Oli Aenaguri’ai: An ethnography of socio-ecological relations and contemporary change in Baelelea, Solomon Islands.

Abstract

This thesis presents a story circumnavigating the social and ecological relations and contemporary changes in Baelelea inland villages on Malaita in the Solomon Islands. The undertaken anthropological and ethnographic study draws on both traditional and contemporary lifeworld of the Baelelea people living in Alafana. The thesis delves explicitly into the human lived experiences, subsistence ways, traditional knowledge, and beliefs that underscore their Indigenous ways of being and knowing. I positioned the research to investigate the socio-ecological dynamics and to gain grounded understanding of Baelelea cultural frameworks, including environmental epistemology, livelihood practices, religious orientation to the environment, oral traditions and spiritual beliefs, and conceptualisation of livelihood sustainability and natural resource management in the face of encroaching externalities of christianity, colonialism and capitalism or globalisation. The studied community of Alafana is small with disbursed population constituting of distinct clan and family groups, all are Baelelea speakers (but with historical and cultural link to other language groups in North Malaita). My ethnographic fieldwork and informants, by disaggregation included few of the remaining elders who converted from the traditional Baelelea religion of akalo (ancestors) to Christianity. Many others constituted first and secondgeneration born Christians. In Alafana and West Baelelea villages generally apart from conversion from traditional religion to Christianity, the biggest culture change is that people’s lifeworld and livelihood have shifted from subsistence systems of reliance on land and the forest to a mixed economy of increasing dependence on cash. A cultural rupture many described as moving from the cultural notion of ‘to make a living’ to that of ‘to make money’. In response and to counter the impending globalised system and social-culture, and ecological changes, informants conceptualised about returning to the basic life of sustainable social living and ecological productivity expressed in the metaphor oli aenaguri’ai –translated ‘return to the tree root’. The metaphor as used in the thesis depicts Baelelea's conception of connectedness and offers an anthropological perspective and deep conversations on the revitalisation of traditional knowledge and interconnectedness with the environment as represented in myths and oral traditions. A metaphorical tree root from Baelelea perspective represents the local ontological perspective, which I propose can contribute to better understanding the cultural landscape and multidisciplinary research approaches in interweaving indigenous knowledge with science in sustainable agriculture systems and natural resources management.