Tikopia

Information about Tikopia

Tikopia is the southernmost of the Santa Cruz Islands, located in the province of Temotu. It is also the southernmost of the Solomon Islands.
Enlarge picture
Tikopia and inset showing position
Tikopia is a high island, covering an area of 5 km² (2 sq. mi.). The island is the remnant of an extinct volcano, its highest point, Mt. Reani, reaching an elevation of 380 m (1,247 ft) above sea level. Some discussions of Tikopian society include its nearest neighbour, the even tinier island of Anuta.

The population of Tikopia is about 1,200. Historically the tiny island has supported a high-density population of a thousand or so. Strict reproductive policy prevented further increase. Unlike most of the Solomon Islands, the inhabitants are Polynesians, and their language Tikopian, is a member of the Samoic branch of the Polynesian languages.

Tikopians practice an intensive permaculture system, 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 A.D, 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.

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.

Four chiefs reign over the islands of Tikopia and Anuta, still holding court in their huts.

Tikopians have a highly developed culture with a strong Polynesian influence, including a complex social structure. The influence of Polynesian culture is not so far distant from local memory: it has not been so long since widespread infanticide was as natural and as necessary as sharing food and learning to dance. Because of these population control methods, resulting in zero population growth and a sustainable economy, pre-contact Tikopian society was described as idyllic, even utopian. Its society was strongly communal: the sea was full of fish, the land grew excellent food, and the people supported one another.

New Zealand anthropologist, Raymond Firth, who lived on Tikopia in 1928 and 1929 provides a detailed account of the social life of Tikopia at that time. He shows how the society was divided geographically into two zones and was organised into four clans, headed by clan chiefs. At the core of social life was the 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 mother's brother and his nephew 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 organisation were key dimensions of island life.

Firth speculates about the ways population control may have been achieved including celibacy, warfare (including expulsion), infanticide and sea-voyaging (which claimed many youths). Currently, many of the young men leave the island, heading to either the Russell Islands or the national capital, Honiara, in search of work. As a result of this outflow of men, population control is less necessary.

Vegetation and human settlements in Tikopia were devastated following Cyclone Zoe's landfall in December 2002. Surprisingly, 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 the continuing contamination of the lagoon 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 of a gabion dam to seal the breach.

See also

External links

Further reading

  • We the Tikopia (1936), Raymond Firth's classic study, still used in anthropology classes today
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Polynesia
Polynesian triangle:Austral Islands Cook Islands Easter Island Gambier Islands Hawaiian Islands Loyalty Islands Marquesas New Zealand Pitcairn Islands Sala y Gmez Samoan Islands Society Islands Tokelau Tonga Tuamotus Tuvalu Wallis and Futuna Islands
Polynesian outliers and peripheral cultures:Anuta Emae Futuna Kapingamarangi Mele Nuguria Nukumanu Nukuoro Ontong Java Ouva Pileni Rennell Rotuma Sikaiana Takuu Tikopia


Coordinates:
The Santa Cruz Islands are a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean, part of Temotu Province of the Solomon Islands. They lie approximately 250 miles (400 km) to the southeast of the Solomon Islands Chain.
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Temotu is the easternmost province of the Solomon Islands. The province was formerly known as Santa Cruz Islands Province. It consists, essentially, of two chains of islands which run parallel to each other from the northwest to the southeast.
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Motto
"To Lead is to Serve"
Anthem
God Save Our Solomon Islands
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High Island may refer to:

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Volcano:
1. Large magma chamber
2. Bedrock
3. Conduit (pipe)
4. Base
5. Sill
6. Branch pipe
7. Layers of ash emitted by the volcano
8. Flank 9. Layers of lava emitted by the volcano
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Anuta is a small high island in the southeastern part of the Solomon Islands province of Temotu.

Description

The island lies about 500 km (300 mi.) to the east-southeast of Nendo, at 11°36'39.00" S lat., 169°51'1.00" E. long.
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Polynesia (from Greek: πολύς many, νῆσος island) is a subregion of Oceania, comprising a large grouping of over 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean.
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Samoic languages are one of the primary classes of Polynesian languages, encompassing the Polynesian languages of Samoa, Tuvalu, American Samoa, Tokelau, Wallis and Futuna, as well as a number of languages, spoken in parts of Tonga, the Cook Islands, New Caledonia, the Solomon
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Polynesian languages are a language family spoken in the region known as Polynesia. They are classified as part of the Austronesian family, belonging to the Eastern Eastern Malayo-Polynesian branch of that family. They fall into two branches: Tongic and Nuclear Polynesian.
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permaculture, coined by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren during the 1970s, is a portmanteau of permanent agriculture as well as permanent culture.
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Forest gardening (also known as 3-Dimensional Gardening) is a food production and land management system based on replicating woodland ecosystems, substituting trees (such as fruit or nut trees), bushes, shrubs, herbs and vegetables which have yields directly useful to mankind.
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Population density is a measurement of population per unit area or unit volume. It is frequently applied to living organisms, humans in particular.

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Polynesian culture refers to the aboriginal culture of the Polynesian-speaking peoples of Polynesia and the Polynesian outliers. Polynesia. Chronologically, the development of Polynesian culture can be divided into four different historical eras:

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Infanticide is the practice of someone intentionally causing the death of an infant. Often it is the mother who commits the act, but criminology recognises various forms of non-maternal child murder.
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Population control is the practice of limiting population increase, usually by reducing the birth rate. The practice has sometimes been voluntary, as a response to poverty, or out of religious ideology, but in some times and places it has been government-mandated.
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Zero Population Growth, sometimes abbreviated ZPG, is a condition of demographic balance where the number of people in a specified population neither grows nor declines, considered as a social aim[1] .
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Utopia (from Greek: οὐ no, and τόπος, place, i.e. "no place" or "place that does not exist," as well as "perfect place") is a fictional island near the coast of the Atlantic Ocean written about by Sir Thomas More as the
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Anthropology (from Greek: ἄνθρωπος, anthropos, "human being"; and λόγος, logos, "speech" lit. to talk about human beings) is the study of humanity.
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Sir Raymond William Firth, CNZM, FBA, (25 March, 1901 – 22 February, 2002) was an ethnologist from New Zealand. As a result of Firth's ethnographic work, actual behaviour of societies (social organization) is separated from the idealized rules of behaviour within the
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Patrilineality (a.k.a. agnatic kinship) is a system in which one belongs to one's father's lineage; it generally involves the inheritance of property, names or titles through the male line as well.
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Matrilateral - Term describing kin (relatives) 'on the mother's side'.

Social anthropologists have underlined that even where a social group demonstrates a strong emphasis on one or other line of inheritance (matrilineal or patrilineal), relatives who fall outside this unilineal
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Coming of age is a young person's transition from adolescence to adulthood. The age at which this transition takes place varies in society, as does the nature of the transition.
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The Russell Islands are two important small islands, as well as several islets, of volcanic origin, in the Central Province of the Solomon Islands. They are located approximately 48 km (30 mi.) northwest from Guadalcanal.
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Honiara, population 49,107 (1999), is the capital of the Solomon Islands and of Guadalcanal Province, although it is a separately administered town. The name "Honiara" is actually a misnomer: the English colonialists found it hard to pronounce the original name of the area
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Tropical Cyclone Zoe

Category 5 cyclone (SSHS)

Tropical Cyclone Zoe at its record peak intensity.

Formed December 23, 2002
Dissipated January 1, 2003
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lagoon is a body of comparatively shallow salt or brackish water separated from the deeper sea by a shallow or exposed sandbank, coral reef, or similar feature. Thus, the enclosed body of water behind a barrier reef or barrier islands or enclosed by an atoll reef is called a
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