“Tired for nothing”? Women, Chiefs, and the Domestication of Customary Authority in Solomon Islands

AUTHOR(S)
Debra McDougall
Culture

This chapter explores emerging cracks in neo-traditional forms of patriarchy in a rural community on Ranongga Island, in the Western Province of the southwestern Pacific nation of Solomon Islands (Map 1). The author begins by exploring precolonial precedents for women’s customary authority over people and territory, power that was largely invisible to colonial authorities and absent from colonial records. I then consider the solidification of a domestic versus political sphere at the high point of late colonialism in the post-World War II years, focusing especially on Joyce Dunateko Panakera, a former Seventh-day Adventist who became Ranongga’s first medically-trained female nurse and midwife and founded the islands’ Methodist Women’s Fellowship, and Dunateko’s husband, Simion Panakera, a businessman and customary authority in the late colonial Solomons. Finally, the author turns to the women now being incorporated into the Pienuna Chiefs’ Committee in the 2000s, focusing especially on the experience of Marina Alepio, the daughter of Dunateko and Panakera, who was chosen to replace her brother as the “tribal” chief in 2005 (Figure 18).

Research Type(s)
Book Chapter
Submitted by Almah Tararia
April 6, 2022
Published in
2000
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