Comité de Seguridad y Salud

This chapter has provided a window into the vanua as a complex worldview and epistemology that weaves together the people, spirits and ancestors, all elements of nature, and the Gods of Boumā. The vanua also acts as a guiding set of principles for living life the right way. Living life na sala va’avanua or na sala dodonu is rewarded by sautu51_{. Caring and sharing with each other and living life for the good of the whole}

community rather than for the self is vital for sautu in Boumā. Communality is rewarded by vū and God whereas individuality may be punished.

The vanua represents a sentient ecology (Anderson, 2000). From his studies of reindeer herders in the central Siberian Taimyr region, David Anderson describes the herders’ relationship with their environment and other animals as operating with a sentient ecology. This intuitive relationship involves knowledge which Tim Ingold describes as

…not of a formal, authorised kind, transmissible in contexts outside those of its practical application. On the contrary, it is based in feeling, consisting in the skills, sensitivities and orientations that have developed through long experience of conducting one’s life in a particular environment (2000, p. 25).

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This will be explained in the context of the ecotourism initiatives in Chapter Eight. 51

Sautu may be compared with the Kwara’ae gwaumauri’anga (or the ‘good life’) which na sala dodonu may be compared with the Kwara’ae maui’a saga (‘living straight’) (Gegeo, 2000).

The people of Boumā like the Evenki of the Siberian Taiyr see the environment as a ‘taskscape’ rather than a ‘landscape’. In other words, their world is not divided into humans and their environment. Rather animals, humans and other environmental features are all interrelated elements of our world. And, ‘[j]ust as the landscape is an array of related features, so – by analogy – the taskscape is an array of related activities’ (Ingold, 2000, p. 195). The taskscape then is a pattern of dwelling activities within the landscape and both taskscape and landscape are perpetually in process rather than in a static or otherwise immutable state (Ingold, 1993). Ingold’s taskscape is his answer to what he describes as the one of the ‘great mistakes of recent anthropology’ - that it has ignored the fact that human technical skills are embedded in sociality (Ingold, 2000, p. 195). In addition, that sociality is embedded in the landscape (which includes the widest interpretation of environment to a people e.g. one inclusive of the cosmological dimension in Boumā’s case). The phenomenologically-based methodologies that I have adopted for this research are compatible with the vanua and Ingold’s taskscape in that they all require an inter-relational, subjective, embodied and reflexive understanding of the world.

The vanua concept as the predominant Boumā worldview produces its own set of dwelling activities within the Boumā landscape. Just as Ingold’s taskscape implies, interpretations of life lived va’avanua (the vanua way) is in constant flux and moves with no pre-determined pattern within an equally dynamic landscape. This premise suggests then that the cultural project is one that can only be imagined as ‘in process’ and that there is no completed product reflecting Hobsbawm and Ranger’s (1983) ‘invented tradition’ as defined in Chapter One. All along the way, however, by- products of this process may be seen as culturally-hybridised forms.

It is vital for us to understand the vanua as an indigenous epistemology, a sentient ecology and as a way of understanding the Boumā taskscape if we have any hope of comprehending the ways in which externally introduced development intiatives like community-based ecotourism will be locally interpreted, negotiated and enacted. An understanding of indigenous epistemologies may contribute to models of development

that empower rather than reinforce neo-colonial attitutes through the application of unsuitable Western models of development (Quanchi, 2004; Gegeo, 2000; Hereniko, 2001; Hau’ofa, 2000; Huffer & Qalo, 2004). For example, development discourse tends to promote the Western model of pursuing production goals which serves to satisfy individualistic desires rather than community needs – a model that may not be entirely appropriate for collective cultures such as Fiji. Conversely, understanding indigenous epistemologies while recognising these are not static and timeless assists us in deconstructing romanticised images of the idyllic and traditional subsistence lifestyles of collectivist societies (Hausler, 1994) and avoiding other erroneous assumptions of local realities, needs and wants.

The following chapter will continue the theme of the vanua as epistemology to discuss how Boumā had already started to adopt what they consider to be individualistic values from outside their tribe prior to the advent of community-based ecotourism. These will be explored in terms of life va’avanua as a ‘moral economy’ (Scott, 1976). The vanua concept as an example of a moral economy (Scott, 1976) is a starting point of cultural and social analysis in this thesis. Bearing in mind the dynamic nature of the taskscape, any ‘starting point’ is problematic. However, the points of analysis in this thesis may be viewed as a snapshot period from the beginning of my fieldwork period in 2004 to the end in 2006 but also including vantage points of other temporal dimensions as contributed by my research participants.

The chapter will discuss how va’avanua is changing along with this shift toward individualism and how chiefly leadership is key in determining the impact these changes will have on village life in the future. Chiefly leadership has had a dramatic effect on how people interpret and apply the vanua as they negotiate community-based ecotourism as a business. This will provide an opening for subsequent discussions on the establishment of Boumā National Heritage Park and its individual projects, and ecotourism as ‘business’ in Boumā.