
there was a woman named Tariviket who had taken her stick to go
fishing
along the seashore.
[12] Tariviket
also saw the lava coming her way and she was scared and ran
into
a cave by the shore. This cave today is called Tariviket's Cave.
[13] Tariviket
stayed inside the cave until the fires burned out and the place
cooled
down, and then she came out.
[14] The
woman wandered about and she came to the village of Lakalia and the
nakamal. She looked around until she
found the tamtam still standing up.
[15] Tariviket
took her fishing stick and beat the tamtam.
[16] As
Tariviket was beating the drum she heard a man talking inside of it.
[17] Tariviket
made a big hole in the tamtam and
Semet came out and talked
to
Tariviket.
[18] Semet
asked Tariviket where she had been. Tariviket told Semet that she had been
fishing at the seashore, and when she saw the fire approaching, she became very
frightened and ran inside a cave. And when the fire had finished, she had
wandered about and came up here to the village.
[19] Tariviket
asked Semet: "What about you?" Semet told Tariviket that he was
feeding his fowl at Tanamalal, and when the volcano erupted he ran to the place
here and he went inside the tamtam,
and the tamtam was buried with him
inside.
[20] As
they were now on only half the island that used to be Kuwae, Tariviket said to
Semet: "I know that around here, the old men used to bury the fermented breadfruit."
[21] TARVIKET
took her fishing stick and probed the ground until she found the
stone
that was placed over the hole where the breadfruit was buried.
[22] They
cleared the ground and took out the stone and then retrieved the
fermented
breadfruit.
[23] They
picked up some of the half-burned wood and they made a fire and they
cooked
the fermented breadfruit, and that was all the food they ate.
[24] Tarimas
on Makira saw the fire on the half of the island left over from
Kuwae. He told his
people that he thought there were some survivors on that half of the island of
Kuwae, and that they should go and have a look.
[25] Tarimas
took out his canoe, named Natololo, and he and his men went to the half island
to look for survivors.
[26] The
place where they went onshore was called Tapurar before, but as they went on
shore they called out Kaho-ov, and that's what the landing is still called
today.
[27] Having
met the survivors, Tarimas went back to Makira to cut wood and wild cane, and
transported it back the island where they built a house for the survivors.
[28] Tarimas
kept visiting them to bring them food and drinking water on the island.
[29] Tarimas
went back and forth and eventually told them that they should come to Makira
where there is a good supply of food and drinking water.
[30] When
the two of them started to live in Makira, Semet and Tariviket got married and
they had a daughter they called Nawa.
[3 1] As
time went on she grew to be a big young woman.
[32] Then
Semet prepared a feast and invited all the chiefs of Makira. He told the chiefs
they should sleep with Nawa so she could have some children.
[33] The
chiefs of Makira proceeded accordingly and Nawa became pregnant and she gave
birth to a boy that Semet named Ti Tongoa Leiserik.
[34] Nawa
became pregnant again and gave birth to twin boys; one was called Ti Tongoamata
and the other one Ti Tongoaroto.
[35] They
all stayed on Makira until the children grew up, and then Tarimas and Ti Tongoa
Leiserik went in a canoe to the half island, the biggest one left over from
Kuwae.
[36] When
they went onshore at the biggest island left over from Kuwae, they saw the
island full of egg plants that are called Woro Tongo. That's why Tarimas named
the island Tongoa, and the smaller one, also once part of Kuwae, he named AWOH,
and a still smaller one he named Vale after the big cave there, and the
mid-size island he called Tongoa RIKI.
[37] After
he had named all the islands, they went back to Makira.
[38] When
they got back to Makira, the three boys, Ti Tongoa Leiserik, Ti Tongoamata and
Ti Tongoaroto left Makira and went back to live on Tongoa.
[39] At
the time they went back to Tongoa, the men of Makira told Semet that since he
was the first man to go back to his island, he should also be the one to take
the children back to his island, and they named him Matan Na-ur Ni Tongoa which
means 'the first man of Tongoa'.
[40] All
the chiefs of Makira thus named Semet as Matan Na-ur Ni Tongoa, and thereafter
he took his children and grandchildren back to Tongoa, where they all
multiplied.
[41] So
now you heard about Matan Na-ur Ni Tongoa and all his children who returned to
the island of Tongoa, taking with them the language of Makira which you can
still hear spoken there today.
1.
Introduction
The above version of the story is based on
a recording the present author did on Makira Island in 1985, with then
Paramount Chief Masoeripu who had one of his residences on Makira – himself
being a native of Makira. A team of local Makirans helped to transcribe it (and
other custom stories recorded in a similar manner), and back at Auckland
University the stories were published in 1986 as ‘na-Makir Texts of Central
Vanuatu’ - in the series of Working
Papers in Anthropology, Archaeology, Linguistics and Maori Studies. When
returning to Vanuatu (2002 – 04) as a UNESCO consultant, and the good fortune
of the sixth Conference of Oceanic Linguistics (COOL-6) being held in Port-Vila,
presented itself, a paper proposal to present the Kuwae story was accepted. I
asked Chief Masoeripu (then an ex-Member of Parliament and resident in
Port-Vila, together with a large section of the Makira community) if he'd be
interested to tell the story to the conference participants - with me doing a
follow-up discourse - he offered to recite the story in both na-Makir and in
Bislama. Since the original transcript had no Bislama translation, we agreed to
give the original text to Roslyn Daniel, a Makiran who happened to work as a
secretary where I did, at the Ministry of Finance, and ask her to translate it
into Bislama (in a sort of interlinear fashion). Roslyn and Chief Maseoripu
worked together and they came back with a newly expanded version in Bislama and
na-Makir, with the explanation that Chief Masoeripu had found quite a few
mistakes and omissions in the old version. Hence, when 'reading' his own story
told many years ago and converted into text, he found room for improvement, a
process presumably familiar to all of us who write, and on reading what we write,
we make changes if we are not satisfied, which in itself is a curious process
when compared to the oral mode of communication and cultural transmission.
However some of the new additions seem pitched at the 'tourist' audience
inasmuch as he explained things like a tamtam,
which most locals would know and understand without any explanation. I pointed
out that the conference participants would be seasoned linguists and
anthropologists who were likely to know more about ni-Vanuatu kastom than many a ni-Vanuatu. Chief
Maesoripu made some changes accordingly but remained suspicious about the
various anthropologists he had met in his life, i.e. foreign academics who want
to know everything but never listening to anything they didn’t want to know.
In any case, above, the 'new' and improved
version is presented. As we shall see, the reason for this detailed account of
the story’s origins is that there are quite a number of other versions with
which we can compare it. In the first place, however, we will do a close
reading of the story in its own right.
2.
Interpretative frameworks
Three perspectives are employed to
‘explain’ the story inasmuch as it needs explaining. The
anthropological/ethnographic angle – including the linguistic features –
provides much of the background as the story has received quite a lot of
published attention in these contexts already. As a sub-category of the above I
attempt a Marxist interpretation which allows for considerable latitude if not
controversial statements. In terms of the narrative structure we employ Labov’s
(1972) scheme. The various perspectives come into play when discussing certain
elements of the story.
2.1. Anthropological
and Marxist points of view
If we consider the narrative to be in the
genre of anthropological descent and identity we might also proclaim, generally
speaking, that identity is manufactured from the stories and legends of the
past. To disambiguate, and to indicate our subsequent frame of inquiry:
(1)
descent and ancestry are key to establishing
identity (Harris, 1983)
(2)
in a post-modernist, virtual
world, identity is the cause of violence (Derrida, 1992)
Our preference is however for the Marxist
angle which might encapsulate the Kuwae story as follows:
Identity politics is
the political terrain
in which various social groups engage in a “struggle for recognition”
within bourgeois society, each seeking recognition for the special interests of
a specific social group.
Even so, Marxist identity analysis can also
be ambivalent, albeit on a different plane: the working classes/the proletariat
have no personal histories, hence identity is a bourgeois concept; on the other
hand the working classes/proletariat have always been the salt of this earth,
and as inheritors of this world will always have an immutable identity.
Marxist anthropologists like Webster (1982)
have pointed out that ‘story telling’ involving common people is one of the key
resources of ethnography, hence we will proceed accordingly, at least inasmuch
as the present narrative deals with ‘commoners’. One may also point to a recent
example of this genre, namely Gounder’s (2011) investigation of indentured
labour in Fiji which is based on narrative recounts of Indian labourers.
As anthropological linguists we cannot
disregard yet another important angle, namely Labov’s (1972) model of
structural analysis of narratives in general. We will adopt his scheme in the
first instance, followed by other features relevant to the story, as told in
the original language, na-Makir.
2.2
Analysis according to Labov’s
scheme
This structural analysis will incorporate
some of the anthropological and Marxist angles alluded to above. Labov’s scheme
proceeds according to five stages: abstract, orientation, complicating action,
result or resolution and coda.
(1)
Abstract
In line [1] we get the classical ‘abstract’
as “I want to tell a little story about the Kuwae volcanic eruption”, giving
away only the barest information, thus creating suspense even if tempered with
the customary modesty label of “little story”. Note also the ‘authorial’ ‘I’
which is of great importance in the context of chiefly authority to be
discussed below.
(2)
Orientation
The main protagonist is introduced, namely
the man Semet, living on the big island of Kuwae. Since this is the central
character, we note here that there are other versions of the story which
identify him as a chief (Luders, 2001, 2010 and pers. comm..) but there is no
mention if his status in this story (but we can make certain inferences later
in the narrative).
(3)
Complicating action
In line [3] we are launched into the action
of a volcano erupting. Vanuatu and her many islands are part of the ‘Pacific
ring of fire’ and as such many a ni-Vanuatu
(the term used to indicate indigenous citizens) is familiar with the sights and
sounds, if not with the immense destruction such natural forces can engender.
Given however that there is now no island called Kuwae – nor has there been in
any living memory – one may be inclined to believe that the narrative will be
one of legend and myth. Indeed this was the case for contemporary observers
until French anthropologists/archeologists/geologists Guiart, Garanger and
Espirat, conducting fieldwork in the area in the 1950 and 1960s, found evidence
for a volcanic cataclysm that destroyed the ‘mythical’ island of Kuwae, leaving
behind only a ring of scattered small islands (now part of the Shepherd
Islands, see Appendix 1: Map) that are well known today by various names to be
yet encountered in the story. Garanger and Espirat published their findings in
a series of books and articles 1972 and 1973, dating the eruption to about 1450
AD. More up-to-date studies by Monzier (1994) and Spriggs et al. (2005) confirm
the Kuwae eruption of around 1452 eruption as a layer of ash in all of his digs
around Mangaliliu and Mangaasi in North Efate.
Map showing the bathymetry
and location of the Kuwae caldera (Figure 2 from Monzier et al., 1994)
The eruption may have had global
consequences, as some studies maintain that it triggered the Little Ice Age (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwae).
Luders (2001) describes it thus:
This was a colossal
eruption. It was one of the eight greatest volcanic events in the past ten
thousand years. At least thirty million cubic metres of rock, earth and magma
were hurled into the atmosphere at an initial velocity of about 300 kilometres
per hour and another vast volume slid into the sea. The dust-pall circled the
globe, initially in the southern hemisphere and later in the northern
hemisphere. The polar ice cores record that it persisted for at least three
years (Delmas et al. 1992). The resultant blotting-out of the sun
reduced temperatures so as to produce a minor ice-age with the result of
widespread famine, evidently on a global scale.
Be this as it may, in lines [6] and [7] we
learn the names of all the islands that exist today and were once part of
Kuwae.
In terms of the continuing narrative one
might expect a grand description of the cataclysm but of course this is not the
purpose of the story. Instead we are taken along with Semet who flees the
eruption only to be buried alive inside an up-right slit-drum (called tamtam). This seems to be a fanciful
development in the light of an almighty natural catastrophe and yet this is the
whole point of fact turning into fiction (i.e. legend and myth): a man called
Semet is the only male survivor! In line [11] we are then flashed back to the
beginning and introduced to a woman called Tariviket who from a different direction
on the island also escapes the eruption – with the more likely scenario of
hiding in a seaside cave. Note that the status of Tarviket is not mentioned
(again as opposed to other versions of the story whereby she is also of chiefly
descent and/or may be related to Semet, perhaps as cousins).
The narrative again becomes extremely
fanciful in that Tariviket, after the eruption, wanders around the remains of
the island and finds Semet trapped inside the drum, well and alive (up to line
[17]). One may ask if these two survived, who else did? Other versions (cf.
Luders, 2001, 2010 and pers. comm.) note that there may have been signs of a
volcanic eruption over quite some time so many inhabitants may have fled to
safer areas, even as far as Efate (for the contention that many Shepherd
Islanders have land rights on Efate, see Wilson 2011) even though a natural
instinct would have been to run for life to the north on the existing big
island that is now Epi (see Hoffman, 2007). Again this is not the point. The
point is to establish a Phoenix-like re-creation myth - out of a natural
catastrophe.
Re-creation myths and legends are not
exactly commonplace but feature prominently in various societies. While the
Phoenix that rises from the ashes is a powerful symbol of personal regeneration
if not reincarnation – with analogies in various regions of the world – there
are far fewer re-creation stories that arise from natural disasters of epic
proportions. In Western societies the probably best known is the Noah’s Ark
story which may have a historical foundation in large scale flooding events in
the Mesopotamian regions, what with bits and pieces of the ark supposedly
scattered somewhere on Mount Ararat. The single survivor (or male and female,
for procreation purposes) idea is of course contrary to common sense and all
scientific reasoning but is a great vehicle to establish a totally exclusive
claim to land, ancestry and identity. The main aim is always located in the
present, namely to justify and solidify the current socio-political paradigm.
The myth becomes the reality that shall be un-contestable in the future. That
the Maori god Maui fished the North Island of New Zealand out of the water is
as ridiculous as the Christian god creating the world in seven days. There is
simply no archaeological evidence. However when re-creation stories such as the
Kuwae narrative revolve around human beings who display no supernatural powers,
we should be more circumspect.
Of course there is no evidence for Semet
and/or Tariviket having ever existed but the fact is undeniable that today
these remaining islands are inhabited (at least in part) by people speaking the
na-Makir language. The language of na-Makir is claimed by the inhabitants of
the eponymous Makira Island (see
Map, Appendix 1) which is quite a distance away from Kuwae and the islands that
remain today. How did the na-Makir language establish itself on these islands?
Did the people there speak the na-Makir language before the eruption? Well,
again this is not the point.
The point is that this story is told by a
chief from Makira Island, naturally claiming his na-Makir language to originate
from Makira (hence the eponymous name), thereby explaining how the na-Makir
language came to be spoken on these other islands. We will discuss this matter
in more detail under the section ‘Linguistic consequences of the Kuwae
eruption’.
Indeed the narrative as such has no
subsequent part that Labov calls ‘evaluation’ (as step (4)) which would shed
light on these speculations. Instead, and in line with myth-making, we are
taken straight-away to what Labov calls the ‘result or resolution’:
(4)
Result or resolution
As soon as Semet and Tariviket make a fire
(line [23]) we can see the proverbial solution: the smoke is seen on the
distant island of Makira, and of course it is seen by a chief of Makira, named
Tarimas (line [24]). Initially (up to line [30]) the rescue operation consists
of visiting the survivors and assisting them in their daily life – again a
fanciful scenario, given that there had just been a cataclysmic volcanic
eruption. A potential motivation for this interlude is to show off chief
Tarimas’ prowess as the captain of the canoe going back and forth between
Makira and Tongariki – a distance of about 11 km as the crow flies – which is
no mean feat, especially as the seas in that area can be very rough and
unpredictable. In any case, in line [29] we are told that Semet AND Tariviket
are taken to Makira, immediately followed by the revelation that the two got
married on Makira and had a daughter called Nawa.
From line [32] onwards the narrative turns
into the genealogy of the future inhabitants of Tongariki, Buninga, Ewose and
Tongoa islands in as far as they are all speakers of na-Makir. It all begins
with the feudal practice of the chiefs of Makira siring various children with
Nawa who in turn become the first chiefs of the islands mentioned. Technically
the narrative says that they all went back to live in Tongoa (the now largest
island left over from Kuwae) but it can be implied that they also populated the
other smaller islands where na-Makir is spoken today. Note that in the other
versions to be discussed below, these events have a different flavour – not
surprisingly perhaps if one is at pains to establish a different chiefly
lineage.
(5)
Coda
The coda in line [41], asserts the claim
over these islands by the virtue of the language of Makira being spoken there
to this very day. Of course the chiefly lines via Makira have also been clearly
established by way of an oral tradition that has been re-told again in the
current narrative.
3.
Anthropological contexts
The story of Kuwae exists in various forms
in the Shepherd Islands, with three main variants presently recorded: the
Tongariki and Makira versions first recorded by Guiart (in Espirat et al.
1973), and the Tongoa version recorded by Luders (pers. comm., 2001, 2010). As
a genre they belong to what Facey (1988) calls ‘locality and descent’ as a key
to social organisation in Vanuatu. As a traditional way to record, maintain and
establish claims to land, there are always bound to be conflicting versions,
and indeed the disclosure of such lore to outsiders is only a consequence of
modernity, often fraught with a mix of deception and leg pulling so as to
confuse the inquisition from afar. As this newly imposed modernity insists on
land titles within the prevailing capitalist mode of the metropolitan masters,
such matters have become of intense interest to those who engage in real
estate, and the existing Land Tribunals that are meant to sort out legal title
begin to engage in oral and written history as means of disentangling
conflicting claims. Wilson (2011) gives a vivid description of the Shepherd
Islanders claiming land on Efate, based on a long history of migration between
these islands. In New Zealand there is a similarity to the Treaty of Waitangi
land claims, with their associated searches of historical lines of descent -
quite apart from retrieving land that was alienated by the colonists – and
which end up more often than not as contemporary legal wrangles rather than
historical ones.
As such oral history assumes a new
importance, even if for all the wrong reasons. Works like that by Espirat et al
(1973) with their amazing detail on chiefly descent lines are sometimes cited
as to support one claim against the other, even though it is well known amongst
ni-Vanuatu that such records often
suffer from the above mentioned leg pulling or other inaccuracies due to
recording in linguistic contexts not well understood by the Western researcher.
So what are the differences in the versions
that might be of interest to both ni-Vanuatu (in terms of land claims, for
example) and ethnologists? First consider the original text by Guiart (1973),
followed by a summary of the story as recorded by Luders (2001) – note that
Luders also fictionalized the whole story in his (2010) novella Cataclysm.
Un homme appelé
Sëmet était à nourrir ses poules a Tanamalal (Mangarisu de Tongoa). Devant
l'éruption il parvient à s'enfuir jusqu'à Tongariki où il se cache à
l'intérieur d'un tambour dressé a Lakilia. Une femme, Tarifegit, qui cherchait
des coquillages au bord de mer, s'était cachée dans une grotte. Quand tout est
fini, elle sort, va et vient et finit par rencontrer l'homme issu de son
tambour. Ils trouvent à manger en recherchant une fosse à fruit à pain fermenté
(na-maäay). Ayant fait du feu avec
des débris, une fumée s'élève que voit TarimasU à Makura. Il pense qu'il reste
là-bas un homme vivant et décide d'aller voir. Il ramène ainsi à Makura l'homme
et la femme rescapés, et c'est à ce moment qu'il change le nom de Tapurar,
celui de la passe de Tongariki, en Kahaov. Sëmet et Tarifegit se marient a
Makura et vivent là. Une fille leur naît, appelée Nawa. Sëmet avait en effet
tué un cochon, organisé une fête, et dit aux chefs de Makura de venir coucher
avec Tarifegit, afin qu'elle puisse avoir un enfant. On procédera de même avec
Nawa qui mettra au monde deux jumeaux : Ti Tongoa Mata et Ti Tongoa Roto.
Voyant depuis Makura que l'herbe repousse à Tongoa, TarimasU y va en éclaireur
et y trouve la plante broussailleuse dite worotongoa,
d'où le nom de Tongoa donné à ce fragment de Kuwae, et d'où aussi les titres
attribués aux jumeaux. On prend alors le nasumwaur
de Makura: Samwan - avant l'arrivée de Mwasoe Rangi et de la déesse Leymangola
- et on l'emmène à Mweriu sur Tongoa. Les deux fils de Nawa épousent deux
femmes de Makura et repartent avec leurs parents à Tongoa, y introduisant la
langue Namakura qui serait ainsi la langue la plus anciennement parlée a
Tongoa. (p. 57-58)
Gujart adds a footnote (not reproduced
here) where he explains why Sëmet might have called on the Makira chiefs to
sleep with his wife and daughter, suggesting that Semet may in the meantime
have suffered from impotence and that this was the traditional remedy (but see
the interesting story to the contrary contained in the Tongoa (Luders, 2001)
version below).
Earthquakes began six years before the eruption
and, on southeast Kuwae at least, chiefs began to evacuate their people to Efate
(with its offshore islands), calling on their long-standing associations there.
They established food gardens, built houses and ferried people to Efate.
The youth who was to become the first Ti Tongoa,
and whose eldest son became the first Ti Tongoa Liseiriki, was heir to an older
title, one of the four referred to above. His personal name was Simeti, Simet
or Asingmet, depending on the version. With other young men, who formed the rearguard
of the evacuation, he was awaiting the canoes that would take them off, when
the eruption occurred. He fled the eruption and survived by taking shelter in a
slit-gong that became covered in the falling ash. A woman named Tarivekit or
Terevikit also survived by hiding in a cave. These two were rescued by men from
Makura Island under a chief named Tarimasu. After some five years on Makura,
Simeti commenced re-colonization of Tongoa, the part of Kuwae that had been his
home, and went to Efate to tell his father and other chiefs that they could
return. A number of histories give the sojourn on Efate as being six years.
In the oral record
it is unsaid, but very probable, that many evacuees did not return but remained
on Efate. Simeti took a new title, suggesting that his father elected to remain
on Efate with the old title and its claims to land based on the migration of
some 25-30 generations earlier. In the nature of chiefly histories, Simeti's
descendants inherit all the detail of the old title up to the point where
Simeti takes the new title and thereafter their history records the new title.
The fate of the old title is apparently lost. Simeti's father may have passed
it to another son on Efate but it seems to exist no longer.
While both versions agree that Sëmet
marries Tariviket on Makira, there is a significant difference in the Tongoa (Luders,
pers. comm.) version where Sëmet and Tarifiket are cousins and as such should
not marry, but when they are caught having sex with each other, they do so
nevertheless. In the Tongoa version Sëmet marries again though, namely to a
Makira woman named Nawa. In the Makira version, however, Sëmet and Tariviket
have a daughter named Nawa, who eventually, when she grows up to be a young
woman, is given over to the chiefs of Makira to produce three boys, Ti Tongoa
Leiserik, Ti Tongoa Mata and Ti Tongoa Roto. Note that the Guiart version does
not mention Ti Tongoa Leiserik.
All versions agree on the naming of Tongoa
after the plant Woro Tongo(a). The Guiart version then tells of a nasumwaur (na-sumaur in my word list is glossed as 'god/spirit who created the
world’) or Samwan being taken to Mweriu on Tongoa, together with the
repatriation of the twins and their wives from Makira. It is also mentioned by
Guiart that the nasumwaur or Samwan
arrived on Makira before the chief Mwasoe Rangi and the goddess Leymangola.
None of this is mentioned in the versions given by Chief Masoeripu.
Both Guiart and Masoeripu versions agree on
the na-Makir language thus being introduced to Tongoa. Luders (ibid.) however
in his Tongoa version points out that the na-Makir language had been in use all
over Kuwae for many generations before the Kuwae eruption, hence the
repatriation was only a re-introduction of na-Makir to what was left of Kuwae
(but see Clark, 1996) who disagrees). This however begs the question as to what
language Sëmet and Tariviket were speaking in the Makira/Guiart versions.
What is however most important in the
Guiart/Masoeripu versions is that the chiefly bloodlines for the resettlement
of Tongoa and the other islands of old Kuwae are descended from the Makira
chiefs. However in the Tongoa version, according to Lueders (ibid.) - which by
the way claims to be told by the descendants of Ti Tongoa Leiserik and Ti
Tongoa Roto – we start off with a Tongoa chief, namely Semet who is to become
Ti Tongoa Leiserik. And there are other re-settlement claims to be considered,
i.e. many of the chiefs before the imminent eruption of Kuwae had sent their
people to safety on Efate and Epi, and these people and their descendants
returned to what was left of Kuwae all-the same. Lueders also claims that the
Nakanamanga language of Efate reached Tongoa (and parts of Emae) only some time
after the Kuwae eruption, especially as the Nakanamanga speakers seem to be
resident on the much less desirable western coastlines, thus indicating lesser
time depth (on this point Clark, 1996, agrees). What is also interesting
regarding Guiart's version, is that the chiefly line of Mwasoe Rangi was not
yet on Makira at the time of the repatriation of the chiefly twins to Tongoa.
As our current author, Chief Masoeripu is a descendent of the chiefly line of
M(w)asoe Rangi it might have been convenient for him not to mention it, lest it
interferes with any claims to land and title.
In the present version, the pre-occupation
with naming people and places actually comes after the telling of the main
events, and as such reinforces the message that it's all in a name that bestows
identity (cf. lines [36] and [37]). This echoes the universal practice of
giving personal names to heroic figures who become progenitors of ancestral
lines of descent. Here heroic status is conferred by surviving a cataclysm,
having adopted somewhat unusual means in case of Semet who had hidden in an
upright drum. Equally heroic is chief Tarimas of Makira Island who rescues
Semet and Tariviket from their predicament, i.e. having survived but having no
food or water to carry on. Indeed it is chief Tarimas who then calls all the
shots and names all the new islands that formed as remnants of the former
Kuwae. Furthermore to really claim the whole bloodline, there is the explicit
line [33] which explains that various chiefs of Makira fathered three children
with Nawa, the daughter of Semet and Tariviket. Importantly – when compared to
the Tongoa version - Semet is not
mentioned to have chiefly descent (nor Tariviket) and thus it would have been
common practice to marry off Nawa to a commoner of Makira. We now need a Deus ex Machina, i.e. a plot device to
solve a tricky problem, namely to ‘invite’ the chiefs to impregnate a woman of
presumably common origins, just so as to establish a new chiefly line that lays
claim to all the islands newly emerged from the cataclysm. Guiart’s contrary
explanation that Semet may have been impotent and thus invited the chiefs to
have a go with his wife and daughter sounds more far-fetched but not impossible
in view of feudal practices.
In terms of post-structural anthropology à
la Derrida (1992) we contend, controversially perhaps, that such sexual
violation as part of a feudal practice – note, it is the father that invites
the chiefs to ‘sleep’ with his daughter - is mirrored in the establishment of
nationalist identity that in Europe unleashed ‘the worst violences … the crimes of xenophobia, racism, anti-Semitism,
religious or nationalist fanaticism’ (Derrida, 1992). While French and English
colonialism in Vanuatu didn’t unleash such extreme violence, one must note that
the unique establishment of a condominium (the first elected PM of Vanuatu,
Walter Lini (1980) called it ‘pandemonium’) – i.e. Vanuatu was governed by
France and the UK simultaneously – was very much based on supporting an extreme
version of an indigenous patriarchal chiefly system which hitherto was a
marginal force in Vanuatu tribal societies. To this day violence against women
in Vanuatu is a major problem (an AUSAID 2011 survey reported that 60% of
ni-Vanuatu women had experienced physical/sexual violence). Other may disagree
and claim that the patriarchal chiefly system in Vanuatu persisted long before,
e.g. Luders (2001):
… the social structure
in this region seems to have been fairly uniform and conformed to the
essentially feudal pattern extant in the Shepherds. The chiefly structure is
hierarchical and land is held by dominant chiefs who once had absolute rights
over all on it, including people.
Guiart (2004)
challenged Luders (2001) article, noting amongst other things, that the
patriarchal system alluded to by Luders was an imposition by the Christian
missionaries that were very active in the Shepherd Island groups.
My contention is
that Melanesian societies in general, and the Shepherd Islands in particular,
are historically described as ‘big men’ (I would add ‘big women’ as matriarchy
in Vanuatu has been and still is quite pronounced in some areas) societies that
lack authoritarian chiefly systems of power, as described by historian Brij Lal
(quoted in Wilson, 2011):
… chiefly systems have never been a prominent
feature of the cultural landscape. Instead, small- scale, loosely organized,
and shifting systems of leadership clustered around competitive
"big-men" were more typical. These institutions have to a large
extent endured in the face of relatively unsuccessful attempts to impose the
paraphernalia of a western-style nation-state. Not only do elected leaders
struggle to implement "development" and other policies among peoples
whom they cannot control or coerce, but they often have to conform to
traditional big-man norms and expectations in order to stay in power. Sofar as
ordinary people remain very much in control of their daily lives, these systems
may operate far more democratically than most "advanced" western
political systems.
Vanuatu’s first ‘leader’ Fa. Walter Lini
(1980) coined the concept of Melanesian Socialism precisely because progressive
and egalitarian political movements could be instituted in a diverse society
like Vanuatu’s.
4.
The linguistic consequences
of the Kuwae eruption
This title is taken from Cark’s (1996)
article where he argues that the linguistic evidence supports the
archaeological facts surrounding the Kuwae eruption. The two languages (North
Efate/Nakanamang and na-Makir) that persist in the islands formed from the
eruption show all the signs (e.g. high cognition rates) of being of lesser time
depth than the many other languages that tend to be geographically isolated.
Clark refutes the possibility (as claimed by Luders, ibid.) that either
language would have been extant on Kuwae before the eruption. Apart from the
above argument, there is no evidence for the Epi languages of any substrate
influences.
Clark (ibid.) gives credence to my
suggestion that the Makirans played a major role in resettling the area by
saying that this ‘assigns Makura people a pioneering role’ (p. 282). As such
the narrative presented quite possibly reinforces a historical truth – and
should have left it at that. That languages spread is more a historical
accident rather than an imperial pursuit (although one might disagree with
reference to the English language, cf. Phillipson’s (1992) evocative book title
of Linguistic imperialism). Indeed
the post-Kuwae spread of the na-Makir language to the island of Emwae is
attributed to an epidemic on Emwae decimating the women in particular, hence
women from Makira emigrated to Emwae and established their proverbial
mother-tongue.
Clark’s
assertion that with the Kuwae eruption all traces of the Kuwae languages
disappeared also, is challenged by Hoffmann (2007) in his aptly titled article
‘Looking to Epi: Further Consequences of the Kuwae
Eruption’. He makes the case that since Epi was to the largest extent part
of Kuwae, there must be reason to believe that extant cultural and linguistic
constructs on Epi must be related to Kuwae of old. Clark did not actually deny
the possibility other than to assert that the current languages of the Shepherds
(i.e. Nakanamanga and na-Makir) have nothing to do with any putative Kuwae
languages(s). As Hoffmann suggests, further research of the Epi landscape may
indeed find traces of the Kuwae languages buried in the extant Epi cultures and
languages.
5. The politics of the narrative
To finally view the story’s preoccupation
with chiefly aristocracy with Marxist eyes (see the introductory quote of ‘identity politics is the political terrain
in which various social groups engage in a “struggle for recognition”
within bourgeois society’), let us assume, with Marxist
polemic, that the ‘commoners’ of Makira couldn’t care less about who is
descended from whom and which island was named by whom and why. They just toil
away in their bush gardens to put food on the table for their families. They go
to church on Sunday because they have to, and they listen to the chiefs because
the consequences for not paying attention can be dire. The priests and the
chiefs have all the spiritual and political power – and they have none. They
have heard about the newfangled ideas of democracy in Port-Vila and their supposed
rights to vote for whom they want. In reality they have to vote for the single
candidate who is their chief. For some time it was chief Masoeripu who held the
seat in parliament for the Shepherd Islands electorate. Parliamentarians get to
travel the world and can attend many parties thrown by the Port-Vila
establishment, namely the high commissions and embassies of the donor
countries. The occasional hand-out reaches back to Makira, like a second-hand
outboard motor for the fishing canoe. When it malfunctions, no one can fix it.
There are murmurings amongst the commoners that this is a scam and things
should change. The priest reminds everyone that such murmurings are the devil’s
work and all kinds of terrible disasters and hellfire will befall Makira if it
continues. Those few who align themselves with the priest and the chiefs get a
few delectable crumbs thrown at them, with the promise for more. It is a
universal story and the only solution seems to be for the ‘workers of the world
to unite’.
I attest to the above in as much my family
and I lived on Makira Island for four months doing fieldwork (during 1985, cf.
Sperlich, 1991), and that as an ardent Marxist I was involved in many
discussions with the locals about politics and the proverbial meaning of life.
Like everywhere else, the ordinary people of Makira are politically aware and
astute but in the face of the oppression decried above, there is little chance
to escape or to start a revolution or even institute Melanesian socialism. Even
with the advent of independence and Fa. Walter Lini’s vision of a Melanesian
Socialism (as quoted above) – and a visit of Lini to Makira while I was there,
affording me the rare chance to talk with him – there was still in place a
pernicious colonial system of oppression, exercised by the chiefs and others
holding political power. When I recorded chief Masoeripu’s kastom stories I heard quite a few comments that I, of all people,
was playing into the hands of those who tell tall stories to enhance their own
reputation above all else. In retrospect I plead guilty.
On the other hand neither Marxist nor
neo-liberal academic can deny that the Kuwae story has historical significance,
and regardless of the ‘cultural’ baggage it carries with it, it must remind all
and sundry of the deeper implications, namely that life is subject to nature’s
whims but is also characterised by human resilience: we may be chastised for
interpreting Semet and Tariviket as an ordinary man and an ordinary woman who
rise from the ashes - Phoenix-like, and thereby re-establish a human identity
on a desolate earth. That the story then launches into chiefly descent is
another matter, one of critical regret espoused here. That we start of with
ordinary human beings in this story is perhaps a sign of unintended hope that
in future all narratives will start, continue and end with them (Wolf 1982,
Fanon 1961).
Note 1: thanks
to Paul Burgess for proofreading and making valuable comments; all remaining
errors are mine alone.
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APPENDIX 1: MAP: Language Map of Central
Vanuatu (after Tryon, 1976)
