Changing land tenure in Melanesia : the Tolai experience

Abstract

A frequently-remarked feature of 1-1elanesian societies is the persistence of core cultural institutions in conjunction with profound environmental change. Nowhere is this more evident than among the Tolai people of Papua New Guinea, who, despite more than a century of intense Western influence, still maintain so much of their rich cultural heritage. Mere co-existence of separate spheres of cultural reality is unexceptional, but the Tolai experience presents a greater incentive for analysis in that, from the earliest times of interaction, there is evidence of a propensity to incorporate their own and the introduced culture into a genuinely pluralist order. No such accommodation was available under the intruding colonial regime, which offered only subordination of the indigenous to the Western culture. The expectation that indigenous cultures would ultimately be subsumed under a Western-style legal order is as far from realisation as ever. Given a commitment to legal pluralism articulated at independence in Papua New Guinea's Constitution, the thesis examines the Tolai capacity for cultural incorporation, and the potential for its development. Focusing this examination on land tenure is no more than a reflection of its centrality to indigenous and Western cultures alike. Colonisation entailed the alienation of much Tolai land, and the imposition of Western land tenure concepts. More trenchant, however, was the general impact of Western governmental processes, concepts of the individual's position in a society, and capitalist economic relations, on Tolai attitudes and institutions. Yet, in reviewing change in the Tolai community - in their social structure, settlement patterns, religious beliefs, and political and economic life - under a century of environmental transformation, the persistence of their cultural institutions is emphatic. Inherently flexible, their culture affords wide scope for the exercise of initiative in response to challenge, enabling Tolai to incorporate in their legal order those aspects of the Western culture which they value. By its flexibility, the integrity of their culture has survived. Following the historical dichotomy of land tenure, change is examined first as a spontaneous process of adjustment to the tenure in customary land, and then in its prescriptive guise, as the legislative process for introducing an alternative tenure regime to land alienated from customary tenure. In the Tolai village, land interests are adjusted in response to the needs of an increasing population with rising expectations, as well as to the impact of more general social, economic and political developments in the wider society. Customary tenure is revealed as dynamic, enabling the continual redistribution of land, and its most advantageous use by village residents subject only to the constraints consequent on the State's refusal to accord it formal recognition. On alienated land, however, the imported legal order offers no potential for adaptation to changing needs, and constant tension between the two legal cultures is evident. Distribution of alienated land allows no accommodation for the increasing Tolai population, the land is seriously under-utilised, and titleholders depend on increasing State support. The marked superiority of customary tenures, when contrasted with the expense, unresponsiveness to social change and economic inefficiency of the introduced tenures, demands a reversal of the inherited official attitudes to land tenure. The Tolai experience indicates that Melanesian societies will continue to resist the imposition of tenures under a foreign legal culture, and to respond to the challenges of the future by utilising their inherent capacity for spontaneous cultural incorporation. . The State should concentrate on facilitating and, if necessary, guiding this natural process, instead of wasting scarce resources on promoting ineffective - and, often, even counterproductive - alternative measures. Show more