book chapter
Native land tenure in the Truk District
Land tenure patterns : Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands • Guam • Published In 1958 • Pages: 161-215
By: Fischer, John L..
AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
This is a study of real property and land tenure among the Chuuk. Real property may be owned by individuals or by lineages ('clan lands.') Real property can include dry land, fresh water swamp, mangrove swamps, or reefs. Property can be acquired by conquest, through improvement, in payment for damages or medical care, as a marriage gift, and in the modern era, through purchase. Improvements include planting of trees or plants, building, or construction of fish weirs of stone. Clan land is apportioned among its members. The matrilineage retains reversionary rights to clan land and the chief is given an annual gift, or tribute, of 'first fruits' in recognition of these rights. Sale or gift of clan land requires the unanimous consent of all lineage members. Both men and women can own land, and land can be passed down either side of the family, i.e., men can divide their share of matrilineage land among their children of both sexes. Full title and usufruct rights to land can be complex. This complexity was largely ignored by both the Germans and Japanese who gave full title to either the chiefs or the current land users, resulting in an increase in land disputes during this period.
- SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
- Real property
- Acquisition and relinquishment of property
- Lineages
- cultureCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
- Chuuk
- HRAF PubDateThe date HRAF published the document
- 1999
- RegionThe area the document pertains to
- Oceania
- Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
- Micronesia
- Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
- book chapter
- Evaluation
- Creator TypeThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
- Ethnologist
- Document Rating A ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
- 5: Excellent Primary Data
- AnalystThe HRAF anthropologist who subject indexed the document and prepared other materials for the eHRAF culture/tradition collection
- Ian Skoggard ; 1997
- Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
- 1949-1950
- Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
- 1850-1950
- Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
- Chuuk State, Federated State of Micronesia
- NotesAdditional notes
- By John L. Fischer
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 212-213)
- LCCNLibrary of Congress Control Number
- 70015587
- LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
- Trukese (Micronesian people)