TURNING POINT IN POLYNESIA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 720, 1 May 1953, Page 6

TURNING POINT IN POLYNESIA

We publish this interview with Bengt Danielsson in the knowledge that the Pacific Islanders are presenting their own views of the situation in Polynesia, at the second South Pacific Congress, which ends at Noumea this week.

ENGT DANIELSSON, the bearded Swedish voyager who recently arrived in New Zealand on what might be called the wake of the tidal wave created by the Kon-Tiki expedition. (of which he was a member), has been living in various parts of the Pacific sinc’ 1947. Some of his thoughts on what life has to offer in the paradise to the north of us are expressed in his book The Happy Island, which describes his stay. on Raroia in the Tuamotus. After some months in the Marquesas

he wrote another book, whose Swedish title means The Forgotten Islands. But Mr. Danielsson is also something: of an anthropologist-he calls himself "a social anthropologist"’-and when The Listener interviewed him it was with the thought that a man with such a scientific interest in islands might be able to tell us something of value about our Polynesian neighbours. Last year he was a member of the Pacific Science Board expedition to the Tuamotu Group, sponsored by the Bishop Museum in Honolulu as one of a series of field trips aimed at studying present-

aay ite in the coral atolls, which have hitherto been rather neglected. in Polynesian research. "We have reached a turning point in Polynesian anthropology," he said. "Previously, most scientists studying Polynesia have been interested in its past. But because Polynesian culture has disappeared so rapidly, we can’t do much more historical réconstruction. The proper thing now is to study present conditions and discover the general laws operating, so that we can plan for the future." Mr. Danielsson said that he was a graduate of the University of Upsala and had started his anthropological field work in 1946 with a visit to the Jibaro tribe of head hunters in the Amazon basin. — In the course of this study, which was the subject of his first ‘book, he came to know a good deal about the balsa

wood rafts on which the Jibaros travel up and down the Amazon. After his work had taken him over the border of Ecuador into Peru, he told us, he met by chance the five Norwegians of the Kon-Tiki expedition. He became the sixth member partly because he was a Scandinavian and partly because of his special knowledge of the balsa raft. Six were needed so that the days and nights could be divided evenly into two-hour watches. Since the Kon-Tiki episode he had fallen in love with Polynesia. He had spent 18 months in the Tuamotus, six months in the Marquesas, and periods in the Societies, the Cook Islands, and on Hawaii. The Pacific Science Board expedition to the Tuamotus was the fourth of a series planned by Sir Peter Buck. The previous three had been to Kapinga Marenga, the Marshalls, and the Gilberts respectively. Sir Peter had gone only on the first trip before his death in 1951, but his work was being carried on. The Bishop Museum had recently received a grant from the Carnegie Institute to help it carry out. "a vast research programme in the whole Polynesian area," a five years’ study of the "actual situation" in Polynesia. "At Raroia in the Tuamotus our task was to make a comparative study of the daily life of the islanders, related to. what we know of life on the more fertile mountainous groups such as_ the Societies," he said. "The Tuamotus are in reality nothing but coral reefs rising from five to ten feet above sea level. They haven’t been invaded by Europeans in the same way as Samoa or Tahiti, yet the inhabitants wear European dress, build their houses of planks, and live from the sale to traders of copra and mother-of-pearl. The islands are becoming over-populated, have already lost: practically everything of their old culture, and are on the road to complete Europeanisation." "T don’t regret it," he said. "We can’t return to old times. From an economic viewpoint these islands are now integrated into the world economy, and with the improved communications of today it is unlikely that they will ever

return to their old isolation. I don’t see how they could, or what use it could be to them." Mr. Danielsson was interested in the Maoris because they had emigrated from the old Polynesian home in Tahiti at about the same time in the 14th Century’ that the Tuamotuans had. Yet Maéri culture today was much more alive than Tuamotuan. He thought that this was due to the Maoris being in a minority here and asserting: their old culture as a form of nationalistic compensation. Yet perhaps, despite this assertion, the cultural changes which he forecasts for Polynesians . to the north will also take place here. This is how he puts it in The Happy Island: "The simple, idyllic condi-

tions of hfe will = gradually, disappear. Tahitians and advanced Tuamotuans will teach the new generation contempt for the old values, and with every old person who dies more and more of the Polynesian friendliness and magnanimity will be replaced by more modern and profitable virtues."