BABATA - Our land, our tribe, our people By Wilson Gia Liligeto; Published by IPS Publications, University of the South Pacific, Suva, 2006 184 pp. $29 Available in bookshops by mid-February.

Professor Edvard Hviding,
Wilson Liligeto has written a remarkable book. For more than 20 years, he has collaborated with elders, younger leaders and members of his own home community, the ‘butubutu’ (or tribe) of Babata on Marovo Island in Marovo Lagoon, with the aim of producing a comprehensive history of the Babata people.

While the result—Babata—is intended to transmit knowledge of the past and strengthen relationships between the new and the old generations of the Babata people, it also fills an important gap in the more general scholarship about the Marovo Lagoon, a place which, in recent years, has received extraordinary international attention on account of it being a hotspot of biodiversity in dire need of conservation-focused efforts.

My own involvement with the people of Marovo reaches back to early 1986. I arrived in Marovo Lagoon as a guest, invited by a network of leaders from the area who wanted research to be carried out by overseas scholars on ways in which the lagoon and its land and sea resources underpinned the cherished lifestyle of the Marovo people.

With their Marovo Lagoon Resource Management Project, these leaders and their collaborators in Western Province, Honiara and the Commonwealth Science Council were indeed ahead of their time in establishing research and education activities with sustainable development as the ultimate goal. Wilson was part of this early pan-Marovo group.

As Liligeto remarks in the opening paragraph of his introduction, the Marovo Lagoon is “...a famous and beautiful area in the Western Province of Solomon Islands”.

However, while many reports by overseas environmental agents working in Marovo have emphasised its beauty, many have tended to overlook the complexity of village life on the ground.

Liligeto’s book avoids this pitfall. It sensitively conveys the ambitions and aspirations of one village community, the members of which remain determined to maintain control over the factors essential to a locally desired way of life.

Simultaneously, the author does not see the people and their place as in any way isolated from wider local, national and global circumstances.

And herein lies a particularly valuable contribution of this book—not only does it provide rich and fascinating accounts of local custom, but it also gives telling insights into how a local community of land—and sea-holding villagers handles an expanding variety of challenges in the fields of economic development and environmental conservation.

In any study of history and society, there will always be many competing versions of what is claimed to be the truth.

Although these different versions may not be in agreement, they are, every one of them, valid versions of reality as seen from the various perspectives of each scholar.

In his study of the Babata people and their land and sea, Liligeto clearly states his own position - that of a centrally placed member (indeed chief’s secretary) of butubutu Babata, and, moreover, one with a particularly deep interest in the tribe’s traditions.

Wilson Liligeto’s Babata—Our Land, Our Tribe, Our People is an original and valuable example of indigenous scholarly writing.

His approach to historical ethnography—founded in sustained dialogue between, on the one hand, elders steeped in tradition and, on the other, an author who represents the well-educated elite of the younger generation and is himself an influential protagonist in ‘development’—is sure to set an example for many to follow, including those currently pursuing similar projects of history-writing with the elders of their own butubutu in other parts of the Marovo Lagoon.

This book, then, deserves a wide and diverse audience. It will inspire younger Babata people to learn about, and from, their ancestral past.

It should also be read by the people of Marovo more generally and by all Marovo-speaking people.

It should be read by other Solomon Islanders (whether they are interested in the Marovo Lagoon, or in writing a similar book about their own place), and by overseas visitors to Marovo, ranging from tourists to representatives of the many international institutions and organisations at work these days to preserve/conserve/reserve some of the environmental wealth of the area.

Liligeto has written a book that will stand as a landmark in scholarship about the Marovo Lagoon and its people, and that opens up new paths for Pacific Islanders interested in writing about their own local communities’ histories and about how their people handle a rapidly changing world.

The Author is with the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen, Norway