Sa

Margaret Jolly

Bunlap, Pornowol, South Ragans

The Sa live on the southern part of Pentecost Island in northern Vanuatu. The island was named by the French explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville, who sighted it on Whitsunday in 1768. "Sa" means "what" in the language spoken by the people, who call their language "Lokit," which means "the inside of us all." The Sa have previously been called the Pornowol tribe, and the region where they live has been known as South Raga as well as South Pentecost.

Pentecost is an island 60 kilometers long by 12 kilometers wide, located at 15°27' to 16°01' S and 168°11' E. The landmass is predominantly basaltic, with a few limestone ridges formed by the uplifting of coral reefs. The windward eastern coast is precipitous and fringed by extensive coral reefs, with few safe anchorages. The leeward western coast is flat, with coral reefs, extensive sandy beaches, and good anchorages. The central part of the island is mountainous and covered with dense primary rain forest. Many rivers and streams flow from the mountains to the coast, especially on the western side; these are the primary sources of fresh water. Temperatures range between 22° and 30° C, and about four hundred centimeters of rain falls in an average year. It is typically cooler and drier May-October and hotter and wetter November-April when tropical cyclones occur. Southern Pentecost experiences occasional falls of volcanic ash from Benbow Crater on nearby Ambrym Island.

In 1979 the population of Pentecost was 9,361, about 1,700 of whom were Sa speakers. Most Sa reside locally, although some (young men in particular) are involved in circular labor migration to the towns of Santo and Port Vila as well as to plantations elsewhere. A few Sa have moved permanently to towns or other rural centers to work for churches, the government, or private companies, or to pursue higher education. In 1999 the population of Pentecost was 14,057 and there were about 2,500 Sa speakers. In 2009 the population of Pentecost was 16,843.

The Sa language belongs to the North and Central Vanuatu Group of Austronesian languages. Although it had no script prior to colonization, it has now been written down through the work of mission linguists and local cultural workers. Most speakers of Sa are also fluent in Bislama, the lingua franca of Vanuatu, and younger Sa increasingly attain verbal and written fluency in English or French, taught in church and state schools.

The first contacts between ni-Vanuatu and Europeans took place in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but there was initial reluctance to trade with European navigators. From the early nineteenth century, Europeans sought whales, sandalwood, and bêche-de-mer (sea cucumber) in the islands with more success. In 1839 the London Missionary Society and, later, the Presbyterians set up missions in the southern islands. They were followed by Anglicans, Marists and, in the twentieth century, Seventh-Day Adventists and the Church of Christ. From 1857 thousands of men and some women were recruited as laborers to work on plantations in New Caledonia, Queensland, Fiji, and on other islands in Vanuatu. In 1906 the rivalry between British and French influences was resolved by the creation of the Condominium of the New Hebrides. Indigenous cash cropping of copra started in the late 1920s. During World War II the island of Santo was a major staging base for American forces. Beginning in the late 1960s anticolonial and nationalist sentiments crystallized, and in 1980 Vanuatu achieved political independence.

The pattern of settlement in South Pentecost includes both nucleated villages and dispersed homesteads. In the traditionalist or kastom villages such as Bunlap in the southeast, the predominant pattern is nucleated, with houses strung out down a ridge and communal men's houses and dancing grounds at the highest elevation. In traditionalist villages the preferred materials and house designs are earth floors, bamboo-pole walls, and sago-palm thatched roofs, on a rectangular frame. Such dwellings typically contain a single room, but a transverse log divides the women with their cooking fires and children at the front from the men at the back. Men's houses are of the same materials and design, but they are much larger and have a number of fires for men of different rank. These traditional structures are complemented by more novel sleeping houses that are raised on stilts, with woven bamboo floors and walls and thatch roofs, which is the usual style of houses in Christian settlements, though some are made of concrete and corrugated iron with several rooms. Most villages are connected by paths although, between coastal settlements and especially those in the west, people may travel by sea in outrigger canoes, dinghies with outboard motors or, occasionally, motorized launches. There is a road along the level western coast.

Sa speakers subsisted pre-colonially by swidden horticulture, fishing, and forest foraging. The main crops are still taro and yams, although these are complemented by sweet potatoes, manioc, arrowroot, sago, and breadfruit. Some leafy green vegetables, sugarcane, squashes, melons, and tomatoes are grown. The Sa fish extensively in the coastal waters off the fringing reefs and in freshwater streams for fish, lobster, shrimp, crab, eel, and octopus. They have extensive groves of fruit and nut trees. They forage for wild greens, ferns, algae, and mushrooms in the forest, where they also hunt birds, flying foxes, snakes, and stick insects. They herd pigs, which are consumed on ritual occasions only. Kava is cultivated; in traditionalist villages only men may drink kava, and it tends to be reserved for hospitality and ritual occasions. In some Anglican and Catholic communities women may drink kava, but they do not do so as routinely as men; in Church of Christ villages its use is totally proscribed.

Traditionalist and Christian communities diverge greatly in their links to the cash economy. The latter have converted far more land to copra, cacao and coffee, and are more dependent on introduced foods such as rice, tinned fish, meat, biscuits and tea. Some cattle are being raised commercially, but most are killed for local feast consumption.

Apart from indigenous architecture, a range of tools, weapons, and ritual artifacts are produced. The precolonial tool kit included wooden and stone axes, adzes, shell scrapers, digging sticks, clubs, bows and arrows, and fishing spears, but these items mainly have been supplanted by modern steel implements purchased from local or urban stores. The old digging stick persists, however, and in traditionalist villages people still use bamboo vessels for cooking and for carrying water, and use carved wooden food platters lined with banana leaves for eating. But even in traditionalist villages cans, plastic buckets, kettles, pots, and pans are becoming more common. Outrigger canoes are fashioned by hollowing out tree trunks and lashing them with lianas. Slit gongs, spears, clubs, and shelters are produced for ceremonial purposes. An ensemble of ceremonial masks and headdresses made in the past are rarely made for use but instead are purchased by museums, art collectors, or tourists. In addition to these wooden crafts made by men, women soften and weave pandanus and bark to fashion clothing and mats for sleeping, and for exchange upon birth, marriage, circumcision, and death. In traditionalist villages women wear fiber skirts made of pandanus or banana spathes and men wear woven pandanus penis wrappers and bark belts. Elsewhere, women's attire is typically a Mother Hubbard (a loose dress) of skirt and blouse, while men typically wear shirts and shorts or trousers or, more rarely, wraparound skirts.

In precolonial times Pentecost was part of an intensive regional trade system with the neighboring islands of Ambrym, Malekula, and Ambae. Items exchanged included yams, pigs, mats, ochers for body painting and sculpture, and ritual forms such as dances and chants. Modern trade is focused on the purchase of imported commodities at small local stores with money derived from cash cropping or wage labor. There are no local markets like as those in the towns of Port Vila and Santo.

The sexual division of labor is pronounced. Only men exclusively hunt and fish from canoes, while only women engage in reef and river fishing. Men carve wooden artifacts; women weave pandanus and palm leaves. Men construct house frames; women make thatch battens for roofs. Women look after small pigs and sows; men nurture highly valued tusked boars. Agricultural work is shared, although men do more of the fencing and clearing, and women more of the weeding and harvesting; however, where yams are concerned, men alone can plant the seed yams and women alone can mound the topsoil. Household maintenance and child care are fairly evenly divided between the sexes.

Primary rights derive from an agnatic relationship with a founding ancestor who claimed prior occupation, although secondary rights are granted to agnatic descendants of later arrivals who were given land by the original occupants. Land, like fruit and nut trees, is inherited patrilineally and shared between sons and daughters. Rights are held in perpetuity by male agnatic descendants, and for their lifetimes by females. Women cannot pass on natal land to their children. Land rights may also pass matrilaterally if payments in pigs and mats are not made at death by the agnates to the matrilateral kin of the deceased. Temporary rights of usufruct may be granted to affines or those without locally available land. Retaining ownership of land depends on continual use and thus continual residence. Control over the distribution of land is ultimately vested in the senior male of a descent category called buluim.

The major kin category is buluim, which is best translated as "house" rather than "clan." These houses are geographically dispersed, but there are also localized patrilineages. The major emphasis in descent is patrilineal, but there are crucial debts to matrilateral kin that cycle over generations.

A Crow-type system is employed, predicated on two basic rules: the equivalence of agnates of alternate generations, and the equivalence of same sex siblings. For a male, all agnates of his father's father's generation are thus "brother."

From the viewpoint of the male, marriage is ideally with the same "house" (major kin group) from which the father's mother came; marriage between agnates should be avoided. The mothers of spouses should be agnates of adjacent and not alternate generations. Marriages have always been primarily effected through the formal exchange of bride-wealth; the alternatives of elopement or infant betrothal were more prevalent in the past. Bride-wealth is predominantly paid in cash, with token payments of the traditional pigs and mats. Only Church of Christ converts totally ban bride-wealth. Although marriages in both traditionalist and Christian villages are to some extent "arranged," the desires of prospective spouses are also crucial. Most adults are in monogamous marriages, but a third of all adult men in traditionalist villages have at some time been polygynous. Monogamy is mandatory for Christian converts. Upon marriage about eighty-five percent of couples live patrilocally, with about ten percent living neolocally. Because marriages are often contracted within a village, women often remain close to their natal kin. Divorce is rare, constituting only five percent of all unions contracted.

The domestic unit is typically an elementary family, with a minority being patrilaterally extended, and a tiny percentage consisting of a sole parent with children. If a man is polygynous his wives usually maintain separate dwellings. Men sleep and eat more routinely in the domestic dwelling, using the male clubhouse as a refectory and dormitory on rare ritual occasions. Such exclusivist male clubhouses no longer exist in Christian communities; there, husbands and wives eat and sleep together rather than separately.

Inheritance of house sites and household effects is predominantly patrilineal, with a greater share going to the eldest son. Pigs, however, are not inherited; they are killed at the deaths of their owners. Land, fishing grounds, and fruit groves are patrilineally inherited. Ritual powers of priests and diviners are typically inherited patrilineally by males, but the spiritual skills of sorcery, weather magic, love magic, and war magic may be purchased, most often by close male kin.

Although children are primarily nurtured by their parents, elder siblings, and grandparents, there is much communal socialization and interhousehold visiting. The primary values imparted are those of respect for rank and age, and the centrality of hard work, cooperation, and consensus. Most children in Christian villages, and some in traditionalist ones, are currently in school.

Social organization is based on the intersection of the traditional hierarchical principles of rank, seniority, and gender. These principles are being transformed by the impact of the commodity economy, so that class differences are emerging. Although these novel inequalities interpenetrate indigenous patterns of rank, such distinctions are most pronounced in urban centers, although they are also apparent in rural regions.

Precolonial politics were based on achieved rank in an institution called "the graded society." Through the exchange and sacrifice of pigs (including tusked boars), mats, and other valuables, men (and in some places women) assumed titles in a hierarchically-ordered series. This arrangement conferred—on men more than on women—sacred powers enhancing their capacity to grow crops, nurture tusked boars, control the weather, and perform rituals controlling human sexuality, health, and fecundity. But such powers were also considered to be dangerous and potentially destructive. This belief necessitated segregated commensality, whereby men ate separately from women and children, and high-ranking men separately from those of low rank. High-ranking men exerted greater political influence without having assured authority. In the modern state of Vanuatu the symbolism of the graded society is employed in the imagery of the state, with the importance of high rank permeating to the national level through the institution of the National Council of Chiefs that gives advice on matters of kastom (traditional culture). The chiefs in this council are, however, those created and recognized by the state, rather than necessarily those with locally-recognized high rank.

Although there are official courts and assessors that are part of the national legal structure, disputes—which arise most frequently over land, marriage, and pigs—are usually resolved in informal village courts. These courts are protracted meetings that try to achieve consensus. Men rather than women are vocal in such meetings, and those who speak most and exert most influence tend to be older and high-ranking. Decisions at such meetings are thought to be binding on all in the community, and may occasion the payment of fines.

Violent conflict is rare, and domestic violence is almost nonexistent. Only on very rare occasions do people resort to the outside agencies of police, prisons, or asylums to control offenders. This state of affairs is a major departure from precolonial practice, when warfare was endemic between villages, and violent resolutions of conflict were frequent.

The vast majority of ni-Vanuatu today are Christians affiliated with Protestant and Catholic denominations, although beliefs and practices involve novel reworkings of both Christianity and ancestral religion. In the past, religion centered on the sacred character of ancestors. The Sa speak as though their ancestors were primordial creator beings responsible for the natural and the social world. There was no easy translation of these beliefs into monotheistic Christianity. The ancestors still are thought to exert a continual influence in the world of the living, and the living are often engaged in attempts to please or placate remote or recent ancestors. The ideal of a rank-ordered “graded society” is predicated on a desire to approach a state of ancestral power. As well as the supernatural powers credited to the dead and the living, other supernatural entities are thought to exist. In South Pentecost, these include spirits of uncultivated ancestral groves, spirits of men's houses, dwarf spirits inhabiting forests and riverbeds, and a kind of ogre with a special appetite for young children.

Ancestral religion employed some part-time specialists, including male priests of agricultural fertility, weather, and war, as well as sorcerers and diviners. Despite the influence of Christianity, priests and sorcerers are still known, even in Christian communities. They are joined by Christian ritual specialists—priests, ministers, and deacons—who are for the most part also are men.

The major traditional ceremonies are birth, circumcision, marriage, grade advancement, and death. Of these, circumcision and grade advancement are by far the most spectacular and protracted. In addition, there is the unique rite of land diving, performed annually at the time of the yam harvest. This has become a major tourist spectacle. In popular representation the athletic aspect of diving from a hundred-foot tower is emphasized, but the religious aspect is paramount for the Sa speakers, and there is thought to be a direct link between the success of the dive and the quality of the yam harvest. Young men who so desire dive from platforms at increasing heights with lianas tied to their ankles to arrest their fall. Construction of the platforms and ritual supervision involves older men. Women are not allowed to observe the tower until they dance underneath it on the day of the diving, although myth credits a woman with originating the practice.

The major artistic expressions are woven mats and baskets, body decoration, ephemeral ceremonial structures and, in the past, masks. Musical instruments include plain slit gongs, reed panpipes, and bamboo flutes. Guitars and ukuleles are also played, and local compositions are much influenced by the string-band music heard on radio and cassettes. Music and dance are central to most ceremonies and are constantly being composed and reinterpreted. There is a huge corpus of myths that are a source of aesthetic delight, their telling often accompanied by song.

Traditionally, many illnesses were seen as ancestral vengeance for the breaking of rules of gender and rank segregation. This sometimes took the form of spirit possession requiring exorcism. Other remedies included curative spells, amulets, and the use of a wide pharmacopoeia of herbs and clays. Medicine was often administered within the household, but if the treatment was unsuccessful the help of diviners might be sought. People are eclectic in integrating traditional and Western medicine, and they will typically try both. There are local dispensaries and some health centers run by missions or the state, and women increasingly are giving birth there. Chronic or serious illness requires removal to a hospital in Santo or Port Vila.

Death is usually seen as the result of attack by ancestors or sorcerers. Close kin cluster in the house of the dying person and stroke him or her, wailing the mourning chant. The body of the deceased is wrapped in ritual finery and mats, and then buried outside the village (formerly below the house). At death, crucial prestations are made to the mother's brother and other matrilateral kin. Mourning consists of dress and food restrictions that are progressively relaxed until a feast is held on the hundredth day. On the twentieth day the spirit of the dead person is thought to run down the mountain range in the middle of the island and jump through a black cave into Lonwe, the subterranean village of the dead. There all is heavenly: food comes without work, there are constant beautiful melodies to dance to, and sweet perfumes fill the air.

This culture summary is from the article "Pentecost" by Margaret Jolly, in the Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Vol. 2, Oceania, Terence E. Hays, ed. Boston, Mass.: G. K. Hall & Co. 1991. Leon G. Doyon updated the population figures in September 2015.

Vanuatu National Statistics Office (2009). "2009 National Census of Population and Housing: Summary Release." Accessed January 21, 2015. https://governmentofvanuatu.gov.vu/vanuatu-statistics.html.

Jolly, Margaret (1981). "People and Their Products in South Pentecost." In Vanuatu: Politics, Economics, and Ritual in Island Melanesia, Michael Allen, ed., 269-293. Sydney: Academic Press.

Jolly, Margaret (1991). "Soaring Hawks and Grounded Persons: The Politics of Rank and Gender in North Vanuatu." In Big Men and Great Men: Personifications of Power in Melanesia, edited by Maurice Godelier and Marilyn Strathern. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lewis, M. Paul, Gary F. Simons, and Charles D. Fennig, eds. (2015). Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Eighteenth edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Accessed September 30, 2015. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com.

Van Trease, Howard (1987). The Politics of Land in Vanuatu: From Colony to Independence. Suva, Fiji: University of the South Pacific, Institute of Pacific Studies.