Tikopia

Tikopia

NASA picture of Tikopia
Tikopia and inset showing position
Tikopia
Geography
Location	Pacific Ocean
Coordinates	12°17′47.3″S 168°49′55.0″E
Archipelago	Solomon Islands
Area	5 km2 (1.9 sq mi)
Highest elevation	380 m (1250 ft)
Highest point	Reani
Administration
Solomon Islands
Province	Temotu
Demographics
Ethnic groups	Polynesian

Tikopia is a volcanic island in Temotu Province, in the independent nation of Solomon Islands, southwestern Pacific Ocean. Although most of Solomon Islands is Melanesian, Tikopia is culturally Polynesian. Its remoteness has enabled much of its culture to persist. One overview calls it "arguably the most thoroughly documented small-scale society in the ethnographic record".

Location and geography

Covering an area of 5 square kilometres (1.9 square miles), this Pacific island is the remnant of an extinct volcano. Its highest point, Mount Reani, reaches an elevation of 380 metres (1,250 feet) above sea level. Lake Te Roto covers an old volcanic crater which is 80 metres (260 feet) deep. This was a fresh water lagoon until a storm in 2002 breached the narrow barrier to the sea.

Tikopia is sometimes grouped with the Santa Cruz Islands. Administratively, Tikopia belongs to Temotu Province as the southernmost of the Solomon Islands. Some discussions of Tikopian society include its nearest neighbour, the even tinier island of Anuta.

History as a Polynesian outlier

An old map of Tikopia from the 1940s

While it is located in Melanesia, the people of Tikopia are culturally Polynesian. Their language, Tikopian, is a member of the Samoic branch of the Polynesian languages. Linguistic analysis indicates that Tikopia was colonized by seafaring Polynesians, mostly from Tuvalu.

The time frame of the migration is not precisely identified but is understood to be some time between the 10th century to the mid-13th century. The arrival of the voyagers in Anuta could have occurred later. The pattern of settlement that is believed to have occurred is that the Polynesians spread out from Tonga and other islands in the central and south eastern Pacific. Before European contact, there was frequent canoe voyaging between the islands; Polynesian navigation skills are recognised to have allowed deliberate journeys on double-hull sailing canoes (outrigger boats). The voyagers moved into the Tuvaluan atolls as a stepping stone to migration into the Polynesian outlier communities in Melanesia and Micronesia.

European contact

The first Europeans arrived on 22 April 1606 as part of the Spanish expedition of Pedro Fernandes de Queirós.

Tikopia played a significant role in slving the mystery of the Lapérouse expedition, which had disappeared in 1788.

Population, economy, and culture

The population of Tikopia is about 1,200, distributed among more than 20 villages mostly along the coast. The largest village is Matautu on the west coast (not to be confused with Mata-Utu, the capital of Wallis and Futuna). Historically, the tiny island has supported a high-density population of a thousand or so. Strict social controls over reproduction prevented further increase.

Tikopians practice an intensive system of agriculture (which has been compared to permaculture), similar in principle to forest gardening and the gardens of the New Guinea Highlands. Their agricultural practices are strongly and consciously tied to the population density. For example, around 1600, the people agreed to slaughter all pigs on the island, and substitute fishing, because the pigs were taking too much food that could be eaten by people. Tikopians have developed rituals and figurative constructions related to their fishing practices.

Unlike the rapidly Westernizing society of much of the rest of Temotu Province, Tikopia society is little changed from ancient times. Its people take great pride in their customs, and see themselves as holding fast to their Polynesian traditions while they regard the Melanesians around them to have lost most of theirs. The island is controlled by four chiefs (ariki): Kafika, Tafua, Taumako and Fangarere, with Kafika recognised as the first among equals.

Tikopians have a highly developed culture with a strong Polynesian influence, including a complex social structure.

Field work

The best known researcher of Tikopia is New Zealand anthropologist Raymond Firth, who lived on the island for 12months between 1928 and 1929. He detailed its social life in We the Tikopia: A Sociological Study of Kinship in Primitive Polynesia (1936).. He showed how the society was divided geographically into two zones and was organized into four clans, headed by clan chiefs. At the core of social life was te paito – the house inherited from male (patrilineal) ancestors, who were buried inside it. Relationships with the family grouping of one's mother (matrilateral relations) were also very important. The relations between a woman's brother and her son (the maternal uncle- nephew relationship) had a sacred dimension: the uncle oversaw the passage of his nephew through life, in particular, officiating at his manhood ceremonies. Intricate economic and ritual links between paito houses and deference to the chiefs within the clan organization were key dimensions of island life.

Firth, who did his post-graduate anthropological study under Bronislaw Malinowski in 1924, speculates about the ways population control may have been achieved, including celibacy, warfare (including expulsion), infanticide and sea-voyaging (which claimed many youths). Firth's book, Tikopia Ritual and Belief (1967, London, George Allen & Unwin) remains an important source for the study of Tikopia culture. He visited again, introducing younger social anthropologists to Tikopia: James Spillius in 1952 and Torben Monberg in 1966.

Based on fieldwork in 1964-65, Eric H. Larsen wrote Nukufero: A Tikopian Colony in the Russell Islands, documenting labour migration to Levers Pacific Plantations.The first female anthropologist was Judith Macdonald in 1980, whose Women of Tikopia (1991) . Other researchers include ethnobotanist Douglas Yen and archaeologist Patrick Kirch. Richard Feinberg has researched Tikiopia's smaller neighbour, Anuta.

Religion

In Tikopian mythology Atua Fafine and Atua I Raropuka are creator gods and Atua I Kafika is the supreme sky god.

The Anglican Melanesian Mission first made contact with Tikopia in 1858, a decade after its foundation in New Zealand. A mission teacher was not allowed to settle on the island until 1907. This was a Melanesian man who married a Tikopian woman and spentthe rest of his life on the island. Conversion to Christianity of the total population did not occur until the 1950s. Administratively, Tikopia is part of the Anglican Church of Melanesia's Diocese of Temotu.

The introduction of Christianity resulted to the banning of traditional birth control, which had the consequence of a 50% increase of the population: 1,200 in 1920 to 1,800 in 1950. The increase in population resulted in migration to other places in the Solomon Islands, including in the settlement of Nukukaisi in Makira.

Cultural significance

Jared Diamond's book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed describes Tikopia as a success case in matching the challenges of sustainability, contrasting it with Easter Island.

21st century

Cyclone Zoe in December 2002 devastated the vegetation and human settlements of the island. Despite the extensive damage, no deaths were reported, as the islanders followed their traditions and sheltered in the caves in the higher ground. The narrow bank that separated the freshwater lagoon from the sea was breached by the storm, resulting in the continuing contamination of the lagoon by saltwater, and the threatened death of the sago palms on which the islanders depend for survival. A remarkable international effort by "friends of" the island, including many yacht crews who had had contact with Tikopia over the decades, culminated in the construction in 2006 of a gabion dam to seal the breach.

In 2009 a double canoe was donated to Tikopia, to ensure its own independent sea transport. The project began in 2005, when Hanneke Boon and James Wharram began to raise money for "A Voyaging Canoe for Tikipoia". These British-based catamaran designers closely followed the hull shape of the traditional Tikopia craft, as represented by Rakeitonga, a 9m outrigger canoe acquired by the Auckand Museum in 1916. A pair of boats slightly larger than this were constructed to their specifications in the Philippines in 2008. The 'Lapita Tikopia' and its sistership 'Lapita Anuta' took five months to sail to the islands, following the ancient migration route of the Lapita people into the Pacific. This voyage of maritime archaeology culminated in the gift of these boats to the islanders, with the intention of ending " an era of being cut off from the surrounding islands and their extended family connections" and allowing deep-sea fishing once more.

In 2013 a Norwegian mother and father brought their two children and a nephew to Tikopia and lived there for six months. A film crew went along to capture footage. The resulting show focuses on the experiences of their young daughter, Ivi, with the children of th island, attending school, visiting chief Tafua and his family, and so on. The 13 episode children's series ("Message in a Bottle") was shown on NRK television channel NRK Super.

In October 2018, one of the chiefs of the island, Ti Namo, made his first visit to the western world to share his worries about climate change. He travelled with a delegation to Grenoble in France, where he presented his documentary Nous Tikopia before a national release on 7 November, and declared to the press, "Before, we suffered a cyclone every ten years. Today it's every two years."

External links

• [1] (The Island of Tikopia. HTV International/Channel 4 UK 1984) Early documentary film for UK television by Krov and Ann Menuhin. Part of the series of South Seas Voyage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QEPkMa3avA
• Flaskepost fra stillehavet (Message in a Bottle from the Pacific Ocean) A children's television program produced by NRK about a Norwegian family that spends a year living on the Island.
• An essay on Tikopia, prepared for the BBC
• BBC photo essay, from the aftermath of Cyclone Zoe Despite the overwhelming devastation and the greatest fears, no one on Tikopia was killed in the disaster.
• Tools and practical help after the cyclone
• Restoring the freshwater lagoon of Tikopia Archived 2013-06-21 at the Wayback Machine
• Solomon Islands - John Seach a Tour Site but with information on each of the islands
• older detail map
• A Voyaging Canoe for Tikopia
• Lapita Voyage official website
• Lapita voyage, introduction and blogs

Further reading

• Baldwin, James, Across Islands and Oceans, specially chapter 8. Tikopia Unspoilt (Amazon Kindle Book)
• Firth, Raymond (2004), We the Tikopia (reprint ed.), London: Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-33020-6, retrieved 18 November 2012First published 1936 by George Allen & Unwin Ltd. This classic study is still used in contemporary anthropology classes{{citation}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
• Firth, Raymond, The Work of the Gods in Tikopia, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press (1940, 1967)
• Firth, Raymond, SOCIAL CHANGE IN TIKOPIA. Re-Study of a Polynesian Community after a Generation, London: Allen and Unwin. 1959, 360 pages
• Firth, Raymond (2006). Tikopia Songs: Poetic and Musical Art of a Polynesian People of the Solomon Islands. Cambridge University Press.
• Kirch, Patrick Vinton; C. Christensen (1981), Nonmarine mollusks from archaeological sites on Tikopia, southeastern Solomon Island, S. Pacific Science 35:75-88
• Kirch, Patrick Vinton; Yen, D.E (1982), Tikopia; The Prehistory and Ecology of a Polynesian Outlier, Honolulu, Hawaii: Bishop Museum Press, ISBN 9780910240307
• Kirch, Patrick Vinton (1983), Mangaasi-style ceramics from Tikopia and Vanikoro and their implications for east Melanesian prehistory, Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association Bulletin 3:67-76
• Kirch, Patrick Vinton (1986), Tikopia: tracing the prehistory of a Polynesian culture, Archaeology 39(2):53-59
• Kirch, Patrick Vinton (1986), Exchange systems and inter-island contact in the transformation of an island society: The Tikopia case, P. V. Kirch, ed., Island Societies: Archaeological Approaches to Evolution and Transformation, pp. 33-41. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Kirch, Patrick Vinton; D. Steadman and D. S. Pahlavan (1990), Extinction, biogeography, and human exploitation of birds on Anuta and Tikopia, Solomon Islands, Honolulu, Hawaii: Occasional Papers of the Bishop Museum 30:118-153
• Kirch, Patrick Vinton (1996), Tikopia social space revisited, J. Davidson, G. Irwin, F. Leach, A. Pawley, and D. Brown, eds., Oceanic Culture History: Essays in Honour of Roger Green, pp. 257-274. Dunedin: New Zealand Journal of Archaeology Special Publication
• Macdonald, Judith (1991). Women of Tikopia (Thesis). Thesis (PhD - Anthropology) University of Auckland.
• Macdonald, Judith (2000). "Chapter 6, Tikopia and "what Raymond Said"" (PDF). Ethnographic Artifacts: Challenges to a Reflexive Anthropology. University of Hawaii Press: edited by S. R. Jaarsma, Marta Rohatynskyj.
• Macdonald, Judith (2003). "Tikopia". Volume 2, Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender: Men and Women in the World's Cultures. Springer: edited by Carol R. Ember, Melvin Ember. pp. 885–892. doi:10.1007/0-387-29907-6_92. ISBN 978-0-306-47770-6.