Contenu du sommaire : La terre et le Pacifique

Children of the Land in Samoa : Local Traditions and Imported "Development" In Oceania, the land possesses people, not vice versa. After laying down a general framework, the example is given of independent Western Samoa, a nation with a very particular characteristic : the proportion of land still under customary law (which neither recognizes individual ownership nor authorizes the sale of land). There is debate in the country about changing this system. The problem of land tenure has to do with the overall social and political organization (with its several thousand chiefs), even though "developers" wrongly believe that purely economic choices are made.

Prophet of an Overturned Earth. The Ke'âulumoku Chief and the First Contacts with Europeans in Hawai'i This article presents the "land chants" of a chief and orator in 18th century Hawai'i. Attention is drawn to the cultural importance, at the time of early contacts with Europeans, of attachment to the land.

Sea Fishers, Land Fishers. The Sea in Tongan Thought On the Tonga Islands, relations with physical space, as well as the social and religious conceptions applied to the notion of territory, associate the land and sea. References to the ocean are very strong. The sea is much more than either the mere prolongation of island space or a part of the network of interisland relations. All men are called fishermen. Sea fishers, who tap the ocean's physical resources, have a close relationship with certain species of fish, the basis of divine images. Landsmen are land fishers ; they morally associate themselves with the appropriation of the ocean's resources through behaviors that consolidate social order in the group. Maritime tenure with controlled access to resources existed till the late 19th century. Despite current freedom of access, the privileged, socialized relation maintained with the oceanic environment has not completely disappeared.

Land, Space, Territory in Contemporary Tahitian. A Few Comments The importance, noted by several observers, of land and territory in the history and society of Tahiti is recalled. Comments are made about a few remarkable features of contemporary Tahitian semantics having to do with land and space. Two "land chants" (paripari fenua) are quoted.

The Earth, My Flesh (Australia) For Australian Aborigines, the claim to traditional attachments has become the symbol of a sense of individual, community and national identity. Ancestral territorial rights were governed by complex systems, wherein the social organization was linked to itineraries and sacred sites associated with the travels of mythical beings. Today, heated debate is taking place about the legitimacy of lines of descent (matri-, patri- or bilateral). It is hypothesized that this conflict is part of the construction of an identity wherein heterogeneous memberships in local groups, with their linguistic differences, constitute the very condition of Aboriginality. A single place still serves as the pretext for parallel discourses, which differ depending on the context and on the speaker' s place of reference and gender. Changes imposed by colonists or administrators, like variations in population and climate during the past, may be expressed through innovations in ceremonies or myths that have territorial applications. These innovations lie at the very center of the traditional process for updating local identities, wherein body and spirit are intricately related through a sort of image, trace or mark. These signs of the past are a virtual memory of the cosmos, wherein the earth is, like the flesh, a form of inscription.

Kanak Land : A Political Issue Yesterday and Today. A Comparative Model The decisive role of relations with the land in the social and political systems of North Central New Caledonia (in the areas where Paicî and Cèmuhî are spoken) is analyzed. This essential dimension of Kanak institutions could be compared to land relationships in other Melanesian and Polynesian societies.

Land and Exchanges among the Anga (Papua New Guinea) The lineage model worked out by africanists does not account for the definition of local groups or, more generally, for the nature of social bonds in New Guinea. The ways the environment is worked and land is appropriated (bush country for hunting and fields for farming) in two Anga groups (Ankave and Baruya) are described. Questions then arise about the forms of the relationship with the land. This comparative study sheds light on the overall logic linking earth, food and exchanges. References to localities and to work are inherent in this logic, which sheds light on cooperation between affines and forms of marriage, as well as on the ceremonial use of game from hunting. The main markers of the land are the trees associated with the production of the bodily substances most valued in conceptions about the making of human beings and in masculine initiation ceremonies : blood and sperm.

The Universe as a Hamlet. Yafar Cosmology and History (Papua New Guinea) For the Yafar in western Sepik, the land is both a subject of cosmological speculation and a social, political, historical and economic reality. How do these two dimensions - in principle, independent of each other - sometimes overlap ? Yafar society integrates the cosmological structure into the hamlet's sociopolitical configuration. It also inserts phantasms from the cosmology into a millenarianism. Independence in 1975, the 1981 cargo cult (death vs. abundance), and splits in Yafar society following internal conflict are new events imposed by history but thought out through cosmology.