RICE AND TEA, FISH AND TARO: SIKAIANA MIGRATION TO HONIARA

Authors

William W. Donner, Kutztown UniversityFollow

Abstract

For the past seventy years, the people from Sikaiana in the Solomon Islands have been migrating away from their atoll. After World War II, most Sikaiana migrants settled in Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands, located on Guadalcanal Island. Several generations of Sikaiana people have matured in Honiara, and, during my stays in the 1980s, the Sikaiana population in Honiara outnumbered the population on Sikaiana. In Honiara, Sikaiana migrants have developed many activities that bring them together as a community, including a residential settlement, funerals, wedding exchanges, and fund-raising events. Sikaiana people living on the atoll form a small face-to-face community of biographically known others. Sikaiana migrants in Honiara have developed institutions and events that maintain this kind of intimate community, but economic and demographic factors are not stable, and the lives of migrants are changing in ways that may alter their communal activities. Collective ownership is being replaced by individual ownership, generalized reciprocity is replaced by new market relations, and most Sikaiana migrants are now dependent on earning wages in an uncertain economy and social system.

Recommended Citation

Donner, William W. (2002) "RICE AND TEA, FISH AND TARO: SIKAIANA MIGRATION TO HONIARA," Pacific Studies Journal: Vol. 25: No. 1, Article 1.
Available at: https://digitalcollections.byuh.edu/pacific-studies-journal/vol25/iss1/1