Land tenure in a New Ireland village

Abstract

This is a study of land tenure in Lokon, a village in the Barok linguistic district of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. After a general ethnographic account of village life, kinship organisation, and settlement and residence, a theoretical discussion of the nature of land tenure is given, together with a summary outline of the system of land tenure in Lokon. Attention is then directed in the main part of the thesis to the most significant elements of Lokon land tenure, namely the manner in which kinship groups establish original rights to tracts of land, and the traditional means by which land rights may be transferred between individuals and groups. The concluding chapter indicates the extent to which traditional aspects of land tenure persist today, notwithstanding the changes which have resulted from the seventy years of European administration prior to Papua New Guinea's independence in 1975, in particular the introduction of Christianity, and cash cropping, the making of cash payments for land, and the work of the Land Demarcation Committee.