Trobriand Islands
The Trobriand Islands, also known as the Kiriwina Islands, are a cluster of twenty-eight coral islands located in the Solomon Sea, off the eastern coast of Papua New Guinea. The largest island, Kiriwina, is home to the majority of the islands' twelve thousand inhabitants and features a tropical climate conducive to the cultivation of various crops, including yams, which also serve as currency. The islands are characterized by a rich cultural tapestry, including a clan-based society that maintains traditional practices in agriculture, trade, and social relationships.
Anthropologically significant, the Trobriand Islanders have a distinctive approach to sexual behavior, with a permissive cultural attitude and a belief system that separates the act of intercourse from conception. The Kula exchange system, a complex network of ceremonial trading involving red shell necklaces and white shell armbands, is central to their social interactions, fostering connections and enhancing status within and between communities. Historically, the Trobriand Islands were first charted by Europeans in the late 18th century and have since attracted the attention of anthropologists, most notably Bronislaw Malinowski, who studied the islands in the early 20th century. Today, the Trobriand Islanders continue to balance their traditional lifestyle with modern influences, offering a unique glimpse into a vibrant and resilient culture.
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Trobriand Islands
The Trobriand Islands are a group of twenty-eight coral islands in the South Pacific off the eastern coast of Papua New Guinea. They are also called the Kiriwina Islands, after the name of the largest and most populated island in the chain. Europeans first charted the Trobriand Islands in 1793, and they were named after a French officer on the expedition. In the early twentieth century, the Indigenous population of the Trobriand Islands was profiled in an influential work of anthropology. The clan-based society of the islanders has been noted for its traditional system of trade and permissive approach to sexual behavior.
Background
At 303,500 square miles (786,061 square kilometers), the island of New Guinea is the second-largest island on Earth, behind only Greenland. It is located about 100 miles (161 kilometers) north of Australia. At one time in the geological past, it was connected to the Australian mainland. The western half of the island is part of Indonesia and contains the provinces of Papua and Papua Barat. The eastern half of the island is home to the nation of Papua New Guinea, a former Australian territory that declared its independence in 1975.
Papua New Guinea consists of a mainland area of 174,850 square miles (452,860 square kilometers) and about 600 smaller islands off its northern and eastern coasts. The nation had a total population of 10.3 million in 2023. English is one of three official languages spoken in Papua New Guinea, the others being Tok Pisin and Hiri Motu. More than 830 Indigenous regional languages are also spoken in the country. The diverse number of languages represents about 12 percent of the world's total, though less than 1,000 people use many of the dialects.
Overview
The Trobriand Islands are part of Papua New Guinea and are located about 90 miles (145 kilometers) off the eastern mainland coast in the Solomon Sea. The Trobriand Islands are relatively flat coral islands rich in mineral deposits, allowing for the cultivation of several tropical food staples such as mangoes, bananas, papayas, coconuts, and pineapples. Yams are a primary crop on the islands and are one of the forms of currency used by the Indigenous inhabitants. The climate is tropical, with frequent rainfall and year-round temperatures averaging about 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 Celsius).
The Trobriand Islands consist of four large islands—Kiriwina, Kaileuna, Vakuta, and Kitava—and twenty-four smaller islets and atolls with a total land mass of about 170 square miles (440 square kilometers). Kiriwina is the largest island at 30 miles (48 kilometers) long and about 3-to-10 miles (5-to-16 kilometers) wide. Most of the islands' 12,000 inhabitants live on Kiriwina, which is also home to the Trobriand Islands' largest village, Losuia. During World War II (1939–1945), Allied forces maintained an air base and naval base at Losuia.
The French ship Espérance was the first European expedition to discover the islands in 1793. The ship's commander, Joseph-Antoine Raymond Bruni d'Entrecasteaux, named the islands after his first lieutenant, Jean François Sylvestre Denis de Trobriand. Christian missionaries began visiting the islands by the late nineteenth century. By the early twentieth century, New Guinea and the Trobriand Islands were under the control of Australia, a member of the British Commonwealth.
In 1914, Polish anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski traveled to the Trobriand Islands to study the Indigenous culture. Malinowski spent three years on the islands, chronicling the population's trading system, agriculture techniques, magical beliefs, and sexual practices. His 1922 book, Argonauts of the Western Pacific, was one of the era's most comprehensive examinations of a non-Western culture and became a highly influential work in modern anthropology.
In the modern era, the Trobriand Islanders have maintained their traditional farming and fishing lifestyle. Their society is clan-based, with the line of inheritance running through the mother's side of the family. Villages are the major cultural unit of Trobriand society, with each village under the command of a chief or a group of chiefs. Inhabitants live in communal structures with shared gardens. Married couples and their children live in separate dwellings from single individuals.
The islanders have a permissive cultural attitude toward sex. Parents do not shield children from awareness of sexual behavior, and adolescents are encouraged to experiment sexually with multiple partners. Once married, many adults take part in communal relationships with shared sexual partners. Many villages have at least one bukumatula, a special dwelling set aside for intimate encounters between unmarried villagers. The islanders' traditional beliefs hold that consuming yams acts as an effective contraceptive and that pregnancy is not caused by sexual intercourse. When a woman becomes pregnant, islanders believe an ancestral spirit called a baloma has entered the woman's body and given life to her child.
The Trobriand Islanders practice a form of cultural trade that follows an elaborate set of rules. The tradition, known as the Kula or Kula ring, is a circular exchange system in which ceremonial gifts are distributed in a predetermined geographical order. Red shell necklaces, or soulava, are exchanged with villages or trading partners to the north in a clockwise direction. White shell armbands, or mwali, are exchanged to the south in a counterclockwise direction. According to tradition, soulava are exchanged with the left hand and mwali with the right.
As the Kula route is completed, the closing gift must be the opposite of the opening gift. For example, if a soulava was given at the start of the Kula, a mwali must be offered at the end. The Kula ring is carried out over eighteen communities in the Trobriand Islands and neighboring islands. Traders travel by large seagoing canoes from one community to another with the goal of securing trade alliances and enhancing wealth and personal status.
Bibliography
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Cassar, Claudine. “Bronislaw Malinowski, the Trobriand People and the Kula.” Anthropology Review, 10 Oct. 2024, anthropologyreview.org/anthropology-explainers/malinowski-trobriand-kula. Accessed 12 Jan. 2025.
MacCarthy, Michelle. "The Morality of Mweki: Performing Sexuality in the 'Islands of Love'." The Australian Journal of Anthropology, vol. 27, no. 2, 2016, pp. 149-167, doi.org/10.1111/taja.12191. Accessed 12 Jan. 2025.
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Styles, Ruth. "Inside The World's Original Free Love Community: Islanders Change Spouses Whenever They Want, Have Dedicated 'Love Huts' and Settle Their Differences over a Game of Cricket." Daily Mail, 14 May 2014, www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2627148/Inside-worlds-original-free-love-community-Trobriand-Islanders-change-spouses-want-dedicated-love-huts-settle-differences-game-cricket.html. Accessed 12 Jan. 2025.
Waiko, John Dademo. A Short History of Papua New Guinea. Oxford University Press, 2007.