Marshallese

By LAURENCE MARSHALL CARUCCI

Bikini, Enewetak, Kwajalein, Majuro, Ralik, Ratak, Marshall Islanders

The Republic of the Marshall Islands, formerly part of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, gained independence as part of a Compact of Free Association with the United States in 1986. The Marshallese or Marshall Islanders now speak mutually intelligible dialects of the same language, and each atoll group recognizes cultural affinities with at least some other atolls in its area. In precolonial times sporadic contact was maintained among all atolls—even the most distant—and occasionally the strongest chiefs were able to extend their reign over several atolls of the central Ratak or Ralik cultures for short periods of time. A common Marshall Islands identity, however, is a volatile notion developed in response to Western geopolitical agendas. The Marshall Islands cover an area of 1.95 million square kilometers in the west central Pacific Ocean, with a combined land mass of just under 180 square kilometers. The group is located between 160° and 173° E and 4° and 20° N. Its twenty-nine atolls (nineteen currently inhabited) and five coral pinnacles (four with human occupants) are simultaneously linked together and separated by the sea. The vast stretches of ocean help maintain an average temperature of 27° C with very little diurnal or yearly variation. Rainfall increases as one nears the equator, with around 152 centimeters per year in the north and 460 centimeters per year in the south. The dry part of the year, December through April, is typified by brisk breezes, and the central month of the wet season, August, may have periods of total calm. For much of the year, a light trade wind, most often northeasterly, provides mellow air conditioning. Typhoons, however, are not uncommon in the winter months.

The population of the islands in 1988 was 43,335, with the vast majority of people concentrated on the capital, Majuro Atoll (19,664), and on Ebeye, Kwajalein Atoll (8,277), across from the missile testing and tracking center on the Kwajalein islet. In 2011 the population of the islands is estimated to be 67,182. The capital Majuro continues to have more than half the population (CIA, 2011). In the 1850s and 1860s missionaries very roughly estimated individual atoll populations to be between 100 and 2,000-3,000. The port towns and government centers supported by three waves of colonizers (Germany, Japan, and the United States) have provided the impetus and ability to alter the delicate balance between human populations and local atoll environments.

Marshallese is a member of the Micronesian Family of the Oceanic Austronesian languages, and it shares the largest number of roots with the languages of Fiji, Nauru, and nearby locales like Pohnpei. Currently there are three dialects of Marshallese, though greater diversity undoubtedly existed in the nineteenth century. Translations of the Bible in the 1860s and 1870s made a missionary-inspired variant of Ralik dialect the standard for over a century. This text, read by nearly every Marshallese, was retranslated in a less awkward style in the 1970s and 1980s. Ratak dialect, spoken in the windward atolls of the Marshall Islands, is grammatically similar but lexically distinct from Ralik dialect, and Enewetak and Ujelang modes of speaking once differed so radically in both lexicon and grammar as to be considered a totally different language by local residents. The construction of a common dictionary and standard grammar has become one unifying focus since Marshallese independence.

Europeans first became aware of the atolls of the Marshalls' area in 1529 when Alvaro de Saavedra Ceron stopped briefly at two atolls, most likely Ujelang and another atoll in the northwest part of the region (Enewetak or Bikini), though Magellan had sailed through the Marshalls' latitudes without sighting land in the previous century. On behalf of Spain, voyagers on the San Lucas laid claim to some Ralik and Ratak atolls in 1565 and, while European visitors were infrequent for the next two centuries, explorers again sought landings in search of water and supplies in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Marshalls, like the neighboring Gilberts, were named for British explorers traveling from New South Wales to Canton in 1788. The nineteenth-century Russian explorer Otto von Kotzebue was the first to develop a serious interest in the people of Ratak and, not long after his visit, whalers began to frequent the area. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), which had sent missionaries to Hawai'i in 1819, expanded their attempt to save islanders' souls to Micronesia in 1852, and by 1857 a mission station was founded on Ebon in the southern Ralik chain. Subsequent mission stations were established on even the most distant atolls like Enewetak by the mid-1920s. Likiep, which was purchased in 1877 as a copra plantation by A. DeBrum (a partner in Adolph Capelle & Co., an early trading firm), is the only atoll not heavily influenced by ABCFM descendants. For most Marshallese, the Catholic beliefs of Likiep residents were used to construct the religious “other,” until a plethora of religious forms appeared on Majuro in the 1970s and 1980s. When the market for whale oil was replaced by coconut oil in the latter half of the nineteenth century, Marshall Islanders were drawn into a European- and American-dominated marketplace. Copra demanded land, laborers, and overseers, and Marshall Islands land tenure, family form, and chieftainship reshaped themselves to accommodate these demands. German copra firms sparked the expanding colonial interests, and in 1885 Germany claimed much of the west central Pacific, including the Marshalls, as its own. For thirty years mission forces and German administrators battled with one another, but as imperial Germany focused its efforts on war, Japan rapidly laid claim to Micronesia. Ironically, their own thirty-year reign would be terminated by another world war but, in the interim, the Japanese became the only committed colonizers of the Marshalls. Japan expanded copra production, opened Japanese-operated copra stations on most atolls, and convinced Marshall Islanders that, through diligence and obedient training, they could become Japanese citizens. In the late 1930s Japan's intentions shifted, and Marshallese were drafted as supporters while Japan prepared for war. Early in 1944 the Marshalls were involved in a holocaust involving battles between American and Japanese forces. Lives were lost and the physical forms of islets were transformed. They were denuded of vegetation and literally blown away by bombing and shelling. Within two months American military forces were in firm control of the critical atolls, and the strategic value of Marshallese soil was established in their minds. While America's hands-off colonial policies slowed the developmental programs begun by the Japanese, the strategic importance of the islands eventually resulted in more radical changes in the Marshallese life-style. Monetary compensations for nuclear damages on out-of-the-way Enewetak and Bikini atolls, for concomitant radiation-related suffering on Ronglab and Uterik, and for missile-tracking experiments and facilities on Kwajalein and Enewetak have created radical disparities of wealth among atoll dwellers. These changes, along with the bureaucratic expansion accompanying the creation of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, account for the significant demographic shifts witnessed today.

With the exception of the urban settlements on Majuro and Kwajalein, most atoll dwellers live in small villages near the centers of the largest islets, on smaller atolls, or in dwellings dispersed along the lagoon side of these islets. Second dwellings may be maintained on smaller outer islets where families may go in search of fish or birds or during times of starvation. These islets are not permanently inhabited since they lack the underlying lens of brackish water that permits year-round settlement. Homes are built on pebbled grounds kept scrupulously clean and free of grass and weeds, and dedicated property owners maintain the lines of coconut palms that run from ocean side to lagoon and that delineate individual land parcels, which are kept cleared of underbrush, trash, and fallen fronds.

In the urban centers wage labor provides one major source of income, though others live on the strategic-testing compensations mentioned above. On the outer atolls, the household is the fundamental unit of production, though larger extended family units or sections of a village or islet commonly work together to prepare for feasts. Collecting and fishing provide the staples and the complements. On northern atolls, fish and birds accompany arrowroot, pandanus, coconuts, and some breadfruit, whereas the southern atolls provide larger quantities of breadfruit and, in ideal circumstances, taro. In many instances, rice, flour, and sugar have replaced traditional staples and added significantly to the nutritional impoverishment of the diet. Pigs and chickens, foods often seen at feasts, provide an added source of protein to the local diet.

Copra production allows access to staples and to cloth from which to fashion Western-style clothing for even the poorest of atoll dwellers.

Sailing canoes, pandanus mats, barkcloth and woven coconut-frond clothing, pandanus or coconut-leaf baskets, coir (coconut sennit) and post-and-beam dwellings thatched with pandanus fronds were among the most critical of traditionally manufactured items. Nowadays, tin and plywood dwellings are replacing thatch, outboard motor boats are fashioned from plywood, canoes have been reduced to handicraft size, and a plethora of other handicraft items made from coconut or pandanus fibers supply the tourist market.

Inter-atoll trade was mainly in spouses, magic, and quests for chiefly control, but during the copra-trading era the center and periphery pattern in use today was introduced and institutionalized. Copra moves toward the center (Jaluij at first; more recently, Majuro), and the flow of Western foods, cloth, and small trade items is disseminated out in concentric rings of increasingly insignificant supply and consequence. Central Marshall Islands chiefs increased their power and stability by becoming the brokers who controlled incoming copra and outgoing goods.

The division of labor is based on gender and age, with males controlling activities in the sea and sky (fishing, canoe building, gathering drinking coconuts or coconut fronds) and females dominating activities on the land (digging arrowroot or gathering pandanus fronds). Females also control the domestic space and are associated with activities in the village, while men work in the outlying bush and travel freely to foreign lands. Children often watch over their younger siblings, though young girls begin training in domestic life quite early while young boys are given considerable freedom to develop their careers as fishers and roaming foragers. The old busy themselves with repairs, child rearing, and activities close to home as long as they are able. Larger cooperative groups—sailing groups, religious groups, or groups representing sections of an islet or atoll—often cooperate for more specialized purposes.

Like kinship organization, land tenure varies significantly from one part of the Marshalls to another. Enewetak, Ujelang, and Bikini customs, affected differently by the copra complex and also altered by relocation, are the least like other Marshall Islands groups. Land rights are held in perpetuity by all members of a clan, living and nonliving, and are inalienable. Living people have use rights to that land as long as they maintain and improve it. In the central Marshalls' chains, chiefs have a right to the first fruits of the land, are given a share of the profits on copra produced on that land, and are allowed to dispossess those who fail to care for the land. Local overseers alab, elders in a matriclan, manage the land in behalf of the chiefs. On Enewetak, chiefs are assisted with copra production on their own land but cannot dispossess landowners. Alab, extended family or household heads, may advise a chief but do not manage land on his or her behalf. In the Central Marshall Islands primary land rights are vested in matrilineages, whereas on Enewetak land rights may be claimed through either one's mother or father, though care of the land is critical to maintain a claim.

Each Marshall Islander is born into the clan of his or her mother and, minimally, clan members can expect to be welcomed by fellow clanmates even on distant atolls. Each clan is divided into lineages and lineage segments in the Central Marshall Islands, whereas on Enewetak and Ujelang people are members of bilateral extended families in which each member can trace a relationship to a common ancestor, usually a woman.

Kinship terminology varies slightly throughout the group of atolls, but overall it is of the Hawaiian type.

Polyandry and particularly polygyny have legendary and ethnohistoric precedent, but such practices are rare in mission times. Clan exogamy is preferred, though marriage between members of the same clan is permitted if the partners to the marriage are not closely related. Atoll endogamy is a direct reflection of the physical and social isolation of any particular group, and atolls within close sailing distance of one another often maintained long-term marriage exchanges. The flexibility in postmarital residence provides, along with adoption, a way to balance the rapidly shifting relationships between clan affiliation and landholding commonly encountered in atoll environments. Residence decisions also reflect the respective position of each partner vis-à-vis larger domestic units. Divorce is allowed, though uncommon. Many early experimental marriages do not last, the children of those unions commonly being adopted by the mother's family of orientation or remaining with the mother and being adopted by her subsequent spouse.

The basic domestic unit is the household, those living under the same roof beam (barowoj), most commonly a small three- or four-generation extended family.

Inheritance is multilineal, with inheritance of land, political power, names, magical force, and other items each reflecting a person's rights in different groups.

Infants remain close to one of their mothers (“real” or classificatory), though toddlers and young children are largely cared for by siblings slightly older than themselves. Females are trained from an early age in domestic skills, while male children roam into the bush lands and emulate the fishing, sailing, and tree-climbing skills of their male superiors. Formal schooling was introduced by the missionaries and still follows the American style. Outer-island schools go through eighth grade, with the most skilled students pursuing high school in one of the population centers.

The social order is characterized by flexible arrangements for group membership and for claiming rights to land. In the Ralik and Ratak chains, several atolls may be governed by a single chief, but throughout the Marshall Islands each atoll member maintains a critical identity as “a person of Mili, of Ujae,” or of some other atoll. Atolls are further divided into islets or districts, each associated with possible affiliations of residence or land-tenure claims established by tracing through a matriclan or conical clan. Sailing groups, fishing groups, and religious groups also exist, and claims to an identity in those groups, as with islet, district, or atoll residence, must be reinforced by active participation and cooperation. The solidarity developed through such commitments of time and energy provide one measure of cohesiveness and of conceptual value. Intra-atoll marriages and intra-atoll exchanges maintained for many generations promote an overlapping of identities and shared interests resulting in increased solidarity. Several clans are typically represented on each atoll, and while some clans are found throughout the Marshall Islands, others are restricted in their membership to one or two atolls. Other than chiefly lineages, the power of a clan and of its constituent lineages or bilateral extended families depends on the number of living representatives and upon their access to land.

Leadership identities are claimed through sacred lines of paramount chiefs who ultimately trace descent directly from ancient deities. These identities pass matrilineally except on Enewetak and Ujelang atolls where such identities are transmitted patrilineally. Ratak and Ralik chiefly lines have intermarried with some frequency, whereas the chiefs of Enewetak, Ujelang, and Bikini were so isolated prior to German times that few intermarriages occurred with Ratak and Ralik chiefs. Chiefs who represent an atoll or district are more localized, as are clan elders who head extended families, speak in their behalf, and, in many areas, serve as intermediaries between chiefs and commoners in matters concerning land. Traditionally, religious and magical specialists balanced the chiefs' earthly powers with knowledge of curing, sailing, and fishing, predicting the weather, and mediating between humans and deities. Warriors and specialists in the arts of love, song, and dance also held respected positions in the ancient social order. The Republic of the Marshall Islands government, designed on the parliamentary pattern, balances elected officials in one house with the house of chiefs, in which membership may be gained only by virtue of hereditary claims through a recognized chiefly line.

While a formal legal apparatus exists to deal with criminal activities in the Marshall Islands, fear of God's wrath, of ancestor spirits, and of the negative judgments of others in one's community or group provide the major sources of social control.

Conflict is always a threat to the solidarity of the group and, unless one is inebriated (and not really one's self), occurs only with “others”—with members of other clans, other island or national identities, or other competitive song fest groups

Nearly all Marshall Islanders now anchor part of their identity in one of several forms of Christian belief, but indigenous interpretations of these beliefs differ substantially from common European and American significances. The traditional polytheistic pantheon included numerous deities, local and regional, female and male, with specialized domains of control. Many major deities are represented by constellations that figure significantly in the cycle of renewal and regeneration that secures the future of earthly life. Other deities were local in character and were associated with local shrines—coral heads, pools of brackish water in the open sea, pandanus, or coconut trees. Ancestor spirits, now as in the past, continue to interact with living humans and mediate between the daily actions of living humans and the sets of taboos and moral guidelines set by high-ranked deities.

Traditional religious specialists have been replaced with indigenous Christian mission pastors, but seers, curers, purveyors of evil magic, and weather magicians are still common.

Kurijmoj, the local celebration of “Christmas,” with many weeks of singing and dancing competitions, feasting, and accompanying exchanges and games, is the largest ritual event. Each extended family or lineage segment also sponsors large first-birthday celebrations after the birth of a child.

Traditionally, Marshallese fashioned the body into an ornate object of artistic and social expression with tattoos. Outlawed by mission and government restrictions, forms of artistic expression are now largely musical, though dance (once frowned on by missionaries) is making a resurgence, and Marshallese handicraft items, mats, and finely crafted sailing canoes are respected throughout the Pacific.

Indigenous herbal medicines ingested or rubbed on the body, massage, and incanted cures are freely mixed with the suggestions of local health aides.

Death, the appropriation of the breath and life's force from living humans, results from the actions of other beings, either living or dead. People carry many of their personality characteristics with them after death. They continue to interact with the living, though their physical features become desiccated, and their vaporous beings are not easily controlled by the living. Recently dead community members remain nearby, often sanctioning those who misbehave. Certain people are protected by recently dead namesakes or close relatives, but other cantankerous ancestral spirits may frighten people, not to sanction them, but to maintain their ambivalent reputations amongst the living. The most dangerous spirits are believed to come to an atoll from outside, often bringing misfortune, illness, or death.

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