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The night was black as pitch. My two-year-old daughter wandered the deck of the small sailing yacht when, suddenly, I heard a splash. I raced toward the sound and, fully clothed, dove into the sea. Swimming in the dark, I worked my way up the side of the hull, arms outstretched. After what seemed an eternity, I felt her wriggling body, carried her back to the surface, and returned her to the boat. She was in the water by herself for only a few seconds, and by the time I set her on the deck she chattered happily about the thrill of “swimming underwater.”
That was our last night on Nukumanu Atoll, a Polynesian outpost near Papua New Guinea’s eastern border. My wife, two young children, and I were completing a year of ethnographic research in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. We were expecting a ship to take us back to the provincial capital when, to our amazement, the yacht appeared with friends we had met months before. They were on their way to the United States, stopped in to check on us, and hosted a farewell dinner. Little did they know that it would lead to one of the most harrowing encounters in my 50 years of field research.
I entered anthropology hoping I could make this world a better place. I knew that some of history’s most brilliant minds had tried without success to resolve our many social problems—stratification, exploitation, crime, war, racism, the list goes on—and thought it might be helpful to escape my Western mindset. In my second semester at the University of California, Berkeley, Gerry Berreman’s “Introduction to Cultural Anthropology” opened the path.
Later, as a University of Chicago graduate student, I sought a field site where cultural understandings and social structure would stand in vivid contrast with my own. I also wished to find a place where I could enjoy the natural world. My father had taught me to hike, swim, paddle, sail, and fish. I learned the wilderness could be my home, and animals around me were my friends. As I considered the options, a remote, largely unacculturated Polynesian island appeared irresistible. Life would diverge dramatically from anything I’d heretofore encountered, and the idea of living off the land and sea seemed perfect. Years before, I’d read Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon Tiki and, after seeing his depiction of French Polynesia’s Tuamotu atolls, wondered why he ever left.
My master’s research focused on the Navajo, far from the sea. Then, while I was working on my MA thesis, Raymond (later, Sir Raymond) Firth came to Chicago as a visiting professor. Firth was known for his pioneering work on Tikopia, a Polynesian outpost in the southeastern Solomons. I took a couple of his classes and spoke with him about potential field sites. In one such conversation, he declared, “… if you’re looking for a remote island, you might think about Anuta. It’s near Tikopia and is as isolated as they come!” Following that lead, in February 1972 I found myself en route to what was then the British Solomon Islands Protectorate.
Anuta is a half mile in diameter, rises to an altitude of just over 200 feet, and is 75 miles from Tikopia, its nearest populated neighbor. British authorities tried to send a ship each month, but often two or three months passed between visits. Since the Solomons gained independence in 1978, shipping has become less regular, with visits sometimes as infrequent as once or twice a year. When I arrived, I found one English speaker and several fluent in Solomon Islands Pidgin English (aka Pijin); otherwise Anutans communicated exclusively in their Indigenous Polynesian language. Raymond had given me some basic lessons in closely related Tikopian, so when I arrived, I had an elementary grammatical understanding and a working vocabulary of perhaps a hundred words. Fortunately, the senior chief assigned me to stay with his younger brother, Pu Tokerau, the island’s catechist and only English speaker. I owe my ethnographic success to him and the many patient islanders who struggled to instill in me a comprehension of their language.
Anutans taught me that an empathetic way of life is possible; a social order predicated upon mutual compassion and support can be achieved. Their prime value is aropa, a word with cognates throughout Polynesia. It signifies emotional attachment as expressed through sharing of material resources. Aropa is also the cornerstone of kinship; thus, anyone expressing aropa may be considered family. On that basis, I became taina (brother) to the senior chief and, four decades hence, my son was ceremonially elevated to a chiefly position. Like other Polynesian islands, Anuta is organized hierarchically on the basis of gender and genealogical seniority. Leaders are infused with spiritual power, known as mana or manuu. At the same time, their legitimacy derives from using that mana to ensure their followers’ well-being.</