Kiribati

Bernd Lambert

Gilbertese (Gilbert Islands), I-Kiribati, Tungaru

Almost all of the citizens of Kiribati have at least some I-Kiribati ancestors and have inherited land rights in the Gilbert Islands. The indigenous inhabitants of Banaba (Ocean Island) speak a Gilbertese dialect and practice a variant of Gilbertese culture, but consider themselves a separate people politically. Most Banabans have lived on Rabi Island in Fiji since 1945. The Gilbert Islands were named in honor of Thomas Gilbert, a British captain whose ship sighted some of the islands after transporting convicts to Australia in 1788. In default of a generally acceptable indigenous name, it was decided at the time of independence to adopt “Kiribati” (pronounced “kiribass”), the local respelling of “Gilberts,” for the new nation. The poetic “Tungaru” usually connotes the ancestors and their savage or superhuman feats.

The Gilberts are comprised of sixteen inhabited coral reef islands and atolls between 3° N and 3° S and between 173° and 177° E. The territory of the Republic of Kiribati also includes the raised coral island of Banaba, about 400 kilometers west of the Gilberts, and the Phoenix and Line Islands lying as much as 2,800 kilometers to the east. The average annual rainfall diminishes from north to south. The islands south of the equator and Banaba suffer from periodic droughts.

According to the 1985 census Kiribati had a total population of 63,883. The average population density for the Gilbert Islands, which have a combined area of 279 square kilometers, was 219 persons per square kilometer, and the growth rate averaged two percent per annum over the six-and-a-half years since the prior census. A third of the population resided in the urbanized area of South Tarawa. In 2015 there were 110,136 inhabitants of the island nation, over half (56,388) on South Tarawa. Nationally there were 105,983 ethnic I-Kiribati, with only a little over a third (37,306) on South Tarawa. An additional 1,974 individuals reported mixed I-Kiribati heritage.

I-Kiribati and Banabans speak a single language, usually known as Gilbertese. Another Gilbertese dialect is spoken on Nui in Tuvalu. Linguists agree that Gilbertese belongs to the Oceanic Branch of the Austronesian languages, and its closest relatives are the other Nuclear Micronesian languages: Trukese, Ponapean, Kosraean (Kusaian), and Marshallese. The more distant connections of Nuclear Micronesian within Oceanic Austronesian are still being debated, but they seem to point toward the southern Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, with the languages of San Cristobal and Malaita as perhaps the strongest candidates. The pioneer American missionary, Hiram Bingham, Jr., devised a written form of Gilbertese based on the Latin alphabet that is still in general use, having undergone only minor modifications.

On linguistic and archaeological grounds, it is likely that voyagers from southern Melanesia arrived in the Gilberts long before AD 600, the earliest radiocarbon date obtained up to now. Kiribati language and culture show signs of borrowing from western Polynesia some period of time after the islands were settled. The political and social structure of all the islands—except for Butaritari-Makin and Banaba—was forcibly unified, possibly in the seventeenth century, when armies led by Kaitu, Beru, and Uakeia of Nikunau introduced the meetinghouse organization. Regular contacts with Europeans and Americans began between 1765 and 1826, with arrivals by merchant ships sailing new routes across the Pacific, by New England whalers, and from expeditions of exploration. From 1846 to the 1870s resident traders bought coconut oil, then switched to copra which remains Kiribati's sole agricultural export. A British protectorate was proclaimed over the Gilberts and their Polynesian neighbors, the Ellice Islands, in 1892. The Japanese occupation of the Gilberts early in World War II ended with an American victory in what has aptly been called the “particularly bloody battle at Tarawa,” fought in November 1943. The phosphate mine on Banaba provided most of the colony's revenue and employment for its people from 1900 until the deposits were exhausted in the year of independence; I-Kiribati continued mining phosphate on the neighboring independent island of Nauru. Since 1967, the Marine Training School has made it possible for many young men to get jobs as seamen on West German ships and to add greatly to their families' incomes through remittances. Four years after the Ellice Islands had separated from the colony to become the state of Tuvalu, the Gilberts also became independent as the Republic of Kiribati on 12 July, 1979.

Precolonial villages were social and political units centered on a meetinghouse ([n/]te mwaneaba[/n]). The settlement pattern was one of dispersed hamlets on descent-group lands, which usually extended across islets from west to east. Around 1900 the protectorate’s Resident Commissioner and government agents ordered villages consolidated along a road running parallel to the western (leeward) shore of each inhabited islet, even if that meant forcing people to move off their hereditary lands. They also compelled the islanders to build houses according to a uniform pattern. A house consists essentially of a roof covered with coconut- or pandanus-leaf thatch and supported by four or six wooden posts. Unlike most precolonial houses, the new-style ones have raised floors of split coconut-leaf midribs and can comfortably accommodate only one nuclear family. Following a colonial regulation, each family still builds separate houses for sleeping and eating. In the 1980s some relatively affluent people, such as the families of merchant seamen and members of clubs organized for the purpose, were erecting cement-block houses with galvanized-iron roofs and facilities for catching rainwater. Large meetinghouses are still constructed in a more-or-less traditional style, not only as sites for village councils and festivities, but also by church congregations and neighborhoods.

The only crop that I-Kiribati cultivate regularly is the atoll taro Cyrtosperma chamissonis, which is grown in gardens dug down to the level of freshwater, or in natural swamps. The slower-growing varieties are often fertilized for years with mixtures of humus and leaf compost sprinkled into “pots” of plaited coconut fronds or braided pandanus leaves, until the plants grow as tall as 3.5 meters. The huge corms that develop as a result of this treatment are suitable for feasts and formal presentations. Smaller varieties, allowed to clone and not usually fertilized, are an everyday food on the northern islands. The only other important native vegetable foods are tree crops: coconuts, pandanus, and, mainly in the north, breadfruit. The coconut palm is also the source of toddy, the juice of the unopened flower spathe which is collected in a coconut shell as a fresh drink, boiled into molasses, or allowed to ferment. The numerous fishing methods include: trolling behind a canoe furnished with a sail or an outboard motor; unrolling a line with baited hook into deep water from a smaller, paddled canoe; catching flying fish with a coconut-leaf torch or kerosene lantern and a scoop net; searching the holes and pools of the nighttime reef with a scoop net and machete; netting on the reef at high tide; angling from the edge of the reef; and trapping fish behind a stone weir. Domestic animals, all of which are eaten, include dogs, chickens, and introduced pigs.

There are part-time builders of canoes, houses, and meetinghouses in every village. These men, like the few remaining navigators, enjoy respect and deference, but they receive no pay except their food while at work, and perhaps a waist cloth when the job is finished.

Most adults hold shares in their village cooperative store, which is affiliated with a national federation. There are many smaller general stores belonging to individuals, partnerships, and clubs. Women sell or give away all of their husbands' catches of tuna, flying fish, and shark that exceed household requirements.

Men cultivate and harvest Cyrtosperma in the south, where the corms are a luxury food. In the north women do most of the routine fertilizing, and the custom that only a woman may dig up a corm is used as an argument for marriage. The I-Kiribati also believe that only men should climb trees. Men do the bulk of the fishing; women collect shellfish and catch land crabs, but occasionally they engage in other kinds of fishing as well. Work with leaves is restricted to women, who make mats, baskets, and thatch, and produce cordage from fiber obtained from coconut husks. Men build houses and canoes, and make smaller wooden objects. Women normally fetch water, cook meals, and wash clothes. The division of labor is not rigid, but persons who habitually perform tasks associated with the opposite sex are regarded as having changed their gender identity, like North American Indian berdaches.

Both men and women inherit land rights from both parents, rights that are inseparable from one's status as a blood relative and a member of the community. The colonial administration abrogated the old rules—under which sons received larger shares than daughters, and an eldest son (and sometimes an eldest daughter) more than younger children—in favor of an equal division. Parents customarily divide their lands in a way that assures each of their children rights in as many of the parental descent groups as possible. If someone dies without leaving natural or adopted children, his land will be divided among his siblings or, lacking these, will revert to the estate of his father and mother. Most of the lands (though not the Cyrtosperma gardens) on Butaritari and Makin are the joint property of descent groups, necessitating a system of annual or weekly turns for collecting coconuts. A widespread Micronesian distinction between provisional titleholders or caretakers (who actually work the land and utilize its products) and residual titleholders (whose claims must be acknowledged by gifts and assistance) is the basis for several social relationships, such as those between brother and married sister, and between guardian and ward.

Descent, like inheritance, is ambilineal. Everyone is affiliated with the descent groups (ramages) of several ancestors, but is most active in a group associated with their own or their parents' place of residence. Before the introduction of lands registers, inactive memberships tended to lapse after a few generations, especially if the link to the group was a female ancestor. Members of a descent group who together with their spouses and children occupied a communal dwelling or hamlet on its estate constituted a residential group (te kaainga, a term used for a descent group conceived of as a landholding corporation and also for the land itself). Each descent group has traditionally been associated with a place (teinaki, literally “a vertical row of thatch,” or te boti) in the meetinghouse.

Cousin terminology is Hawaiian type; everyone with whom one shares an ancestor an equal number of generations removed can be referred to by the terms for “sibling of the same sex” or “sibling of the opposite sex.” Other cognatic and affinal relatives are also classified by generation. Native kinship terms are not used in address. h1]MARRIAGE AND FAMILY[/h1]

First marriages, in particular, ideally are arranged by the parents or at least require their consent, but elopements are becoming more common. In theory, persons who share an ancestor within three generations, or who trace descent from a more distant common ancestor but themselves belong to different generations, are forbidden to marry. In practice, reaction to a proposed marriage that would join together distant relatives depends on whether the immediate families of the young people have been treating one another as kinsfolk. Some families still follow the old custom of rejoicing publicly when a bride has demonstrated her virginity. Most young married people reside with the husbands' parents until they are considered ready for independent life. Until recently, they were also expected to reside permanently on land the husband had inherited either through his father or through his mother. A man who agreed to live with his wife's kin was thought to yield much of his authority over his household. A permanently separated couple is regarded as divorced by the community, if not by the church. Once children have been born, kin on both sides will put pressure on the spouses to reconcile or will try to persuade an unmarried sibling to act as stepparent. Sororal polygyny is dying out.

The people who cook and eat meals together are considered a family. The teenage boys and young unmarried men of a neighborhood often sleep in an unoccupied house but eat with their families. Ordinarily, the minimal family units are a nuclear family, or a currently unmarried woman and her children. As their own children grow up and leave home, couples often begin rearing a second family of grandchildren or wards. Other helpful or dependent kinsfolk may be present as well. Outside the population center of South Tarawa, families average 5.8 persons.

Parents leave their house to one of their children, often when they retire and stay with each of their children in turn. Portable artifacts are probably distributed informally, but large canoes tend to be treated like land. Items of esoteric knowledge, which are considered a kind of personal property, may be bestowed on a favorite child, on another young relative, or even on an outsider.

A good deal of personal independence is conceded, even to young children who at least in theory have the right to own property and to decide with whom they will live. Small children are treated indulgently by everyone, even when they act aggressively. Older children are expected to help with household tasks, to show respect for senior kinfolk, and to refrain from calling attention to themselves when adults are present. Physical punishment is acceptable once a child has reached the age of reason. Threats, ridicule, and scary stories about punitive agents from outside the family, however, are more common sanctions.

Chiefs were present in the central and northern Gilberts, but on several islands no single chief managed to hold undisputed power for very long. The most stratified societies in the late precolonial and early colonial periods were Butaritari-Makin and Abemama, which had conquered the neighboring islands of Aranuka and Kuria. The Butaritari-Makin hierarchy, which resembled those of other Micronesian societies to the north, was headed by a high chief who was a focus for redistributive activities. Below the high chief and his siblings and children were aristocrats, commoners, and descendants of strangers from other islands. Since the 1970s life-styles have reflected differences in family incomes, even in the villages.

Kiribati is a democracy with a popularly elected president and House of Assembly.

On the national and island levels the government of the republic provides a system of court, health, educational, and agricultural services. Elected island councils are responsible for repairing roads, maintaining schools, granting permission to build new houses, and filling some off-island jobs. Lands courts approve the inheritance and transfer of real property, and resolve disputes over boundaries and the rights of co-owners. Especially since independence, many of the powers of the island councils have been assumed by unofficial bodies of village elders that developed out of the traditional councils comprised of the heads of descent groups. The elders legislate on matters ranging from trips by the local soccer team to the prohibition of alcohol. They punish violators with fines, beatings, and, occasionally, exile. Wider consensus is reached by inviting delegates from other villages to a joint meeting or, as on Nonouti in the late 1960s, by organizing a single council for the whole island.

The Kiribati ethos holds that an adult should be prepared to fight if challenged, and to be ready to avenge an injury or insult against himself or a member of his family. Nevertheless, the wisdom and control over the passions that comes with age gives some older people the status of acknowledged peacemakers. Any assembly is thought to assert social norms over the selfish or shortsighted impulses of individuals. The fear of gossip, and of secret or open mockery by neighbors, are commonplace checks on deviant behavior.

In the past, villages and intervillage factions fought to avenge offenses, to seize land, and to gain a chieftainship for their candidate. Wars became more destructive in the nineteenth century, when steel weapons and firearms were widely available, and the activities of labor recruiters, traders, and missionaries weakened the social order and created new causes for conflict. In the presidential election preceding independence, the voters of Kiribati decided against having an army.

The forerunners of the present-day Kiribati Uniting Church (KUC)—the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and the London Missionary Society—arrived in the northern and southern islands, respectively, in 1857 and 1870. The French Roman Catholic fathers of the Order of the Sacred Heart began work on Nonouti in 1888. Catholics (53 percent of the indigenous population) are in the majority from Tarawa northward. The KUC (41 percent) holds a near-monopoly on Arorae and Tamana, and retains majorities on a few of the other southern islands. About two-and-a-half percent of the I-Kiribati adhere to the Baha'i faith. Mormons, Seventh-Day Adventists, and members of other Christian sects make up the remainder of the population. A good deal of social, recreational, and even economic activity centers on the churches.

The expatriate (mostly French) Catholic clergy has been largely replaced by I-Kiribati priests and nuns. Local catechists conduct services on most islands between occasional visits by a priest. Kiribati Uniting Church ministers are all I-Kiribati (except for a few from Tuvalu), but do not serve on their home islands. The priests of the old pagan religion interpreted omens, and made offerings to deities that descended from time to time onto pillars of coral limestone and other shrines, or took animal forms. Spirit mediums are probably still active, although they are possessed by recently introduced supernaturals and are regarded with great ambivalence. I-Kiribati deities (some with western Polynesian names) were believed to have been ancestors of descent groups that obeyed their taboos and relied on them for protection. Their associations with animals and natural phenomena gave them significance for the community as a whole.

The patterns of plaited sleeping mats, created by alternating light- and dark-colored strips of dried pandanus leaf, show off women's aesthetic sense, as well as their technical skills. Durable ornaments are made of Spondylus, mother-of-pearl, and marine snail shells; in former times, dolphin, whale, and human teeth also were used. Kiribati sitting and standing dances, accompanied by singing and by clapping hands or beating on a box, are famous. Songs are still composed by traditional methods, although usually on a Western tonal scale.

Illness is generally attributed to material causes, although attacks by ghosts, retribution for offending a parent or other superior, sorcery, soul loss, and divine punishment are advanced as explanations in particular cases. Indigenous curing methods include the use of proprietary herbal medicines, and systems of massage and cautery.

Nineteenth-century travelers reported that the body was kept in the house for three to nine days; longer if the deceased had been prominent. Some months after burial the skull was removed, and would thereafter be oiled and offered food and tobacco. Missions were opposed to drawn-out funerals and, unsurprisingly, to the custom of keeping a relative's skull on a shelf or carrying it around. The wake is still attended by a large number of kinsfolk, who contribute Cyrtosperma corms and money, and eulogize the departed. Burial is in a village cemetery, or in a grave next to the house. Despite strong Christian beliefs in an afterlife of rewards or punishments, people remember the old story that the god Nakaa welcomes souls at the north end of the Gilberts.

This culture summary is from the article "Kiribati" by Bernd Lambert 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 March, 2018.

Geddes, William H. (1977). “Social Individualisation on Tabiteuea Atoll.” Journal of the Polynesian Society 86:371-392.

Macdonald, Barrie (1982). Cinderellas of the Empire: Towards a History of Kiribati and Tuvalu. Canberra: Australian National University Press.

Ministry of Finance, Republic of Kiribati (2016). 2015 Population and Housing Census. Vol. 1. National Statistics Office: Bairiki, Tarawa. http://www.mfed.gov.ki/statistics/documents/2015_Population_Census_Report_Volume_1final_211016.pdf. Accessed March 27, 2018.

Silverman, Martin G. (1971). Disconcerting Issue: Meaning and Struggle in a Resettled Pacific Community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Watters, Ray and Nancy J. Pollock, project directors (1983). Atoll Economy: Social Change in Kiribati and Tuvalu. 6 vols. Canberra: Australian National University Press.