Bush Culture in the New Hebrides

Abstract

OWING to recent economic developments in the islands of the Pacific, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the anthropologist to find material for observation there in the field of social and cultural anthropology. The sophistication of the native through European contacts has indeed always been a difficulty, but post-War development, especially plantation employment, has led to a rapid disintegration and even a blurring of the memory of tribal institutions. Such, for example, was the experience of Miss Beatrice Blackwood in the Solomon Islands, when she was compelled to seek the remoter islands of the group before she could begin her investigations. A similar experience befell the members of the Oxford University expedition to the New Hebrides. It is noted in the recent report of the Oxford University Exploration Society that it was only in the bush that unspoiled material was to be found. Here, however, conditions are still to a considerable extent unchanged, as was indicated in the account of the natives of Malekula given before the Royal Geographical Society on March 16 by Mr. T. H. Harrison, who resided on this island of the New Hebrides from August 1934 until July 1935, and took a census of the inhabitants of this and the adjacent small islands. He assesses their numbers at approximately 10,000.