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WOMEN'S RITUAL ROLES IN MATAILOBAU; FIJI ISLANDS:

THE CONSTRUCTION OF GENDER AND SOCIAL LIFE

by

Diane Michalski Turner

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Anthropology

1986

© 1987

DIANE MICHALSKI TURNER

All Rights Reserved

ABSTRACT

WOMEN'S RITUAL ROLES IN MATAILOBAU, FIJI ISLANDS:
THE CONSTRUCTION OF GENDER AND SOCIAL LIFE

by

Diane Michalski Turner

This study of Fijian womenfls ritual roles is based on
sixteen months of research in a village in Matailobau,
Naitasiri Province. Matailobau is a district in the moun-
tainous wet-zone interior of Viti Levu, the largest of the
Fiji Islands.

After residing in the village for several months, I
became interested in the cultural meanings assigned to the
sexes at public events and rituals, and I decided to focus
my work on those meanings. I saw in these rituals the
assignment of basic conceptions, relationships, and tasks
to the sexes, and villagers corroborated them -- women
serve men, men guide women, and men speak on behalf of
women at important functions.

An understanding of ritual requires knowledge about
other aspects of society and culture: thus, in analyzing
these rituals I consider, among other things, Fijian con-
cepts of gender, sexuality, cross-sex siblingship, and
social structure. Although many factors and relationships
are brought to bear on this study of women's ritual roles,
there is one recurring theme in this work: how women's
intercalary position between their agnates and affines

yields practical benefits to each category.

111

Diane Michalski Turner

I describe here a cohabitation ritual, a bisaba, and a
funeral ritual. The first celebrates the social creation
of a woman: the second honors a new mother and her child:
and the last marks the completion of a womanfls contribution
to affinal relations, when her childfs death may affect the
link between them.

Within these rituals are contained data that add a new
dimension to the anthropological discussion of whether
women are, are not, or are merely behaving like connubial
chattel. Additionally, Fijian conceptions of the sexes are
not founded on their respective reproduction roles, and
thus, they differ from some anthropological assumptions
about sex and gender.

These interpretations of women's roles and meanings
are based on at least two observations of each type of
ritual and on a knowledge of the broader social and cul-
tural context in which they occurred. I obtained the
latter data by participant observation and by collecting
genealogies, doing a census, and recording interviews. I
spoke with both men and women. Thus, the account, except
where indicated otherwise, reflects both men's and women's

statements .

1v

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This study was funded by a National Science Foundation
grant. The moral support for it came from my committee
members: Drs. John Hinnant, Robert McKinley, Charles
Morrison, and Harry Raulet. I thank them all, especially
Charles Morrison for his editorial help.

For his encouragement and other assistance, I want to
thank Prof. Bernard Gallin, chairperson of the Department
of Anthropology.

My daughter Megan Nicole, who was my best research
assistant, continues to show me the goodness of Fijian
people because they made her the wonderful person that she
is. Thank you, Meggie.

And to my husband, who supported me during the writing
of this dissertation, I owe a heartfelt thanks.

Mary June-e1 Piper edited and typed this dissertation.
I am most grateful for her splendid work.

Because they allowed me into their livves and gave
generously of their time, information, and hospitality, I

owe my greatest thanks to the people of Matailobau.

Managua vakalevu!

TABLE OF

List of Figures . . . . .
List of Tables . . . . .

1.

2.

5.

Introduction . . . .

Cohabitation Ritual .

First Day of the Ritual

Second Day of the Ritual

Third Day of the Ritual

Fourth Day of the Ritual

summary 0 O O O O I 0
Notes 0 O O O O O O O

The Bisaba . . . . .

The First Ritual
The Second Ritual
Summary . . . . .
Notes . . . . . .

The Funeral . . . . .

The Funeral of an Old
The Funeral of an Old
Summary . . . . . . .
Notes . . . . . . . .

Summary and Analysis

Bibliography . . . . . .

Appendix:

CONTENTS

Page
0 O O O O O O O O O O O Vii
O O O O O O O O O O O O v11
0 O O O O O O O O O O O l
O O O O O O O C O C O O 35
O O O O O O O I O O O O 71
O O O I O O O O O O O O 78
O O O O O 0 O O O O O O 84
O O O O O O O O O O O O 96

O O O O O O O O O I O O 105
O O O O O O O O C O O O 107

O O O O O O O O O O O O 109

135
146
159
160

O O O O O O O O O O O O 163

Widow . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Man . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

O O O O O O O O O O O O 225

O O O O O O O O O O O O 244

Criteria Defining Women as Girl's People . 250

LIST OF FIGURES

2222
l. Matrilateral tie between Nakoroniu and chief
living on its land . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
2. Terms for offspring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
3. Matagali positions at the old woman's funeral . . 206
4. Matagali Navua's affiliations in Namatai . . . . 213
Appendix
1. "Navulavula" teacher related as youth's "child" . 254
2. One woman's connections to Nakoroniu matagali . . 255
LIST OF TABLES
29.22
1. Schedule of food giving at cohabitation ritual . 86
2. Ownership of nets used in fishing on last day . . 98
3. Women/girls who were kitchen helpers at the old
man's funeral . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Appendix
1. Women who participated in the vakamamaca . . . . 251

 

vii

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

This study of Fijian womenfls ritual roles is based on
sixteen months of research in a village in Matailobau,
Naitasiri Province. Matailobau is a district in the moun-
tainous wet-zone interior of Viti Levu, the largest of the
Fiji Islands. This work begins to fill a lacuna in Fijian
ethnology. No anthropological research had been done pre-
viously in this area, and of the fieldwork conducted else-
where in the islands, none had focused on women (e.gu
Belshaw 1964: Rutz 1973: Sahlins 1962).

I went to Fiji prOposing a general study of village
women with an emphasis on their social roles and kinship
obligations and sentiments. After residing in the village
for several months, I became interested in the cultural
meanings assigned the sexes at public events and rituals
and decided to focus this work on them. I saw in these
rituals the assignment of basic conceptions, relationships,
and tasks to the sexes. Villagers corroborated these:
women serve men: men guide women: men speak on behalf of
women at important functions. I maintain that these are
cultural proclamations that greatly influence definitions
of gender and identities. They are, I suggest, of a dif-
ferent order than those phenomena also viewed as being
instrumental in defining women's status and power (eqpq

Reiter 1975: Rogers 1975: Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974),

2
ine., womenfls informal powers of gossip, affection, politi-
cal sagacity, diplomacy and economic leverage.

In other words, if women have power over men at
the level of social interaction, this is not to
"be taken as an indication that they are not

subordinate. Their subordination lies at the

level of cultural evaluations in terms of which

such powers are trivial (Milton 1979:42-43).

These rituals' messages can be ameliorated by actual
relationships and the effects of those variables I men-
tioned above. The communicative strength of these rituals,
however, is that 323 events they are unassailable -- there
are no other ritual moments at which roles are reversed or
opposite meanings are transmitted. 131a sense» they make
statements that cannot be refuted, much as ultimate reli-
gious dogmas, as Durkheim noted, cannot be proved or dis-
proved. Additionally, these rituals convey potent communi-
cations about nonritual situations because ritual distills
meanings and "becomes the centre of a cluster of different
associations" (Richards 1982:164) and contexts.

As rituals can contain information about other con-
texts, so too does an understanding of ritual require
knowledge about other aspects of society and culture: thus,
in analyzing these rituals I consider, among other things,
Fijian concepts of gender, sexuality, cross-sex
siblingship, and social structure. Not only are these
cultural and social factors involved in these rituals, they
are interconnected: realizing this intertwining of vari-

ables contributes to our understanding of women in ritual.

3
In turn, greater insights are achieved into other parts of
women's lives and perceptions of them by reflecting on
women's ritual roles. Lastly, an investigation of women's
lives must include men's participation because

one cannot understand women without understanding

men and vice versa. The sole focus on women by

some ethnographers is a political response neces-
sitated by the logic of Western politics. 'Theo-
retically, it makes for a sterile pursuit (Cesara

1982:170).

And thus, I describe men's roles and culturally defined
qualities in these rituals and elsewhere.

Although many factors and relationships are brought to
bear on this study of women's ritual roles, there is a
recurring theme in this work: womenfls intercalary position
between their agnates and affines and how this situation
yields practical benefits to each category. Even within
this narrower topic,]:indicate that this structural phe-
nomenon is facilitated by womenfs culturally defined quali-
ties and is enhanced by their characteristics that bind
people to them and to each other; The traits that permit
women to occupy an intermediate affiliation between their
own and conjugal kin are their perceived formlessness and
malleability. Women are seen as amorphous beings because
their essence is more like that oflchildren, whose liquid
souls (1212 323) have not been formed and solidified by
internalizing social mores and values, than like that of
men. Persons with these unfirm, socially immature charac-

ters have to be governed because they cannot contain them-

selves within social boundaries. Metaphorically speaking,

4

but with reference to Fijian idiom, their behavior flows
around and over these boundaries if they are not re-
strained. Womenfls qualities are antithetical to the mascu-
line qualities of.solidity and strength that allow men to
conform better to social dictates. Feminine qualities
indicate weakness, a property that elicits others' pity
and, thus, love. Pity and love's emotive connection is
lexically shown by the root (1223) that they share. Thus,
people feel sorry for weak beings, women, and become senti-
mentally attached to them (cf. Briggs 1970 -- the Inuit
hold similar ideas). Women's qualities, therefore, allow
them the flexibility to be incorporated into two kin groups
and provide’a means for emotionally linking others to and
through them.

As gender concepts contribute to our knowledge of
women's structural position, so too do we learn more about
this position by analyzing the two basic statuses involved
in it, those of wife and sister; Likewise, we must use a
dialectic tack in analyzing these statuses and in consider-
ing how notions of gender and the social structure color
them. Yet for heuristic purposes and to express infor-
mants' perceptions and statements, these factors and sta-
tuses must sometimes be viewed as isolable phenomena. For
instance, knowing that women's intercalary position
involves them as wives and sisters requires that we under-

stand the differences between these statuses and that the

5
separation between them works to promote the utility of
uxoral relations and women's dual affiliation.

The differences between sisters and wives are clearly
drawn and initiated at a cohabitation or wedding ritual.
These rituals are also the rites of passage that enunciate
that a woman now exists -- a female is defined as a girl
until she has entered into a conjugal relationship -- who
can occupy these statuses and begin the first phase of
uxoral relations. When a woman is thus socially created at
these rituals, she enters into and simultaneously promotes
the alliance between her own and her affinal kin. It is
for these reasons that the second chapter‘s topic is a
cohabitation ritual that includes how Fijian ideas of
gender, notions of common substance and corporate identity,
and sexuality determine how this ritual has different
repercussions for the man and woman, why one but not the
other can have dual kin affiliations, and why the statuses
and roles of sister and wife are variously valued and why
this is not so for those of brother and husband.

The third chapter records the next phase in the female
developmental cycle, motherhood, and the addition to the
intergroup relationship of a consanguineal dimension. It
is the transmission of a group’s blood, its symbol and
corporate property that, I argue, is involved in this
ritual. The new mother is feted in the bisaba ritual
whether she is married, cohabitating, or single. This is

so in part because children and fecundity in general are
\

6

highly valued: this, as I will indicate, has historical
precedents influencing it. But I also maintain that all
women's maternity is celebrated because they are sisters
who are the transmitters of their groups' sacred substance.
The rationalization for my position is found in the second
chapter”slexposition on the concern a group has about its
femaLe members' sexuality because the girls and women can
allow the corporation's blood to be shared without its
consent. A woman's child is the incarnation of her rela-
tives' essential substance, and thus, within or outside of
wedlock, their people's holy contribution to the infant
should be acknowledged. In those cases where the mother is
married, her sister-in-law, the childhs father‘s sister, is
a prominent participant who depicts another aspect of the
sister's role, the solicitous representative of the childfls
paternal and thus own group. Both the mother and the
child's father's sister express the permanent identifi-
cation a woman has with her natal kin and the greater
responsibility and respect accorded sisters over wives (cf.
Sacks 1979).

A woman's importance as sister and transmitter of
corporate substance is clearly depicted in the final ritual
described here and the last phase in the developmental
cycle, the funeral. Usually, a funeral would be defined as
the last stage of a woman's life when it referred to her
own interment. But here I am utilizing this cyclic scheme

to indicate the end of a woman's most concrete contribution

7

to alliance-making, the demise of her child. The child who
shared substance with its maternal and paternal kin is
buried by those whom it is believed are responsible for its
conception, birth, and life, its maternal relatives. These
uterine kin are equated with the mother and her nurturant
qualities and activities. Thus, these people perform the
final tender act of interring the deceased.

The nurturance of maternal kin reflects the tenderness
and care-giving that is supposedly a feminine characteris-
tic. Indeed, in each of these rituals life-giving and life—
sustaining activities are associated with female partici-
pants. For instance, at the bisaba people pray for the
mother's health and the women guests present her with a
food that supposedly increases breast milk and thus direct-
ly promotes the infant's vitality. At the bisaba a general
acknowledgement of womenfls reproductive capacities is also
made, and this is harnessed to prOpitiations to them to
create and maintain life. Women may try to honor these
requests for fecundity, and yet their efforts may be
thwarted by the men who hold the supernatural means to
affect their reproduction and extant children's health,
their brothers. Partly because the brother who retains
this power over the sister represents their group, uterine
kin as a category are important elements in social life and
are significant actors in these rituals, particularly at
the funeral. Although in certain respects the brother and

uxoral kin can be independent components in ritual and

8

other contexts, the influence of cross-sex siblingship
cannot really be isolated from them. Indeed, the influence
of brothers and maternal relatives can be mitigated by
sisters, who can employ feminine weakness to elicit these
others' pity and sway their opinions and then their behav-
ior. The cross-sex sibling relationship has several modes
that evolve as the siblings move through the developmental
cycle.

These three rituals describe the siblings' relation-
ship: when both are single: when the sister marries: when
she bears a child: when her child marries her brother's
child: and when her child dies. Cross-sex siblingship is
an ideal cross-sex relationship because each sibling re-
ceives respect and honor, there is no mention of sexuality,
and the brother exemplifies male authorityu The marital
relationship produces an asymmetry in respect and honor for
the spouses because the womanfls sexuality devalues her
status and role. Likewise, being the mother"s brother has
a prestige and power that in some ways overshadows that of
the child's father (the sister's husband): this is mani-
fested at the funeral.

A woman can discredit her sister‘s status by her illic-
it sexual behavior. The brother may counter her dishonor-
able actions by preventing her pregnancies or harming her
offspring. Additionally, the brother retains the ability
to continue his and his sister‘s group by having influence

in this patrilineal system over his son's wife, the

9
daughter of his sister. But both the man's sister and her
daughter may mollify him and secure their positions because
of their feminine qualities that elicit his goodwill.

Thus, cross-sex siblings share a sacred trust and are
more equal than a husband and wife are, and each has ways
to influence the other. The sister opens "paths" between
kin groups through her marriage and children and because of
this is accorded a special prestige. Capable of utilizing
her weakness and others' attachment to her, the sister can
affect her brother”s behaviomu She, however, must acqui-
esce to her brother in most matters because he is the
sibling set's moral and political leader. His position is
garnered from his masculinity, which by definition is based
on a moral and social confirmation superior to that of
females.

Because of males' greater ability to internalize
mores, which bespeaks their moral strength and the recogni-
tion of their physical prowess vis-a-vis females, men and
their pursuits are more culturally valued than women and
their activities. This male cultural bias is reflected in
the rituals described here: men represent groups, and their
funerals are more lavish than womenfs burials. These
rituals illustrate the sexes and their relationships and
gender, as all rituals do, in relatively laconic terms. It
is partially for communicative simplicity that I chose
ritual as a vehicle for studying women. Whether the

message is ameliorated, falsified, or enhanced by other

10
events or contexts is not as significant, in my view, as
the fact that it Lsrunzcountered in other similar formal
contexts.

Within these rituals' temporal and contextual limita-
tions are contained data that add a new dimension to the
anthropological discussion of whether women are (Levi-
Strauss 1969), are not (Weiner 1976), or are merely behav-
ing like (van Baal 1975) connubial chattel. Matailobau
people define the woman and man as their respective groupfls
“property,” which is controlled and transacted at the coha-
bitation or wedding ritual. The kin groups legitimize a
conjugal pair by celebrating the ritual, exchanging valu-
ables, and accepting the couple as a village unit. The
fact that Matailobau view men and women as their kin's
”property" suggests to me that the anthropological percep-
tion of women as valuables with intrinsic worth may not be
universally applicable, even in such kinship systems as
this Fijian version, where cross-cousin marriage is pre-
scribed. -Women do not have to be the gift or price that
cements intergroup marital alliance.

If the Matailobau see men and women as corporate "prOp-
erty,” then the fact that distinguishes one sex from the
other in terms of affinal relationships, I argue, is that
women are not valuables, unlike men, but instead are trans-
mitters of something unique -- £53 £322 (sacred blood).
This interpretation meshes better with the Matailobau idiom

of women as ”paths who open the way": women in this meta-

ll
phor are not objects or acting like objects as van Baal
suggests, but paths joining units. Even though I have used
the concepts "objects/valuables" versus "paths," it can be
argued that, regardless of the term, women are still being
commoditized here. I maintain that what is more in keeping
with Matailobau thinking is that women, like paths, estab-
lish a relationship: it is the pathfis function -- to estab-
lish a relationship, not as a valuable that is exchanged --
that is important. A path, as Matailobau say, has traffic
flowing in two directions: therefore, it is not a commodity
that can be owned by someone but is something that is
entered upon for a journey. Women can function in this
manner because of the way in which Matailobau define the
sexes: women can symbolically flow like the traffic between

groups because their liquid souls (yalo wai) make them

 

amorphous beings who>can be.shaped around the contours of
society as a footpath marks a route allowed by the terrain.

The Matailobau do not adhere to the definition of
woman that some anthropologists have assumed to be univer-
sal: “what defines women as women is the eternal fact of
[their reproductive] biology“ (Edholm, Harris, and Young
1977:101). Matailobau do define the sexes in terms of
their biologic natures, but these are not rooted in their
reproductive systems. As I mentioned before, feminine
nature’s attributes of formlessness, malleability and weak-
ness are justifications for men to act as society”s repre-

sentatives. These attributes explain why brothers are

12
their sisters' leaders, why women obey their husbands, why
the conjugal relationship affects the sexes differently,
and why women can affiliate with two groups and bind others
to them. They do say that women are care-givers and that
the model of nurturance is the mother-child dyad. But
these characteristics appear to be accretions, achieved
when girls become matrons whose social task or expectation
is to sustain household members and, by extension, society
in general. Womenfls nurturance is attributed to them after
they have become wives or mothers and have fostered others.
It is the maternal and wifely roles that are nurturant and
that encourage and expect its occupantszto behave thusly.
People do say that women are nurturant, that is, they have

alo naka (good hearts), but here again it is not because

 

they are essentially and potentially mothers whose need it
is to provide succor (cf. van Baal 1975) that they are
socially conscious and generous.

These interpretations of womenfls roles and meanings
are based on at least two observations of each type of
ritual and a knowledge of the broader social and cultural
context in which they occurred. I obtained the latter data
by participant observation, collecting genealogies, doing a
census and recording interviews. Each day I attended
village activities. Such a tactic required energy and
tolerating the frustration of not immediately following up
on previous events. The benefits of such a regimen were

that I was immersed in village life and could see the

13
connections between people and between activities that I
would have missed had I initially pursued a different
schedule. Villagers partially imposed these research
methods on me. They expect all able-bodied persons to
leave their houses daily and interact with others -- to do
otherwise may be a sign of antisocial feeling or behavior.

From the first, I interviewed villagers on topics that
I or they found interesting. ] spoke with men and'women.
Some topics, such as menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth,
and lactation, I discussed only with women. Women do not
speak of these things in menfls presence: I believed that it
would deleteriously affect my rapport with the community if
I asked men about them.

As time progressed, I became aware of the agreement
among respondents' replies to my inquiries. For some
issues, e.g., customs, ancestors, etc., there were views to
which members of both sexes adhered. Men and women dif-
fered sometimes in their interpretations of topics, for
instance, in conceptualizing the sexes. Thus the account,
except where indicated otherwise, reflects men's and
womenls statements.

My analysis utilizes villagers' explanations of their
lives and, as in most ethnographic enterprises, also
employs my interpretations of these, especially for the
bisaba. Villagers always said the bisaba was done to make
the newly delivered mother and child happy. I believed

that I could achieve another understanding of their state-

14

ments and this simple ritual's meanings with a deeper
analysis guided by the data and by logic. The data that
seemed most basic to this enterprise and to an understand-
ing of the other rituals, plus their common topic of
womenfls intercalary position, concerned kin groups. In one
sense, describing these units is a straightforward task: in
another sense, it poses definitional problems because there
are two models of these groups um: Belshaw 1965: France
1969: Walter 1978) and because these groups may combine an
ego's maternal and paternal kin that ideally should be
separated. 1 will describe briefly these two models and
then list the various recruitment principles of these
groups.

The gg‘jpgg version of Fijian social structure springs
from the Native Lands Commission. This commission defines
Fijian society as having a single system of hierarchically
arranged units, that is, a segmentary lineage model. These
interlocking segments have a set of terms that categorize
each social level from lineage through phratry. Patri-
lineal descent is the principle of group recruitment,
except in the provinces of Lau, Cakaudrove, and Macuata,
where affiliation is optative and descent cognatic. Each
Fijian is registered in a kin group in the 312132; 5332
(The Book of Descendants) sometime during childhood. Kin
groups claim land,creeks, and streams: their members have

rights to these and to extend usufructory rights to others.

15
Children born to unmarried women are members of their
mothers' groups.
The other model of kin groups is locally defined and
reflects more closely the idiom embedded in the term

mataqali, a kin unit. In the fig jure system, mataqali

 

refers to a middle level group. Villagers call groupings

of various kinds mataqali because it means "category,”

 

"type," or "speciesu" Perhaps a mataqali is best described
in terms of what it does (Hocart 1952): provide a category
and a support system for its members who, as the root 9213
indicates, "have ties with [each] other" (cf. Turner 1983).
In villages and in the Matailobau vernacular, mataqali can
mean a social unit based on one of several criteria.
People who use the same parcel of land, who are joined by
patrilineal or cognatic descent or affinal ties, for
example, can belong to a mataqali. There is usually an
agnatic core to which others are attached, and this facili-

tates the image of a mataqali as a patrilineal descent

 

group.
The village in which this fieldwork was conducted had

five mataqali. Within the larger ones, there were named

 

lineage segments that c00perated closely in daily matters.
Also there were mataqali composed of members of named units
‘vith different origins. In these latter cases, the people

echo have joined the mataqali core are ”staying with" it.

 

lbarge mataqali with named sections and those with members

'Tstaying with" the core pose somewhat similar identifica-

16

tion problems for their members. In each case people have
to align themselves with the larger unit, and yet there are
circumstances when they define themselves first as the
smaller units' members. This situational identification is
an interesting process to observe and ponder because
mataqali are defined by their uniqueness, their separation
from other units.

The separation of mataqali is increased by the dis-

 

tinctions in rank that divide mataqali into chiefly and

 

commoner groups. These very differences, however, are the
means for articulating mataqali ritually and politically in

veiqalaki relationships. Veiqalaki relations are modeled

 

on a type of ramage organization in which ranked persons
are ritually and politically interdependent. In this
organization the chief is the head and those junior to him
are his priests, warriors, heralds, and commoner helpers.

These persons' descendents are the mataqali who belong to

 

each occupational/ritual category. 13$ is a reciprocal,
3313 means ”to serve" or ”attend," and 19" is the preposi-
tion ”to" or "towards": thus, commoner and chief are bound
to each other in service. Chiefs give protection and
ritual leadership to their commoner vassals, who recipro-
cate them with ministration as heralds, warriors, priests,
or servants. Rituals clearly express these ties. For
example, a chief died during the research period and his
warriors stood guard at the corners of his house during the

funeral. In another example, when a chief's bier passed on

17
the way to the cemetery, a man of the chief's herald
mataqali bid a formal farewell and presented a whale's
tooth to him as a final tribute.
As differences in rank can be a means for linking

mataqali, so too can kinship. Indeed, veiqalaki ties and

 

affinity have much in common:

the pattern of behavior between two moities:
mutual aid combined with playful hostility,
intermarriage, interburial.

The Fijians call such a reciprocal relation
”mutual ministry” (more literally, “facing one
another," or ”worshipping one another”). . . .
It means that if the deceased belongs to one
line, the other buries him (Winnabagoes), or
mourns for him (Trobriands), or otherwise plays
the vis-a-vis (Hocart 1952:186).

Marriage creates affinal bonds between mataqali, and the

 

birth of children establishes consanguineal ties for them.
A 3232, sister‘s child, enjoys certain privileges from its
maternal kin and returns respect and services to these
highly regarded relatives, particularly the mother's
brother, who has a keen interest in the Eggpfis life and the
right and obligation to bury the 331:; when he or she dies.
The children of sisters are linked through their common
uterine kin: these are termed vasuVata (those who are 3232
to the same people). Vasuvata are also equated because
their mothers are sisters, and female siblings are viewed
as being categorically alike. Siblingship is, of course,
the basis for the formation and continuance of mataqali and

results in its corporate nature.

18
Because mataqali are corporate groups whose prOperty
is the land they claim, the symbols and ancestors they
share, or both, they represent each of their members. In

turn, each member stands for the mataqali, and each sib-

 

ling's actions impact on the others. Thus, an affinal or
consanguineal relationship of one member can be extended to
the unit. For instance, mataqali can be spoken of as being
siblings because some of their members are two sisters'

children or vasu to the same mataqali. Likewise, a

 

siblinglike bond can be created between mataqali if they

 

are alike in some way, e4L, if they are both heralds, they
can be equated in the same manner as siblings. The equiva-
lence between mataqali is similar to that of siblings for
it carries with it reciprocal obligations and sentiments of
caring.

The siblingship within a mataqali is differentiated

 

from that between mataqali not only on the basis of actual
versus fictive or classificatory siblingship but on the
basis of propinquity as well. A good proportion of a
mataqali's members in the village under study live close to
each other; These households are typically headed by the
men who are the mataqali members. This and the usually
virilocal postmarital residence, along with its potential
for agnatically extended families, reaffirms the ideal of

the agnatic core for the mataqali. 'These mataqali house-

 

holds' frequent interactions reflect mataqali values of

 

cooperation and reciprocal aid. The stress on male agnates

19

here calls into question the nature of the siblingship
extended to female agnates. Gender separates siblings into
those who, upon marriage, can transmit membership in their
patrilineally extended group and those who cannot. It also
divides siblings who marry and move into other units from
those whose spouses come into their own groups Gender is
also employed in assigning privileges to siblings -- some
can politically represent the unit and others can transmit
its substance to other groups. The peculiarity of female
corporate membership is illustrated by their nonrepresenta-
tion of the mataqali at most formal and ritual occasions.
And yet, the women, who move away from their brothers and
do not speak on their behalf, identify with them and have
rights in the siblings' property and expectations of these
kin's assistance.

Women, who are expected to retain membership in their
natal units, are supposed to identify totally with their
conjugal groups and work on their behalf. Furthermore,
women may extend to their husbands and affines usufructory
rights in their mataqali land and assistance from their
agnates. However, women's relatives may call on the
womenfls affines for services too. This intricate, seem-
ingly paradoxical position of women and the apparent recip-
rocity of benefits to affines through them allows women to
function like centripetal forces, weaving their respective

natal and conjugal mataqali into a fabric for the larger

 

society.

20
Women's intercalary position is illuminated in these
lfituals: so too is the place of siblingship and the
mataqali with which it is associated. The distinctions

between siblings wrought.by‘gender and defining mataqali

 

membership is also marked in them. These rituals also
delineate how the developmental cycle affects cross-sex
siblingship. Cross-sex siblings become, according to the
kinship ideology and terminology, the parents-in-law of
their sibling's children. Their children's marriages
result in returning a wife to the group that released a
sister in the previous generation. The cross-sex siblings'
and their children's affinal relations may be the paradigm
for the many exchange relationships found in Fijian
society. Exchange relationships are important in Oceanic
societies (e.g., Clay 1977, Weiner 1976). The structural
significance of cross-sex siblingship and notions of
exchange are expressed in these rituals by the siblings'
and their descendants' participation.

The geographic and social situation in which I con—
ducted this research was a village on the Wainimala River.
Namatai, the pseudonym that I use for this village, sat on
a bluff overlooking the river and was surrounded on three
sides by forest interspersed with gardens. Its forty-six
houses were built along three paths, all parallel to the
river. The village had "upper’ and ”lower" sections that
corresponded to the river's flow. A Methodist church and

rectory and the district school and teachers' compound were

21

at the lower end. All buildings sat amidst ornamental
plants and closely cropped lawns. Coconut palms dotted the
village, and breadfruit and orange trees, bananas and other
food plants grew on its periphery. Most homes were made of
bamboo, which was either split and plaited or covered with
reeds and grasses. One residence and the church were made
of concrete blocks. Three homes were constructed of sawn
timber. All houses were raised above the ground to‘avoid
inundation from the frequent rains. Traditionally, thatch-
ing was used for roofing, but corrugated metal sheets have
replaced it. Am the beginning of this research, only two
houses had thatched roofs: by the end of it, those houses
had been renovated and their roofs replaced with metal
sheeting.

About 250 people resided in the village. The tenta-
tiveness of this statement of population is due to the
common practice of Fijians to be away from their homes for
extended periods, traveling and visiting relatives. During
my village stay there were ten births. and three deaths, and
eight young people moved to urban areas for work.

The village economy was based on horticulture. Across
the village was a large floodplain where most villagers'
gardens were located. Root crops and vegetable relishes
grown here made up the bulk of the diet. Most gardens were
planted with taro, the preferred staple. This root crop
provides a complete Fijian meal -- the root is one of the

“true foods" (kakana dina), and the stalk and leaves can be

22

prepared with coconut milk to make a relish. The other
most commonly cultivated root crops were tavioka and yams.
Edible hibiscus was the most common of the vegetable
relishes. Some villagers also planted smaller plots of
green beans, cabbages, and cucumbers for household consump-
tion and for sale in the village and at the markets.

Gathering and fishing augmented the diet of cultigens.
Wild yams were collected, often by women, to give variety
to the diet and to supplant crops that failed or were
insufficient to meet household needs. Most animal protein
came from fish, although fishing was not a daily activity.
Eels were the largest fish caught, some nearly four feet
long. Several other fish species were also found in the
river and creeks. Prawns were the only crustaceans in the
area. Both sexes fished: women used nets and poles, while
men typically speared fish in the river. The river was
murky during the fieldwork period because it was polluted
by the effluence from the construction of a dam at its
headwaters: this situation affected the menhs spearfishing.
Flying foxes, mongooses, and wild pigeons were either
trapped or shot by men. For Sunday dinners or other
special occasions people sometimes ate the domesticated
chickens that roosted in village trees and were fed by
women and children. The cows that ranged on the floodplain
were slaughtered by men for rituals or were butchered and
eaten or sold when found dead. Some men hunted wild pigs

with dogs, often using only their cane knives to kill the

23
animals. A few men had licenses to hunt with guns.

The main cash crop was taro. Villagers took the
tubers to the truck stop by boat where they sold them to
middlemen. Men usually dominated this process, but some-
times women sold small crops alone or in conjunction with
other women for money for a community enterprise. ‘Typi-
cally, women earned cash by making pandanus-leaf mats,
brooms, or bundles of pandanus leaves to sell in city
markets. .A few women sold cigarettes in the village.

Cultivation tools and techniques were relatively few
in number. Dibble sticks, pitchforks, and cane knives were
the most frequently used tools. A few villagers employed
ox teams to plow the floodplain gardens. Some people
applied fertilizers and pesticides in their plots.

In the division of labor, men were assigned the
"heavy" tasks of clearing the gardens by a slash-and-burn
method and preparing them for planting. Because they were
”weak,” women worked along with men in the less-demanding
tasks of planting, weeding, and harvesting crops. Women
also collected firewood: cooked: washed clothes: wove mats,
brooms, and baskets: and tended children. Most of the
cultivation of taro was done by women.

This outline of the social structure and physical
setting in which these rituals occur sets the scene for the
discussion of the cohabitation ritual that produces the
women and the conjugal union that initiates affinal rela-

tions, two of this dissertation's central topics.

24

Two current anthropological enterprises, whose mutual
objective is the clarification of ethnographic terms and
frameworks, have influenced my analysis. One of these
enterprises questions whether anthropological concepts are
universally applicable for "making sense" of other
cultures. In MacCormack's and Strathern's (1980) volume,
for example, contributors discuss whether Western cultural
dichotomies of nature and culture and the antithesis of the
genders are universal phenomena. These anthropologists
indicate that these paradigms are not always useful heuris-
tic tools and do not reflect their particular non-Western
informants' cultural perceptions. Likewise, L. Dumont
(1983) points to the interpretive pitfalls that can occur
when anthropologists accept certain phenomena as central
concepts of another culture, without investigating whether
their assumptions about these are responsible for their
selection. For instance, Dumont asserts, if we focus on
South Indian consanguinity and give little attention to
affinity, we have made a value judgment about their respec-
tive significances. He says this because "South Indian
people . . . look at the two entities in question with
equanimity, and make a simple, straightforward, symmetrical
distinction between them where we maintain a hierarchical
distinction" (Dumont l983:vii).

These examples of the discipline's self-analysis are
part of a multifaceted process that has existed for some

time now (cf. Boon 1982: Hymes 1973: Jacobs 1974: Leach

25

1971: Needham 1971, 1974, 1983). The rethinking of anthro—
pology, however, has taken more dramatic expression within
the last five years or so (Barrett 1984: Berreman 1982:
Cesara 1982: Dumont 1978: Hoebel et a1. 1982). For
instance, Schneider (1984) has critiqued his work on Yapese
kinship. Schneider‘s reanalysis may have been prompted by
LabbyH3(l976) examination of his data, but for the last
fifteen years, Schneider (1972) has been wrestling with the
fundamental issue of whether what is called kinship is a
phenomenon separable from other kinds of relationships.

Such terminological and conceptual issues are asso-
ciated with another major concern in anthropology -- the
communication or translation between cultures that ethnog-
raphy entails. The problem of transcultural communication
involves, of course, inquiries into the applicability of
our concepts and paradigms to other cultures. Among those
interested in anthropology as a communicative endeavor,
Boon (1982) and Geertz (1973) have dealt at length with the
process of making one culture understandable to another,
and in so doing have contributed to fieldworkers' self—
awareness of themselves as culture-bound persons engaged in
cross-cultural communication.

The realization of the potential difficulties or
misuse in employing one culture's terms in explaining
another culture is connected to the fieldwork enterprise
characterized as interpretive ethnography.

Interpretive ethnography is, to use Riceour's

phrase, a matter of attributing "a meaning to a
meaning” (1970:13). It is a descriptive enter-

26
prise, which promises neither to uncover "how it
feels" to get inside a native's skin nor to
facilitate causal generalization, but rather

through its organization to promote at once a

taste for detail and a sense of pattern and to
articulate something about the ways that cultures

work by showing how they "mean" (Rosaldo

1980:221).

Interpreting a culture is a comparative process: the ethno-
grapher has "to preserve the 'otherness' and complexity of
unfamiliar 'worlds' or contexts, while rendering familiar a
hitherto inaccessible form of talk" (Rosaldo 1980:221). In
other words, the anthropologists must use their cultural
symbols, their language, to express what other peOple mean
in their own -- and different from the anthropologists' --
terms.

Several theoretical and methodological issues have
been involved in the facilitation of communication between
cultures. Distinguishing between the subjects' view of
their existence and actions -- emics -- and the observers'
categorizations of the same -- etics -- has been a long-
standing anthrOpological concern. The demarcation of emic
and etic interpretations is related to anthropologists'
compilation of informants' semantic systems, the purpose of
ethnoscience. Additionally, an acknowledgment of the
researcher in the fieldwork process has heightened ethnog-
raphers' understanding of their cultural concepts, assump-
tions, and communication models. Indeed, along with an
increase in the anthropological literature focusing on the
cross-cultural communication process entailed in fieldwork,

there has been a proliferation of reports on fieldworkers'

27

experiences, which help readers understand within a more
complete cultural (and transcultural) context the ethno-
graphic communication being presented (Cesara 1982: Dumont
1978: Ruby 1982, among others). And, lastly, feminist
scholarship has also affected anthropology by producing the
epistemic model based on the premise that one "must not
assume that existing categories of analysis are adequate,
and [that one can] name new categories” (Thorne 1985:50).

These various concerns and orientations regarding
cross-cultural fieldwork and ethnographic interpretations
have alerted me to the potential for communication problems
and to the need to attend to nuance in cross-cultural
translation. It is, perhaps, the nuances, which must
enhance our knowledge of other cultures, that suggest that
the data itself may'be complex, even contradictory; And,
therefore, I try to record the many facets of phenomena,
for example, that siblingship may be separable from
corporate group membership and that the term mataqali can
have different referents, various connotations for its
members, and qualitative differences in membership as
determined by gender.

The various interpretations and aspects of mataqali

 

illustrate why, even though I can find connections between
values, actions, and institutions, I do not describe a
cultural system in which all elements fold neatly together
in a series of Chinese boxes, or, to use another metaphor,

do not reach closure. litry'to explicate the "reality" of

28
Fijian life as best I can see and know it, and thus, for
instance, I indicate that gender alone does not always
affect rank, or ritual and social roles, because age is
also a consideration. My assessment of the influence of
these variables is correct, I maintain (cf. La Fontaine
1978). Secondly, while I make the bold statement that
women in affinal relations should not be viewed as chattel
but instead seen as "paths" between groups, I also affirm

that the mataqali have a proprietary interest in their

 

members. My assessment of both attitudes and orientations
is correct, I believe: they are seemingly contradictory
only if we assume that they refer to women (and men) in the
same way, but they do not. Mataqali are at once defined as
unique entities: as being composed of individual members:
as having authority over members: as being largely under
the direction of their elder members, who have a qualita-
tively different mataqali membership than do their junior
members: and lastly, as providing qualitatively different
mataqali affiliation for males and females. Elders do
direct younger mataqali members and have a say in their
endeavors, and the junior members belong to the mataqali
(and to their elders) in a way that the senior generation
does not. I refer to individuals, particularly young ones,
as being viewed as the ”property” of the mataqali. I use
this expression in order to relate the sense of ownership,
of authority, and of jurisdiction that elders have over

junior mataqali members and the sense of the corporate body

29
being, in some sense, more significant than its individual
members. If this choice of idiom bears too strongly in the
direction of the junior people being objectified, I regret
this. But I want to stress the tenor of the respective
relationships regarding mataqali affiliation. For example,
elders frequently can be heard to ask younger people, "0
cei lewa?" ("Who has chosen/decided for you?") to determine
if their actions have been approved by those who have a say
in how they behave. I suppose that I could describe the

relationship between the senior and junior mataqali members

 

solely in terms of authority relations. Fijians, however,
employ the term taukei, which can be glossed as owner or
original inhabitant, to state the relationship between the
youth and his kin at the cohabitation ritual described
here. Taukei, meaning both owner and original inhabitant,
refers to certain powers and privileges of persons to whom
some forms of obedience and displays of respect are
required. In sum, then, I try to translate as best as I
can the seeming contradictions within, the variations of,
the shadings in meanings regarding, and the different
aspects of phenomena.

Because I am concerned about the heuristic utility of
concepts, I have selectively used anthropological concepts
to portray Matailobau life. Specifically, I take liberties
with the application of the concepts of public and domestic
domains in order to delineate the Matailobau distinctions

between times, events, and purposes. I do this because

30

there are common elements that Westerners and Fijians
attribute to these terms, and it is for the purposes of
making Fijian life understandable "with reference to our
construal of its context" (Rosaldo 1980:221) that I retain
these dichotomous terms. My basic definitions of these
concepts follow those of Ortner and Whitehead —- the public
domain is "the sphere of wider social coordination" domi-
nated by men and the domestic domain is not concerned with
this (1981:18). I acknowledge that I sometimes figura-
tively stretch the more commonly accepted usage of the term
domestic -- household and familial activities, spaces, and
concerns -- to include a ritual that involves nonhousehold
and family members and that contains elements of political,
public relationships. I include the bisaba ritual within
the domestic sphere, partly because the Matailobau gathered
for it see it as separate from occasions and activities
that they attend as political units, for intergroup
exchange, and in nonkinship roles, and partly because women
are its focus and major participants. I saw that some
Matailobau events, times, and spaces are genderized, so
that the public domain is associated with men and the
domestic sphere with women. Thus, I utilize the anthro-
pological concepts of the‘domestic and public to reflect
the kinds of distinctions that Matailobau make for gender-
appropriate tasks and domains.

Although these current interests in anthropological

communication and(conceptualization.are(apparent in this

31

study, so too are more traditional perspectives. For
instance, the holistic orientation to data collection and
analysis has facilitated my description of cultural mean-
ings and the construction of social life and gender even as
I focus on women's roles within these rituals. Because I
take a holistic perspective, I attempt to limn the inter-
connections between, and the imbeddedness of values, of
forms, and of actions that these rituals suggest. Both the
outcomes of the analysis and my position regarding it are
connected to my view of what ritual is -- purposive action
geared to accomplishing social goals, to teaching social
norms, and to socializing individuals.

I am most comfortable with the kind of interpretation
of ritual that Richards uses in Chisungu, where she empha-
sizes the social context within which the ritual is set. I
dwell neither on the meanings of symbols found within these
rituals nor on peopleds reactions to these. Likewise, I do
not review anthropological discussions of symbolism and
consider their implications for this study (cf. Douglas
1966: Firth 1973: Langer 1942: Rosaldo 1980). I emphasize
the socializing aspects of these rituals in part because of
my own responses to them, and in part because of the way I
have perceived Fijian attitudes toward these rituals and
their orientation toward life.

My reactions to these rituals result from my initial
village reception as a European women and from villagers'

subsequent modification of my position as one more consis-

32
tent with that of other village women. When I entered the
village, I was honored in the chief's house, along with my
husband. We sat together to petition the chief for his
protection in the village. For a period of time after this
I was accorded more respect and given more privileges than
other village women enjoyed. My first taste of what it was
like to be a Matailobau woman came when I took my place at
ritual events. I sat with other women my age:h1the last
places reserved for women: before me sat older women,
younger men, and finally senior men. liresented my posi-
tion. I also felt humiliated when on my knees I presented
tea to elders and learned to be silent at public events.
As time passed, I no longer seethed at occupying one of the
lowest positions at public events. What created this
change in my perceptions of my place and my acceptance or
understanding of my situation was a socialization process
that turned my initial feminist anger at being placed in a
subordinate female position into an understanding of and
identification with Matailobau women. Instead of jealously
viewing myself in a position against men, I felt a solidar-
ity with women, and if women sat in less prestigeful
places, so what? "So what" is what the entire public
ritual process had become to me. I learned about and
internalized cultural statements about women's roles and
places, not only because of the rituals, for my lessons
were found in all contexts, but because they were the most

pronounced lessons at whose continued attendance I could

33
measure my acculturation.

It is partly because of my reaction to these rituals
that I view them as transformative and boundary-maintain-
ing. I devoted little time to asking villagers how they
felt at these rituals. On the contrary, people talked
about what the rituals did or should do, or what they or
others did during them and why. I did not think about my
lack of interest in their emotive responses during the
research period. As I wrote this I began to understand
that I believed I knew how they felt, that is, I knew how I
felt at these events that tutored me in Matailobau ways.

I also limited my'inquiry into my.informants'affec-
tive responses to these rituals because I knew that Fijians
are taught who they are and what they do. Fijians tell
each other what they do and what they as Fijians can do.
There is a Fijian way of life, of performing tasks, of
techniques (vakaviti) and with special reference to culture
and custom there is the concept of being "in the way of the
land” (vakavanua). Asking Fijians why they do thus and so
may or may not yield the kind of introspective answers that
are so satisfying to Westerners. Some Fijians will explain
rituals, e.gu, that the first fruit ceremony links the
production cycles of domestic and wild yams with the
respective procreative efforts of people and the deity. It
is not the why of things that is important in Fijian
culture but how things are done. And so, given my response

to their public, ritual lessons, and my absorption of

34
these, plus their orientation to these rituals, I focus on
the socializing aspects of these rituals and the goals that

they seek to obtain.

CHAPTER 2

COHABITATION RITUAL

Cohabitation rituals and weddings create the women
whose ritual roles we want to understand. Weddings do not
occur as often as do cohabitation rituals, and for this
reason Ivam describing the cohabitation ritual that pro-
duces a woman and initiates the affinal relations to which
she is so significant, two central topics of this work.

Fijians do not automatically assign the term yalewa
(woman) or marama (lady) to a physically mature female.
They usually reserve these appellations for those who are
or have been members of a conjugal pair. A girl becomes a
woman in this ritual partly because she has publicly
entered a conjugal relationship but partly because this
union is sanctioned by the community. The point in the
ritual at which the transformation truly occurs is when an
elder lectures the couple on proper marital behavior.

A cohabitation ritual results from an: elopement
(veidrotaki), which is viewed as the theft of the girl from
her mataqali. This ritual provides a means of rectifying
the eloping couple's social and moral errors and a way for
the pair to cohabit in the village, where morality and
rules of etiquette should prevail.

The couple's social acceptability in the village is

‘vouched for by the youth's mataqali, who host the ritual

 

iand in so doing indicate to the village that, by sheltering

35

36
them, they will be somewhat responsible for the couple's
marital career. The boy's kin will ideally apologize to
the girl's group during the ritual and the latter will
accept their expressions of regret and accept the union.
If’the»gir1fs people attend the ritual and exchange valu-
ables with the youth's, the couple will be considered
vakamau (married). If the girl's kin do not consent to the

union, the pair is defined as vakawati (courting or

 

engaged). The cohabitation ritual then at least results in
creating a socially approved couple but not necessarily a
married one.

This ritual, like the wedding, lasts for four days: it
differs from the wedding in several respects -- it is not
preceded by a betrothal and a series of exchanges between
the youth's and girl's groups and, by definition, does not
include the girlds kin's transfer of their rights to her
to the youth's group and thus a marriage. The cohabitation
ritual's essential components include the clothing and
anointing of the couple and their sponsors: ritual meals
and drinking of the beverage yaqona (an infusion made from

Piper methysticum roots): the vakamamaca (drying) of the

 

 

girl on the fourth day, after the couple has bathed and
fished with the girl's sisters and the boy's male attend-
ant: gift giving: and an elder's speech to the couple on
proper marital behavior, which, in effect, solemnizes their
union. The elder's lecture is partially necessitated by

the couple‘s elopement because this indicates that they did

37
not take the correct path -- betrothal-- to establish
their alliance.

An elopement poses several problems that the cohabita-
tion ritual seeks to remedy. First, the boy brings the
girl to his household, and its members must decide whether
she is to stay with them. Second, the boy‘s kin, the
girl's, and the village need to determine if the couple
truly wishes to cohabit. The girl's relatives are some-
times the first to seek confirmation of the pair's inten-
tions by sending a representative to ask her if she "is
going to stay forever.” The cohabitation ritual acknowl-
edges the couple's intentions to become a unit and the
boy's kin's acceptance of this unit, and the village's
participation confers community approval of the couple and
its enclosure in a mataqali.

The ritual also helps to ease the first few days of
the couple's incorporation in the youth's household, parti-
cularly in terms of providing bedding and clothes for the
girl who left her wardrobe in her parents' house. The
establishment of a couple within a household requires that
they share a conjugal bed, for couples occupy clearly
defined sleeping quarters.Fijian houses are constructed
with no walls dividing the living areas. There are ele—
‘Vated beds for senior people, and couples sleep in nestlike
beds made from bamboo poles laid on the floor and covered
krith mats. Other household members, especially single and

Sinnior persons, retire where there is available floor

38

space. Because a new couple needs bedding materials, the
gifts most appropriate for the new couple are pillows,
blankets, and the curtains that cordon the sleeping area.

The gifts usually given by other villagers and non-
village guests, however, are foodstuffs, clothing, whalefls
teeth, and mats. Food is needed by the ritual's hosts to
feed their guests, clothing is useful for the girl, whale's
teeth and mats are valuables, and the mats have practical
uses as well.

Certain persons and groups are expected to give parti-

cular prestations. The youth's mataqali hosts the four-day

 

ritual in one of its member's houses, where presentations
are made: the couple is dressed, fed, and ensconced in the
sleeping area: and the guests drink and visit. The boy's
male agnates should bring yagona and his female agnates
should provide clothes for the girl, mats, and cooked and
raw food. In effect, most food for the first two days'
meals are provided by the youthfls entire mataqali. On the

last two days of the ritual his group's sibling-mataqali,

 

mataqalivata (units who view themselves as siblings), are

 

expected to help the hosts with provisions. At each meal,

however, other village mataqali may bring portions of

 

cooked ”real food" (tubers) to the dining hall. Giving a
portion of cooked food to another household is called 1
takitaki (the share of something). Bringing food and
rendering services to the ritual's hosts are expected and

valued activities.

39

As particular categories of persons should present
things during the ritual, so too are persons of different
sexes and ages expected to perform certain tasks. Chlthe
first day the couple is anointed with oil, given new
clothes, and draped with garlands by the youth's cross-
cousins, the girl's sisters. The couple is joined at a
meal by the girl's father's sister and a senior male. The
girl's companion, her father‘s sister, is expected to stay
in the house for the duration of the ritual. During these
four days, senior men sit in the youthhs house, engaging in
conversation and drinking yaqona. Women come to this house

when their conjugal mataqali present their gifts and when

 

they give food for meals. Youths, girls, and younger
children harvest crops, collect firewood, wash dishes,
erect a pavilion and perform jobs assigned to them by
senior people. Sometimes during the festivities mature
women perform a burlesque or humerous, possibly licentious,
skit (vakavuru). At night there is singing and some danc-
ing by men and women. On the ritual's last day the couple
goes to the river to bathe and fish, accompanied by the
girl's sisters and the youthfls male attendant. This party
returns the fish to the girl's kin to be cooked and pre-
sented at the luncheon. While the girl's sisters are at
the river, the youth's are preparing the meal in the
village. As the group from the river nears the youth's
house, they are met by his sisters, who present the girl

with clean, dry clothes. Yaqona is given to the girl's

40
women for returning her to her new home. Afterwards, a
meal is eaten by everyone attending the ritual. Following
this, a senior man lectures the couple about proper marital
behavior: the talk is directed at the girl.

As the senior man focuses his remarks on the girl, so
too will I now attend to the meanings attached to her.
First, it is important to ascertain why the elder addresses
his comments primarily to the girl. I believe that there
are two reasons why the girl receives the most instruction:
one is that her nature requires that she be tutored in
proper social behavior, and the other has to do with the
more extensive role she plays in alliance formation in
comparison with her maten At this point I will limit my
discussion to why female nature needs to be molded and
return to why and how women cast a wider net in affinal
connections later.

Women are described as weak (malumalumu), formless

 

beings with unfirm spirits (yalowai): their behavior is not
dignified: they are silly. The adjectives applied to women
are those used for children. Women and children are
socially immature persons -- that is,iJ1comparison with
men. During the cohabitation ritual, however, this form-
less female is given a socially approved shape when a
senior man instructs her in how to behave as a wife, as a
woman. It is then that the girl, incapable of self-
governing behavior, is turned into a responsible woman.

Because she has been a relatively formless social being

41
susceptible to molding, changes can be made in the girl.
Unlike the girl, the youth is already able to behave in a
socially approved manner because of his male spirit, a
construction intrinsically solid and capable of internaliz-
ing social norms.

There were indications from informants' comments that
perhaps women are not as capable of internalizing social
mores as men. As do other non-Western people (cf., for
example, Ortner 1974) and some Western philosophers (e.g.,
Hegel), Matailobau categorize men with the social governing
qualities of culture. From the conversations and stories
that I recorded, Matailobau women do not appear to be
viewed as "undomesticated, natural beings,” as they are
supposedly perceived by the authors mentioned above.
Matailobau speak of women as needing men to structure their
behavior. (There are old tales that relate the unpleasant
outcomes that happen to women who refuse to marry and grant
men's hegemony over them.) They would probably agree with
Hegel on another matter -- that ”the perfect moral
male/female relationship [is] that of brother and sister"
(O'Brien 1981:26). What. they would not accept is his
notion that this is because "female morality is essentially
biological" and not directed at society at large. Quite
the opposite is argued by Matailobau men and women: this
will be illustrated in the chapter on the bisaba.

Men and women hold this general view of femaleness and

the value of the senior manfls lecture to the girl at the

42
cohabitation ritual. This is not to say, as will be pre-
sented later, that contradictory attributes are not also
applied to the sexes. But in Matailobau thinking, men are
to be respected because they are male: women are not worthy
of such respect. Marriage or cohabitation, however, modi-
fies the girl into a woman because it affects her behavior

and being. It also makes a youth (carauvou) a man

 

(turaga), but this can also occur as a result of'aging. .A
single man, after his middle years, can be given the appel-
lation 532 by virtue of his seniorityu An elderly single
man can participate in rituals as well as married men do:
not so for an unmarried female. This indicates that adult
social status is not given to single, physically mature
females: marriage or cohabitation makes girls into adult
women, and this is most evident in rituals. For example,
during a funeral it is only adults who sit in the
deceased's house to mourn. Before her cohabitation or
marriage, a girl cannot stay with the mourners in this
house. An elderly unmarried male may, however, give a
speech at a funeral. At domestic rituals, iJL, the
bisaba, matrons speak, and if they attend at all, girls sit
silently in the places occupied by those with the least
social prestigeu Fuller participation in community life
for a girl begins when she enters a marriage or cohabita-
tion relationship.

The distinctions between male and female natures and

how these are associated with differences wrought upon the

43
sexes by cohabitation or marriage are also linked to their

respective roles in mataqali. There are differences in the

 

articulations of the couple's conjugal roles with their

most important mataqali statuses of sister and brother.

 

The values assigned to the roles of brother and husband are
commensurate in value. Not so for the roles of sister and

wife: the former is the much honored mataqali sibling and

 

cherished vessel of mataqali blood, and the latter is the

 

subordinate spouse whose sexuality, which is required for
her affinal group's propagation, is partially responsible
for devaluing her. Therefore, cohabitation/marriage pro-
duces two discontinuous roles for women. This disparity
does not obtain for the roles of brother and husband.
Shore (1981) finds this to be the same in Samoa, where
sexuality is part of the definition of female roles but not
a qualifier for masculine roles: “Concern over sexual
control and the proper allocation of reproductive potential
is focused on the female and not the male" (Shore
1981:201). Because a girl's conjugal role is defined by
her sexuality, and because the supervision of females'
sexual behavior is so important to Fijians, a girl is
guided toward proper conduct by the elder at the cohabita-
tion ritual.

Why is it that sexuality is a definitional element in
all female roleszbut is not expressed for that of sister?
frhe sister's sexuality is not alluded to because of the

tzabu that cross-sex siblings may not refer to concupis-

44
cence. For a man, a sister is a person in whose presence
not even a verbal or kinetic reference to sexuality can be
made. To behave otherwise would make the siblings guilty
of 25; (a transgression against custom), and a fine can be
levied on the sibling initiating such behavior. From ado-
lescence onward, cross-sex siblings are reserved in each
others' presence: they should not discuss sexual matters or
behave in a licentious manner when together, and formal
avoidance may occur when they marry. This behavioral
complex, I suggest, is associated with the fact that a
brother is the guardian of his sister's sexuality. Their
mataqali has a proprietary interest in the girl's sexuali-

ty. The brother, as the mataqali representative, functions

 

as his sister‘s Argus. To indicate the seriousness of the
consequences of her sexual behavior, the brother must not
condone any licentiousness on her part. Hence the tabu.
It is because of this relatinship that, in the following
description of a cohabitation ritual, a brother hit his
sister when she defended the girl whose premarital affair
preceded the ritual, because he did not want his sister to
accept such behavior or to imitate it.

The entire mataqali is concerned about the girl's
sexual conduct. The brother's interest is more evident
because of the relative closeness of their ages, and
because he is expected to keep watch over his sister. His
junior status in the mataqali allows him to engage in her

management and to use sanctions that his more dignified

45

father would not. For instance, in the example to be
described here, the sister hit her brother back when he
disciplined her for siding with the eloping girl: this
indicates their relative closeness in age. The girl's
father did not intervene in the siblings' altercation. In
like manner the girl's father did not try to retrieve the
girl from the youth's house. He sent his wife to do so.
It is more acceptable for the mother, as a woman, to seek
her daughter's return. Women are not as dignified as men:
thus, the mother has less prestige to lose when she risks
the humiliation of publicly going for her daughter.
Notions of feminine nature also influence why someone would
try to call the girl back. Girls are not expected to
behave in a socially approved manner of their own volition.
Their liquid souls flow over the boundaries of convention:
therefore, they must be brought back within these boundar-
ies. In another sense, girls are not responsible for their
actions: they must be controlled. For all these reasons,
brothers should supervise their sisters.

A brother and other mataqali members do not lose

 

interest in the sister‘s behavior after she marries. Tra-
ditionally, for instance, married women felt compelled to
perform their domestic chores well, fearing their own kinks
admonishments that the family's reputation would be tar-
nished by its members' poor household habits and the sting
of their village neighbors' gossip (Griffen 1975). These

considerations obtain to a degree today as well. And while

he

be

th-

ct

a:

46
her mataqali cannot address their concerns about her sexual
behavior to a woman at the inception of her cohabitation,

the elder‘s guidance should remind her of her mataqali

 

obligations, the sacred trust that she carries for them,
and her new responsibilities to her affines.

‘Women are in one sense pivotal in affinal relations.
When they "move about” after marriage, they take their
siblings' blood elsewhere and "open paths" to other
”houses” and groups. Women are valued for their ability to
create these new connections. Matailobau conceptions of
all of this appear to be similar to those of Moalans in the
Lau Islands of Fiji, who

describe the mother's brother, the father's
sister, the offspring of these, and the sister's
child [as] "sacred blood" (dra tabu). A man's
sister gives his "blood" (dra), Tip "descent"
(kawa), to her children. A man's father's sister
carries his ”blood" also, and gives it to her
children. A man again carries the ”blood" of his
mother‘s brother, carries the "descent" (kawa) of
that man through his own mother. "My EIEfer's
son,” said Taka of Keteira, “is very 'serious'
[dredre]. It is my blood: my sister went to give
rise to that man. Brothers are only brothers
[veitacini sa veitacini g_], but the sister's
child is a new path [of relationship]. Your
daughter or your sister makes a new line [kawa].
Brothers are only in the house: they have been
there from the past to today. But the line of my
sister is a new line” (Sahlins 1962:168).

 

Building these networks is not accomplished, however,
without some sense of peril to the blood that is taken from
the group in the forms of the sister and her children and
to their well-being. An elopement is the "theft" of a

sacred commodity, the sister and, in her, her mataqali

 

47

blood. Disregarding momentarily the mataqali's prOprietary

 

rights to her and their sense of authority over her, I want
to focus on the meanings concatenated to the girl. She
symbolizes a corporate essence, blood, and the ability to
transmit it. Stealing her is not only an insult to her kin
but a kind of sacrilege affecting their being. She repre-
sents not only what the group is but what it can be by
regenerating itself through her in other units. The power

of transmission of self is found in the mataqali sister.

 

Not to control this sister and where and how this essence
is transmitted can result in outrage for the group.

I have referred in the last several pages to three
topics that are given expression in various women's roles
in the cohabitation ritual, ime., the discontinuity between
sister and wife roles, how the distinctions between these
roles facilitate women's interstitial position or dual
mataqali affiliation, and the fact that sisters transmit
mataqali substance. Each of these aspects of womenls lives

points to the importance of mataqali membership, a fact

 

that will be reiterated in diverse ways throughout this
work. For now, I want to concentrate on the associations
women have with kin groups as I discuss these topics and
women's ritual roles.

In the cohabitation ritual to be described, some women
affiliate with the girl's relatives at one point while
their husbands align themselves with the youthfls. Although

this situation is peculiar to the circumstances surrounding

48
this couple, there are structural principles and cultural

meanings that underlie it -- women's dual mataqali affilia-

 

tion, their malleable natures, and the equivalence of
groups defined as siblings. This ritual also illustrates a
common feature of womends ritual roles: they transmit

persons and substance between mataqali. Women's flexible

 

group affiliation and their transmitter roles are linked to
the cultural definitions of them as malleable, weak, form-
less beings: thus, women can act as transmitters partially
because of their intermediary "pathlike" social positions
and flexible natures. lkaother words, women described as
paths may move people and corporate property between

mataqali because, like paths or boundaries, they exist

 

between these groups and can be used as conveyances. Both
of these types of functions and roles emerge from particu-
lar female statuses, those of wife, sister, and mother. I
will describe how these statuses are involved in transfers
in the cohabitation ritual and then talk about how women

align themselves with one mataqali while their husbands

 

stand with another.

There are four kinds of transfers in this ritual that
women generate as wives, sisters, and mothers. One trans-
fer involves the girl/woman who, as the new wife, moves
into her spouse's home and is expected to behave as a

member of his mataqali. The girl's movement entails her

 

taking the potential of her mataqalifis sacred blood to her

 

affines, and in so doing, her significance as sister

49
emerges. A second transfer occurs if the girl's relatives
come to the cohabitation ritual to allow'her to marry the
youth: the transferral of their rights in the girl is
accompanied by her mother's laying down of the marital mats
(tevutevu). The mother is assisted in this act by the
youth's mother. The girl's mother makes the transfer as
wife of the girl's mataqali, but, I suggest, also as sister
of the group who receives the girl as wife and potential
mother, for the girl is terminologically/ideally marrying
her mother's brother's son. Likewise, the youth's mother's
participation is based on her duties as wife to the
mataqali receiving the woman, but she is given not only her
new daughter-in-law but her brother's chiLd, whom she
should supervise as mother-in—law and care for as member of
her natal mataqali. Thus, the mothers act on behalf of
their natal kin as sisters even when they perform their
ritual labors ostensibly for their affines. Sisterhood is
also expressed in another act of transference, this one by
the woman's sisters, who take her for her bath on the
ritual's fourth day and then return her to her new mate's
people. In all these instances, sisters can confer impor-
tant mataqali possessions on others, either through their
own sexuality or by transmitting other persons'. One may
view this as performing services for their male agnates, a
thing women should do for men. But again, it is connected,
I maintain, to women's ability and intrinsic power to open

"new paths“ and to function as such themselves. Sisterhood

50
is the more enduring status for a woman, and as the
coupleds mothers' actions indicate, even when a woman does
something on behalf of her affines there is always the
possibility that she is aiding her consanguines.

Women in their roles as sisters and wives do have
things in common. When women fill interstitial places and
when they transfer persons and substance at this ritual,
they do them to continue social life: this, in part, is why
they are called givers pf ligg. Women nurture others, give
food, and keep a watchful eye on others' needs in order to
obtain community aid for them. The ritual roles previously
enumerated articulate with other women's ritual contribu-
tions, iJL, the presentation of food, clothing, or mats.
These gifts indicate, along with women's functions as
transmitters of people and substance, that their generic
social role may be care-giver or sustainer of life, for
each of these services yields utilitarian or essential
items for existence. Indeed, the youth's sisters' prepara-
tion of the fourth day‘s meals and bestowing of clothing
upon the girl is another example of womenfls sustaining and
nurturing role. The care given their brother‘s spouse is a
means of ensuring the union and thus the chances for pro-
creating new members of their mataqali. Care—giving is a
significant action and value in Fijian life, and because of
this the cohabitation ritual has special meaning: it
creates a woman, whose worth and function is tied to bene-

ficence.

51

As I said before, Fijians do not automatically assign
the term yalewa (woman) or marama (lady) to a physically
mature female: they reserve these appellations for those
who are or have been members of a conjugal pair. The
Matailobau term for woman connotesaahigh female status,
the privileges of which include receiving a special greet-
ing upon entering another's house and being entitled to
return the salutationu Certain respected community obliga-
tions fall to matrons: for instance, they bring and serve
village guests food. I once prepared food for a tea given
to visiting delegates to a church meeting. The woman in
whose home the tea was held asked me to assist her because
"only a girl" was available to help her in the kitchen and

a matron was required to serve the male guests properly.

 

This example indicates that visitors are honored if they
are the objects of matrons' ministrations, because relative
to girls, women are prestigious. Their prestige is also
exhibited by the fact that they can give speeches at
rituals and at public events, e.g., when they all partici-
pate in making a mat for a particular occasion. Membership
in the soqosoqo vakamarama (village women's society) is
limited to matrons. This society can initiate community
projects and exert influence in deciding village activi-
ties. Because of its ability to mobilize people and affect

decisions on village matters, the society and its members

are respected.

52

It is not merely women's marital status that deter-
mines the relative high regard in which they are held, but
also the value attached to their role-specific tasks.
Women are pip; (heavy, significant) because they are
settled into and responsible for households, and because
they give services and resources to the community. What
they do as matrons is considered important, and so too are
they. These activities can be performed only by women:
girls are prevented from doing them. Girls' jobs devalue
them: they move between their parental and various rela-
tives' households, rendering domestic and horticultural
services because they are persons of low status. The
girls' mobility and purported undependability contributes
to>the.low esteem in which they are held. Females, then,
gain prestige when they engage in matronly work, but are
precluded from doing this until they are defined as women.

A woman is socially valued because she is a wife.
Ironically, her affines respect her because of what she can

bring to them via her status as sister in another mataqali:

 

a woman may extend usufructory rights in her mataqali land
to her husband and her husband's relatives. Women can
provide this benefit to their affines because they are
identified with them yet expected to remain loyal to their
natal kin. Because they are intermediary in mataqali iden-
tification, they can be emissaries and also, by'virtue of
their qualities that elicit othersf.affections, bond the

two units. Women can be valued for their parts in mataqali

 

53

alliance, but this same function and position may pose
difficulties for them (e.g., they must abide by the mourn-
ing restrictions imposed on their natal and conjugal rela-
tives). While having responsibilities to two units may, as
in mourning, be hardships for women, there are compensa-
tions. Women's consanguines will protect them against
their affines' poor treatment or serve as a refuge when
women want to leave their husbands. The permanence and
value of sisterhood is shown when a woman's spouse (some-
times with his agnates) must approach her agnates with a
whale's tooth -- the Fijian valuable par excellence -- to
ask their permission to return her to his home.

In the past, improper treatment of women was harshly
responded to by her kin. As Brewster (1922) reports, a man
was stomped by his affines because their sister had been
impregnated by him during the postpartum tabu period. A

sister's children reward their mother's mataqali's concern

 

about her and them. Today, villagers say that their first
paycheck or parts thereof should be given to their mother‘s
brother. And the mother‘s brother is given the best repay-
ment of all —- his sistesz'daughter'as his son's wife, a
point we will soon discuss.

Although I have been stressing that women seem to link

and create reciprocal benefits for mataqali, the couple is,

 

in some sense, the center of their relatives' attentions

because the partners affect mataqali relationships. Each

 

54
group has an investment in the continuance of a union that
provides them with various benefits.

Even though marital partners may be sometimes viewed
as alike, cohabitation/marriage affects them differently.
Women change group identification, their husbands do not:
women change residences by custom, their husbands by choice
or need: and it may be assumed that women's traits make
them, relatively speaking, socially immature and more
likely to disrupt affinal ties. For this latter reason,
the girl is lectured on proper wifely behavior at the
cohabitation ritual. It might be that the homily is also
deemed necessary because this is a girl who has eloped and
for that reason has shown a special lack of social decorum
and thus a need for such instruction.

The girl who requires assistance in becoming a good

wife is, as I noted before, the mataqali sister who is

 

carefully watched because she is the vessel of their sacred
blood. Throughout this section I have been referring to
the significance of the girl's and other women's mataqali
affiliation and their greater worth as sisters than as

wives. I now want to discuss other aspects of mataqali

 

membership, particularly cross-sex siblingship, and how
these are expressed in this ritual.

Matailobau view the couple as their respective
mataqali's Wproperty.” The girl's people hold rights in her
that they transfer to the youth's group upon her marriage.

The youth's kin are the taukei pi tagane (owners of the

55
male): their proprietary hold on him is shown by their
determining the ritual's format, one of their senior men
speaking for the unit, their choosing his attendant, and
senior members presenting gifts and redistributing those
received. This orientation does not reflect the usual
anthrOpological focus on the woman and her children as the
corporate property involved in a cohabitation or marriage
and the transfer of rights in them as a hallmark of the
institution. The exchange of gender-specific prestations
may represent the couple and signify that the youth and

girl are their respective mataqalifls gift. I suggest this

 

view of the couple because the masculine gift, the whale's
tooth, is given by the youth's group in exchange for the
mats, the feminine valuable, presented by the girl's
mataqali. Equating the girl and youth as their group's
possessions modifies the anthropological discussion about
whether women are connubial prOperty (Levi-Strauss 1969:
van Baal 1975: Weiner 1976). When the youth is viewed as

his mataqali's ”property," then we must consider him

 

possibly to be used in mataqali alliance formation in the

 

same way that women are employed. The youth appears to be
”given" in the cohabitation ritual in the same way by his
group as is the girl by hers. For if the group does not
approve of his choice and sponsor the ritual, the youth
cannot reside with the girl in the village as a proper

couple with accepted affinal connections.

56

Although I have been stressing the mataqali as the

 

significant actors in a cohabitation ritual, their hold on
their members should not be viewed as coercive because it
is matched by the individual's corporate group identifica—
tion and loyalty. These sentiments are perhaps best illus-
trated by those Fijians who marry in civil ceremonies away
from home but who return for village rituals. Not only are
these persons responding to the dictates of ancient Fijian
custom -- a mighty incentive —- and reacting to the possi-
bility of not having their unions fully accepted by their

mataqali, they are also reflecting those deep concerns

 

about corporate identity that necessitate the sharing and
approval of their new alliances. It is for these reasons

that exchanges between mataqali, which I will now outline,

 

are important aspects of this ritual.
The specific act of giving a whale's tooth to the

girl's kin, called the bulubulu (the burying), accomplishes

 

two things. First, it expresses the youth's apologies to
the girl's mataqali for having “stolen“ her instead of ap—
proaching them and seeking her hand in marriage (this is
the Fijian idiouU. Second, the acceptance of the whale's
tooth and other valuables by the girl's mataqali and their
counter-prestation transfers their rights in her and in her

children to the youth's mataqali. The apology and its

 

acceptance can occur soon after the elopement or years
later. If she is married, the woman's children are patri-

lineally affiliated. Before a woman's children can be

57
included in her mate's mataqali, she and he must be consid-
ered married. Until her family yields their rights in her
and her progeny, a woman has "a strong hold on the
children." Before the transfer of rights in the children
and her occurs, the woman can include her children in her
mataqali's roster. The genitor would have a difficult task

in trying to place the youngsters on his mataqali's list.

 

Mataqali membership is a legal status that involves regis-
tering a personfls name in a kin group and having a claim to
mataqali-held land.

When rights in a women and her children have been

relinquished, compensation must be made to her mataqali for

 

fear that they may use supernatural sanctions against her
conjugal kin -— Matailobau people maintain some notion that
a woman's fertility is under the influence of her natal
kin, particularly her brother. The mother's brother is
feared (3252) because of his power to harm his sister's
children or to prevent their conception. And that is one
reason why at the cohabitation ritual -- or sometime after-
wards -- the youth apologizes for having eloped with the
girl.

The mother's brother‘s influence on his sister and her
children continues through time because the ideal marriage
occurs between the children of a brother and sister. The
kinship terminology equates the mother's brother with the
father-in-law and the father's sister with the mother-in-

laww and after two generations of marriages between such

58

ideal spouses the mother's brother is married to the
father's sister. This pattern includes two advantages
emanating from the cross-sex sibling relationship. First,
a man has influence over the fecundity of the girl who
should marry his son, and thus possesses a means to protect

his and his sister's mataqali's continuityu This feature

 

is, I suggest, tempered by the man's sister's ability to
secure love and care for herself and her children because
of her relationship with her brother and also her feminine
qualities. Villagers said that there is something about
women that evokes others' pity, love, and care (love, gift,
and pity have the same root, i252). ‘The sister may also
use her brother's feelings for and obligations to her to
benefit her son when she approaches her sibling to request
his daughter in marriage for her child.

The siblingship of a couplets parents is particularly
important for womenfs wedding roles because what the
mothers' actions show, I maintain, is the tenacity of their
natal mataqali affiliations and their bonds with their
brothers. Women are in a particularly useful position in
terms of assisting their brother‘s sonfis marriages to their
daughters. Both men and women said that the girl's mother
permits her to marry, even though it is the girl's father
who receives the youthfls request to wed her (that is, when
a betrothal is sought, and in cases of elopement when
apologies are proferred). Why and how this seeming incon-

gruity comes to be is explained by villagers in this way: a

59
mother is the girl's manager: she teaches her skills, has
her as a helpmate, and is her guardian. When the request
to marry the girl comes, it is the mother who relinquishes
her managerial control to the youth's mother, who will be
the girl's new household supervisor. Jural rights may be

transferred by the men of the girl's mataqali, but this is

 

signaled by the girl's mother's presentation of mats that
make up the nuptial couch.

Interestingly, the action that completes the transfer
of rights in the girl is performed by the couple’s mothers,
for in the elaborate form of marriage they make up the
marriage bed on the first day of the ritual -- on behalf of
mataqali with whom they have no permanent connections (that

is, if viewed in terms of their conjugal mataqali ties).

 

But if we look at the girl's mother's task, particularly,
we can see how the mothers act for their consanguines. I
propose this because the daughter takes her mother‘s place

ixlthe lattesz mataqali.or is the person who can replace

 

her. Thus, it is the mother‘s right to release her control
over her child and make her the bride of her brothesz son.
Looked at in another way, the mother‘s group should have
the first opportunity to bring back a woman to replace the
one they lost when the mother married.

The importance of the cross-sex sibling tie is also
evident in the relationship between the daughter- and
mother-in-law. According to the logic of the kinship

system, the daughter/bride shares mataqali membership with

60
her father”s sister/mother‘s brother‘s wife, her mother-in-
law. Because of this, the women are supposed to care for

one another as mataqali sisters. Women connected in this

 

fashion can be expected to live amicably and, I suggest, to
ease the difficulties built into their relationship. Their
reciprocal support and the strength of their kin affilia-
tion may actually be founded on the older womanfls bond with
her brother, the girl's father. I say this because the
kinship system is based on the notion that marriages occur
between two kin groups: sisters go to the same place as
wives. Brothers take back their sisters' daughters.
Sisters hand their daughters to their brothers and act as
guardians of their brothers' daughters, their daughters-in-
law.

Two other aspects of the cross-sex sibling relation-
ship should be noted here. The demarcation of authority
between the brother and sister and their roles as mother%:
brother and father's sister are preparatory for and con-
tinwe into their affinal roles. Villagers said that
neither in her role as father‘s sister nor as mother-in-law
is this woman viewed with the awe that is reserved for her
brother, as both mother's brother and father-in-law.
Depending upon their respecting gender, the children of.a
woman perceive their mother"s brother a bit differently:
this disparity in sister's children's reactions is useful
-- the child who is less afraid of the uncle must go to

live with him and the one who is more so must ask his

61
permission to marry his daughter. And thus it is claimed
that the niece is less fearful of the uncle than is her
brother. Women said that their relationship with their
mother's brothers as fathers-in-law is more reserved than
it was with them as uncles before the women were married.

I have been describing the reserve and authority
structure surrounding the cross-sex sibling relationship.
Let me turn now to the relationship between these siblings'
children, who are potential spouses. Cross—sex cousins'
interactions are nearly mirror opposites of those between
their sibling parents. First, cross-cousins are terminolo-
gically separated from siblings: siblings are equated with
both matrilateral and patrilateral parallel cousins.
Teasing and ribald behavior are permitted -- indeed,
expected -- between cross-cousins, tavale. In contrast, as
indicated before, the reserve between cross-sex siblings
graduates into formal avoidance when the siblings marry and
become parents: then they use their children to transmit
messages between them, and the brother does not face his
sisters while eating.

At cohabitation rituals, the differences between the
behaviors of cross-cousins and cross-sex siblings is clear.
The youth's cross-cousins, i.e., the girl's sisters,
anoint, give new clothes to, and garland the couple, and
tease the guests, covering them with powder and smearing
them with oil: their behavior is aimed at producing a

convivial atmosphere. The youth's sisters, by comparison,

62
are very reserved participants. They do not dance or
behave in a bawdy manner in the house where the ritual is
celebrated and where their brother”s conjugal role is be-
ginning and sexual aspects of it -- that is, the nuptial
bed -- are evident. While the party is fishing and bathing
on the last day of the cohabitation ritual, the youth's
sisters remain in the village in order to prepare the feast
and to collect dry clothes for the girl, who left her home
without her wardrobe. The youth's.sisters must act with

him and on behalf of their mataqali to honor their obliga-

 

tion to the girl. The division between the cousins and
siblings is also shown by the contributions that each makes
to the fourth day‘s midday meal. The youthfls sisters
provide cooked food ”from the land" -- tubers, a fowl, or a
cow. The girl's sisters, the cousins, contribute the fish
that they have caught. One side gives something from
mataqali-claimed gardens, while the other harvests what it
can from outside its own milieu.

The divisions between the youth's and girl's kin's
presentations to the ritual and the disparity between the
roles of sister and wife are manifestations of a prominent
element of Fijian social structure and cognitive organiza—
tion, viz., the construction of sides (yasana). The
siblingship that promotes the sense of ”we" and ”they” is
associated with the predisposition toward lineage connubium
and the social and cultural emphasis on exchange. The

principal's groups' involvement in this ritual is emically

63

viewed as significant. First, there must be sides to
accomplish the ritual tasks that create the celebration and
establish the couple. There is also the need to emphasize
the siblingship within these categories. During the
ritual, mataqali ideals are expressed by working and eating
together and by amassing and then distributing gifts as a
group. For some parts of the ritual, the actual kin of the
couple need not attend or perform their functions: their
structural equivalents can do so. Actually, groups that
are equated are expected to assist each other, and it is
only a modification of this principle that allows them to
represent the couple's units.

Equivalence between mataqali is made on the model of
siblingship. Siblingship is based on common descent and
propinquity resulting from origins in the same 131!
("housesite"L. The political aspect of the sibling rela—
tionship has two modes:the cross-sex sibling set, in which
“a brother'is his sister‘s leader” (liuliu),.and also the'
same-sex sibling relationship, in which the elder can
command the respect and obedience of the junior sibling.

When viewed as siblings, then, mataqali are somehow alike

 

and yet somewhat different, as are siblings per se. Thus,
kinds of siblingship between mataqali are created by virtue
of the fact that they belong to the same phratry: they
occupy adjacent territories: they are descendants of two

sisters: they are sisters' children to the same group: they

64
perform the same function, 64%, are heralds: or they act
as a co-residential unit.

Mataqali that are separated into "sides" or exchange
partners are bound by the women who share in their respec-
tive identities. These women can substitute for their male
counterparts in their affinal and natal units: this is
illustrated twice in this ritual. Women's identification
with two groups is made more useful by their ability to
bridge them: it is because of this function that they are

referred to as "paths” (sala/gaunisala). Their linking

 

capabilities are founded on their status as sisters. I

suggest that the Matailobau term for sister (salavolo)

 

linguistically points to their social usages and cultural
meanings because g_a_i_a_ means pgt_h and 322 is £2 32 aside.
Villagers tended not to want to divide the word and ferret
out meanings from its constituent parts, as I have done

here. But I believe that salavolo's‘elements fit neatly

 

with women's role in network building and, for instance,
Sahlinsfls quote and my informants' statements about them.
The bridging of groups that women facilitate entails
reciprocal privileges and obligations. For example, the
wife’s brother and her husband should be especially helpful
to each other. House-building parties and garden-
preparation activities, for instance, are often headed by
the householder's wife's brothers. I recall also, as an

illustration of sister's husband's help, a man working with

65
his wife's brother for two entire days to build the
latter's kitchen.

When a couple has a child, reciprocal respect, obliga-
tions, and privileges mark the relations of the sister's
child and her brother. For instance, one day I saw an
adolescent enter his uncleds house, walk past his aunt, and
reach into the food chest in order to take out some food.
His aunt made some mild protest that she needed the food.
This same behavior on the part of the child in his own
house could result in him being slapped and called a thief.
But, as women bragged to me, in their maternal kinfls houses
children could do things that would not be tolerated in
their own agnatic relatives' homes.

The inter-married mataqali are said to be part of
these avuncular relations because the genealogical connec-
tion between members of groups are extended to the corpo—
rate bodies of which they are members. Even without the
benefit of structural relationships and expectations of
aid, villagers indicated that women could bind groups and
persons. Affective bonds through women tie their offspring
to their natal kin, and vice versa. The mother is nurturant
and the children identify with and love her kin, who are

equated with their mother's tenderness. The mataqali loves

 

its sister's children because the mother was her brother's
protected sibling and her sister's loving companion. There
is, as I said before, something intrinsic to females and

femaleness that evokes others' pity and, thus, love.

66

Therefore, people involved with a woman as mother and
sister are, by their sentiments for her,‘attached to each
other. For example, at least seven people’s participations
in the cohabitation ritual to be discussed here are attrib-
utable to their matrilateral ties to the couple.

Women's incorporative abilities may be symbolized in
the fishing nets used on the ritual's fourth day. Just as

fish, which are the patrilineal mataqali's totems, are

 

caught in the women's nets, so too are mataqali enmeshed

 

through the women who move between groups and whose blood
mingles them. That women have this function may also be
shown by the name of the chief's speech on this day, the
net/law (pp i332). The chief's admonitions are directed at
the girl in order to instruct her in how to behave as a
respectable, industrious, responsible matron. Implied in
this focus, I maintain, is the notion that she will play a
stronger, more far-flung role -- she, like the net, is made
of separate bits of "twine" and will be used to collect
"fish." An astute informant said that the fishing net and
the speech's title have the same meaning.l I suggest
further that both refer to the fact that the couple is now
caught in the communal expectations for mates and that the
net symbolizes this.

As in the English idiom, the couple might be said to
be enmeshed in the net of the law regarding domestic life.
This same type of idiom is employed by the people of this

area, as Brewster, an early colonial administrator, has

67
shown in retelling the case of a man who committed adultery
with an unmarried woman. The man wanted to leave his wife
because her tribal totemic animal was the snake. His
children followed their father's dietary habits and, like

other members of their mataqali, ate snakes. The children

 

were said to

partake of their mother‘s nature, and when they

[ate] of the same food as [the father] or that

which [had been] cooked in the same pots in which

snakes [had been] boiled, they [suffered] from
swollen faces, necks, and glands (Brewster

1922:109).

This man tried to commit suicide with his sweetheart: she
succeeded, but he merely injured himself from a leap off a
mountain. He was still held to his wife and bemoaned his
fate: ”I [was] determined to take up with another woman who
had not a like disability, but lo! I am enmeshed in the net
of the law” (Brewster 1922:109).

Starting with the events that led to the elopement
being examined here, I will now describe how this net is
cast in order to illustrate the various structural rela-
tionships and qualities of women expressed in a cohabita-
tion ritual. A girl, her parents, and siblings had been
visiting in Namatai for two months. They had been staying
ina household that was considered to be their "door" into
the village, iJL, each formally entered the other's

village through their respective ”houses" or "doors.” ‘This

Namatai household belongs to Navulavula mataqali, a

 

commoner group who acts as the messenger for the girl's

chiefly mataqali.

 

68

For several weeks during the family's stay in Namatai,
a number of village youths had been sleeping in the house
next door to their hosts' house. It is a common occurrence
for male adolescents and older unmarried men to sleep ina
kind of village "club house" (page), i.e., a house (or its
kitchen) that is headed perhaps by a young man and his
widowed mother. The house where these young men slept
belonged to a newly married chief who still behaved like a
single man, entertaining and housing his younger, unmarried
fellows. In retrospect, I realized that this chief's house
was the site of a couple of weeks' worth of nightly sere-
nading and boyish pranks, the purpose of which was to
attract the attention of the girl visiting next door. The
result of these activities was the elopement of this
chiefly girl and a commoner youth, who was the lead singer
and guitarist of the nightly recitals.

Various matrilateral kinship ties existed between the
girl, the youth, and the young chief that facilitated these
young people's behaviors. The chief, unfettered by the
reserve accompanying the relationships of agnates, was
bound tohelp the young man, who belonged to the chief's

grandmother‘s mataqali. The couple were cross-cousins and

 

potential spouses and were thus expected to flirt with each
other. The one relationship that was not honored was that
between the youth and the girl's father, his classificatory

mother‘s brother whose person and position the youth should

69
have respected and thus whose permission should have been
sought for the girl's hand in marriage.

The elopement occurred during a celebration for a
youth who had returned to his village after overseas em-
ployment. A dinner and dance were given for this young
man, and most of Namatai's residents attended it. Ikhuge
and varied menu was provided: beer and yaqona were plenti-
ful. The occasion was marked by exuberance, tempers were
oiled by the amiable commotion, crowding, and beer. At
night the sated guests began to dance. Emotions were high,
and as the conviviality and banter increased among the
youth, an argument began: the girl's brother had heard
some playful remarks about his younger sisterfls relation-
ship with the youth. This is a transgression against
proper cross-sibling behavior and causes "shame" and anger.
Thus, the brother, infuriated by even a hint of imprOpriety
on his sister‘s part, hit her in the face. Her friend, the
girl in whose house she and her family were visiting,
defended her. The altercation that then ensued involved
several people. It was at this time that the couple left
for the youth's house.

Particularly among the older people at the party, a
discussion ensued about elopement, morals, and cross-sex
sibling behavior. This episode had contradicted proper
sibling conduct and insulted the girl's family; The dis-
cussion helped to correct the young peoplefls refutations of

collective values and thus to reestablish them.

70

While this was going on, the girl's friend and her
brother'begantto argue about the elopement. The brother,
incensed that his sister should aid the girl and anxious
that she not become involved with a youth in the same way,
punched his sister in the mouth, splitting her lip. His
sister returned his blow. This brother, like the eloping
girl's brother, was left to discipline his sister, while
his more prestigious father remained on the sideline.

The next day the youthfls sister-in-law awoke at day to
begin the elaborate Sunday breakfast. She found the young
couple dozing in the midst of the children, who sleep in
the center of the house. Shortly after this, the household
stirred to the entrance of the girl's mother. This woman
came on behalf of her husband, and in doing so she helped
him to retain his dignity, something that men should
possess. She demonstrated by her actions how women provide
services for men. Her presence also showed that girls need
to be controlled because they cannot be expected to have
internalized mores well. Spurred on by her humiliation of
the previous night's events, and no doubt by her husband's
goading, the mother demanded that the girl leave with her.
The girl replied that she was going to remain with the
youth. The angry mother slapped the girl and then left.
The girl began to cry.

This interaction between mother and daughter points to
another general feature of the differences in treatment of

boys and girls by their parents. Mothers appear to hit

71

their grown daughters more frequently than fathers do their
sons, thus expressing the qualitative differences attrib-
uted to the sexes, their relative worth and dignity, and
the expectations of their respective moral development.

With the girl's statement of intent to remain with the
youth, his household had to proceed this day with the
cohabitation ritual that would allow them to live in the

village as a couple.

EEEEE.EEX.2£.EE£ Ritual

Cohabitation rituals, like weddings, are celebrated
for four days. To accommodate the needs of those hosting
the ritual, the days may be collapsed, e.g., if food is in
short supply, the third day may be considered as the last
and fourth day. For this cohabitation ritual, the first
day happened to fall on a Sunday, when villagers honor the
Sabbath by refraining from boisterousness, work, or
burials. It also occurred after a scandalous elopement and
began with a bitter exchange between the girl and her
mother. All these factors contributed to the lack of
community participation and enthusiasm for it. But after
lunch some men and a few women came to the youth's house.

This building, like all other village residences, was
organized and utilized on this day to reflect the rank,
age, and relationships of those within or entering it.
Houses are rectangular and have at least three doorways.

The largest doorway,which is approached by stairs cut into

72

a log, is used by visiting women and children. Men, espe-
cially those of high rank, may use the side door to enter a
house. When a group enters the house, they use the main
doorway. The house‘s interior is conceptually divided into
an "upper," reserved area and a "lower" one. The house-
holder and his wife's sleeping area is at the upper end and
is cordoned off by drapes. .Some houses have a drape that
is pulled across this entire section. Even in houses where
there is no actual means for demarcating it, people recog-
nize a boundary between this section and the lower space
where visitors should remain. In some persons' houses,
visitors feel an obligation to stay in the lower area,
e.g., in their mother's brother's houses. One old man told
me quite emphatically that he would not think of sitting in
the upper end of his uncle”s house because of his respect
for him.

On this first day of the ritual the allocation of space
in this house marked the couple, the ritual's focus on
them, and the changes in their statuses. First, the couple
occupied the householder“s sleeping area. Second, when the
youth joined the men in the main part of the house, he sat
amidst elder, chiefly men, far from his usual place appro-
priate to his age and rank. People sit at public events in
order of their ranks and their ages. Highest ranked and
senior-most men occupy the positions closest to the upper,
most prestigious end of the house. The lower-ranked,

younger men sit closer to the large door through which

73

women, children, and young people enter, especially those
who are not household members. Women occupy the floor
space closest to the large door at the house's lower end.
On this day, the only exception to these patterns was the
position of the youth who was being honored for the start
of his conjugal life and full-adult status. Likewise, the
girl was placed in the householdfls conjugal bed and treated
like a woman.

The ritual began, as do all Fijian ceremonies and all
significant social gatherings, with the drinking of yaqona
(known as 5313 in other Oceanic societies). Yaqona drink-
ing is itself a ritual: yagona is always formally presented
by someone and accepted by the recipient. On this day the
tanoa, the serving bowl made from the greenheart of India
tree and shaped like a turtle, was full. No one would
begin the ritual until the village paramount entered the
house. When he walked into the house, he used the door at
the higher end of the house, adjacent to the sleeping area
shielding the girl.

Household members provided the fresh yagona root for
the initial serving. Young chiefs helped the youth's
mataqali brothers grind the root. Commoner youths poured
the drink from the bowl into serving cups, and the young
chiefs passed them to the company. This ritual assistance

is part of the veiqalaki obligations operant between liege

 

and vassal. Each participant helps the other in this

74
political-ritual relationship: to that end, the older
chiefly men brought packets of powdered yagona.

The mood in the house indicated a distinctive communal
reserve, a quiet cheeriness instead of jubilation. Three
factors contributed to subduing this gathering. As I noted
earlier, raucousness is forbidden on the Sabbath, and the
previous evening's ruckus tainted today‘s celebration.
Third, no appreciable number of women were in attendance.
Men are reserved at public events. Levity is generated by
women, who will generally talk louder, tease more, and
start dancing or singing more often then men. Women take
the initiative to create a merry atmosphere. They ask men

to dance the taralala, a European—derived couple dance.

 

This is all in keeping with the dignified behavior expected
of men, and the anticipation that women are not so reserved
and do not mind being "sillyJ'

Throughout the afternoon, men came to the house and
slowly filled it. The men who attended were either from

the youthfis group or from the chiefly mataqali to whom his

 

mataqali are vassals. No man came from the mataqali that
the girl's family stays with in Namatai. Until midnight,
men visited the house. The couple stayed within the bed
curtains. Early in the evening the household's‘women and
children ate and then went to sleep in the kitchen build-
ing. It is typical for children and women, especially when
they are few in number compared to the men, to leave the

ritual area.

75
Women would not attend the ritual until they came with

their conjugal mataqali to present their gifts: they would

 

not do so on the Sabbath. A few women came into the house:
however, they were the youth's mother, sisters-in-law,
nieces, and sisters. I attended this afternoon because the
youth's sister-in-law came to tell me about the couple and
to invite me to drink yaqona. In the kinship system I was
classified as the youthfls sister-in-law, and my husband was
his elder brother. The sister-in-law and I were karua,
that is, "sisters." We were each other's “seconds" (53
means "a thing,” and £33, 'second"). Theoretically we
could be substituted in the sororate. We were also the
equivalents of the girl and her sister and would call each
others' husbands, and they us, 9353 (“my back" or, as some
people said, ”one can look over one's shoulder and see
one's spouse's siblings waiting").

The sister-in-law in whose house the youth lived was a
serious, intelligent woman of chiefly heritage. She sat
more quietly than the other women in the lower right—hand
corner of the house. I recognized the tension in her face
and bearing. Chiefly people are expected to behave deco-
rously and to uphold social custom. This elopement was
conducted in a way that abraded her aristocratic sensi-
bilities. Because this “theft" happened at a public
gathering, in front of the girl's father, and involved
brothers and sisters insulting each other, it was all the

more disrespectful. And added to this were the complica-

76
tions that this was a hypogamous union and that there were
avuncular relations between the youth and his prospective
father-in—law. The youth had behaved disrespectfully to
his mother‘s brother, and his actions contradicted cultural
ideas about proper behavior between members of two ranks.
(The commoner youth's behavior was to be expected, a
chiefly woman angrily said later: he acted like a kgi pi, a
servile person acting in a plebian manner») ‘The sister-in-
law, who in other contexts told me that 223 was an aristo-
crat but not her husband, was not pleased by her brother-
in-law's conduct for these reasons. She also identified
with the girl, for at another time she mused that she also
had been deprived of the privileges of a proper wedding
because she had been ”stolenJ‘

An elopement partially reflects the relationship of
the coupleds mataqali, the financial and political abili-
ties of the youth's mataqali to acquire prestations enough
for'a*wedding, and the predictions for the success of the
union. Women indicate that they are pleased to have been

wed in a vakamau vakavanua ritual because it shows their

 

worth to the mataqali involved, their own mataqali's pres-

 

tige, and the commitment of all concerned to their mar-
riages. There is, however, a delight in the romance of an
elopement that is shown by the household and neighbor
women's shouting and laughing as the suitor comes to take

the girl from her home. Romance and merriment do not mean

77

as much, though, as the more somber prenuptial exchanges
and mataqali interests in the formation of a couple.

Although few women were in evidence on this day,
kinship ties through them influenced several menhs behav-
iors. For example, the paramount's mother and the girl
belonged to the same group. Thus, in passing her hidden
behind the curtain, he greeted her with "good health,
little mother." Their tie was strengthened by his wife's

origin in the same mataqali. Indeed, it was his wife who

 

would be the girl's attendant for the remainder of the
ritual and stay in the house with her. Another man whose
participation was influenced by matrilateral ties was the
village headman (turaga pi 5252), who functions much like a
town crier: he called passersby into the house in order to
encourage village participation. He had a kinship connec-
tion to this family that made him concerned about the
ritual's success -- his grandmother had come from the

youth's mataqali. People who are descendents of a woman

 

(ic_a_w_a_) maintain a sense of loyalty, affection and obliga-
tion to her group. An even closer connection to the
youthfls mataqali encouraged a young chief to help with the
yaqona. The young chief was the son of a Nakoroniu woman
and his family ”stayed with" Nakoroniu and cultivated on
its land. The young chief was thus the youth's sister's

child.

78

Second Day pi the Ritual

 

Monday was the second day of the ritual, but activi-
ties that should have taken place the day before happened
then. People were moving around the house with supplies,
cooking utensils, building materials, and tools early in
the morning. Young people perform most of the ordinary
tasks at rituals, and so it was that before 8:30 a.m. young
men went to the forest to collect the bamboo needed to
construct the pavilion that would be erected next to the

house to accommodate guests. Women of the youth's mataqali

 

were preparing food in the cook house, and the other
village women were cooking food in their own homes to bring
to the dining hall later in the day. Senior men's ritual
task is to sit in the house where the ritual is located and
to drink yaqona and converse. Their ritual preparation and

consumption of yagona is their work (cakacaka) because it

 

promotes the event's efficaciousness and other partici-
pants' well-being and safety.

By'10:00,aJmn chiefly lineages began coming into the
house. The paramount's lineage was the first to enter. It‘
was followed by the lineages related to the youth's group
by matrilateral ties. Their respective gifts were mats,
clothes, and whale's teeth. Women carried the mats and
clothes because these are feminine prestations. The teeth
are masculine gifts and are given by men. Two flower-and-
leaf garlands and two shirts and complementarily colored

sulu (cloth two meters in length that is wrapped around the

79
waist) were brought for the couple. These gifts were
formally presented by senior men of the respective groups
and received by the brother in whose house the youth
lived. A benediction was then prayed by a man of a
commoner mataqali. Men make all the speeches for exchanges
at cohabitation and wedding rituals. If a woman attends
one of these alone, her gift will be offered by a man who

is her ”brother" or her husband's or her mataqali's ”door"

 

to the village.

The man who spoke on behalf of the youth's mataqali

 

was his elder full brother, not his senior half-brother.
(The senior brother's mother had died and his father
married the younger men's mother, who now lived with them.)
It was the older of the full siblings who acted as taukei
_i taqane (owner of the man), organized the ritual, and
represented the mataqali. Their mother, who was recovering
from a stroke, had very little input into the event: she
also contributed little to decisions on everyday matters.

The girl's "sisters" and her "father's sister" were
the most visible female participants on this day. Both
kinds of women functioned as aspects of the ritual's most
important female role -- bestower of the girl upon the
youth and his kin. This role is personified by the girl's
mother, a point that I will come to later.

I first want to address another part of the girl's

sisters! behavior. These women directed the festivities

for a time: they did so as embodiments of the "wife" role.

80

The wife role, I suggest, symbolizes what a cohabitation or
wedding ritual seeks to establish. Thus, these women, who
stand for the transformation of the girl into a woman/wife,
are the ones who mark the girl and youth's permutations
into full-fledged adults and a couple. The girl's sisters
marked these changes in front of the gathering by removing
the couple's upper garments and metaphorically stripping
them of their former identities, then oiling/cleansing the
couplefls faces, arms, and chests, thus renewing their
beings. They helped the couple into clean shirts and
placed the garlands around their necks, thus signaling
their new personae. The couple stood and wrapped the new
cloths over their own: they loosened and let fall the old
ones and securely tied the new clothes. Somewhat self-
consciously, the couple resumed their places in front of
the curtain while these women turned their attention to
others. It was then that one might perceive further evi-
dence of these women as symbols of marriage/cohabitation.
They rubbed oil on the faces, arms, and sometimes chests of
guests and sprinkled baby powder on them: they aimed espe-
cially for their cross-cousins and avoided their brothers.
As people tried to dodge the oil and powder or an embar-
rassing remark from these frolicking women, spontaneous
singing, dancing, and spoofing began.

While the girihs sisters were thus engaged, the para-
mounths wife -- who, unlike all other women in attendance,

except the girl who had just been given new clothes, was

81

dressed in her good clothing -- was given a garland by her

cross-cousin, her husband's mataqali-brother (and a

 

descendant of a woman of the youth's mataqali, Nakoroniu).

 

Thus, the girl's father's sister and the couple were
similarly adorned.

The youth's mataqali chiefs and their wives entered
the house amidst this noise and mischief. When the youth%3
elder brother accepted their prestations, he began to cry.
He beseeched all those parties offended by the elopement to
forgive them. He disliked his brother's discourteous
behavior and the unhappy way that the couple initiated
their conjugal life. Like a chorus, many commiserated with
him, sniffing and wiping their eyes.

After the emotional release produced by this statement
of shame, the expenditure of energy in merriment, and the
several hours of sitting in an increasingly warm house, a
pall settled on the festivities at noon. At this time the
paramount's younger brother joined the couple and the
father's sister in front of the assembly. A chief always
occupies a place of honor at an important gathering, such
as this one. This particular chief had a kinship tie to

the youthfls mataqali, viz., his wife was the half-sister of

 

a Nakoroniu man and thus a classificatory sister to the
youth. If the kinship system was operating ideally here,
the youth's.sister's husband would be the girl's brother.
The two couples were given an elaborate lunch consisting of

chicken, beef, yams, cabbage cooked in coconut milk, and

82

bananas in coconut milk. Three plates were given to the
couples. The senior people each had a plate and the young
couple shared one. The youth's forthcoming role as his
mate's leader (liuliu) was symbolized by his actions at
this meal. He placed food on the plate he and the girl
shared and separated chicken pieces for her. bk>one else
in the house was given luncheon by the youth's household.
After the couple ate, people left to dine in their own
houses.

Guests returned after their meals to the house for
more drowsy chatting: their conversation centered on
whether the girl's family would attend. Members of several
village mataqali, and those from other villages, also came
and brought gifts to the house. Most of those who stayed
in the house were men, because women had to prepare the
evening meal and tend to other household needs. The
youthfls mataqali was supposed to eat together for the four-
day period because this was a time to reinforce and to
express their solidarity by being together as much as

possible. At suppertime, the youth's mataqali and guests

 

ate at another house selected as the dining hall for the
ritual's two remaining days. The house chosen for this
purpose, however, indicated the fragility of the mataqali
ideal and the impediments to achieving it. The decision to
use the youthfls sister-in-law‘s natal house as the dining
hall did show how women bind their own and their affinal

kin and facilitate the more relaxed "cross-cousin" ties of

83

their respective husbands and brothers. As household head,
the youth's brother asked tn: use his brother-in-law's
house, which was next door, because his was too small to
accommodate all the guests. It was supposedly his decision
to request the use of this house: at least, this is what
his wife told me when I inquired about how the site
happened to be chosen. This is, of course, what should
happen, ime., the male householder making decisions for the
unit. I do not doubt that she promoted this plan and
discussed the possibility with her brother before her
husband petitioned to use the house.

The youth's brother could have had access to a
mataqali-brother's house 50 yards from his own, but rela-
tions between these two “brothers' had been strained for
several years. Each was about forty years old. The neigh-
boring brother was actual (but not titular) head of his
household and keen on becoming a respected senior man.
These two men were too close in age for one to»be clearly
the senior of the two, and in that capacity to be able to
”lead" the other in the relationship by virtue of his age.
Thus, the selection of the wifefls brother‘s house for serv-
ing meals reflects the greater ease of interaction between
brothers-in-law/cross-cousins than between brothers.
Brothers are expected to treat each other with respect, and
the senior has the right to direct the younger's activi-
ties. Brothers-in-law, by comparison, are supposed to joke

with each other and to tease -- in a word, to interact

84
without the constraints imposed by relative rank and age.
This relationship is also affected by the woman who links
them as wife of one man and sister of the other.

As this woman facilitated an affinal relationship and
was an expediter of the ritual meals, so too do other
women's roles provide important elements of the ritual
process, viz., food, valuables, demarcation of the couple's
changing status, and merriment, which may be extrinsic to
the cohabitation process but is viewed as a desirable
component nonetheless. If these outcomes of womenhs ritual
involvement have qualities in common, they are those of
facilitating bonding and utilitarian concerns. These
attributes of women and their activities will be more

closely associated with women in later sections.

Third Day pi the Ritual

 

 

By 9:30 a.m. there was revelry inside the youth's
house, and outside of it a circus of ducks was being
pursued under and around my house by children and adults.
A widow, the ducks'lowner, wanted to present them to the
youth's sister-in-law in order to help her feed the guests.
The widow was not the only one eager to aid the youth's
kin. Navulavula sent some of its members to the store five
miles downriver to buy frozen or live chickens for the
day's meals. The youth's mataqali would later compensate

these donors with a mat for each animal given them.

85
Certain persons or groups are expected to help
(veiqaravi) the group hosting a ritual. For instance, the

widow was tied to mataqali Nakoroniu through her

 

grandmother: the widow was thus its 5313 (descendant of a
woman). As such, she should have a continuing interest in
Nakoroniu and they in her. She and Nakoroniu shared blood,
and blood ties through a woman draw persons to each other
sentimentally and through reciprocal obligations and privi-
leges. This widow also assisted Nakoroniu in her role as
wife of their chief. Her late husband had headed the
mataqali that is Nakoroniufls liege. She was thus acting in
a ”chiefly” manner, as would her deceased spouse, by show-
ing her concern for the success of her vassal's ritual.
This is the first example given here of a common phenomenon
-- married/widowed womenfls identification with and efforts
on behalf of their husbands' mataqali. Navulavula assisted
the youth's‘group because the two were structural equiva-
lents -- they had previously lived as a unit and were thus

mataqalivata (mataqali together, or sibling-mataqali).

 

They were obliged to assist the youthhs kin to provide food
on the third and fourth days of the ritual. (Table 1 lists
those who should aid the youth's mataqali on those days,
and those who did so.)

The provisioning, preparation, and serving of food,
especially the tuber stables, falls largely to women.
Indeed, if we had to generalize the sexes' ritual labors,

we could say that men consume yagona, speak for groups, and

86

Table 1.

Who Should Give Food

 

Youth's siblings Day 1
Youth's siblings Day 2
Youth's siblings Day 3
Youth's sibling-

mataqali
Youth's siblings Day 4

Youth's sibling-
mataqali

Schedule of food giving at cohabitation ritual

Who Did Give Food

 

No one: observation of
Sabbath

Youth's sisters
Navulavula man*

Youth's sisters

Navulavula wives

Woman born Navulavula and
whose mother was
Nakoroniu: she is
sister's child to
Nakoroniu

Navulavula man*
Navulavula wives

* His mother-in-law is natally of girl's mataqali and is

the youth's mother's namesake

87
make exchanges: women give food. Women's involvement with
food was most clearly seen on this, the first day that
meals were served to large numbers of people in the dining
hall.
The women most responsible for feeding these guests

were those associated with the youth's mataqali. They

 

spent most of the day in the youth's family's cook house
and that of the dining hall, tending large, smoky fires and
preparing piles of hibiscus and taro leaves. These women
were primarily the youth's sisters, sisters-in-law, and
nieces, but there were other female helpers too. Two girls
from a neighboring village said that they assisted because
their mataqali is the ”door” for Nakoroniu in their village
and because they and the youth share a common ancestor --
their respective grandfather and father were brothers. A
third reason, which they did not mention when I first asked
them about their participation, but which others informed

me about, was that their mother was born in mataqali

 

Nakoroniu.

A middle-aged woman participated in the food prepara-
tion because she and her chiefly husband live on Nakoroniu
land and thus have a commitment to the group and its
affairs. Her husband had asked a Nakoroniu man for permis-
sion to plant on mataqali land by appealing to their rela-
tionship through their mothers, who were cross-cousins.

Figure 1 is a diagram illustrating the connection.

8.8

 

A=

Nakoroniu

9,
:

(A chief

b—O—De

Figure l. Matrilateral tie between Nakoroniu and chief
living on its land

This chief acted with Nakoroniu and honored his responsi-

bilities to them when his own mataqali membership did not

 

have to take precedence, for example, when he had to
perform his function as chief in a ritual or when he had to
vote on a possible new use for his own kin's land. His
relationship to Nakoroniu had an interesting aspect -- when
they needed a chief to sit at one of their feasts, he often
obliged them with his presence.

The other female helper was the girl who had defended
the couple's actions to her brother and at whose grand-
father‘s house the latter‘s family had stayed prior to the
elopement. Her participation reflected her mataqali's
obligation to the youthhs: her Navulavula kin and Nakoroniu
were considered "siblings,” and thus she was scouring pots
while women born into or married into Navulavula brought
food to the dining hall. There was also one youth who
worked with the women. He often participated in women's
activities, even at public events. He belonged to the

youth's mother's mataqali.

 

The food was served by the following six women:

1) born in Navulavula (her elder brother was married
to a Nakoroniu woman), she was married to a man of

89

a sibling-mataqali of Nakoroniu

2) born in Nakoroniu and married to Navulavula

3) born in Sika and married to Nakoroniu

4) village school teacher who is associated in the
village with Navulavula but calls the youth
"father" ~

5) youth's elder sister and married to Navulavula

6) born elsewhere and married to the youthds sister-
in-law's brother: thus, it was in her house that

all the wedding meals were taken
These women were associated with the youth's side and
therefore hosted the meal.

Matrons serve meals because it is a prestigious and
demanding activity. It requires knowledge about the
diners' respective ranks and number in order to serve
properly: it demands the good sense married women should
have. Portions are designated by rank: heads of the flesh
foods, if there are any, and the largest and choicest
shares of the relishes go to the most honored guests. The
server-has to«give‘ample amounts for the first serving or
so and also reserve enough food for the later diners.

Late in the afternoon a boat from the girl's village
docked at Natamatai's north end. People in the youth's
house supposed that the girl's family had come with mats to
signal their acceptance of the couple. Their expectations
were disappointed when the village headman along with his
wife and children came laden only with their own presta-
tions -- a live duck, a bundle of four large taro, a mat,
and hibiscus leaves. These visitors entered the house with
one of the youth's.sisters, the wife of the chief who was
the village headmanls "door” in Namatai, and the wife of

the chief who lives on Nakoroniu land. The youth's

90
sister's escorting of the family illustrates how a married

woman becomes associated with her husbandls mataqali and

 

can represent them by taking her husband's roles. She
ceremoniously led the party into the house, where her role
was completed because no woman makes a speech for an
exchange at a cohabitation ritual. The other woman who
entered the house with the headman and his family was
affinally related tn: him -- her husband's brother was
married to the headman's sister.

The headman had these ties to Nakoroniu and also the
one through the youth's mother, who belonged to his
mataqali. His mataqali was not coming to the ritual
because they were mourning the death of the son of its
leader. The mataqali leader"s family had very close ties
with the youthhs family, because their respective wives and
mothers were full sisters. This connection through sisters
shares some elements with the brother-in-law relationship,
viz., the sentimental attachment and ease of interaction is
facilitated by the linking women. In one sense, however,
the relationship between the mourning lineage and the
youth's was much closer than that between brothers-in-law
because they were "siblings," i.eu, descendants of two
mothers-sisters.

About 5:00 me” an hour after the lunch serving was
completed, three older women came into the youthhs house to
perform the vakavuru (a burlesque). It is not uncommon in

Oceanic societies for older women to take the part of

91

clowns. These women put on a skit about the recent acci-
dental sinking of a half-ton of concrete by the Public
Works helicopter in the gardens across the river from the
village. This unfortunate incident occurred during the
construction of a service road to be used to transport men
and material to the hydroelectric project at the headwaters
of the river. Donning menhs trousers, boots, and hats, the
women imitated the helicopter, its pilot, and a ground
crewman. One woman directed the pilot, who manipulated the
helicopter. The audience roared at the accurate depiction
of the seeming inanities of the ground crewman and the
pernickety pilot: their appreciation was:a tribute to the
performers'keen observations.and kinesic alacrity. ‘The
intensity of the laughter and the foreign costumes of these
women started the youngest children wailing and pleading to
leave the house. The skit lasted about five minutes and
had the effect of cleansing the fatigue from the party, who
then settled down for more yaqona and conversation.

The vakavuru performers were all women over 50 years
of age: all were born to mataqali other than the groom's:
two were from another village, and one was from Namatai.
Their common purpose was to make the celebrants happy
(marau) by entertaining in the house. The women were not
classified as ”sisters” of the youth. The womenhs behavior
depicted the differences between wives and sisters at such
rituals, e4yq the boisterousness during the previous day

of the girl's sisters (the youth's cross-cousins) as

92
opposed to his siblings' reserve. The skit's principal
performer was the youth's eldest brother's wife: she said
that she wanted to entertain her brother-in-law, her poten-
tial spouse. The second woman came to amuse "her woman" —-

she and the girl belonged to the same mataqali. This woman

 

had another tie to the girl, perceived of as secondary:

her daughter was married.to a man whose mataqali resides

 

with Navulavula, the youth's sibling-mataqali and the

 

girl's mataqali's "door” to Namatai. By the logic of the

 

kinship system, the third woman should not have partici-
pated in the skit: if one traced her relationship to the
youth through one line, she was his classificatory sister.
This classificatory siblingship was not within one
mataqali: it was based on the fact that the youth's

mataqali and the woman's mataqali were like siblings. No

 

informant said that she should have conducted herself as a

real sister, for whom doing vakavuru is forbidden --

 

vakaroqorogo 22 yalewa baleta 22 ganena nona liuliu (a

 

woman honors her brother because he is her leader). A real
sister has to go outside to the pavilion or nearby the
house if she wants to dance and be merry. A sister is shy
(mpgpg) at her brother‘s cohabitation ritual. To engage in

the often lascivious songs and pranks of a vakavuru would

 

make a sister transgress against customary behavior and
perhaps be fined.
Late in the evening and past midnight, the house was

filled with the men's strong singing. The men sang

93
traditional Fijian songs (9253) accompanied by rhythms beat
with two heavy wooden sticks on a short length of bamboo.
The drummer was the eldest Navulavula man, whose role

reaffirmed the unity of the two mataqali. Navulavula and

 

Nakoroniuhs solidarity was not apparent on the first day of
the ritual because, in one sense, the girl had eloped from
a Navulavula house, and thus they had to honor their
obligations to their guests, the girl's family, by
remaining at home and respecting the girl's family's
avoidance of the occasion. Sometime during the ritual,
however, Navulavula had to join Nakoroniu or risk insulting
their brothers. Thus, by the third day they donated food
and supported the youth's kin in the house. Navulavula
still had a strategic problem to solve the following day
when the girl's sisters should take her to bathe and fish
with her. Because they were the girl's “door" in Namatai,
they were geographically the closest of her people and
would be expected to function as such. Navulavula resolved
this issue by having its men sit in the house with the
youthfls side while its wives and sisters went to the river
with the girl. The intercalary position of women, their

ability to affiliate with two mataqali, based on their

 

malleable natures, eased Navulavula's dilemma.
Around 10:00 pum., the tempo of the music and the
volume of the audience increased when the women joined the

men. As usual, women livened up the gathering, but their

94
merriment was only a hint of the jubilation they would
express the next day at the river.

This day's activities exemplify the concept of
veiqaravi (helping) in Fijian culture and some of the
things I have mentioned already about women. Helping is
positively valued, and although it is expected on certain
occasions, e.g., at rituals, it is also spontaneously
given. For instance, a woman may chop up yagona root for a
neighbor because he has no wife, or people may help a
bachelor to meet his church tithe» Certain categories of
persons were expected to assist the ritual's host -- their

sibling-mataqali, Navulavula, and those persons related

 

uxorally: however, their respective reasons for helping
were different. For Navulavula, siblingship entails recip-
rocal aid because siblings belong to a body that should
maintain itself. Uxorally connected peOpleVs service ema-
nates from sentimental attachment expressed by caring and
succor. Although ”blood," fictive or real, can be used as
a metaphor and explanation for siblings' and uxorally
related people's assistance, it is mainly in the case of
matrilaterally connected people that it is employed. 5333
(descendants of a woman) rationalize their commitment to
these kin by reference to their shared blood. Several
persons' participation resulted from uxoral ties, and in
the cases of the youth's family's relationship to his
mother's sister‘s family and the host's use of his brother-

in-law's house as the dining hall, we have good examples of

95
the ease and yet tenacity of relationships wrought by
women.

Uxorally related persons' interactions may be asso-
ciated with the characteristics of the women who link them
-- women's weak spirits and their fluidity prevent them
from achieving the austerity and dignity characteristic of
men that make agnatic relationships more reserved and cir-
cumspect. Women draw people to them because of their
qualities that elicit others' affection, and thus they draw
their kin into ritual participation when their relatives

are not normally required to do so by mataqali ideals or

 

expectations.
Women's more malleable natures also facilitate their

joining their husbands' mataqali and representing them, as

 

did the chieffls wife who escorted guests into the ritualhs
house. This and other feminine characteristics also per—

mitted women to act as clowns in the vakavuru: their form-

 

lessness and their relative lack of social decorum appar—
ently are prerequisites for such entertaining, ine., taking
on other personae.

The vakavuru performers followed the same pattern of
carefree behavior as did the women who anointed the couple.
Both these sets of women portrayed the wifely persona in
this ritual and her opposition to the youth's sisters, who
quietly prepane meals and tend to the needs of their

sibling's new spouse.

96

Fourth Day pi the Ritual

 

The girl's kin would not come to solemnize a marriage,
and someone had to perform some of their tasks. Navulavula
women would substitute for the girl's kin and depict how
equivalences are drawn and how women fill the interstices
of the social structure.

The day began with Nakoroniu wives and sisters sweep-
ing out the dining hall and sending children, older girls,
and youths for food. In their homes, women of other
mataqali were cooking the food that they would bring to the
dining hall. Men were settling down in the youth's house
to their first serving of yapona, which was dedicated to
the women and their work.

Shortly before noon the paramount directed the villag-
ers to “kill the cown" "go to the river to bathe," "bring
the yapona here,” and "make the feast for the fourth
night." The youth's attendant and a bevy of women joined
the couple for their bath: the youthhs sisters prepared the
food: and young men slaughtered the cow and gathered
yapona.

The male attendant was chosen by the youth's brother.
These two young men were close in age, companions, and
matrilaterally related. The attendant's mother was the
woman in the vakavuru skit related to the youth as classi-
ficatory sister. The young men were described as

rousalavata (two from the same path) and routabavata (two

 

from the same branch). Their kinship connection was as

97
follows: the youth was the attendant's mother's brother,
and the attendant was the youth's sistesz son.

The avuncular relationship is marked by respect and
reserve, especially on the part of nephews. The youth and
his attendant did not portray the customary behavior
involved in this relationship. The attendant did treat the
youth's older brother with the customary respect: there was
no sharing of food, joking, or familiarity. Indeed, the
youth was said the yppp (fear) his motherfls older brother.
Such discrepancies in behaviors between people who call
each other by the same terms has been a topic for inquiry
among anthropologists interested in kinship.

Clay (1977), reporting on the Mandak, a Melanesian
society with some similarities to the Matailobau, suggests
that ”behavioral differences within single categories may
be described in terms of the varying application of the

moral force of symbolization to these categories”

 

(1977:47). Differences in ages may be behind the moral
force that Clay refers to. For Fijians, age is a very
important discriminator of peOple and their activities and
may be the variable influencing the differences in avuncu-
lar relations. Deference is paid to seniors, who precede
juniors in eating, giving opinions, access to things, and
influencing situations.

Although the youthhs attendant was chosen for him by a
senior mataqali member, no one directed any of the women to

accompany the girl. Each woman knew if she could be

98

expected to be with the girl -- that is, if she was classi-
fied as someone other than the youth's sister. Women who
joined the bathing and fishing party were either of the
girl's mataqali or from a mataqali associated with it. The
principles used to define women as the girl's people and a
description of the individual participants are given in the
appendix. Of the women attending the girl at the river,
the paramount's wife, who sat in the house during the
celebration, and another senior woman of the girl's
matapali, whom she called "father's sister," were her main
escorts.

The party was in a very festive mood. Each person
bathed at the river, and when all were finished they moved
to a creek just north of the village. The youth's attend-
ant poled a boat containing the couple up to this spot.
Fishing nets were erected in the creek by the women. One
woman steadied a net while one or more drove the fish into
it. Four nets were used: three women brought their own
nets and a new one was given to the couple by the youth's
sister-in-law. Table 2 lists the owners of the nets —- all

were women closely associated with the couple.

Table 2. Ownership of nets used in fishing on last day

Net Owner

1. youth's older sister, married to Navulavula
2. woman natally of Navulavula

3. woman natally of Navulavula

4. gift from youth's sister-in-law

99

Women took turns holding the nets and driving the fish into
them. Neither man held a net, because this is the way that
women fish. Men fish with spears. The bag into which the
fish were placed was held by the girl. During this entire
time there was a great deal of noise and excitement due to
the women's high spirits and joking. When the party had
decided that enough merriment had been made, the bag was
sufficiently full of fish, and they were chilled from the
cold rain, the party returned to the village.

Once inside the village the girl took the bag of fish
to her "house," the Navulavula house where she had been
visiting. The house's.senior woman took the fish to cook
for the luncheon. Shivering, the party continued on to the
dining hall. They hesitated when they reached the
boundary-marking ditch in front of the house in order to
let three Nakoroniu-born women meet them. What took place
here gives its name to the entire sequence of events of
that afternoon and to the day itself -- the vakamamaca (the
drying [of the girl]). The bathing and fishing are
subsumed lexically and in significance by the act of the
youth and his sisters providing dry clothing for the girl,
who elOped without her wardrobe.

The youth's sisters and patrilateral parallel cousin
slowly approached the bathing party carrying neatly folded
clothes for ”drying” the girl. The youth's eldest sister
oiled the woman who had sat in the house as the girl's

father's sister. At this, the attendant and the couple

100
moved a bit away from the main group. As they did so a
Navulavula man (husband of one of the youth's sisters)
brought a bucket of yapona from the house and placed it
where the youth's sisters and the couple and women met.
Villagers said that the women, the girl's people, receive
the’yaqona because they have returned hertx>her mate and

his mataqali.

 

The yagonafs actual donor was the chiefly woman who
yesterday had donated the ducks. She was Eggp_to Nakoroniu
and the widow of its chief. Through both these connections
she counted herself as part of the youthfs people and
presented the yagona on their behalf. Her gift demon-
strates several things. Multiple ties can influence
persons' participation at events. Kinship and political
relationships should be expressed on ritual occasions
through prestations and by donating services. Widows have
the option of affiliating with either one or both of their
mataqali. Thus, this woman could continue to fulfill her
husband's political and ritual obligations to his vassals.
Her yapona also exemplified the tenacity of uxoral bonds.

Although women do not speak for exchanges at this
ritual, when the;yagona was presented to them they repre-
sented the donor and the recipientsc It is at this time,
when women are the immediate, perhaps ultimate, trans-
mitters of the girl, that they represent their units. At
the river the women have an opportunity to take the maiden

back to her kin. They, like her mother, who finalizes the

101
transfer of the girl to her conjugal kin, have the power to
withhold or bestow'heru No group>of men are available at
the river to contradict the women's wishes. It is this
part of the ritual that defines womenfs powers to continue
or extinguish groups, and it’points to women's opportuni-
ties to avoid men's control. All that men can do at this
time is to request various powers via the yaqona that their
desired outcome at the river will materialize. Thus, when
the girl's sisters bring her back they must be rewarded.
It is perhaps fitting that they receive the yapona that may
be responsible for their return. The chances for restoring
the girl to her new peOple are boosted by a natural means
-- the father's sister's presence, who is defined as the
girl's prospective mother-in-law.

After the yaqona was presented, the wet, chilled women
went to their respective houses to bathe at the taps,
change clothing, prepare their food gifts, and return to
the dining hall. The couple and male attendant bathed at
the youthfls house. While the girl kept a distance between
herself and the young men, the youths appeared to move as a
pair. The couple was behaving according to Matailobau
norms for married persons. Female informants said they are
ashamed to be seen spending too much time with their
husbands or sitting next to them at public events. Cross-
sex siblings, cross-sex parents and children, and couples
do not publicly display affection and generally attempt to

avoid each other.

102

Inside the dining hall the couple and the youth's
attendant ate at the first serving with the eldest and
highest-ranked men. The youth sat with his attendant
toward the middle of the food mat, which is placed in the
center of the room and around which people sit, and thus in
the middle of the male ranking series. The girl sat four
places away from them and toward the lower, less prestig-
ious area. Note that on the first day of the ritual the
couple sat together to eat, but by the fourth day, when
their transition to the status of a conjugal couple was
more complete, they sat apart. If these young people were
not being specially honored this day, they would have eaten
at later servings with their age and gender mates. After
they had finished eatimg, the couple socialized with
members of their own sexes.

After the usual post-prandial rest period, the couple
entered the youth's house for a chiefly speech about the

law or code for conjugal conduct (pp vosa yakaturaga, pp

 

$2.13.): Cohabitation establishes a person's social maturi-
ty, particularly for a female. As I said before, because a
single girl is viewed as immature, frivolous, and child-
like, the chief's speech is directed primarily at her. As
yet, she is not formed in a socially acceptable manner:
hers is a formless, watery soul. Cohabitation gives a
female a socially approved solidity. She must be instruct-

ed, however, in how to achieve and to maintain this confir-

103
mation. Both sexes agree on the necessity of this chiefly
talk. The chief thus tells the girl how a matron behaves.

The chief also advises the couple as a unit. He
admonishes them not to quarrel: to love each other: to keep
a quiet household: to eschew divorce: to stand by each
other and go through life together. After the chief's
lecture, people said, the couple is considered vakawati.
As noted before, vakawati is applied to sweethearts, affi-
anced couples, and mates: it does not mean "married." ‘The
chief's lecture thus prepares the pair for proper conjugal
life and allows them to cohabit in the village, where
standards for couples exist.

In the description of this day‘stactivities, another
aspect of the avuncular cross-sex sibling relationship
emerges. Throughout these three days the relationship
between the youth and his sisters has been depicted as
reserved and helpful. The same can be said for the rela-
tionship between a man and his sister‘s son, as the refer-
ence to the youth's attendant's interaction with his
classificatory mother‘s older brother attests. Even though
their interactions are seemingly circumspect, the sister‘s
child and mother“s brother anticipate reciprocal privileges
and caring. Again, because they are linked by women, they
can seek out each other for aid and comfort in ways that
agnates do not: hence we find the youth facing the girl's
sisters' intimidations and innuendos at the river with a

man who is his sister‘s child.

104

As this matrilateral tie between the attendant and the
youth is colored by the qualities of the woman who links
them, so too do we find women's characteristics surfacing
in their ritual behavior and functions at the river. Women
are expected to be less self-controlled, less self-
restrained than men, and so we see them frolicking noisily
in the water; Women occupy an interstitial position,‘and
this may be illustrated by the fact that no one told them
which women should attend the girl: those who knew that
they could fill this ritual role accompanied her. Like-
wise, womenfs Wsilly” spirits were put to special use on
this day -- with their exuberance they broke the tension
created by the ritual.

Women seemed to energize the proceedings at the river.
We may think of the women themselves as a source of energy
that society metaphorically needs to harness in order to
continue its existence -- the type of vitality that a
cohabitation ritual addresses and wants to channel proper-
ly. So it is on the fourth day that the women are away
from the directing, controlling men and are at the river,
engendering the jpip pp vivre, the vigor necessary for
social and biologic regeneration, where the girl refreshes
herself after four days without a complete bath and fishes
to bring her contribution to the feast. The girl uses a
net to ensnare fish (patrilineal totems) -- a net that
functions as she will in affinal relations. Thus, at the

river the women are the unfettered source of enthusiasm, of

105
life, but also the care—givers and sustainers who give the

girl to her new mataqali. Upon their return to the

 

village, the women “speak" for the first time in this

ritual: they represent their natal mataqali. As the

 

sisters who transmit substance and life, they yield this
girl to begin the reproductive cycle.

The woman who stands for the girl's people is her
father's sister, and it is this woman who is anointed by
the boy‘s sister, the sister of the father of the girl's
future children. These are the women who can control their
own mataqali's transmission of sacred substance and who
wish to encourage the continuance of it through their
brother's spouses, the only women who can bring new blood

into their group, new ties, and members created by mataqali

 

men. Thus, these two women, one already a fatherfls sister
and the other eager to be one, represent two aspects or

phases of this status and role.

Summary

This ritual depicts the significance of groups and
siblingship. It is the sameness of a group's members and
their opposition to other units that is stressed. Indi-
viduals' group memberships determine their involvement in
the celebration. Specific actors are not stressed at the
ritual. A couple, as individuals, may elope, but they must
have others' approval to be considered a marital pair and

to reside as such in a village. The greater significance

106
of groups over individuals is also found in the facts that
a couple is considered to be fully married only when

exchanges have been made between their respective mataqali

 

and that mataqali have the right to sanction marriages
because they are perceived of as the ”owners" of the
couple.

All womenfls roles involve them in providing something
life-sustaining, especially the women of the youth's side,
who give the feasts, and the girl's women, who have the
ability to yield her. The girl's father‘s sister supports
the girl in the youth's house, her sisters transform her
and her mate into a couple, and her mother finalizes the
transfer of the rights in her to the youth's people. This
common quality of women's roles is particularly significant

because it is men who represent mataqali for exchanges and

 

proffer and accept apologies for the elopement.

The sexes' natures were described here as they were
pertinent to understanding this ritual and womenfls roles in
it. The quality of the statuses of sister and wife were
also discussed because they reflect a major division in the
ritual roles women occupy. The dichotomy between the wife
and sister statuses.and roles affects the meaning of this
ritual following an elopement. The wife's sexuality
results in diminishing her prestige relative to a sister.

A sister is the cherished vessel of mataqali blood whose

 

sexuality is never referred to by a brother. Eloping with

a girl is an act that impinges on the meaning of sisterhood

107

and the honor and sacredness (dra tabu, sacred blood) of

 

the mataqali blood she carries and has the potential to

 

share. Thus, the "theft" of a girl is the stealing of a
groupfls corporate essence, its blood. The insult's gravity

is diminished by the girl's mataqali's ability to retain

 

her children until they relinquish their rights in her and
her progeny.

Both sexes are concerned about giving their mataqali

 

blood to other groups. This interest is based on the
strength of their siblingship, which is draped with an
ideology'of support and love. .Although men speak for the
mataqali during most parts of the ritual, the womenfs roles
indicate that they can refuse to release the girl to her
affines and that the ultimate transaction of the girl
involves her mother and the youth's mother. Women's roles
are thus significant, although they appear to be "inaud-
ible," in Arderner's (1975) terms, compared to the men, who
dominate the exchanges and represent the groups for most of

the ritual.

Notes

1 Some villagers found other associations between the use
of fishing nets and the girl. I had asked why nets were
employed and not poles, and I was told by women related
to the youth that there was no particular reason for the
use of nets. The youth's niece actually became uncom-
fortable when I suggested that nets may have some prac-
tical or symbolic purposes. ‘Then I inquired about the
nets among the youth's cross-cousins, the girl's
“sisters,” and they entered into a mirthful discussion
of the custom. Because the women stand in the water,
net fishing allows the girl an extra-long bath after her
three days of showering beside the wedding house. When
I said that I had not heard this explanation about the

108

use of nets before, they laughed raucouslyu A word of
caution about this interpretation of the use of nets --
cross-cousins are supposed to tease each other and are
permitted to speak licentiously to and about each other.
The youth's cross-cousins may have been responding to my
questions in this spirit.

CHAPTER 3

THE BISABA

The cohabitation ritual transformed a girl into a
socially acceptable woman. Womenhs roles in this ritual, I
argued, centered on their bestowing'the girl on thejyouth
and his kin and providing food. The bisaba ritual is an
extension of women's contributions to the continuance of
life. Whereas in the cohabitation ritual women delivered
the promise of fecundity to a group, in the bisaba ritual
they fete a new mother and child and present food to
sustain this pair.

The bisaba guides and inspires women to be mothers
partly because women have been viewed as exacerbating the
colonial processes that deleteriously affected Fijians and
resulted in population decimation. Thus, the bisaba ritual
blesses and encourages fecundity and women's reciprocal
help in child care. In doing so, the ritual also expresses
the same cultural notions about women found in the cbhabi—
tation ritual - 'iae., women are weak souls in need of
others' guidance.

The importance of the sister is again seen in the
bisaba's father's sister's role, in the fact that a newly
delivered mother is féted regardless of her marital status

because the sacred blood of her natal mataqali has been

 

created anew in her child, and in women's representation of

109

110
their natal mataqali as they give speeches for and provide
services on behalf of their group.

Affinal relations and those between cross-cousins are
salient in the bisaba, as they were in the cohabitation
ritual. We see once more how exchanges are involved in
these relations, not only in transactions of categories of
persons and common substance, but also in the mundane
giving of items for redistribution at the ritual.

Like the cohabitation ritual, the bisaba focuses par-
ticipants' attention on the ritual's principals by ensconc-
ing them within the sleeping area's curtain, within the
houseds “upper," reserved section. Unlike the cohabitation
ritual, the bisaba typically does not include bringing the
principals from behind the drapery at some time in the
ritual. Indeed, some villagers said that the bisaba's
purpose is to mark the appropriate time when the child
could be brought into the housefls main section.

The bisaba is held at the home of the person in whose
honor it is given and consists of villagers, usually women,
bringing gifts of ”raw food” -- especially taro, plus
sugar, kerosene, tinned fish, soap, or flour. The ritual's
name is taken from the words pipp (to give) and pi (cooked
taro stalk). All prestations are referred to as the feast
and designated as 333: this is in keeping with its primary
purpose of increasing a woman's breast milk by having her

consume the pp that stimulates lactation.

111

Originally, villagers said, the bisaba celebrated only
a child's birth, but it is now also observed when a person
recovers from an illness or when new residents are incorpo-
rated into a village. Each of these events is the
successful completion of a difficult task or passage
through a period of stress. In all cases, the person is
blessed at the bisaba by others as he or she returns to
more regular tasks and, in the cases of new residents and
mothers, occupies a new status.

Womenhs life-giving and life-sustaining activities are
best exemplified in the bisaba ritual. The needs that
prompt such actions are most vividly portrayed by the
dependent newborn, whose existence relies on its mother's
milk. When women carry the taro stalks to the mother and
child, they contribute to the motheris milk supply and the
childfls life. To refrain from giving assistance to the new
mother could show the evil power that women may wield. The
bisaba is not just an expression of happiness, as villagers
claimed it to be. It is also an opportunity for merriment
and to lift others' spirits: these are women's
contributions to social events, as we learned in the
preceding chapter. Womenfls attendance at bisaba, but more
specifically their contributions of food, also illustrates
their social solidarity and social concern.

Let me turn first to women's associations with food,
since this is the bisaba's focus. Women have several

relationships to food. Matrons supervise household food

112
supplies, serve meals, share food with other households,
and provide hospitality for village guests. It is in this
latter activity that women's associations with various
forms of prosperity, which food can represent, are publicly
expressed. The feminine nurturant role, and women's
ability to invert it, is manifested in the following
example.~ Nayacakalou (1975), reporting <n1 ceremonies
welcoming him to a village in Kadavu, an island off the
southern Viti Levu coast, said that after the formal
presentation of whale's teeth to the village chief and
ritual yagona drinking were completed, it was understood
that his intended visit had received chiefly blessings.
[But] this approval to stay in the village was
given concrete and formal acknowledgement when,
(”Ithe Sunday following, the*village women pre-
sented me with a feast, including a whole cooked

pig, in acknowledgement of the boka [presentation
to the chief] I had presented and implying that I

‘pppip pp! pp "looked after" durin ‘pympppy.(Naya-

cakalou 1975:61: emph3§T§_adEEETfa
The women who brought food to Nayacakalou, thus indicating
Itheir hospitality, have something in common with the women
who carry food to the bisaba. Both sets of women substan-
tiate their good wishes for another by giving something
life-sustaining, food. Matailobau perceptions of women are
that 'Eratou taura vakalevu pp ppip pp yalewa pi xiii"
(Fijian women hold life very much in their hands) because

they engage in salubrious activities -- nursing, child

care, giving food in takitaki, and being committed to

 

assisting those in need. Women are also credited with

113
having some ability to make things flourish, especially the
taro that represents the bisaba.

The bisaba's interest in producing a thriving infant
and thus in group continuity is, I suggest, affected by the
Matailobau peOpleHB colonial experiences: the high infant
mortality and low birth rate that followed pacification was
largely attributed to women's behavior. It is for this
reason, I argue, that bisaba are given for each child, not
only for firstborns as they are in other areas of Fiji, and
are celebrated for the recovery of ailing persons and the
incorporation of newcomers in villages. The ritual's sig-
nificance also emanates from the ideas and values attached
to m (mother) as a symbol of nurturance and love.
Mothers' beneficience, however, is shadowed by the possi-
bility of their withholding it and, the darkest thought of
all, their preventing or terminating life itself. Thus,
the bisaba participants rally around the newly delivered
woman and call for blessings upon all who support her as
they seek physical, social, and cultural continuityu The
cultural importance of motherhood is, I believe, influenced
by the Matailobau memory and interpretation of coloniza-
tion: for this reason, I will sketch this event and its
effects on women before describing the bisaba ritual.

I became awarerof the significance of the bisaba for
Matailobau people when a village visitor, a man from Lau
(the easternmost islands of the archipelago), remarked to

me about their relatively frequent occurrence in Namatai.

114

I then realized that one occurred nearly every month during
my fieldwork -- six were given for newborns, two for sick
persons, and one for new village residents, iJL, for my
family. This Lauan said that in his area bisaba are cele-
brated only for firstborns and for persons recovering from
serious illnesses. In Matailobau, bisaba are held for each
child and even for people recovering from mild ailments.
The differences in the number of bisaba in these two dis-
tricts might be explained by their respective responses to
colonialism. In the interior, where population losses due
to the stresses of European domination and diseases were
recovered from more slowly than in Lau, bisaba are held for
every child and for relatively mild ailments. Indeed, as I
read archival sources, I began to think that there were
other connections between women, population demise, and
subsequent bisaba celebrations that should be considered.
For instance, one of the factors suggested as responsible
for the poorer rate of replacement in the interior was the
quality of women's child care. Government reports indicate
that women in this region lost their incentive for proper
nurturance:

A mother, now that she no longer fears the old

consequences of neglect, cares little for her

child. She neither feeds it, oils it, nor does

anything for it, as was done in the days of old

(Notes of the Proceedings of a Council of Chiefs,

1882:24).
The catechist of Lomaiviti also noted that

We some time ago permitted some of the young

[coconuts] to be used for children, the immediate

result has been that the mothers have taken to
drinking nuts. It is almost impossible to lay

115

down any hard and fast rules, people won't adhere
to it (Notes of the Proceedings of a Council of

Chiefs, 1882:54-55).

This negative image of women should be set against the
colonial background impinging upon them. The first
European-introduced factor that probably affected women was
the administration's demand that Fijians increase the
amount of land that they had under cultivation. For the
Hill Tribes a call for more gardens perforce involves more
work for women, who tend to perform domestic tasks, collect
firewood, fish, provide child care, and cultivate. A
second ramification of their lives concerned their post-
partum tabu. Prior to European contact, Fijians maintained
a postpartum tabu on marital coitus for three or four
years: transgressing this custom "was considered an outrage
on public decency" (Brewster 1922:189). Any man unable to
exercise continence with his wife was literally stomped by
her kin. The shortening of the postpartum tabu in Fiji may
have been associated with the implantation of Christian
ideals of conjugal behavior, as was the case in Tonga,
where

By insisting on sexual availability as a wifely

duty, missionaries also put an end to the sexual

abstinence of women after childbirth, which had
lasted until all the child's teeth were in, and

was explicitly intended to prevent pregnancy and

premature weaning (Thompson 1904:357: quoted in

Gailey 1980:314L
Within the first decade of colonial administration, Hill

Tribe women utilized European courts as a means of discour—

aging their husbands' recent increases in amatory behavior.

116
After this time, colonial officials noted that conjugal
behavior was changing in the direction of European mores,

because, they surmised,

our milder system and the examples set by Euro-
peans brought emancipation from the restriction
set on the intercourse of the sexes, although in
the first years of [our] service public opinion
still condemned undue uxoriousness on the part of

the man (Brewster 1922:190).

A third innovation made by Europeans in Fijian society
was the change in sleeping arrangements and in the encour-
agements of nuclear family households. Menfls houses were
used as sleeping quarters by adult males in the pre-
colonial period. Women and children returned to their
respective households to sleep. Europeans wanted the
people of the interior to live in nuclear family households
and to prevent the men from sleeping in the men's house.
There was Fijian resistance to this colonial demand, as is
indicated in a report written several decades after its
initiation.

There are still houses with more than one couple

in them. This is in a measure owing to the

conservative manners of some of the older people.

We all know that previously men never slept in

the same house with women, 5 that custom is dying

hard amongst the elder of the kai Colo [inhabi-

tants of the hills] (General Report -- Colo East,

1903: 121).

I suggest that the European insistence on nuclear family
households and other regulations further burdened women and
affected their health and well-being. Nuclear, as Opposed

to extended, family households may create more work for

their adult members because each person must do all the

117
tasks assigned to his or her gender, whereas in households
with more adults of the same sex the jobs can be divided
among them.

Some of the other regulations that I maintain had
negative outcomes on womenhs health and that of their
children were those pertaining to fishing. Minutes of a
meeting held in 1899 (Colo East Provincial Council Book,
1898-1904) refer to rules prohibiting pregnant women from
fishing at any time and all other women from fishing at
night. During my stay in Matailobau, I noted that pregnant
women increase the time that they allow for fishing, which
yields the most common source of animal protein at a time
when mother and fetus have increased nutritional needs.
The women boil the fish in water, and then they eat the
flesh, suck the bones, and drink the broth. This method of
preparation and consumption provides a good source of cal-
cium, also needed in larger amounts during pregnancy and
fetal development. Night fishing allows women who have
been otherwise engaged during the day the opportunity to
fish either for themselves or for other women, especially
for those who are pregnant.

Colonial administrators do not appear to have linked
their policies to the outcomes that I have proposed here.
They studied women mainly in terms of how women's positions
could be improved and how they could modify women's behav-
ior, most particularly to avoid "evasions of maternity“

(Notes of the Proceedings of a Native Council, 1885).

118

These women, who were the object of European and Fijian
concern regarding high infant mortality and low birth
rates, were at the crux of a paradox -- they had to produce
more food and more children when institutional changes
mitigated against doing both very well. If women's work
had been confined to what Europeans perceived to be their
job (that is, housework), perhaps not sharing it with one
or more women and having more children than they had before
would have been the "improvement" in their lives sought by
Europeans. Many Europeans believed that colonization would
free indigenous women from their supposed inferior social
position, especially when they compared them to European
women (Etienne and Leacock 1980). But, as Brewster (1922),
an administrator in Fiji, wrote in retrospect, the position
of women that colonizers held up for comparison to those
whom they conquered was the position of the European "lady”
and not the European working woman.

Fijians must have understood some, if not all, of the
associations among the colonial government's program and
its influences on their lives, and especially infant mor-
tality and its tie to women's work:

Some of you say» "The children of the whites live

because they get cows' milk, our children die

because we have not cows' milk to give them.“

How many Fijians are present here that were

brought up on cows' milk? Yet ye are strong men

and so were your fathers, and they were brought

up on the produce of the land. The truth is that

you, chiefs, were reared by women that were well

fed, that were kept comfortable, and had nothing

to do except to care for you. But the only food

employed was that of the land, the same as had

been used by your fathers from time immemorial.
. . . But if a mother has rest, a dry comfort-

119

able house, and an abundance of good food, the

produce of the land, she can nourish her child

herself until it is able to eat (Notes of the

Proceedings of a Native Council, 1885:7).

It may be that Fijians began remedying their situa—
tion, for when a native administrator of Nabubuco, an area
north of the present Matailobau territory, was asked by
colonial officials why the population had rebounded there,
his reply was that

the reason must be that when some of our people
are sick, their friends go and attend to them
well. When children are born their mothers are
tabued for three weeks -- after which they are
inspected by the Turaga-ni-koro [village headman]
-- and food [is] taken to the mothers (Notes of
the Proceedings of a Native Council, 1881:16).

This practice appears to be similar to a bisaba, and if not
designated as such, it surely sprang from the same values
and orientation that underpin the Matailobau ritual. The
bisaba is a collective statement about helping others,
regeneration, and sustenance. That women are the ones
visibly associated with regeneration might explain why they
are the ones to give the neophyte the life—making pp. But,
I suggest, the larger meaning of the bisaba is a wish that
all women be fruitful and that they all be committed to
motherhood, in terms of both their own children and those
of other women. It was supposedly women's negation of
these activities that was responsible for the population
demise that indicated their individual and collective
malaise. This orientation may be an outgrowth of the

belief that in pre-pacification times women had opportuni-

120
ties to limit the number of their children and to punish
their affines' and spouses' maltreatment of them by prac-
ticing infanticide (Brewster 1922). Infanticide was sup-
posedly at women's discretion because no male was permitted
within the house for four days after childbirth.

The bisaba may also have increased in frequency'as a
result of Matailobau consciousness of the discontinuity in
their lives and identity due to intrusive political forces.
I propose this because the ritual employs symbols and
references that tie the Matailobau to their pre-colonial
past. Taro and yapona, the two important bisaba elements
and symbols, were significant in the pre-Christian reli-
gion. The autochthonous religion associated men with
yams and women with taro and used yapona as a sacrifice and
communion (Turner n.d.). Yapona root is ground, thus sac-
rificed, and served from one vessel to all participants at
a ritual. Every important ritual and social gathering
includes yagona because of its intrinsic qualities and its
ability to be a conduit to supernatural powers. For
instance, in the bisaba speeches, yapona is defined as a

potent substance, kalougata (blessed or auspicious) and

 

vakaturaga (chiefly, respected). Yagona's power is likened
to chiefship. Blessings come from ancestors and chiefs,
two sources of power and vitality. Ancestors may provide
their descendants with good fortune or punish them.
Likewise, chiefs who give patronage are ppppp‘ppi peneris,

like ancestors. Villagers seek chiefly assistance and

121
succor, e.g., in cases of domestic quarrels or spirit
possession. Yet chiefly wrath must also be avoided. Like

the chief, yapona is pi bula (life-giving) and kaukauwa

 

(strong) and can confer good fortune on others.l

Yagona and chiefship are associated with maleness.
The link between chiefs and maleness is apparent, so I will
briefly describe the connections that I perceive between
yagona and maleness. Prior to pacification, it is reported
that yapona had been drunk periodically only by men.
Today, men drink it nearly every day in villages, while
women enjoy it infrequently. When yapona is ritually pre-
sented as a complete plant, it is solemnly carried by men.
Thus, yapona is a male symbol and a celebration of and
invocation for human perpetuation. The power of yapona is
articulated in the bisaba speeches, where it is used to
call for blessings for the mother and child and for all
others in attendance.

The propitiation of autochthonous sources'of power is
apparent not only in the ways yagona is described and used
but also in the prayers said at these rituals. Such an
invocation was most explicitly made at a bisaba celebrating
a birth in the mataqali of the original chiefs of the
Namatai area. It was said by the paramount's wife after
the benediction: indeed, it followed a Christian prayer.
She called it pp lotu vakavuravura (a prayer to ask for
continuance).

E vitu, e walu, kena vuravura. Kemuni na marama,

kena vuravura veivavisiko. Veiira na tamata
cakacaka. Va'kabukabu.

122

Seven, eight [said when one wants to add a state-
ment at a proceeding], its stalk. You women, the
stalks make the visiko (bisaba). To them, the
workers. To the sowing, tomorrow.

Vuravura in the Bauan dialect (the lingua franca of Fijian

 

speakers) means sugarcane stalks, but here I am assuming
that it should be applied to the taro's stalks as a symbol

of continuance per se. Vuravura has another meaning —-

 

world. In this context it may refer to the local society.

As either definition, vuravura has a meaning applicable to

 

the bisaba's intent. It is the women and the taro stalks
that are the essential ingredients of the bisaba, which is
dedicated to people's well-being and exemplified by nurtur-
ing the newborn infant.

The prayer focuses on the implied wish that the 1253,
the infant, the women, and the society flourish, but it
equates the operationalization of this wish with women's
efforts, their cooperation. Women's cooperation seems to
be something that cannot be taken for granted. For
example, wives in a Sigatoka Valley village (a region west
of Matailobau) frustrated the construction of a school
compound by refusing to bring their husbands! lunches to
the worksite (Belshaw 1964). Withholding food is an effec-
tive feminine social control mechanism in a society where
men are not expected to cook for themselves and women can
plead poor scheduling or unforeseen circumstances for the
lack of food, or can remain mute and passive. This prayer

then acknowledges women's control of life-giving activities

123

and seeks their commitment to them. Regardless of the
alternate interpretations of words and meanings here, the
prayer's thrust is in keeping with the bisaba's orientation
and employs two of its central elements, women and the
regenerating stalk. There are, I suggest, connections
between women and the taro stalk: to illustrate this I will
first explain some things about taro.

A stalk generates several plants that can be harvested
in turn. Each plant is completely edible, and before a
tuber and its stalk is uprooted, leaves can be plucked from
several plants without jeopardizing any of them. Taro is
the only plant that provides Fijians with a complete meal:
"real food," a tuber, and ”relish," leaves or stalk. When
taro is presented at the bisaba, it is given as tuber and
stalk. The tuber may be eaten and the stalk may be used to
make pp or it may be planted to produce new plants. ‘Taro
and women each provide immediate and future gifts. A woman
provides her labor and then children for her‘affines, but
her children are also the potential spouses for members of
her natal group. Likewise, the taro and the women who

bring it are both identified with the husbands' mataqali.

 

Women, nevertheless, have some autonomy in allocating their
labor and the food.

Women are associated with taro in another way, as I
noted in passing above.131the past, people averred “that
the [taro] will only flourish under female care“ (Brewster

1922:163). Villagers retain some of their ancestors'

124

notions about womenfls ability to cultivate taro but explain
them in pragmatic terms that have to do with the division
of horticultural tasks between the sexes, that is, whether
the work is appropriate for the “strong" men or the "weak"
women. The cultivation process begins with the men loosen-
ing the dense soil with dibble sticks. Members of<either
sex can transplant the stalk with a bit of the tuber base.
Women often plant the stalks and, after a month or so, dig
out some soil around the plants to give them more space for
- growth. During approximately the second month the young
plant is banked with soil so that it will grow tall and
strong: women do this as well. Because they assiduously
use a short-handled knife on the small, delicate plants,
women commonly weed them. Some women informants stressed
that these tender plants are often destroyed by the men's
wide, powerful sweeps of their long knives, which are due
to their impatient dispositions. The last phase in the
process, harvesting, can be done by either men or women.
Women, then, tend taro more than men do because they sup-
posedly weed better and can perform those simple but back-
breaking chores of digging out and banking up the plants.
I do not discount, however, a lingering notion on vil-
lagers' parts that taro 9331s a woman's care to flourish.

The taro that women bring to the bisaba is given with
the idea that they are assisting someone and not expecting
a return. In Matailobau dialect, pipp means to leave

something. When I asked for a synonym for bisa, people

125

gave me the word pip (to throw out, to leave, to put out).
Initially, I thought that bisaba derived its significance
from the Bauan usages of pipp, i.e., to rain upon or to
accomplish an arduous task. It seemed to me that these
definitions concurred with the meaning of the ritual since
people were "showering" the recipients with presents
because they had recently gone through arduous processes.
But Namatai people assured me that the meaning of the
bisaba lies in the phrase pipp 22.22 (the leaving, or to
leave the pp).¢Given their orientation, I suggest that a
cultural statement emerges from the bisaba: as the women
donate the pp with no thought of reciprocation, so too are
they expected to produce children. I takethisstance
because I believe it corresponds to the societal needs that
required women to produce more children without the recip-
rocation for and control over their fecundity that they had
prior to colonization. Thus, I maintain, the roles of
women and gift-giving in the bisaba are symbolically
combined. Women carry food to rituals and other households
as a means of giving men respect. To be a woman is to
provide services and food, to be a ”giver of life.“ ‘The pp
is a means to make the baby's "real food," its mother's
milk, which will sustain it.

Food is an important cultural category to Fijians.
Giving food signifies positive feelings, and withholding it
indicates negative sentiments. As I said before, women are

associated with the presentation (and retention) of food.

126

Perhaps their link to food is connected to their being the
first persons to give food, the mothers. Eipp (mother) is
an honorific that conveys many sentimental connotations of
nurturance and love. When Fijians discourse on mothers, as
they can (and often do), they refer continuously to the
mother's milk, which provided them with life. Mother's
milk symbolizes all activities undertaken to help a child
survive. Vakasucu (to bear a child) is a verb based on the
word for milk (pppp). They know that parturition is asso-
ciated with lactation, without which the neonate could not
live (this knowledge represents both traditional and typi-
cal contemporary conceptions that eschew milk-substitute
formulas and wet nurses). Mothers are thus praised for
providing life-giving and life-maintaining services and for
having loving sentiments for children over whom they have
no legal claims (that is, if the mothers are married).

The focus on the new mother and child at the bisaba is
usually signified by cloistering them within the curtains
of the sleeping area. There were two bisaba at which the
mother did not stay with the infant. One was when the
child was given the bisaba one month after its birth
because the mother had been convalescing from a tubal
ligation. At that bisaba the mother was quite past the
postpartum period dedicated to resting with the infant.
The other case was the one in which the child was adOpted.
The adoptive mother helped her husband to host the affair,

while the natural mother sat in the least prestigious part

127
of the house, where a seventeen-year-old commoner girl
would normally sit.

The seclusion of the mother and child, particularly
the child, may be associated with an earlier form of the
bisaba, sometimes called the roqoroqo (to pick up and hold
or carry a child). Traditionally, villagers said, the
roqoroqo was performed on the tenth night after the birth.
For the first ten days of a baby's life it was secluded
behind the mosquito nets and sleeping curtains of the

parents' bed. After the rogoroqo was held, the baby was

 

brought into the main part of the house. The child is
still sheltered within the curtains while the bisaba is
held. Thus, the ritual is the prelude to the infant's
debut into the center of the house, the realm of social
life.

At present, the village headman selects the evening
for the bisaba, confers (or may not confer) with the
honored family, and informs the village of his decision
during his morning and evening walks through the village,
when he notifies the residents of community events. The
bisaba is first announced a day before it is scheduled. On
the day of the celebration, the headman reminds the village
about it in the morning or early evening. The headman's
call is directed at the women, without whose participation
the ritual does not seem possible. A special relationship

exists between the headman and the women: he is to ”bring"

128
the women to the ritual and to present their gifts for
them.
At the appointed hour, women leave their homes with

their gifts. Wives of a mataqali are expected to walk

 

together to the bisaba. When they enter the house where
the ritual is to be held, the women place their prestations
near the center doorway through which all female and child
visitors enter. Then they move into sitting positions
along the walls according to their respective ages and
ranks -- chiefly and older women sit near the upper end of
the house, where the beds are. Women usually take their

places according to their natal mataqali's hierarchic posi-

 

tions, but their seats may be in terms of their conjugal
mataqali's places. As it becomes apparent that most of the
guests have arrived, the women's gifts are presented. If
the headmanz has ”brought" the women, he may dedicate their
prestations to the bisaba recipients. A spokesperson for
the ritualfs principals and their household acknowledges
the womenfs generosity and thanks them. A benediction over
this transaction is said by an autochthonous commoner who
can call upon the spirits of the land for the most effica-
cious blessings. The women's prestations are reciprocated
by the householder's yapona, which is dedicated to the
women in a speech. One of the senior chiefly women formal-
ly accepts and thanks the hosts for the yapona. Again a
benediction is prayed for the parties involved. These

speeches contain various data: structural relationships

129

between mataqali, the positions of women in mataqali and

 

 

the effects of their marital status on these rankings, and
the bisaba symbols and meanings.

Structural relationships that were prominent at the
cohabitation ritual are also emphasized at the bisaba. We
will again see the effects of rank on persons' participa-

tion. Womenfls dual mataqali affiliation is most pronounced

 

at this ritual, where they may represent either their natal
or affinal units. The father's sister's role is also an
important feature: I will discuss her involvement first
because, although structurally relevant, the role is muted
by the specific circumstances of these examples I have
chosen. Then I will outline the cross-sex siblings' and
cross-cousins' participation. Womenfs structurally ambiva-
lent positions will be demonstrated as they occur at these
events.

The tasks of receiving the bisaba feast and presenting
the yapona to the women can fall to the child's father's
sister. At one bisaba, the babyfls father's real sister did
accept the feast. When we discussed her role, she said
that this is what the father‘s sister should do because she
will call this child her pppp/pppp, .She thus referred to
the two relationships that she has to the child -- one
through her cross-sex sibling, which makes the child her
yppp (brother's child: "child-in-law") and the other
through her husband, when she employs pip term for the

infant, vasu (sister's child: "child-in-law'). When the

130
system is functioning ideally, one's vasu and vugo are the
same individual for Ego. A woman's/man's same-sex

siblingfls child is called child (luve).

 

|
I l

l I
Ego ‘. A: ‘. A: “H=<>
I

ve vugo/vasu

 

 

 

(IS—ll
6—"

1 ve l

 

 

 

Figure 2. Terms for offspring of own children, same-sex
siblings' children, and cross-sex siblings'
children -

The father‘s sister occupies two roles or, viewed from
another perspective, has one role that emphasizes different
aspects through the developmental cycle. After.her

marriage, a woman has connections with her natal mataqali

 

and can function as its representative in certain approved
ways, e4», at bisaba. Within the definition of and expec-
tation for the father's sister is her potential role as
brother's children's mother—in-law. This is reflected in
the kinship terminology, where ppi is father's sister,
mother's brother's wife, and mother-in-law based on the
ideal of cross-cousin marriage. The father's sister gives
a daughter to her natal mataqali and receives a niece from
the same group. At the bisaba one might think of her
receipt of the feast as an acknowledgment of her natal
affiliations and an act on behalf of her brother. ‘Viewed

from her position of prospective mother-in-law, as she

131
receives the pp today, she will have the woman for her son
in the future. On the other hand, today”s pp may be a
compensation for the loss of her daughter to this male

child of her own natal mataqali. In keeping with women's

 

flexibility in mataqali identification, the father‘s sister

 

may speak for the mataqali of the newbornfs parents (her

 

own natal group) and for her conjugal group.

The father's sister's bisaba role must also be ana-
lyzed in terms of cross-sex sibling ties. Respect for
one's cross-sex sibling is also rendered by one's children
(with the child's gender affecting the degree of respect
shown). The mother's brother is held in awe but not the
father's sister, and it is this quality of the father's
sister that facilitates her representation of her natal and
conjugal units. She is more approachable than her brother
or her husband, can share in both their statuses, and can

move between mataqali and roles.

 

The father's sister's dual roles may be associated
with the assumption that the bisaba has some associations
with the child's future marriage: the ritual solicits
health and fecundity for the infant and provides it with
nourishment. The woman who receives the feast (the
father's sister) shares an identity with the child's natal
and potential conjugal groups. She is the maternal source
of the child's future spouse, the child's cross-cousin.
The feast in this ritual for continuance is thus associated

with a woman who embodies the continuance of both her natal

132

and her conjugal mataqali. The woman who receives a feast

 

to feed a girl (who will in turn produce children for the
woman's own kin) or to feed a boy (who will produce
children for her husband's people) is herself a symbol of
continuance. She is wife and mother to one group, and the
transmitter, the sister, of the other group's common sub-
stance, its blood.

The respective marriages of a brother and sister sep-
arate them spatially yet bind them together, as they retain
the other's children as in-laws. The (expectation of this
will be signaled by two things at the second bisaba to be
described. The newborn's grandmother calls upon her
brother‘s son, her "son-in-law,” to offer the yagona to the
women. A father's sister's request or command is
authoritative, and this, along with the reciprocal help and
sharing intrinsic to the cross-cousin relationship, is why
the young chief assisted at the bisaba. Additionally, if
he and the new mother had acted according to cultural
expectations, he could be the baby's father. His
explanation for participation in the ritual was that he was
the baby's mother's potential spouse/cross-cousin and her
mother was his father's sister. As he said, his child and
his cross-cousin'slchild were ”the same" for his father's
sister.

The prospect of exchange is inherent in these cross-
gender sibling and cousin relationships: this exchange, as

noted above, concerns marital partners and children.

133

Exchanges of other sorts between these categories of
persons occurs at the bisaba and reflects those exchanges
based on marriage and substance. For instance, at the
second bisaba the householder gives tobacco to his female
cross-cousin as a remuneration for the womenfls gifts. His
gratitude for his wife's and daughter‘s reproductive powers
is shown by this presentation to his wife's sister, his
cross-cousin. People said that when things are to be
distributed in such circumstances, individuals look to
their cross-cousins to help them to do so. We learned in
the last chapter that helping and sharing are parts of the
relaxed, jovial cross-cousin relationship.

Another shared element of the cohabitation and bisaba
rituals is the respect given to men. The bisaba gifts are
dedicated to the male householder even though they are
intended for the mother and child. To add prestige and
integrity to the proceedings, men are invited to represent
groups, or they may come of their own accord. Indeed, the
practice of acknowledging men before women and using them
as representatives of units is signaled when the village
headman refers to the house where the ritual is to be held
by the householder‘s name»in its teknonymic form based on
his firstborn child's name, e.g., father of Litia: on the
house's lineage name, e4p, the second house of Sulisuli
lineage: or on the house's platform's name. No bisaba for a
firstborn with the child's name identifying the household

was announced during my stay. Thus, the neonate for whose

134
ostensible benefit the bisaba is held is subsumed within a
social body that is headed by a male.
This ritual differs from the cohabitation ritual in

several ways. First, women speak for mataqali throughout

 

it. Second, the womenfls prestations are not viewed as the
same kind of exchange as were those of the cohabitation
ritualq and perhaps that is why women are functioning for

mataqali. It should be recalled that women spoke at the

 

cohabitation ritual when the girl was returned from the
river and her women were honored with the yapona. Giving,
or pipp (leaving), the pp probably has more in common with
presenting the girl to or leaving the girl with her mate
without receiving a commensurate compensation than the
men's formal prestations at the cohabitation ritual,
because men's gifts or exchanges are viewed as officially

representing relations between mataqali and womenfls do not

 

carry the same meaning. Because the bisaba allows women to
deliver speeches and focuses on them, and because its
participants are mainly women, it may be viewed as being
quite different than the rites of passage that men domi-
nate. Also, the bisaba somewhat suspends the usual public,
political roles of villagers, and this too«contributes to
separating it from rites of passage. Thus, for all these
reasons, I prefer to describe the bisaba as a domestic
ritual of reintegration wherein the mother returns to her
more normal activities after the birth, the child is

brought into the center of the house and social life, and/

135
or the recovered patient and new resident become partici-

pants in village life.

The First Ritual

 

Let me now illustrate these general statements about
the bisaba by describing and analyzing two celebrations.
The first bisaba I will discuss is the first one I wit-
nessed, the one for the paramount's granddaughter. The
participants were quite reserved because of the high
chief's presence and the dampening effect of an older
child's discomfort from measles. At this ritual the
infant's father was a very active participant, but usually
this is not the case. This bisaba was also unique in that
it occurred nearly a month after the birth because the
mother had been hospitalized in the capital for a tubal
ligation after the delivery. After the mother recuperated
for a couple of weeks at home, the bisaba was called by the
headman. The celebration was held at the paramount's home,
in which the child, its parents, and siblings lived. The
household also contained the paramount's other son and his
wife and child, who at this time were visiting in the
wifeds natal village.

Most of the villageds married women came to the event
carrying taro or another root crop. One mat was given by a
woman from another region who was married to a man of a
nearby village wholin turn was related to this household.

This was the only mat I observed given at any kind of

136
bisaba.3 My gift was tinned fish, the only store-bought

item.

When it appeared that most of the participants had
arrived, the headman made the first speech -- the presenta-
tion of the women's gifts.

Vakaturaga e Sika delai Navaulele Nabena vi na
Taukei na Waluvu. Dua na ba lailai na ibe sa
taura mai na marama, me mai baleti rau na
vitinani. E:lailai sara warai me rauti komodou
na ‘turaga, veiluveni. Keimami mata Imai
vakamarautaki rau no na vitinani. Cabe
vakaturaga tu e Sika, Waivou.

A chiefly greeting mataqali Sika from Navaulele
Nabena now the Owner of the Floods! A small
amount of pp, a mat are what the women hold in
their hands here because there' is a mother with a
child. These are really small gifts not enough
for you [three] to eat, you sir and the mother
and child. We want to make the mother and child
happy. We want to continue to praise in a
chiefly manner Sika, Waivou.

 

The respect for the chiefly office had to precede the
significance of and consideration for the mother and child.
A second sign that the paramount was the focus of the
evening's event was that the tanoa, the wooden, turtle-
shaped bowl filled with yapona, was directed at him, as he
was the highest-ranked person present, the honored guest.
This is not to say, as indicated in the speech, that the
bisaba was for the paramount. The bisabahs purpose was for
the felicitation and sustenance of the mother and child.
Clearly, however, the mother and child are subsumed under
the householder‘s leadership, and the gift must be given to
the mother and child through him, thus expressing the

hierarchic positions of men, women, and children.

137

The householder's importance was also expressed by the
statement that the gifts were too small to feed the chief,
mother, and child adequately; (Disparaging the amount of
the prestations is also a common feature of these offertory
speechesJ The comment bears on their respective worth and
does not reflect the actual disposition of the food, which
is not adult food but a means to produce an infant's nour-
ishment, breast milkn It is necessary to emphasize that
the pp, as the ritual's central symbol and metaphor, repre-
sents all prestations except mats. Mats are the only other
things that are categorized separately because they are
"real," traditional feminine valuables that express d_ok_ai
(respect) for their recipients.

Women give gifts, said the headman, to make the mother
and child happy. Women also responded to my questions
about the bisaba's purposes by saying that they wanted to
make this dyad happy or to signal their own happiness. I
could always understand their latter motivation, but the
former one puzzled me. The solution to this enigma may be
found, I believe, in the colonial period when women suppos-
edly lost interest in child care. Thus, the bisaba might
function like a rally that inspires or reassures the new
mother for her duty to the child. Maternal tasks had
involved other women, however, and it was women's lack of
mutual support in child care that was also held responsible

for the pOpulation demise. Therefore, the bisaba may addi-

138
tionally be seen as a means to encourage other women to
assist her.

Villagers also gave an.alternate explanation for the
frequencyof Matailobau bisaba that, I maintain, dovetails
with this ritual's meanings and goals and their history.
Their ideas center on women as givers of life and as being
more socially concerned than men. They describe Matailobau
women as kind, generous, and concerned about others, ine.,
as alonaka (good souls). A woman who is not generous, does

not give food as takitaki, etc., is an aloca (bad soul).

 

Men, or so remark the women (and observation bears out
their perception), do not concern themselves as unnfli with
other villagers' situations in order to determine who needs
help. Indeed, they say, it is because Matailobau women
have these characteristics that bisaba are so common here.
I argue further that the bisaba is a means of encouraging
and rewarding women for such behavior by calling down
blessings upon them. To emphasize womenhs significance in
creating a viable society, women are allowed to fully
participate in this one ritual instance -- idh, to give
speeches that they do not make at rites of passage or
political functions. There is, however, a subtle reminder
included in the bisaba celebration about women's life-
giving functions -- they'are tO‘view their claim to their
children in the same way that they view their bisaba gift,

as something that they give without expectation of compen-

139
sation or return prestation, thus reflecting womenfls posi-

tion in their conjugal mataqali.

 

Even in this ritual that focuses on women, their
places in groups per se are determined by their relation-
ships to men, as is evident in the headman's address. He
not only mentions the paramount's presence first, but in
his closing sentence he also refers to the presence of the
only other man from outside this household in attendance, a

member of Waivou mataqali. Waivou is the paramount's

 

warrior mataqali, and one of its members sat next to the

 

paramount during this speech. The relationship of these

matagpli is especially close because they belong to the

 

same phratry (yavusa).

After the headman had finished, people began to look
around to see who could respond to the presentation by
"touching" (pppp) the gifts. Several criteria have to be
met by the person who delivers the response. She/he must
be the eldest, highest-ranked person who can speak for the
honored recipients. A chiefly woman married to the para-
mount's father‘s brother‘s son received the gifts for the
household. In interviews with me, she explained that her
participation was due to the fact that she is chiefly, a

member of the paramount's mataqali but of another lineage:

 

that she is married to the paramount's cousin: and that the

feast was given to the matanitu (chiefdom or government).

 

In her speech this woman acknowledged the gifts and

thanked the household for the yapona that they had pre—

140
sented to the women. Thus, she spoke serially for the
bisaba recipients and for the women gift-givers. Her
selection as spokesperson for the women was equally attrib-

utable to her conjugal and natal mataqali affiliations.

 

Usually, a speaker for the recipients does not include a
reference about the yapona for the women. These tasks are
divided into two speeches. The general format is for the
acceptance speech to follow the presentation immediately.
This matron combined the acceptance of the gifts speech
with the speech of thanks for the yaqona. She said,

Au cavute vakaturaga Sika
vakaturaga Navulavula
vakaturaga Waivou
vakaturaga Vutu
vakaturaga Navua
vakaturaga Navanualevu

dua memudou.na yaqona na marama, Au vakacabore
vi kemudou me tara na magiti levu dou kaute mai
na siga nikua.. E lailai warai me kaute kemudou.
Au vakacabere na vakaturaga Navulavula,
Nakoroniu, Vutu, Navanualevu, noqu vanua.

I name in a chiefly manner mataqali Sika
chiefly Navulavula

chiefly Waivou

chiefly Vutu

chiefly Navua

chiefly Navanualevu

 

and on their behalf acknowledge your yagona for
the women. I give praise to you because I touch
this large feast that you brought here today.
What you brought is not little! I give chiefly
praise»to mataqali Navulavula, Nakoroniu, Vutu,
Navanualevu, and my land/government.

 

When she spoke for the household, she praised the women's

generosity vakaturagp (in a chiefly manner), that is, in a

 

respectful way. Turaga, both in the sense of chiefs and of

141

men, are worthy of respect. In all speeches we hear these

words used to honor others and to give kudos.

The vosa pp vinavinaka (speech of thanks) dedicating

 

the first round of yaqona to the women in gratitude for
their gifts was made by the newborn's father. Another

member of his mataqali could have given this speech, but at

 

the time, of those present he was the most appropriate for
the task. He followed his elder cousin's wife in the
speaking order because he is her junior, the greater pres-
tige of his maleness notwithstanding. His speech was as
follows:

Vakaturaga Nabena

vakaturaga Nasau

vakaturaga Waivou

vakaturaga Navulavula

vakaturaga Vutu

vakaturaga Navanualevu-Mataiqereqere

dua memuni yaqona qoi i so ni magati nu mai
cakave tiko. E leilei sara tiko na yaqona qoi
kenai kuri no me tovi lomani tiko. U kera tiko
me niu taure e na alo loloma yaqoni leilei sara u
cakave tiko qoi. Vacacabere me cabe. Vakaturaga
Nabena, Navanualevu, Navulavula, Nakoroniu,
Waivou, Vutu, Nasau.

Chiefly Nabena

chiefly Nasau

chiefly Waivou

chiefly Navulavula

chiefly Vutu

chiefly Navanualevu-Mataiqereqere

let this be your yagona then for the feast that
you are making here. Yours is a small amount of
yagona in its pot and I am sorry about the manner
in which I am serving it to you.

I am asking you to be of good heart and accept
this small amount of yapona that I am making

here. I am slow in praising the chiefly Nabena,
Navanualevu, Navulavula, Nakoroniu, Waivou, Vutu,
Nasau.

142
The headman accepted the yaqona with this speech.
Tara na yaqona vakaturaga. Yaqona ni bula.
Yaqona ni kalougata. Na bulabula tiko na marama.
Rau bulabula tiko na viluvena. Vakaturaga
Nakoroniu, Navulavula, Nabena, Vutu, Navua,
Mataiqereqere. E mana! e dina! a muduo!
I touch the chiefly yaqona. Yaqona for life.
Ya ona for luck. Let the women be healthy/flour-
ishing. Let the mother and child be healthy/
flourishing. Chiefly Nakoroniu, Navulavula,
Nabena, Vutu, Navua, Mataiqereqere. Oh power! Oh
truth! a great thanks!
In this speech there is a reference to the efficacy of the
chiefly, respected yaqona and its use in ritual to produce
salubrity. The yapona, associated with males, is connected
to life forces and‘given the same adjective as are ances-

tors, kalougata (auspicious or, more idiomatically appro-

priate, that which or those who bring blessings)4' and is
used to secure blessings for women. Utilizing a male
medium to obtain these boons may be interpreted as reflect-
ing men's leadership and greater cultural worth and women's
dependency upon men for guidance as well as the lesser
value attributed to their gender.

The official serving of yapona consists of the first
few cups, which express important hierarchic, age, liege-
vassal, and interchiefdom relationships among those
present. These servings are paired into "chiefly" and
”follower" cups. The highest-ranked or specially honored
person receives the first cup, and then the second cup goes
to his or her follower, ime., either a commoner vassal or a
representative of a chiefdom that is related to the first

person's territory. The third cup is presented to the

143
next-highest-ranked or honored person and the fourth to the
follower, and so on. The determination of the number and
order of servings is the pourer‘s province.

On this occasion, six cups were given. The first one
went to the paramount and the second to his warrior follow-
er, the wife of a Waivou man. The important point here is
that no Waivou man was inaattendance at that time, so the
senior Waivou man's'wife substituted for him. There was
then an opportunity for me to drink because I was someone
given respect as a European and as a guest who might have
high standing in her own society. I too had to be accom—
panied by an aide: this person was the second senior-most
Navulavula man's wife (the senior man's wife did not attend
the bisaba because of illness). ‘The last chiefly cup was
taken by the paramount's wife, the radini ipyp (high

queen), who was natally of chiefly Nasau mataqali of Nasau

 

chiefdom. Her follower was a woman natally of Nasau

mataqali and married to a Navulavula man whose mataqali is

 

 

vassal to both Nasau and the paramount's lineage. These
women displayed matrons' structurally ambivalent positions
because they came from one group, but one acted on behalf

of it and the other on behalf of her conjugal mataqpli.

 

The paramount's son gave his mother the cup, I
suggest, because he wanted to honor her as the child's
grandmother. This sentimental display (if, in fact, my
attribution of such motivation is correct) had to be done

within the context of structural relationships. Thus, the

144
grandmother was given the cup as the representative of
another chiefdom.

After these first cups were consumed, the pourer com-
pleted the sequence by saying the formula, "the chiefly
yaqona is now ended," and giving the three claps that
signal its termination. Then cups were given to everyone
else present. While these servings were being passed, the
newborn's mother was adding water to the yaqona root that
her older children were grinding for the second round.
This was an unusual thing for the childhs mother to do, but
as I noted before, she had borne the child a month earlier
and was not confined to bed, as a recently delivered mother
would have been. After a while, a younger woman married to

a Navulavula man and born in Nasau mataqali took over the

 

mother‘s task when the latter went to attend to the young-
ster suffering from measles. About this time the infant's
father stopped pouring the yapona because two men came to
"help" him. The first man to enter the house was a young
chief, who said that he and the baby's father were
"siblings”: he served the cups. Shortly after his arrival,
a young commoner took the father's place as pourer. This
young man's mataqali does not have a vassal relationship to
the paramount's house. When questioned as to why he
attended the ritual, the young man said that he and the

baby's father were viluveni (bound by a distant mother-

 

child tie). Of importance here is that these helpers

couched their explanations for their participation in this

145
domestic ritual in terms of kinship obligations.

It will be noted that the speech of benediction is not
included here: this is because there was some disagreement
about whether the new father delivered it. Since the
bisaba occurred only two weeks after my arrival in the
village, and I did not know that I should have brought
along a tape recorder,5 I had to obtain the speeches after
the event. At that time the new father only recalled
making the yaqona dedication speech: however, the women
attending the bisaba said that he also gave the benedic-
tion. Clarification of which speech the father made is not
a minor point in light of several factors -- the feast was
presented to the paramount, thus indicating its possible
public, political nature: no chief prays a benediction at a
public event: if the chief said the benediction, it would
mark the bisaba as a domestic ritual because, according to
informants, he may say the benediction in his own house but
not in another‘s or at a public event. The general consen-
sus was that the newbornfls father prayed the benediction.

Members of the bisaba recipients' household do not
have to present speeches or pour or serve yapona because
others can represent them. The baby‘s father‘s performance
of these tasks may be viewed as a sign of some lack of
social support. On the other hand, the fact that his son
occupied these roles was a sign of respect for the para-
mount.

When the tanoa was empty, a bucketful of yapona was

146
poured into it. llsecond round of dedication and accept-
ance speeches was made. A similar series of first cups
were offered to special people, but fewer than during the
first round (and without my participation -- I could not
drink very much). When the guests tired of conversation
and the tanoa was empty, the evening closed and the guests

departed.

ipp Second Ritual

The second bisaba to be discussed is the one for a
child born out of wedlock to a young girl who lived with
her parents, siblings, and maternal grandmother. They were
an affluent household but without much prestige and influ-
ence in the village because the householder was from
another village. He was in the irksome position of living
in his wife‘s village and thus not generally being expected
to contribute to public discussion, although he was infre-
quently, and sometimes facetiously, asked to do so.
Although this man was chiefly, his children were not
addressed with the titles that were their due. Even though

his own mataqali had kinship ties to the paramount's

 

lineage, this relationship had little influence on his
householdfls social position in the village. This family‘s
situation exemplifies that, although benefits accrue to men
through their wives, these situations somewhat degrade the
men because they are not part of the main structure of the

group with which they live and*which claims the land they

147
cultivate. Fijians sometimes react to such families' cir-
cumstances as deviations from an ideal pattern.

The householdfls village integration was facilitated by
the wife, who drew upon her womanly qualities and kinship
obligations and sentiments to obtain others' aid. For
example, for the bisaba she had asked some individuals to

participate: her natal mataqali sisters felt the usual

 

obligation to help one of their own: and there was also an
element of sympathy for this household, which had suffered
from several serious illnesses and a child's death.

This bisaba was a bittersweet event. There was joy
over the birth of a beautiful, healthy child, but sadness
about the lack of paternal kin. gppppippfl (children of
the path) are not a rarity, but their numbers do not assure
them others' acceptance of their status. An onus falls on
such children: e.g., they are sometimes reminded of their
lack of paternal affiliations by their taunting grade-
school classmates. Often they become the responsibility of
the maternal grandparents when the mothers move away “to
have their husbands' childrenJ" The fate of such children
rests with the maternal kin with whom they live, iJL, the
mothers' parents, sisters, or brothers. Some children are
educated and well cared for, while others sometimes are
given minimal attention. Unmarried women who work in urban
areas may keep their children with them. A married woman
may have her out-of—wedlock child live with her after she

and her husband have had a child.

148

In the case presented here, the grandparents supported
the mother during her pregnancy, purchased baby clothes,
and accompanied hertuathe hospital for what they thought
might be a complicated birth. Their caring was evident at
the bisaba, which both attended and at which both presented
yapona and cigarettes. At most bisaba only yaqona is given
to the guests. Interestingly, it was at the two bisaba for
unwed mothers that I attended that yagona and cigarettes
were given by the hosts. It was only at the bisaba to
establish the new pastor and his household as village
residents that no yagona was given: he reciprocated the
women's gifts with a whale's tooth.

This bisaba began about 9:00 p.m. As the women
arrived, two aspects of the assemblage became apparent.
One was that the most common gifts were kerosene and sugar.
Only a few taro were presented because villagers had
smaller than average food stores available: they had under-
estimated their subsistence and cash crop needs, and the
weather had been poor. The second attribute of thelgroup
was that women immediately began performing tasks for the
household. A neighbor poured the individual quart-sized
bottles of kerosene into a large plastic container.
Another woman consolidated the prestations of sugar into a
large jar. The yaqona was stirred by the wife of the
paramount's younger brother, who was shortly relieved of
this job by a woman from the grandmotheris mataqali. This

second woman became the pourer for most of the evening.

149

When she decided to sit in the pavilion adjacent to the
house, her place was taken by the first woman's son. A
Sulisuli chief served the yagona and gave some of the
speeches. People involved with the yapona traced their
relationships to the family in these ways: one woman
shared natal mataqali membership with the grandmother: the
other woman and her son were associated with the grand-
father: and the Sulisuli chief traced his connection
through the grandmother.

The caka pp pp vakacabore yi Tamai Verenaisi (the task
of ”offering the pp to" the newborn's grandfather) was done
by the headman.

Tamai Verenaisi, vakaturaga Nacoicolo, qo dua na

ba lailai sa taure mai na marama. Me na ba nomu

itani tukuna Taukei ni Waluvu. Me mai bisaba

veidrau veiluveni. Vakacabera, vakaturaga

Naceicolo, Nakoroniu.

Tamai Verenaisi, chiefly Naceicolo, this is a

small amount of pp that the women bring here.

This should be the pp of your distant place says

the Taukei ni Waluvu. Here the bisaba should be
for you two, mother and child. I praise the

chiefly Naceicolo, Nakoroniu.

This speech's cordiality is due to the grandfather's kin-
ship with the paramount and the headman's uxoral link to
the grandmother's mataqali, Nakoroniu. The headman is the
descendant of a Nakoroniu woman, and as such, he felt an
obligation to help at the ritual, as he did when inviting
villagers into the house for the cohabitation ritual. Like
the other dedication speech, this one is addressed to the
householder but implies that the pp should be prepared for

the new mother and child: it too laments the smallness of

150
the women's prestations. A recognition of the house-
holder‘s origin is included, along wittla comment that he
should feel that the feast is the kind that he would
receive in his home village. Unlike the other dedication

speech, this one includes the natal mataqali of the grand-

 

mother, something that appears to be done usually when the
bawaS mother is from the village. At the bisaba for the
paramount's granddaughter, the omission of the mother's

mataqali may have been accidental, or it may have been due

 

to the fact that she is a<nnnmoner from another province.
Either reason is plausible. Regretfully, I did not inquire
into this matter.

The grandfather formally received the feast by saying

Au tara tiko na magiti, magiti ni bula, magiti ni
kalougata dei tiko na veiwekani. Soko tiko na
kena dra: kalougata na noda vanua: tubo tiko na
cakcaka ni kalou. E Mana! e dina! A muduo,
muduo, muduo. A muduo, muduo, muduo.

I touch the feast, the feast of life/health, the
efficacious/lucky feast brought here by rela-
tives. The blood is thick here: our land is
blessed, god's work is continuing to grow. Oh
power! Oh truth! A great thanks, a great
thanks, a great thanks. A great thanks, a great
thanks, a great thanks.

The grandfather stressed the life-giving qualities of the
prestations (focusing on the few taro actually presented).
He gave kudos to Namatai village, and to associate himself
more closely with his guests he categorized them as non-

agnatic relatives and did not list their specific mataqali.

 

The Sulisuli chief who would serve the yapona that

evening offered the yaqona to the women on behalf of the

151

grandfather. This speech is the pp vosa nai cavu pi toka-

 

toka pp mataqali (the speech that calls out the lineages or

 

mataqali) of the people present. It listed the women's

 

houses (na bure ni marama).

Vakaturaga Nabena delai Navaulele
vakaturaga Navulavula

vakaturaga Waivou

vakaturaga vutu

vakaturaga Nakoroniu

kei na veidela ni yavu ni marama.

Dua na tanoa yaqona au vakacabore tiko ya qoi.
Qoi nai so ni magiti levu ko do kaute mai na
marama me baleti rau na veiluveni.

Kitou niutake ni va mai magiti ni bula, me rau
mai bulabula na veiluveni, me mai to na wai ni
sucu, ke lailai mo dou vosote.

Mai balabalavu na vosa ni yaqona, mai vakacabere
cabe vakaturaga e Nabena, vakaturaga e Nasautoka,
Navua, kei na vei matabure kece sara e sogo ni
vata tiko e loma ni vale.

Ka tu.

Chiefly Nabena delai Navaulele
chiefly Navulavula

chiefly Waivou

.chiefly Vutu

chiefly Nakoroniu

and the housesites of the women.

I am offering this bowl of yagona.

I am giving this to repay the women for the big
feast that they brought to the child and mother.
We think that this feast of life will make the
mother and child grow well, to give more milk to
the mother's breast, pardon us if what we brought
is too small. -

I have talked for a long time, here let me praise
chiefly Nabena, chiefly Nasau, Navua, and all the
houses attending in this house.

Let this be/It is coming up.

The chief enumerated the village mataqali first, ine., the
women's conjugal kin, and then included the women's natal
mataqali. He listed all the things that peOple say are of

concern in the bisaba -- honoring the mother and child,

152
hoping for their well-being, providing a means for increas-
ing the mother‘s milk, and respecting the womenfs contribu-
tions to these goals. At the end of the speech, he

mentioned the natal mataqali of an old widow and of two

 

women from other chiefdoms.

This chief's presence at the bisaba is a direct result
of his kinship connections to this household: he was the
new mother's cross—cousin, a potential spouse. It was the
grandmother who asked him to give this address. He felt
obliged to assist at the bisaba because, in his words, “I
am the path from Verenaiseds mother, because I call her my
father‘s sister. Verenaise's child is the same for her [my
father"s sister] as my child.” If the kinship and marriage
system was operating perfectly, this chief might be the
father of this newborn, and his father's sister would be
his mother-in-law. The persuasive grandmother could call
upon her brothe1”s child to add his aristocratic presence
and oratorical skill to her grandchildhs bisaba based upon
the potential in-law relationship between them, but more
especially because of the respect and deference he owed her
as his father‘s sister.

But let us look at the chief's relationship to the new
mother, his cross-cousin. Cross-cousins not only enjoy a
relaxed relationship, but one in which sharing and assist-
ance are expected. Therefore, the chief's aid could be
anticipated merely on the basis of his tie to the new

mother. This aspect of the cross-cousin bond was also

153
illustrated in the grandfather's behavior, when he handed
five packages of cigarettes to his cross-cousin, his wife's
half-sister (the women had the same mother), to distribute
to the other women.

Then with a speech essentially the same as the one he
used at the paramount's grandchild's bisaba, the headman
received the yapona on behalf of the women -- but made no
mention of the cigarettes. After he concluded, he glanced
around to find the appropriate woman to bless the yapona.
His selection criteria were twofold: the eldest and the
most highly ranked woman present. A 75-year-old widow born
in Namatai in Sulisuli lineage, 1”“: was visiting her
sister, was chosen by him to give this speech, This was
her benediction:

Yaqona dina e caka

Caka vakaturaga mai Naceicolo, mai Nakoroniu,

Nabena, Navaulele, Nasau, Navua, Vutu, Nabena

Nasautu.

Yaqona ni bula,

Yaqona kaukauwa.

Bulabula vata tiko.

Tubu na lotu ‘

Mana e dina. A vura. A muduo, a muduo, a muduo!

Real yagona is made

Made in a chiefly way from Naceicolo, from

Nakoroniu, Nabena, Navaulele, Nasau, Navua, Vutu,

Nabena Nasautu.
Yapona for life,

Strong yapona.
Let us all here be healthy.

Faith/power grows,
Real power. I repeat. A great thanks, a great

thanks, a great thanks!

As did the paramount's son, this chiefly woman gave the
benediction, which is the privilege of commoners at public,

political events. Her prayer again expressed the domestic

154
nature of this ritual. She, like the paramountha son, was

related to the bisaba's principals: she was pppp, a

descendant of a woman of Nakoroniu mataqali, the newbornfis

 

grandmother‘s mataqali with which this household affiliated

 

in Namatai.

The first cups of yapona were given to chiefly women
and their followers at the other bisaba. I was given a
cup, but this time for a special honor -- the child was my
namesake. To demonstrate my relationship with the infant,
I sat at the center of the gathering in the highest-ranked
position and directly in front of where she slept.

The child was named after me by her maternal grand-
mother, who said that she did so because we had qualities
in common -- relatively fair skin and, by implicit refer-
ence to her non-Fijian father, foreign extraction. Name-

sakes have a special bond: they are yacadrau (those two

 

with the same name) and should support and assist each
other. As a relatively wealthy and powerful person, I was
therefore a good choice to help a child whose social inher-
itance had been affected by her parental ethnic differences
and unmarried state.

After these first few cups were given, the formal
serving was closed. As the remainder of the guests and
hosts had their turns for yagona, laughter and joking
filled the house. Iksecond serving of yapona was brought
in a metal bucket from the pavilion into the house. The

young chief also dedicated it. This time, however, the

155

paramounths wife received it for the women: she did so for
two reasons. First, she was the second senior-most woman
present: her rank, however, was based on her husband's, who
was the highest ranked and oldest villager. Secondly, her
husband had a kinship tie to the grandfather‘s group. This
woman's participation, which was related to her marital
status and her husband's kinship ties, depicts some impor-
tant features of Fijian society. Matrons are affected by
principles of age and rank that govern social interaction
differently for them than they do for men: they are some—
times ranked according to their husbandhs hierarchic posi-
tions. The chief, however, was younger than the widow and
thus behind her in the ranking order according to age. As
did the woman who gave the first speech, widows can act
according to their own or their deceased husbands' ranks in
some circumstances.

This second -serving of yapona is called the last
offering (pp otioti viqaravi). It is understood that,
after it, no more yagona will be given, and that when it is
consumed the women are expected to leave. The village
headman's benediction for it calls upon the yagona's and
the paramount's blessings.

Kacivi tiko na yaqona. Yaqona vakaturaga.

Nabena Taukei na Waluvu. Yaqona tiko na bula.

Veilomani tiko. Rau bulabula tiko veiluveni.

Mana e dina. A muduo, a muduo, a muduo!

The yapona is calling. The chiefly yagona.

Nabena, Owner of the Floods. The yaqona is for

life. It is for everyone here. Let you two,

mother and child, flourish. True power. A great
thanks, a great thanks, a great thanks!

156

Because it has potent qualities and can be a means of
relating to powers that can confer human longings, yaqona
is called upon to grant the speaker‘s wishes. It is par-
tially the verbalization of the wishes, the calling upon
the power of the yaqona, that can make human desires reali-
ty. Yaqona is drunk in the hopes that its qualities and
those of the powers with which it communicates will be
transmitted to those who consume it. At this ritual, the
yaqona is called upon to make the mother and child and the
other participants, ine., the other women, flourish.

Thus, the bisaba's goals meet the needs of a society
that has been affected by foreign domination, high infant
mortality, low birth rate, and malaise. The bisaba is
directed at the women, who are believed to be responsible
for the loss of their children and thus of their culturefls
vitality. Cheering the mother and child is part of womenfis
usual function at gatherings -- that is, to enliven, to
energize, as we saw at the cohabitation ritual -- and may
be at the bisaba a metaphor for the reciprocal support that
women should extend to each other in the interests of
social survival. Women may be expected to assist others
because they function as the community‘s care-givers, which
is illustrated by their provisioning others with food. It
is no wonder that women should be identified with taro,
that is, the preferred food, one that yields a complete
meal and that contributes to the production of breast milk,

everyone's first food.

157

Taro and women may also be equated because both must
be assiduously cultivated: this is shown in the bisaba and
cohabitation rituals, where women are guided toward social-
ly approved behavior. Steering women to proper wifely and
maternal behavior is of utmost importance because these are
society's sustainers and care-givers, whose intrinsic re-
generative energy can be subverted. Women are capricious
because their souls are weak and fluid: if left uncon-
trolled, women might undermine communal goals.

The bisaba and the cohabitation ritual are alike in
their illustrations of the importance of sisterhood. In the
bisaba the sister's worth is manifested in the fact that,
regardless of her marital status, the mother is feted
because her child is the«expression of her sisterhood and

her mataqali's sacred blood. Secondly, women speak on

 

behalf of their natal units. Lastly, the father‘s sister‘s
role conceptualizes the utility of women as intermediaries

in mataqali relations.

 

'Womenfls dual mataqali affiliations are also shown in

 

the bisaba. Indeed, the flexibility, the contextual
influence in their group identifications, is reflected in
womenfls bisaba participation, where they can act on behalf
of their natal or affinal mataqali. The bisaba, like the
cohabitation ritual, appears to say that however, whenever,
or wherever women will contribute to social well-being,

they will be assigned a place in a group.

158

Although there are similarities between women's parti-
cipations and perceptions of them in these two rituals,
there are<differences between them too. A¢.the cohabita-
tion ritual, women moved quietly, preparing food -- that
is, they did not speak for groups during the gift ex-
changes, as men did, and while some of them dressed the
couple in their new clothes, no women addressed the gather-
ing. Indeed, it was only when the women were alone for the
"drying" of the girl that they formally spoke, and then on

behalf of their natal mataqali. Women spoke only as

 

vakavuru performers, when they occupied other personae and
were, as clowns, in a liminal position -— that is, outside
a structurally acceptable status and role.

At the bisaba, women can give speeches throughout the
ritual and on behalf of either their conjugal or their

natal mataqali. Additionally, women are spoken of as the

 

focus of attention in the bisaba, as the ones who organize
bisaba for ailing persons, and as the important actors in
it. I suggest three explanations for these differences
between the cohabitation ritual and the bisaba in regard to
women's involvement in them. One is that the cohabitation
ritual is a rite of passage that consists of men, repre-
senting corporate groups, who are expressing changes in
status for mataqali and two of their respective members.
Second, the bisaba is a domestic ritual that does not

necessarily entail the participation of mataqali as corpo-

 

rate entities and, therefore, does not require that men

159
lead the ritual. Lastly, childbirth is a process that
traditionally was supervised by women: likewise, women,
with their agnates} support, controlled their fecundity.
Perhaps the bisaba is dominated by women to prevent them
from rebelling against nmnvs domination by refusing mater-
nal care to the infant and sororal assistance to the

mother.

Summary

A child's birth occasions the celebration of
Matailobau continuity and the recognition that this new
life must be nourished. The bisaba is part of the wish to
fete and nurture the neonate. Women are largely respon-
sible for these processes and outcomes, and this is signi-
ficant in the bisaba. They give the infant's mother a
substance that should increase her milk: the substance is
the regenerative stalk of taro -- the symbol of the bisaba
and the plant with which women are associated in several
respects.

Both women and taro give immediate and future presta-
tions. As taro provides a complete -- but separable --
food for adults and infants, so too do women provide a
complete means for social regeneration, i.e., giving
children to their affines and making these same offspring
the potential spouses of members of their own groups.
Women are identified with the bisaba because they are

viewed as having life-maintaining and life—sustaining func-

160

tions. ‘Thus, they are the ones who present, or withhold,
food, the symbol of and basic requirement for existence.

Womenhs significant relationships are also depicted in
the bisaba: cross-sex sibling bonds are expressed in it,
especially in the role of father‘s sister but also in that
of cross-cousins. We again see that women's structural
position is ambivalent, but we see this more clearly in
this ritual, where women represent their natal or affinal
group, than in the cohabitation ritual. The argument is

made that the father's sister's role epitomizes women's

dual mataqali affiliation.

 

Notes

1 Power (mana) can be obtained by having contact with a
person rich in it. For instance, the paramount's wife
is in a position to call upon her powers to bless others
by virtue of her sharing in some measure her husband's
qualities. The mechanism for obtaining blessings that
are associated with powerful persons was illustrated to
me by an experience that my daughter had in the village.
An hour before he died, a highly ranked chief kissed my
infant daughter, who was visiting at his house with
another child. People told me that my child would be
lucky for the rest of her life because she was the last
person to receive a kiss from a "big chief" before he
died. Another example of the luck that can be conferred
by the touch of a chief occurred when the Tui ppp, the
paramount of the Fiji Islands, came to visit Namatai.
In my exuberance to greet him, I stood up and extended
my hand to him: he grasped it, and I began to shake it
enthusiastically. People were aghast by my impertinence
-- to stand when I should have decorously taken to the
shadows and to dare to touch someone of great power.
The result, however, was that I had taken the hand of
the highest ranked Fijian chief and had obtained good
fortune and some of his personal power from him.

 

During the course of my research, two men alternated as
headman. The first one, who was divorced with children,
presented the women's gifts: the second, who was the
headman's brother's son, acted as headman when the
senior man was out of the village. ‘This young, single

4

161

man did not represent the women. When he brought them
to a bisaba, a senior woman gave the speeches.

The man who pointed out the disparity in the number and
kinds of bisaba between Lau and Matailobau noted other
differences as well. In Lau, celebrations of first-
borns'bdrths include, besides the raw tubers, presta—
tions of elaborately decorated mats and other costly
items, e.gH, whale's teeth. Matailobau bisaba can
include store-bought goods but do not include clothing,
and rarely mats (recall that the one mat was given by a
woman from another area). In regard to the store-bought
goods, he said that it was obvious that these were
recent innovations and perhaps indications of these
people's misunderstandings of the form and meaning of
bisaba, i.e., the prestation of raw tubers. Presenting
a store-bought gift, he suggested, may be due to having
forgotten to harvest crops for the events, which may in
turn be due, in part, to the frequency and perhaps the
spontaneity of these events.

Yagona is presented and consumed with ritual precision
because of its mystical properties. Two people serve
the yapona: one pours a portion into a cup made from a
coconut shell and the other gives the cup to persons at
the gathering. People drink in turn from a single cup.
After the "official” first few rounds, several cups may
be circulated at a large affair. There are two ways to
serve yapona. It may be presented in the server‘s right
hand with the left hand steadying the right elbow while
the server is squatting before the recipient. Yapona may
also be dispensed with the server maintaining a
military-type posture of erectness and deliberate move-
ments -- the serveris eyes are devoid of any focus, the
cup is supported with both hands, the server squats or
kneels before the cup's recipient. The recipient first
gives several short claps with her cupped hands, then
reaches for the cup with her right hand. Hand claps are
signs of respect, e.g., before touching a chief to
administer a bandage, one should clap. Because it is
revered, yapona is guarded against careless spilling.
Indeed, to sova pp yagona (to spill out [this is the
verb used for the disposal of garbage]) is a significant
part of the sorcery technique.

Using a tape recorder was a folly, I learned, because
when it was on, speeches became a field for competition
in erudition, length, and genealogical acumen. In
natural settings, people give speeches according to the
formulae that they learned from parents or other elders.
Even when the speaker's emotions would flood through a
speech and affect the formula, the content, replete with
emotion, would be recalled months later. Fijians have
excellent memories. Once I understood this, I believed
that it was better to record a speech after the event

162

rather than capture the dubious spontaneity of the
situation as it happened.

CHAPTER 4

THE FUNERAL

The role of the woman who has facilitated the affinal
relationship that is brought into realignment at the
funeral is muted. Her maternal role and function are not as
stressed as they were in the bisaba. Instead, we see her
completing the cycle of affinal relations begun at her
cohabitation ritual: the child who established consanguin-
eal ties between her and her spouse's kin has expired,
leaving the affinal ties as tenuous as before its birth,
and what continues to be salient about her» as before her
motherhood, is her worth as a sister. Because she is

mataqali sister, her group was concerned about her marital

 

union, and then her fecundity and offspring, and is now
interested in properly burying the sacred substance that
she created and in which they share.

As at the other rituals, we see at the funeral the
strength and importance of groups. The deceasedhs parents'
roles are subsumed into their respective mataqali statuses,
which define the deceased's agnatic kin (affinal kin, in
the case of a woman) as the "owners of the death" and give
the maternal relatives another kind of prOprietary rela-
tionship to the deceased. As at the cohabitation ritual,

the exchange of substance and person between mataqali at

 

the funeral and the compensation that is made for such a

transfer is stressed. At the funeral, the child that the

163

164
maternal kin gave to their affines is taken by them or
given back to them to be interred.

There is the suggestion that those who had the right to
release someone to its paternal groups may have the right
to take that life and bury its remains. The act of burial
is, however, a nurturant one, the final tending and
wrapping of a human being. Burial is, therefore, a mater-
nal act that uxoral kin, who share in the mother‘s quali-
ties and functions, should perforhn At the funeral, how—

ever, the maternal mataqali must receive a whale's tooth

 

(pp kena ula, it's head) for burying the body from the
deceased's group as recompense for their labors and sub—
stance. The tooth refers to the deceased's head, the
bodyis most respected part1 and the symbol of its essence,
which the maternal relatives allowed to exist when they
relinquished their right in the deceased and its mother.
The owners of the death's presentation of the pp l_<e_np pip
tooth to the maternal kin may be a means of resolving any
sense of social imbalance signaled by the death, or it may
be a way to facilitate the resumption of their relation-
ship.

There is a notion of disequilibrium between these
groups because people maintain that if this tooth is not
given to the deceased's maternal unit, the yppp, then
calamity will befall the deceased's matapali.2 The threat
of the ypppfs power over the deceased's people may be

related to the belief that they may be responsible for the

165

death, because deaths may be caused by supernatural inter-
vention and because the mother‘s group, particularly her
brother, had power over her fecundity and her children's
viability. The pppp's power is also shown by its members
requiring to be fed and to be sheltered by the deceased's
relatives, to determine the funeral's size and format, and
to have ypip women attend with it and not with their con-
jugal units. Yet for all this display of privilege and
might, the yppp still portrays the nurturance attributed to
maternal relatives, because burying their sister‘s child is
an act that reflects the care giving that marks such rela-
tionships.

Echoed in the other womenfls funeral participation and
presentatitulof food and mats are the deceased's mother's
female qualities of sustenance and care giving. As shown
in the other two rituals, womenfls food giving exemplifies
sentiments of caring and sustenance, and their mats like-
wise represent feelings of respect and devotion. In the
funeral ritual, mats have a special role as the traditional
and most common wrapping for the deceased. ‘Thus, women are
again involved in the transfer of substance, as in the
cohabitation and bisaba rituals, this time by producing the
conveyance in which the deceased is moved to (and which
remains in) the grave.

There are other similarities between womenfls roles in
the funeral and the cohabitation ritual: women do not

represent groups and their exchanges at either ritual.

166
While women are again "silent" at the funeral, they provide
something essential to the ritual task, their mats, and in
this regard their roles are reminiscent of their cohabita-
tion ritual and bisaba functions. The qualities of femi-
nine weakness and malleability and their lesser cultural
worth shown in the other rituals are also manifested at the
funeral ritual. Womenfs frailty is displayed at the funer-
al by their (relatively) unrestrained keening, while the
men show'that their souls are strong and solid by sitting
in quiet repose in the ypip pi ppip_(house of theldeath).
The greater value of masculine things is depicted by the
greater investment of interest, resources, and time in
men's funerals. But women's more modest funerals also
signal, I argue, the fact that their interstitial position,
so useful on so many ritual and nonritual occasions, makes

mataqali commitments to them weaker than they are for men,

 

who are unequivocally identified with one group. ~The

staunchness of the mataqali's investment in the deceased as

 

its member is translated into the attention given to'the
funeral.

The funeral, like the cohabitation ritual, lasts four
days and is situated in the deceased's household. Unlike
in the cohabitation and bisaba rituals, the deceased as the
ritual's principal is not ensconced within the sleeping
area but is enveloped in mats (occasionally in a coffin) in
the middle of the upper end of the house. Also like in the

cohabitation ritual, there are visitors, feasts given by

167
the deceasedhs kin, and exchanges between mourners and the
deceased's matapali.
As soon as the villagers hear about a death, either by
witnessing the grief of the deceasedfls household members or

by hearing about it, mataqali gather to decide when they

 

will go as a unit to the deceased's house and what they
will present to the bereaved. Men usually give whales'
teeth and sometimes cows. Women typically determine
whether they will present used clothing, new cloth or
clothing, mats, or pppi (mulberry bark cloth, which is

obtained from coastal areas). A mataqali may also give

 

tinned crackers, tea, sugar, or money. Gifts are ranked,
and thus their presentation reflects the relationships
between donors and recipients and are also a means of
bolstering the donors' prestige.

While other mataqali are deciding upon their presta-

 

tions, in the house of the death the family and others who
may be committed to assisting in the preparation of the
body, eqy, the vassals of chiefs, wash it and clothe it in
clean, and sometimes special, garments. After the corpse
has been bundled in several large mats, certain categories

of persons may sit near it at the upper end of the house

 

when visitations begin: women of the deceased's mataqali,
the deceasedfls widow and her sisters, the paramount chief,

and other chiefs who have ties to the deceasedhs mataqali.

 

Other mourners and household members sit along the walls

and in front of the body at the lower end of the house. If

168

there is room in the house, all adult matagali members will
enter it to pay their respects to the deceased and its kin.
Otherwise, men will go to the pavilion erected adjacent to
the house of the death, and women, carrying their mats,
will enter'the house to keen. Men, who in all situations
are supposed to be more reserved than women, do not express
their sorrow in the stylized, high-pitched wailing.

After their presentations, the deceased's co-villagers
may leave the house either to make room for new mourners or
to return to their respective household tasks. Mourners
from outside the village may stay with the deceased's
family or lodge in another village home to which they are
related either by kinship or as each othei”s "doors." If
burial does not occur on the funeral's first day, mourners
gather in the house of the death to sing Christian songs
throughout the night. Every adult villager who possibly
can should come for some time to this vigil. During the

four days either the deceased's mataqali or another

 

mataqali will provide a cow orcows to feed the mourners.

 

Root crops for these meals are given by the deceased's

relatives and in takitaki by other village groups. The

 

fourth-day feast (ppppp) closes the ritual with a distribu-
tion of meat village-wide and to all non-village mourners
to carry to their homes.

One group of mourners, the bikabika, resides in the
house of death for at least the four days of the funeral

ritual. Bikabika in this context refers to the act of

 

169

staying with the deceased's closest survivors. Bikabika

 

membership is determined locally, but usually consists of
socially mature men and women, iJL, persons who are or
were once married but who do not have to provide family
meals or child care. Women with dependent children, house-
wives responsible for households, and male householders may

choose to join the bikabika when the deceased is a member

 

of their household, some informants said. The bikabika

 

performs a task, has its work (cakacaka) -- to stay in the

 

house of the death, to talk about the deceased, "to think
about the deceased,” and thus to comfort the most bereaved.

Bikabika members are not allowed to cultivate, fish,

 

collect firewood, or do housework. They take all meals in
the house of the death and sleep there as well. The length
of the bikabikafs vigil is dependent upon their sentiments
for the deceased and the deceased's rank and social net-

work. Men and chiefs usually have bikabika that stay

 

together longer than the four-day funeral as a means of
signifying the respect given to these categories of
persons.

Regardless of the deceased's characteristics, as the
ritual unfolds, as at the cohabitation ritual, the
person(s) occasioning the event appear to produce the back-
ground for it, while intergroup relations take prominence.
The significance of groups and their organization into
"sides" is demarcated at the funeral by the respective

roles of the owners of the death and the wexa.

170

Funerals are organized by the deceasedfls mataqali and

 

wexa: their respective roles are influenced by the vicissi-

tudes of each particular funeral. The deceasedhs mataqali

 

is responsible for feeding mourners, and the yppp has the
right to call mourners to the funeral. But if the pppp is
not informed of the death because it resides on a distant
island or if for some other reason it cannot or will not
attend the funeral and fulfill its obligations, the owners
of the death will determine to whom the death is announced.

Announcing a death to a mataqali or household obligates it

 

to attend the funeral. The deceased's gender, rank, and
personal characteristics may influence the number and kinds
of groups invited to the funeral: this will be illustrated
in the following descriptions. The circumstances surround-
ing the survivors, eug., insufficient resources to host
many mourners, also affect the number of announcements the
bereaved send. The announcements that we have been dis-
cussing are of two types. Sending a man whose mataqpli has
the specific obligation to carry such a message to another
village or mataqali is the traditional means of announcing
a death. The modern form of announcement is a radio
message.

Another group of people who supervise aspects of the
funeral proceedings is the gravediggers, the bouta. The
bouta is formed on the first day of the funeral. A repre-
sentative of the deceased's kin may choose the bouta

leader, who in turn can select several other men. The

171
bouta leader is "like a chief" during the four days of the
funeral and, as such, can impose fines on those who behave
in a manner that is disrespectful to the deceased or the
bereaved. Merrymaking or, in the case of a chieffls funer-
al, sitting with one's legs straight out in front are
examples of behavior for which a person can be fined and
must pay the bouta cigarettes, whales' teeth, or whatever
he determines appropriate to the misdemeanomu The bouta
can retain the fine or give it to someone else. In his
chiefly capacity, the bouta leader also places a tabu on
part of a taro garden and a section of a stream. The taro
in this plot and the fish in these waters are reserved for
the feast culminating the mourning on the 100th day after

the death. The bouta is like the bikabika in that it stays

 

in the house of the death for the duration of the funeral.
Villagers said that the ppppp is "held" in the house of the
death for the four days and is "released" (ppkp) after the
feast on the fourth day.

The involvement of the pppp, the size and duration of
the bikabika and ppppp, the extent of other peoplehs parti-
cipation, and.the qualitative aspects of funerals are in-
fluenced by the deceased's«characteristics, particularly
the culturally assigned traits of gender. I will illustrate
this in my comparative descriptions of the funerals of an
old woman and an old man. For example, Fijians use the
term vibeci (to despise) to express the lack of formal

cultural regard given women in comparison with men. A

172

major descriptive feature of the sexes is that the mascu-
line characteristics of strength and solidity outrank femi-
nine traits of relative weakness and malleability. As
their supposed inherent qualities are rated, so too are the
sexes: women are not valued as highly as men in Fijian
society. It is this general devaluing of women that par-
tially explains the smallness and relative penuriousness of
the widow‘s funeral to be described here.

Masculinity is also honored because men represent
groups and Fijian society per se: as such, they are of a
different order than women and more worthy of respect.
Men's representational roles, I argue, are linked to their
unambiguous identity with one group, whereas women's affil—
iation may be divided between their affinal and natal kin.
Women can affiliate with two units because their fluid,
weak, malleable natures allow this associational flexibil-
ity that is denied men, whose more solid essences militate
against their absorption into their wives' groups.

To wit, the old woman's mataqali affiliation was not

 

only shared between her natal and affinal kin -- her tie to
her conjugal mataqali was fragile by definition because it
depended on the continuation of her marriage. As a widow,
her group identification was further blurred by the expec-
tation that a widow may either return to her agnates or
remain with her children and affines after her husband's

death. A widow‘s mataqali identity is made more ambiguous

 

when she affiliates with both groups, as she can do serial-

173
1y at rituals or in daily affairs. Even when she has opted
to remain with her affines, however, without her husband's

presence her conjugal mataqali membership is tenuous. .A

 

widow can be driven from her deceased husbandfls home -- as
happened during the research period -- by her son's angry
words, "This is not your home!" A widow's uncertain
mataqali membership hinders others from giving her the kind
of loyalty and steadfast support that can be rendered to a
man, who is securely identified with a group.

The differences in the sexes' respective incorpora-
tions into kin groups also result in disparities in the
amount of social disruption brought about by their respec-

tive deaths, I maintain. Deaths of persons whose mataqali

 

membership is unambiguous will produce larger hiatuses in
the social network than those whose group affiliation is
indeterminate. To reweave the social reticule rent by such
persons' passing, more lavish funerals involving more
people are held. The greater emphasis on mataqali's
exchanges and mourners'amticulation of their structural
relations to the deceased help to substantiate this view-
point. By this same argument, more highly ranked and
regarded persons} demises will create more stress to extant
relationships than will deaths of persons with the opposite
characteristics. Thus, the qualitative differences between
these funerals can be explained in terms of the greater
prestige accorded men: men's firmer mataqali identification

and subsequent support from their co-members, and the

174
greater disruption caused by their deaths due to these two
preceding variables.

I offer as substantiation of my interpretation of the
differences between men's and women's funerals these out-
lines of the mortuary rituals that I will later describe
more fully. The widow's burial occurred within twenty-four
hours of her death. She was wrapped in mats and carried to
her grave by two young chiefs, followed by a small cortege.
To avoid feeding members of her pppp, her son told them
that they did not have to fulfill their funerary function.
The yppp, for its part, did not want to incur expenses in

doing so. Her affinal mataqali buried her. The bikabika

 

 

was small, composed of women who sat for only the four days
of the funeral. No woman wore the black mourning dress in
her honor, and there were no plans for a memorial grave
marker. The EE.EEEE.ELE whale's tooth was neither given
nor even chosen for her pppp during the funeral. The
poverty of preparations for and personnel involved in her
funeral was due to her commoner female status and her lack
of a large and strong social network of village women,
which is attributable to her own personality.

Her personal characteristics and recent physical and
mental degeneration worked against her having many women

supporters, but her social weakness (malumalumu), said

 

female informants, may have been due to the fact that her

husband was deceased and thus there was no one to attract

 

mentx>her bikabika. Her personal belongings were burned

175
instead of being given to her pppp or other close kin. The
burning of her possessions was not discussed by informants
but may be associated with their belief that she had a
powerful spirit familiar whose connection with her effects
the living did not wish to retain. When her daughters
spoke sorrowfully of her passing, they reminisced about the
widow's generous allocation of time in child care and
companionship» The daughter who tended the widow imme-
diately before she died and in whose house the funeral
feasts were held compared her father-in-law‘s unwillingness
to ease her burden of child care and other tasks with her
mother's aid. The widow's son-in-law also mentioned his
mother-in-law's help and thoughtfulness when we discussed
her funeral months after the event. The few who grieved
over the widow's death and the meagerness of her funeral
are contrasted with the numbers involved in and the lavish-
ness of the old man's funeral.

This octogenarian man was leader of commoner mataqali

 

Vutu ahd was respected for his generosity to village
projects and his amiable personality. He and his sons
prepared for his funeral by selecting his largest cow and
whalefls tooth, and his sons purchased a coffin. His large
‘yppp took on its full funerary responsibility and liberally

presented valuables to his mataqali. The funeral cortege

 

was headed by the paramount, his bikabika contained men and

 

women and sat for more than a week, and his wife donned

black mourning clothes in his memory. People’s mourning

176

was affected by the value they place on men, whose mascu-

linity deserves respect and vflu: are begettors of matagali

 

members.

The genders' traits that partially explain the dispar-
ities in the qualities of funerals for men and women are
also related to the sexes' funerary participation. The
strong, able men speak for groups at funerals, and because
of their representational roles, they are respected.
Unlike men, women are "silent" at these rituals -- not in
Ardener‘s (1975) sense of not having access to the cultur-
ally dominant speech style, but in terms of not formally

speaking on behalf of mataqali. Women's funeral tasks are

 

influenced by their nurturant qualities, and that is why
they provide life-sustaining food and present mats. The
sexes'traits and funeral roles can be viewed as complemen-
tary. Women and men perform their respective ritual func-
tions partly on behalf of each other. Likewise, the
genders' valuables are also complementary and signal that
various prestations are required to properly celebrate the
ritual. Whales' teeth, like men, can represent all the

wealth a mataqali is presenting. But a group's formal

 

visitation is not complete without women's mats: indeed,
the mats may be more essential at funerals than whales'
teeth.

I suggest the importance of mats because I once saw
women come into a house of the death before the formal

presentations by their men. This happened when the senior

177
Sulisuli chief died suddenly on‘a New Year's Eve at 4:00
p.m., when the village was preparing for that evening's
celebration. Pandemonium erupted in his house at his
death: Sulisuli women threw themselves against his bed, the
floor, and walls, and tore their clothes and his bed
drapery. Within minutes, news of the death circulated
throughout the village. Women came quickly, but quietly,

in mataqali groups to the house and laid their mats in an

 

enormous pile on the floor. The importance of the mats and
the women was then manifested, as the deceased's vassals
and children tenderly took him from his bed, bound him for
his grave, placed him on a pile of mats, and swaddled him
in others. At the time of death, the first thing that
needed to be done was to present the mats for covering the
deceased and placing him on a soft bier.

An analogy can be drawn between the ranking of men and
women and their respective ritual gifts. The three tradi-
tional funeral prestations,indescending order of value,
are whales' teeth, animals, and mats: the first two valu-
ables are associated with men and the last one with women.
If we placed these items on a scale, measuring their ritual
and practical significance, we would find that whales'
teeth have only ritual importance, animals and mats have
ritual and utilitarian uses, and mats are the most func-
tional. While animals are consumed for food and therefore
have a practical value, they are not needed in daily life,

unlike mats.

178

The versatile mats are like women: mat-making does
not require that the source of the mat, the pandanus plant,
be destroyed: so too a woman's marriage and motherhood does
not sever her and her children's ties to her kin. A woman
provides services and children to her affines and consan-
guines, as a mat has ritual and utilitarian uses. Indeed,
a mat may be used in ritual in one instance and then be put
to everyday use, or vice versa. The only time a mat can be
removed from this recycling process is when it is buried
with the dead.

Men's and women's complementarity is also symbolically
associated with the mat-making process. Women own the
pandanus plants that they cultivate, but the land on which
the plants grow belongs to their husbands. Relationships
between the pandanus, the land, and the genders are analo-
gous to those created by marriage: married women are

nourished by the fruits of their conjugal mataqali's land

 

and produce children for those who feed them.

Women's mats reflect the feminine qualities of care
giving and tenderheartedness, and the mat redistribution
exemplifies women's essential role in regenesis, as ex-
pressed in the Matailobau claim that "women hold life in
their hands.“ When a death occurs, the stream of life that
is usually taken for granted is diverted and, in its diver-
sion, its feminine source is remembered. The power to give
and to withhold life has traditionally been under women's

control. Women, however, do not have complete power over

179
their fecundity -- their brothers can deprive them of
children or harm their offspring. A death may reflect upon
the power of the deceasedfls maternal kin because deaths can
be caused by supernatural intervention. It is for this
reason, I believe, that 3353 membership grants a matron the
privilege to join her natal group and the freedom not to
have to lodge with or represent her affines at a ritual:
this is the only time, as far as I know, that a woman can
do this. The 3332's power, privilege, and worth is not to
be undercut -- or tempted into action -- by having one of

its sisters stay with her conjugal mataqali.

 

The regenerative and destructive abilities of women
are symbolized by the 3353, which is represented by the
deceased's mother's brothers. The 3353, whom people call
the most important part of the funeral, must be fed by the
owners of the death, as women are nourished by their con-
jugal kin: it can determine the funeral format, as women
have traditionally had the ability to control their fertil-
ity with their agnate's assistance: and the 333 must
receive the 23 £322 gig whale's tooth or else use super-
natural means to punish the deceased's people. I want to
stress that the 3353 should be viewed as an entity that is
linked through a sister, whose maternity has created the
relationship. The 3352's focus is on the sister as mother
and not, as in the bisaba, on the woman and her maternity.
That is why we hear about viluveni (mother and child) at

the bisaba but about wexa (relatives) at the funeral.

180

Let us gain a better understanding of the 1353 by
describing its role at the old man's funeral. Nakoroniu
and Navulavula were considered the old man's wexa because
at the time his mother was born they constituted one unit.
Nakoroniu was recognized as having closer ties to the old
man, however, because his mother was born in that group.

The 323's meeting was held in the house of the eldest
man of either mataqali, This octogenarian Nakoroniu man
performed few ritual and other social functions because he
was deaf: his son managed the household because of this and
thus acted for his father in ritual contexts. The son was
selected by Nakoroniu's and Navulavula's Sulisuli chief to
be the wexa leader. The chief's decision was partly based
on the fact that the man's father was the eldest male of

the two mataqali but also because the elder‘s mother was

 

from the deceased's mataqali. The Nakoroniu elder, then,

 

was sister's child to the deceased's group and was obli-
gated to assist it. The 3353 leader, however, had an
alternative explanation for his selection -- his own ritual
knowledge and articulateness prompted the Sulisuli chief to
choose him over other 3353 members.

The wexa leader called both mataqali to his house to

 

determine their contributions, the timing of their proces-
sion to the house of the death, the timing of the burial,
and so on. When Nakoroniu and Navulavula men and their
wives came to the house, the leader officially transmitted

the news of the death to his two sets of mataqali siblings.

 

181

He presented a tanoa of yaqona and, in his announcement,
mentioned their duties as 3353. To reinforce the signifi-
cance of the wexa, he listed each manhs‘nga and added how
important they will be at each of their own funerals. The
serious demeanor of the gathering signified the collective
feeling that their 3252 role was £12; (heavy, of great
importance).

One household arrived late for this meeting, and the
wexa leader castigated them on their tardiness, which he
saw as evidence of shunning their 1353 responsibilities.
He spoke for some time about punctuality and about present-
ing the 3353 as a strong, large, coordinated unit. So
intent was he on having this 3333 honor its duties with
solemnity that he was becoming peevish. After his harangue
ended, the discussion continued about the number of cows,
whales' teeth, mats, magi and the amount of money, tea,

biscuits, and sugar that would be given to mataqali Vutu.

 

When decisions were reached, the 1e_xa_'s wealth was left in
the leader's house while everyone else returned to their
respective houses to change into better clothing. The
3353's donning of better clothing signifies the importance
of their funerary role, because villagers attend most
rituals in their everyday wear. Attending church services
and traveling are the two main activities for which people
wear their finer garments. There was another clothing

requirement that showed the uniqueness of the wexa's parti-

l82
cipation -- men had to wear £213 (one to two meters of
cloth tied around the waist) instead of trousers.
Reassembled in their finery at the g£§2_leader‘s house
were nearly 50 men and women ready to organize their pro-
cession to the house of the death. People lined up accord-

ing to mataqali membership and then, within these units, in

 

order of gender and age, men and seniors first. The 33x3
leader carried a large bag filled with whales' teeth and
sticks representing cows. Several men carried large tins
of biscuits, tea, and sugar. At their left-hand sides and
perpendicular to their bodies, the women carried their
mats. Because they were part of the 3353 that had come to
bury its child, women could not give a piece of cloth or
clothing, as they might at any other funeral. The womenHB
mats indicated respect for themselves as 3353 members and

for the deceased and his mataqali. The wexa would also

 

obtain prestige by presenting mats and other valuables, and
it was their prestige, strength, and size that the members
of the £252 wanted to impress on the owners of the death.
To further illustrate their ability to amass wealth and

people, the wexa brought to mataqali Vutu a bier heavily

 

covered with their most ornate mats. It was in the inter-

est of a grand (levu) and strong (kaukauwa) presentation

 

that the wexa leader had called upon a sibling mataqali

 

from another village to enhance their numbers.
The senior Sulisuli chief led the wexa into the

deceased's house. Elderly chiefs of other lineages and

183
their wives, and men and women of Vutu and Waivou, the

deceased's and his wife's mataqali, were already there.

 

The widow sat behind her husband's body with the widow of

the deceased's mataqali brother and the Vutu chiefs from

 

this andqanother village» Before this party the Sulisuli
chief knelt and began his address by holding up a whale's
tooth, which was taken from the bag brought by the 3353
leader, saying that it symbolized all that the 3353 was
presenting. The chief's grief rendered him unable to speak
without tearful pauses, and this ignited the other
mourners' emotions. The wailing became very loud and
cacophonous after the chief's presentation speech. The
acceptance speech by the second-most senior man of the
paramount's lineage, Vutu's chiefs in Namatai, and the
benediction by the second-most senior Waivou man (who was
the deceasedfls widow“s younger brother) could not be heard
in this din.

We see that the deceased's wife's mataqali, Waivou,

 

sat in the house when the 3353 entered it and that they
offered the prayer for the 3323's gifts. Waivou performed
other tasks at this funeral, primarily as helpmates to the
deceased's children, for whom they are wexa.

Avuncular relations are described as nurturant -- "the
mother nurses the child . . . the mother's brother is just
like the mother.... . The mother‘s brother is like the
child's mother . . . because the child is theirs." ‘The

uncle cares,for the child as its mother does, and because

184

the mothe¢”s brother can represent the mother‘s mataqali,

 

his nurturance of and responsibilities to the child are
extended to it. Thus, the members of the wexa bury their
sister‘s child, whose life, it is maintained, they assured
by their generous granting of their sister's fertility.
Properly burying the corpse is the final nurturant act of
the deceased's mother's people. Likewise, the deceased's
children's maternal kin fulfilled their obligation for
assistance by taking on the job of redistributing the mats
on behalf of the deceased's mataqali when asked to do so by
the deceased's children. The children's 333:3 provided the

deceasedfls children a service by reciprocating mataqali for

 

their gifts. Vutu thus looked to the group that could be
expected to help them most -- their mother's brothers.
Giving the job of mat redistribution to their 3333 also
indicated the respect for and superiority of the mother's
brothers. This dyadiof wexa - sister's children reflects
other important paradigms in Fijian life -— senior
(chiefly) people make decisions for their junior (commoner)
fellows. Thus, Vutu's actions showed their dependence on
their supportive maternal kin, whose power over themselves
they acknowledged.

The actual delegation/relinquishment of the decision-
making process of the mat redistribution went from the

deceasedhs children to Waivou mataqali as an entity to the

 

children's real mother's brother and, ultimately, to the

mother's brother's wife, who did the actual sorting. This

185
process depicts Fijian ideas about serving others and
respect. Respect is a salient concept and significant
motivation for behavior. Providing services for others
indicates one's respect for them. For example, a chief has
someone speak, eat, or drink for him on certain occasions
as a way of signifying the greater value of his own person.
Likewise,eayounger person will do something for someone
older to show respect for that person. At the funeral, the
deceasedfls childrenfls maternal kin showed their respect for
their sister's children by redistributing mats for them.
The relationship between the sister‘s children and mother‘s
brother, however, is marked by reciprocal respect, privi-
lege, and identification, with authority invested in the
senior generation. It was the last element that prompted

the children's renouncing of their power (kaukauwa) of mat

 

redistribution in favor of their maternal relatives.
Providing service usually is a sign of some kind of
social inferiority, but in this case it was more like the
assistance that chiefs give to their commoner vassals, for
instance, when the Sulisuli chief spoke for the 33353 at the
deceasedfis house. The chiefs' help does not diminish their
prestige but enhances.it because the chiefs are viewed as
protective and benevolent. And chiefs' aid is evidence of'
their greater power. The reallocation of the mat redistri-
bution to the children's 3333 involved another aspect of
serving others and respect -- the attributes of rank and

prestige. The mother‘s brother‘s wife apportioned the mats

186
to the various groups because she was bound to this work by
two social principles. Junior peOple work for senior
people, and women work for men. The deceased's children
gave the power for the redistribution to the senior Waivou

man because he was mataqali leader and, as such, must be

 

shown respect. The Waivou elder handed the task to the
children's mother's brother because of the genealogical
ties between himself and the younger man and because junior
peOple perform such jobs. The mother's brother delegated
his authority to his wife, who, as a woman and wife, works
for her husband: to serve a husband by distributing mats or
by carrying food or mats is a way to honor him. Therefore,
this womanfls task was in keeping with her inferior position
vis-a-vis her husband and his junior position in the

mataqali's age hierarchy.

 

The aid of uxorally related kin was not limited to
those of the deceased and his children at this funeral.
The small Nakacadreve lineage -- especially the young chief
who kept the book of presentations and who assisted the
Sulisuli chiefs in the cow slaughtering -- worked with the
w because it is the 3353's sister's child. Nakacadreve
also performed these tasks because it was Sulisuli's
sister‘s child. Thus, the young chiefs of Nakacadreve and
Sulisuli are cross-cousins and, as such, are expected to
share with and help each other. The relaxed cross-cousin
relationship, with its institutionalized teasing, facili-

tates the cousins' comradeship and reciprocity. Sulisuli,

187
in turn, was not only the nggfs chief but was tied to it
as sister's child as well -- it was the descendant of a
Nakoroniu woman. Nakacadreve and Nakoroniu were both

sisters' children to a chiefly mataqali of a northern

 

village, and Nakacadreve and NavulavuLa were sisters'

children to a commoner mataqali of a village located south

 

on the river; Because these groups are sisters'Ichildren

to the same peOple (vasuvata), they are seen as equivalents

 

and, as such, should help each other.

Examples of help giving between descendants of sisters
can also be found at the old man's funeral -- the de-
ceased's and the 3352 elder's mothers were sisters, and
thus, as offspring of two same-sex siblings, these men were
categorized as brothers. The deceased and the 3353 leader
were therefore classificatory father and son, and this
influenced the choice of the son as 3252 head. 'The other
example of the strength of and obligations involved in such
ties was the woman whose maternal grandfather and the
deceased were children of sisters, thus making her the
deceased's grandchild. This woman and her mother worked in
the owners of the death's kitchen while her husband, who
cultivates the nggfs land because of his uxoral tie to
it, "stayed with it” at the funeral.

I have presented several illustrations of help given
by various uxorally related kin and have explained these
relatives'1aid in terms of expectations about such rela-

tionships. But I also want to mention how women's quali-

188
ties imbue these bonds and generate such assistance.
Villagers, especially women, attest to these beliefs about
women's traits by saying that a womanfs parents cannot seem
to refuse a married daughter's requests and that maternal
grandchildren, nieces, and nephews are indulged. The
special treatment of these children was explained by such
statements as "It is because of the mother that her

children are so welcome in their mother's mataqali's

 

homes." The greateraffective bonds between uxorally
linked persons is epitomized by the maternal grandmother
and grandchildren: 'Vkmaternal grandmother suffers more
from the loss of a grandchild than a paternal grandmother.
It is because of who the child's mother isJ‘

While women's weakness secures them, and those related
through them, affection and services, the malleability that
emanates from their traits can sometimes result in seem-
ingly punitive treatment. An example of such treatment
occurred at the old manfls funeral and involved his youngest
daughter‘s perceived obligation to mourn him with her con-

jugal mataqali and not to come to her natal home as soon as

 

she heard of his passing. This matron's funeral participa-
tion depicts the sometimes conflicting loyalties and obli-

gations imposed on women by their dual mataqali affiliation

 

or, phrased otherwise, reflects another aspect of their
lives, their interstitial position. Indeed, I have been
questioned about and heard comments on whether a woman has

come to visit her family when she arrives in the village

189
with her husband. Depending upon whether they are of the

womanfls natal or conjugal mataqali, women either say that

 

she should come soon after her homecoming to see her rela-
tives and spend much time visiting them, or that she should
confine most of her stay to her spouse's people. Such
contradictory standards of behavior were employed by women
discussing the old man's‘daughtesz actions and by other
women talking about the daughter‘s critics.

The old man's younger daughter had not visited her
father‘s house when she first heard of his death. Several
women commented during the funeral that the daughter was a
fool to ”wait for the _w_e_x_a_," her husband's group, to go to
the funeral because it is “difficult to lose one's fatherfl'
One woman, recalling emotionally the passing of her own
father several years before, said that if she were the old
man's daughter she would have gone to see her father
regardless of what her husband and his kin said. It is
impossible to speculate about the deceased's daughter's
feelings in regard to her conduct at her father‘s death. I
can, however, relate several observations that may be use-
ful in gaining some understanding of her actions. The
deceased, his wife, and their children were almost fanati-

cal about protocol. They knew their mataqali's duty, their

 

social place, and they abided by it. This daughter was
always a quiet, helpful woman who fulfilled the expecta-
tions that a wife be firmly integrated into and loyal to

her conjugal mataqali. A wife ideally should ”forget”

 

190

about her natal mataqali. An important point should be

 

made here about the deceasedfls daughter‘s funeral comport-
ment and that of the woman who criticized her for not doing
as she had done, viz., visiting her deceased father before
her conjugal mataqali's formal mourning. The deceased's
daughter was a commoner married to another commoner: her
critic was a chiefly woman whose spouse was a commoner. The
chiefly woman's determination not to be kept from seeing
her deceased father was in keeping with her unacceptance of
many of the restraints that marriage imposes on women, and
this supposedly had deleterious results for her. Some
women suggested that this chiefly woman's ailments may have

been due to her husband's mataqali's ancestral spirit,

 

which sought to punish her disobedience to her husband and
her attempts to support her own acts of insolence by
referring to her higher rank. (Ironically, on another
occasion I asked this chiefly woman how she felt about her
natal mataqali and she quickly retorted, "I have forgotten
about that.")

There are times, however, when women want to enforce
normative behavior and there are no conflicting standards,
(Lg., all village matrons condemned the behavior of an old

woman who sat in the old man's bikabika. After the close

 

of the bikabika this old woman visited for a month at her
conjugal mataqali's ”door" and then in the household in
which her granddaughter was married. People called her

viavia tagane (wants to be like a man) because of the time

191

she spent playing cards and‘drinking yaqona with the men,
and wacece (cheeky) for having the temerity to do so.
Discussions amongst the women and in front of her daughter,
who was married to a Namatai man, communicated to her their
displeasure about the old woman's comportment. The old
woman ceased her visiting, however, only when.she became
ill -- from too much yaqona and too many late hours, other
‘women commented. The village womenfls concern about the old
woman illustrates Matailobau perceptions of their social
involvement in others' lives, which results, as noted
before, in communal assistance but which, as in this case,
can also be a mechanism of social control.

This old woman exemplifies the kinds of behavior for
which women receiVe sanctions, but she also depicts what
they are expected to do at funerals. She joined the
bikabika to sit with a woman who was from her natal
village. Women are expected to return to their villages to
assist at rituals, social functions, fundLraising events,
and the like. They are yalewa kggg (women of the village),
who should continue to provide services in their feminine,
care-giving roles. Women, it appeared to me, acted more
often on the ideal of community service than did men,
perhaps because this is part of their anticipated nurturant
behavior. I want to corroborate these general statements

with explanations of the bikabika women's and female

 

kitchen helpers' involvement at the old man's funeral

(Table 3).

192

Table 3. Women/girls who were kitchen helpers at the old
man's funeral

Natal mataqali Conjugal mataqali

 

 

single (deceased's son's
wife's sister)

1. Navulavula

2. unknown Waivou
3. Waivou unknown
4. unknown Waivou
5. Waivou single
6. unknown Taulevu
7. unknown Vutu

8. Nasau Taulevu
9. Nasau single
10. Taulevu unknown
11. unknown Vutu
12. Waivou single
13. Vavua single
14. Navulavula single
15. unknown Taulevu
16. unknown Vutu
17. unknown Vutu
18. unknown Waivou

193

All four bikabika women were widows -- the deceasedfls
widow, the deceased's brother's widow, the daughter of the
deceasedfls brother, and a woman from the same natal village
as the deceased's brother's wife. Women's reasons for
bikabika membership were not always couched in terms of the

obligations between mataqali. Some explained their in-

 

volvement in it as being due to their wish to reciprocate
the widow's comforting presence when their own husbands had

died. The woman who came to the bikabika to be with her co-

 

villager expressed a common expectation about women sup-
porting their natal village and its members'rituals and
other events. The women listed as numbers 8 and 9 in Table
3 also came to work with their co-villagers in the kitchen.

These women exemplify another general feature of
Fijian life -- widows return more often than married women
to help at their village's events. Widows not only usually
have more time to do so as they advance in the develop-
mental cycle, but they do not have to request their
husbands' permission to leave their conjugal homes.

The first girl listed in Table 3 explained her help in
the kitchen as an example of community service, in this
case to those needing assistance during a ritual. She was,
however, the younger sister of the deceasedfls daughter-in-
law, and it was this connection that other women gave to
explain her help. This girl brought along a girlfriend and
mataqali sister to work in the kitchen because women and

girlfriends sometimes work at each others' kin functions.

194
Their aid is founded on the Fijian expectation that people
help each other. One woman, as in the case of one of the

bikabika women, can be a magnet who draws her peers into

 

service.
The different standards for assistance for girls and
women are also shown by the first girl's actions. She

belonged to Navulavula, one of the wexa's mataqali, but her

 

assistance in the deceased's kitchen did not counter the
practice that no woman of the wexa aids the owners of the
death. Although she was 38 years old, she was called

goneyalewa (girl) because she was unmarried.

 

Analysis of the roster of female kitchen helpers

illustrates the relationships between mataqali and the

 

important distinctions between the 3352 and the owners of
the death. The women kitchen helpers were all related to
the owners of the death: no women of the honored wexa were
among them. Table 3 lists these kitchen helpers' natal and
affinal mataqali affiliations. Seventeen of the eighteen
female assistants served in the kitchen for four reasons

attributable to reciprocal mataqali obligations or member-

 

ship in the same mataqali as the deceased.

 

Women do not assist at every village ritual. They
usually help those with whom they have some relationship,
even though the anticipation of community service may
appear to override such ties. Neighbors often do not work
at each others' rituals. There is, however, an example of

a woman neighbor cooking in the old man's kitchen. The

195

neighbor and the deceased's‘daughter-in-law were friends
and helpmates. The neighbor was the only woman in her
household and relied on women of other households for the
kind of help that a mother- or sister-in-law would normally
provide. Thus, she reciprocated some of that aid given by
women of the deceased's household by helping them at the
funeral.

There is a common thread running through a number of
these examples of women's/girl's help giving -- the rela-
tionships between women, even though these are cast against

principles of general commitment to society or mataqali

 

connections. Women said that ties between women sometimes
were primarily responsible for their funeral help. In two

cases, there were mataqali connections between the helpers

 

and both the deceased and his widow, but women's interpre-
tations of why these females assisted in the kitchen
focused on their relationships to the widow. Informants
said that the woman listed as number 10 in Table 3 assisted
the deceased's kin because her father's mother was a
distant, but genealogically verifiable, sibling of the
deceased's widow. This woman's siblingship with the
deceased's widow could have been extended to the deceased
because at the time the ancestress through whom she traced

ties to them lived, Vutu (the deceased's mataqali) and

 

Waivou (the deceased's widow's mataqali) formed a single

 

unit. But women stressed that it was the woman's friend-

196
ship with the widow that was responsible for her help at
the funeral.

The other example of how bonds between women influence
giving assistance is the case of the Navua girl listed as
number 13 in Table 3. Informants said that she was a
helper because of her father‘s sibling tie to the deceased,
but this did not explain why she should be in the village
without her familyn and it was her village residence that
created the opportunity for her to assist at the funeral.
This girl attended the district school, located in Namatai,
and stayed during the school week in the deceasedfls widow's
brother's house. The girl resided in this house because
her mataqali and that of the house's owner were considered
siblings. Thus, the girl's help was given primarily
because of her closer connection to the widow. As with the
widow listed as number 11» ‘women did not extend the
siblingship between the girl's (and the deceased's widow's)

mataqali and the deceased's mataqali, even though they

 

could have.

As relationships between women influence their ritual
participation, so too does a ritual provide the opportunity
‘for the expression of these relationships. It appeared to
me that women addressed grievances and confirmed satisfac-
tory relations at rituals more so than did men: however, my
interpretation of this must be measured against the fact
that I did not know as much about men's networks as I did

about women's. My perception of women's use of ritual

197
contexts corresponds to Fijian ideas about womenfls charac-
teristics and behavior as lacking in self-restraint and
being prone to pettiness. Nonetheless, I saw interactions
at the old woman's funeral that lend credence to the sug-
gestion that relationships between women can be monitored
at rituals. I do not mean to say, however, that these
womenfls actions resulted solely or in each instance from a
dyadic relationship with another woman. Indeed, what may
appear at first to be something only pertaining to womenfis
relations is upon closer inspection an occasion used to
state the animosities, misconceptions, or goodwill between

men, households, lineages, mataqali, or other units: in

 

these instances, women may again be seen as conveyances,
this time for others' sentiments.

I do not know if the fact that it was a woman's
funeral allowed the women to express their respective sen-
timents without menfiainterest in their behavior or if I
saw more of the exchanges and knew the parties better
because we were neighbors, and thus perceived their
actions' significance more clearly than I might have at the
old man's funeral. But I viewed the following Nakoroniu's
women's presentations as carrying several messages about
their relationships with the deceased and her kin.

'Gifts, because they are rated according to their re-
spective worth, can indicate the presenter's relationship
to either the ritual's principal or another closely affili-

ated person. Women's wealth have the following qualities.

198
Mats indicate dokai (respect) for their intended recipi-
ents. flggi cloth, which is not produced locally, is in
some sense more valuable than mats. The other items rated
in descending order of worth are new cloth/good clothing
and old clothing. The women who presented the magi each
had special relationships with the deceased: in one case,
the giver was from the deceased's natal village, and in the
other case, the giver and the widow's daughter were asso-
ciated through namesake ties. The first woman was the one
whose cohabitation ritual was described in the second
chapter. This young woman's mate's mother was the woman
who sat nearest the deceased's head because she and the

deceased were from the same mataqali. This funeral was the

 

first ritual event that the young woman attended as a
marama (an espoused woman). The other magi was given by a
woman who had asked the widow's daughter to name the
daughter‘s eldest child after her: the daughter did, there-
by establishing a namesake relationship between her child
and this woman. The relationship between the widow's
daughter and this woman was further cemented when the
widow”s daughter called her youngest daughter after this
womanfls child. The positive feelings for the deceased and
her daughter were thus shown by presenting the valuable
9.221..

The opposite of such sentiments was displayed by the
Nakoroniu woman who gave an old blouse as her gift. For

several months this woman had been harboring a grudge

199

against the widow”s daughter, and now she expressed some of
the social distance between them by giving a meager offer-
ing. 4Another Nakoroniu wife whose interactions with the
widow's daughter were strained gave a mat, but she, like
the woman who presented the blouse, did not come to prepare
food in the house of the death's kitchen. The woman who was
the widow's granddaughter's namesake, on the other hand,
sent her two adolescent daughters to prepare and serve the
funeral feasts.

Womenfls ritual and non-ritual behavior is affected by
their connections to groups of men -- their brothers and
their husbands. Yet they have the ability to act apart, to
some degree: e4p, Nakoroniu gave a cow, but some of its
women did not present valuable gifts or render their ser-
vices. Women, like their contributions to the funeral, may
seem secondary in importance to men, who act publicly on

behalf of mataqali, and likewise to men's contributions.

 

However, women provide several significant substances: the
woman who gave birth to the deceased is acknowledged in the
powerful and privileged 3353. The feasts' "real food," the
tubers, is given by women. They make and present the
burial mats. Men act on behalf of women in the 333:3 as the
formal presenters of the mats, and even as owners of the

food that women carry to the meals. Yet, as no mataqali

 

flourishes and establishes consanguineal ties with another
without wives' and sisters' children, so too men cannot

create a funeral ritual without women's assistance. Mats

200
are women's wealth, and although they can be dedicated by

men, women hand them over for presentation. The mataqali

 

food, which is viewed as belonging to their conjugal

mataqali and particularly to their husbands, is always

 

carried to the house of the death by women, for as noted in
earlier chapters, women are seen as the givers of cooked
food. And as food givers, women can either yield or with-
hold sustenance and their aid. So too at funerals can they
employ food presentation as a means to lighten the owners
of the death's responsibilities to feed mourners. It
should be understood that even as women are perceived of as
a source of food, the act of bringing food is‘defined as.a
way to show their respect for men.

Women are associated with food at a funeral in another
way -- they are the kitchen helpers who prepare, cook, and
clean away the remains of the feast. Their ritual service
(veiqaravi) does not, however, receive the respect given to
men's representational roles. I say this because women
have to remain subdued in the vicinity where men are drink-
ing yaqona and making exchanges. No one demures to the
ritual labors of the kitchen staff, and in no other
contexts do women gather at this ritual.~ Yet men say that
the ritual does not begin “until women bring their mats."
Men do respect the mats, the mat-making process, and the
women who are their creators.

As each sex's ritual contribution is respected, so too

are they culturally valued differently. This is most

201
clearly evident in the ways that the two old persons were
mourned. These funerals, however, tend toward being
extreme cases because other women's funerals were more
lavish and had more relatives involved in them and other
men's kin were less concerned that they honor their
deceased brethren well: in their relative polarity, how-
ever, I believe that we perceive certain cultural ideas

about men and women.

The Funeral 22.22.9l9.§i92!

The widow, approximately sixty-five years old, resided
with her son and his wife and children. Although she was
capable of household tasks, she had to be closely super-
vised because she was prone to aimless wanderings about the
village, talking to herself and hoarding bits of cloth and
thread. Her family and neighbors responded to her occa-
sional forgetfulness, confusion, and senseless smiling with
good-natured ribbing. Her daughter-in-law and daughter,
who lived next door to the widow, Sometimes had to forcibly
halt her escapes from her home. The widow's behavior
affected her relationship with her voluble daughter-in-law,
and there were times when neighbors were clearly aware that
they greatly annoyed each other. The senior woman in the
house has the right to direct younger females' activities,

but in cases such as this one, the daughter-in-law is the

household's female head.

202

Whether there were power conflicts between mother- and
daughter-in-law I cannot say. The potential for such dis-
putes must surely have existed, especially since the
daughter-in-law outranked the widow. The daughter-in-law
was the paramount's child and had been honored by being
married in a proper, traditional wedding. The relationship
between the daughter- and mother-in-law did not appear to
affect the relationships of the daughter-in-law and her
husband or sister-in-law. The widow's behavior did not
result in any neglect or abuse from her children or her
daughter-in-law, In“: it did not gain her any respect
either. At the time of her death, the widow did not
command much personal prestige or power, nor did she have
any strong friendships with other old women. According to
others' reports, she does not even appear to have had these
advantages in her prime.

As a young girl the widow was brought to Namatai
village by a Sulisuli chief to marry one of his vassals
whose wife had recently died, leaving him with small
children to raise. She and her husband had eight children,
of which a son and two daughters lived in Namatai at the
time of her death.

The day before she died the widow had taken ill and
stayed in the kitchen her son had recently constructed for
her to sleep and entertain visitors in. Her daughter
checked on the old woman's condition during the night.

Sensing that her mother was near death, she came immediate-

203 '
ly before dawn with two of her daughters to be with the
widow. When the old woman died, the daughter informed
members of her household and her brother's. The widow's
son-in-law and son carried her into her son's house, the
house of the death.

The village became aware of the widow”s death about
six<wclock in the morning, when the women and children of
other households heard the news as they bathed and drew
water at the village water pipes. Soon women's keening was
heard throughout the village. The loudest, longest wailing

came from houses in which women of the deceasedfls mataqali,

 

Navua, lived. The intensity of the mourning was the proper
display of grief for someone of their own group.
Shortly after the households heard about the widow's

death, mataqali heads sent children to their members'

 

houses to tell them to come and discuss their funeral
participation. The widow‘s son-in-law's house was the site
of the Nakoroniu mataqali meeting because the son-in-law‘s
father was the group's eldest male. The widow's son-in-law
was the household's manager because his father was too
frail to continue in this role, and so now the son took his
father's place as mataqali leader. Although everyone knew
of his mother-in-law's death, he had to announce it
properly. He began his speech by saying that he had anii
tukutuku vakavanua (a message delivered in the apprOpriate,

customary manner). And thus he told his mataqali -- mainly

 

his agnates, because their wives were at home preparing

204
breakfast and starting to cook tubers for the luncheon --
that the widow had died and that he would slaughter a cow

and present the carcass to the widow's son's mataqali on

 

behalf of Nakoroniu mataqali. It is proper in Fijian

 

society for mataqali to be represented as the ritual

 

actors, and not individuals. During his speech he did not
mention his relationship to his mother-in-law. Others also
discussed his prestation as being Nakoroniu's«gift, as I

learned at another mataqali's meeting that day. He did,

 

however, tell me in subsequent- conversations that he gave
the cow because it was his wife's mother who had died.
Other informants said that it is a common practice to
present a cow at the funeral of a spouse4s sibling, parent,

or sibling's child, but in the name of one's mataqali,

 

rather than in onefls own name.

Within two hours of the mataqali discussion, Nakoroniu
was prepared to make the first visit to the deceased, and
the kitchens of the house of the death and the widow‘s son-
in-law were filled with people preparing for the funeral
feast. A pavilion was being erected adjacent to the house
of the death, where prestations would be made and men would
sit during the funeral. Although not many mourners were
expected, it was a very hot period of the summer and the
pavilion would provide a better gathering place for
mourners than the house.

Preparations for the first-day feast illustrated which

mataqali were expected to give food and services to the

 

205
deceased's kin. Nakoroniu provided tubers because they

were the sibling-mataqali of the widow's son's mataqali,

 

 

Navulavula. The widow's son was not actually a member of
Navulavula: he, like his father, ”stayed with" Navulavula,
cultivating with them and participating in their economic
and ritual activities. The bulk of Nakoroniuhs tubers came
from the deceased's son-in-law's gardens, showing that
although groups are supposed to be emphasized in rituals,
and in daily affairs as well, connections between persons
and households determine the extent of such participation.
The tubers from Nakoroniu and Navulavula were cleaned and
cooked by Navulavula women as their contributions to the
funeral of a woman who had married into the same mataqali
as they had. Young Navulavula men and young Nakacadreve
chiefs butchered the cow. Nakacadreve is sister‘s child to
Nakoroniu and, as such, should help at its maternal kin's
rituals.

While younger men and adolescents of both sexes worked
outside the house of the death, senior men and women began
entering the house where their presence was required.
Ritual labors are divided between those that are performed
outside by younger people and those done inside the house
by mature ones. Navulavula mataqali had to be in the house
as owners of the death to receive mourners and their
prestations: its representative sat at the left-hand side
of the house in the position midway between the deceased

and the mourners. The paramount chief was in the center of

206
the upper end of the house, the position reserved for the
most important person in the village, between the mourners
and the deceased, his daughter's mother-in-law. Women
closely related to the widow were stationed near her at the
uppermost end of the house. Figure 3 shows who occupied

the various positions during the first visitation of the

 

day.
Bad I
.‘L
3 _7 2 I...‘ - -- the deceased
E: El 6 a -- tanoa of yaqona
tag 5 Q -- mats

men and women

n!
X
X
X
x
I
X.

I
I

 

 

 

 

l. woman from deceased's natal village and mataqali and
married to Nakoroniu man -- a widow

2. woman natally of Navanualevu mataqali and married to
Navulavula man: lived next door to the deceased -- a
widow

3. woman born in Navulavula mataqali and married to chief
of Nakacadreve lineage -- a widow

4. representative of Navulavula, the mataqali's eldest
male member

5. Nakoroniu man who presented Nakoroniu's gifts
6. deceased's Nakoroniu son—in-law
7. paramount chief

x men of Navulavula and Nakoroniu mataqali and their
wives and Sulisuli chiefs

Figure 3. Mataqali positions at the old woman's funeral

207

Not all of Nakoroniu mataqali attended this visita-

 

tion: those who resided on garden lands across the river
did not arrive in time for it. Only two men led the
Nakoroniu wives, who carried two pieces of Eéél' one large
mat, an old blouse, and four meters of new cloth to the
widow”s son-in-law”s house where they were joined by the
widow's daughter and son-in-law. The Nakoroniu men decided
in the son-in-law's house to give two whale's teeth, a
stick signifying the cow, and my husband's twenty dollars.
Nakoroniu was led to the house of the death by the eldest
man in the party, who presented the gifts. Nakoroniu's
prestations were accepted by Navulavula's elder, who then
gave a whaler tooth on a very ornate pandanus-leaf chain
to Nakoroniu. A Sulisuli chief accepted the tooth for
Nakoroniu. Sulisuli lineage can represent both Navulavula
and Nakoroniu because both are its commoner assistants.
The transaction's benediction was said by the deceased's
son-in-law, who acted as an autochthonous commoner whose
privilege it is to call upon local power"s blessings.
After Nakoroniufls presentation, some of the older
women and all of the men stayed in the house while the
other women returned to their own houses to work. The only
Nakoroniu wife who went to help in the kitchen was the

widow's daughter. Like women of other mataqali, the

 

remainder of the Nakoroniu wives brought cooked tubers at

meal time.

208
During the day other village mataqali presented their

wealth to the deceased's mataqali, very much as did

 

Nakoroniu. All contributions to the owners of the death
and subsequent redistributions from them were recorded in a
book that is organized into columns headed by a specific
gift, e.g., whale's teeth. Records are kept for such major
transactions. At this funeral two young chiefs kept the
book.

The young chiefs also assisted in the distribution of
the beef. The carcass was divided into portions, some to
feed those who would stay in the house of the death and
others to becdistributed village-wide. Portions went to

the members of the deceased's mataqali: to the paramount

 

chief, as owner of the village: to Nakoroniu for giving the
cow: to Sulisuli lineage because it is Navulavula's and
Nakoroniu's chiefs: and to Nakacadreve lineage and Waivou
and Vutu because they brought gifts to the owners of the
death.

At the distribution place, men apportioned the meat to
mataqali or lineage representatives to carry to their
respective members. This latter redistribution includes in
its calculation whether a particular household was to have
funeral guests for the next few days as well.as the usual
size of each household. Once households received their

share, they could give some of their meat as takitaki to

 

those whom they wanted to reciprocate for previous food

sharings, to benefit a relative, to acknowledge a bond, or

209
to assist another household burdened with guests to feed
during the funeral. Women usually prepare the meat for
cooking and for sharing with other households.

Although meat is eaten infrequently and is highly
appreciated, it is not hoarded: it is shared because gene
erosity and sharing are cardinal virtues. Wide distribu-
tion of a carcass ensures that no meat is wasted in this
humid, hot climate where there is no means for preserving
it, and that the principle of reciprocity will provide a
return on the present distribution.

After 3:00 gum. the village chairman beat the village
drums in the nonrhythmic, slow pattern for funerals to
alert the village that the church service would soon begin.
Great wailing and thrashing against the walls were then
heard in the house of the death. In the heat waves the
heavy odor of something like spoiling sweet flowers came
from the house as many mourners watched the unwrapping and
rewrapping 0f the bOdY-3 The widow was rebound in large,
thick mats and suspended from a ten-foot bamboo pole about
eight inches in diameter that was carried to the church on
the shoulders of two young Sulisuli chiefs. These pall-
bearers' paternal grandfather had brought her to Namatai to
wed a man for whose mataqali he was chief.

The cortege was headed by the village catechist and
followed by a Sulisuli chief, the deceased, various women,
children, and a few men. Two flower wreaths for the

deceased were made and carried by the deceased's daughter

.1. '

‘I-Ir—

 

.9- --.‘_4

210
and a little girl of the widow“s natal mataqali. Two mats
were carried into the church by the wife of the second-
oldest man of Navulavula, who acts on behalf of the senior-

most wife, who is infirm. These mats (bikabika) were

 

placed beneath the deceased in the church and were given to
the minister after the service. On the journey to the
cemetery the wreaths were carried by the women who had
brought the mats to the church. ‘The brief church service
consisted of theicatechist reading from the Bible and the
paramount's younger cousin delivering a short sermon.

After the church service the procession went through
the village on its way to the graveyard. Near the
deceasedfls home, the cortege stopped and her grandchildren
walked four times back and forth beneath the body. People
said that the purpose of this hee'eehe (going under) was to
finalize the farewell to her and to prevent her spirit from
trying to return to the living. The widow's children and
most of the grandchildren did not go to the cemetery: they
stayed in the village, the daughters cooking and the son
sitting in the house of the death with the men and senior
women.

The gravediggers had prepared the grave earlier and
were now supervising the process of burying the widow.
After the body had been lowered into the grave, the head
gravedigger stamped on the earth covering the body before

the grave was completely filled.

211
Members of the EEEE are supposed to carry the deceased
to the graveyard and direct the burial. In the past,
villagers said, the E252 and the gravediggers (heehe) were
composed of the same individuals: today they are separate
entities. The gravediggers' leader had a matrilateral

connection to the widow: her father was sister's child to

 

his mataqali, Nakoroniu. Both the widow's parents were

from the mataqali that is Nakoroniu's sibling-mataqali.

 

 

The leader thus came from the deceased's classificatory
mother‘s brother‘s mataqali, and he gave this as the reason
for his selection as bouta head. Two gravediggers were
from the paramount's lineage, idhq the widow's daughter-

in-law's people, and one was from Waivou mataqali. All

 

these men were unmarried and older than sixteen but younger
than thirty-five. Gravediggers do not have to be single,
but they are usually men between the ages represented in
this heehe.

The old womanfls bikabika contained six women who were
either from her village, had married into her village, had
married into her conjugal mataqali, or were her neighbors.
During the funeral's second and third days the widow's

other children came, as well as mataqali from other

 

villages who were related to the widow‘s natal mataqali,
her husbandfls mataqali, or mataqali associated with either
of them. One group came because it was a "sibling" of a

mataqali that was sister‘s child to Navulavula.

212

The fourth—day feast was celebrated in the widow's
son-in-law”s house. Young men, girls, and women butchered
a cow and cooked the meat. The women involved in these
tasks were those married to Navulavula men or were natally
Navulavula, and some were girls and women born in Nakoroniu
-- these were the daughters of the woman who was the name-
sake of the widow's daughter's child. Engaged in other
kitchen work were women either born or married into the
lineage of Navulavula's chiefs, women born in the
deceased's mataqali, or women whose mothers were born in
Navulavula. Young male kitchen helpers were from chiefly
houses, Navulavula, or Nakoroniu. Kitchen helpers were
thus mainly related to the owners of the death.

The first women to give takitaki that day were those

 

of the deceasedfls mataqali, iue., those who were married to

Navua men, the widow's wexa. Then other village mataqali

 

wives sent takitaki, while most of the Nakoroniu and

 

Navulavula women returned to their homes from the
deceased's son-in-law's kitchen in order to get their
platters of cooked tubers.

One woman at this funeral illustrated particularly
well the phenomenon of matrons representing their husbands
and their conjugal kin. Navua formally entered the village
through its "door," a Sulisuli household. The Sulisuli
chief's wife (appearing on the lower left in Figure 4)
accompanied the Navua women carrying their takitaki to the

son-in-law's house. She acted as her husband, their

213
"door," would have by leading them to the house. This
woman acted in the same capacity at the cohabitation
ritual, where she led the girl's village headman and his
family into the house. This woman's relationship with
the Navua wives existed prior to her marriage to their

Namatai "door" -- her mother's mataqali is Navua. The

 

chief's mother is also natally Navua. All these uxoral

ties enhance the relationship between the mataqali.

 

 

 

 

 

I T
O A O =;( +1“ wzéowfl K

1 / 1
0:1 A=O

Nakoroniu (D, A
9' A

Navua

 

Sulisuli

A,.
13.0

Solia (stays with
Navulavula)

Figure 4. Mataqali Navua's affiliations in Namatai

As the Navua women were filing into the widow”s son-

in-law‘s house with their takitaki, yaqona was being dedi-

 

cated in the pavilion next door. A bucket of yaqona was
brought to the house for the women by one of the young
chief's who had kept the book of presentations. The yaqona

was given to the women to reciprocate their takitaki. It

 

was formally presented by'a Nakoroniu lad whose paternal
grandmother, also a Navua woman, sat closest to the

deceased during the wake. The senior-most Navua woman

 

214

present, the mother of the Sulisuli chief, accepted the

yaqona.

The Navua women had recently ended their mourning for
one of their adult sons and wanted to be away from the
assembly of men, the solemn reminder of their own grief.
In order to enjoy themselves and to preserve the quiet
dignity of the men's activities next door, they took the
yaqona to their Sulisuli "door" two houses away.

After the men concluded their speeches, exchanges, and
prayers for the deceased, the feast was served at the son-
in-law"s house by women born in Navulavula, by those whose
mothers were born in Navulavula, and by those whose spouses
were Navulavula. The only woman who ate during the first
serving with the senior-most and highest-ranked men was an
older woman, natally Navulavula, who had married into a
village an hour and a half's walk away. She sat at the
lowest end of the food mat, next to the serving pots.

Over the next few days the last of the mourners left
the house of the death. The adult members of the household
were visibly fatigued from the demands of hospitality and,
far the householder, the effects of sustained yagona

drinking.

The Funeral 23.22 Old Man

 

For several years before his death, the old man had
been in frail health and had not been very active in the

menhs daily yaqona gatherings or in many public functions.

 

.LM'J #13: 'I 3'- .9211“ “"‘u

215

Until he fell seriously ill six months before his death,
he cultivated a small garden near his house. He played
cards and visited with a few Navulavula men. About a month
before he died there was a minor rally in his strength, and
a bisaba was given for him. Soon after, however, he had a
relapse and was taken to the local hospital, where it
became evident to the attending physician that he was
terminally ill. The doctor informed the manhs family that
no medical treatment would help him and that they should
take him home.

The old man lived with his wife and one granddaughter,
a child born out of wedlock to one of his daughters. He
had seven children. His two daughters were married to

village men, one of Waivou mataqali and the other of

 

Nakoroniu. His mataqali had previous ties to these groups:
his mother was from Nakoroniu, and his wife was from
Waivou. Of his five sons, three lived in Namatai but only
one married a Namatai woman -- she was from Navulavula.
When the old manfls condition became grave, his family
began funeral preparations. Two sons who worked in the
city purchased a coffin there. The three sons resident in
the village kept company continuously with their father.
The daughter who lived two houses away from him visited him
often, but the one whose house was located across the river
did not visit her father often. Three days before his
demise, the old man's sons erected the pavilion next to his

house. He told his eldest son living in the village to

 

216
reserve his biggest cow for his 2232 Nakoroniu and its
associate, Navulavula.

Late one Saturday night the old man died. News of his
death was spread from house to house in the village and was
responded to with brief, perfunctory wailing in many house-
holds not closely related to his. He was swaddled in heavy
mats and a wake was held for him on Sunday because no one
can be buried on the Sabbath in a Fijian village. Holding
the body for a Monday burial also ensured that his coffin
would arrive from the city in time for the burial.

On Monday the area around the deceased's house was
filled with mourners. The 3252 came in grand procession to
carry the deceased to church and then to the cemetery.
Their presentation was accompanied by a dramatic outpouring
of grief. When some modicum of calm returned to the
gathering, mats were exchanged between the deceased's kin
and the 3252: Then the coffin was hoisted atop the bier
and the funeral cortege proceeded tn: the church. The
village paramount led the party and was followed by the
minister, the bier, various chiefly and commoner men, and
then many women and children. The widow and her daughters
remained in the house while the sons attended the church
service.

The church service was brief and similar to that of
the widow. On their way to the cemetery, the cortege
halted at the deceased's house, where his grandchildren

walked beneath the bier four times. As in the case of the

MSW M

.nm.‘ «1.11 «‘1 . ”815:

217
widow"s grandchildren, these youngsters were frightened by
this custom -- some cried and had to be forced to perform
it. Afterwards the procession headed for the cemetery,
located a short distance from the village: again, the sons
joined it, but not the widow and daughters.

After the burial the group returned to the deceasedfls
house where the gehe, according to custom, was to eat some
food cultivated by the deceased, or at least some sugarcane
or other fruit that grew near his house. The purpose of
this practice-is to compensate the £252 for burying the
dead, but it is also the owners of the death's obligation

to provide food for the bikabika and the wexa. Thus, the

 

luncheon beef fulfilled the obligations of the owners of
the death to the eehe for this day. I

The E252 would complain, however, that for the remain-
ing three days of the funeral Vutu did not give it food.
The eeg's complaint was only partially justified because
the deceased's relatives did send it cooked tubers during
these days, but they were not sufficient to feed all 1252
members who ate at the E233 leader's house. Vutu's
resources were strained because they had to feed the twelve
people of the bikabika. Women of the eehe noted that Vutu
women had to ask other households for leftovers to provide

breakfasts for the bikabika, and they lauded their own

 

abilities to support mourners at their own households'

funerals.

218
Four women and eight men sat in the old man's

bikabika. The womenfls connections to the deceased were as

 

wives or daughters of the deceased's mataqali, in three

 

cases, and in one case as a co-villager of one of these
women. The men had the following affiliations to the old
man. Three were from his 2252' and one was from his
children's E2323 Three men were his chiefs.‘One chiefly
man joined it because he was the deceased's friend. These

persons' bikabika membership reflected both the operation-

 

alization of the ideals of reciprocal aid between mataqali-

 

designated siblings, veiqalaki, wexa, sister's child, and
persons of the same regional origins, plus the influence of
personal affections. In terms of the latter reason for

bikabika membership, men stressed that the obligations

 

between mataqali were responsible for their involvement.
For example, as part of the wexa, Navulavula could be

expected to provide bikabika members, but it was the

 

Navulavula men's friendships with the old man that deter-

mined why they and not other mataqali members sat in it.

 

Apart from these structural and affective reasons for
bikabika participation, a funeral is also an opportunity
for senior people to spend time visiting. Villagers seldom
spoke of this aspect of the bikabika, except in regard to
the woman who extended her stay in the village after the
bikabika's ending. Regardless of the differences in the

basis for men's and womenfls bikabika membership, they

 

shared one characteristic -- all were free of household

219
responsibilities because there were other adults to do the
required work.

During the next two days, mourners from other villages
continued to come and pay their respects to the deceasedfis
family; On the fourth day, three cows were slaughtered for
the heeee (fourth-day feast). One animal fed the villagers
who ate lunch at the deceasedfls house. The second carcass
was butchered and distributed uncooked to all non-village
guests as they departed. The last one was carried on a
bamboo pole to the e_e_x_e leader's house for the 1152'4 who
then left for the luncheon at the deceased's house. Before
the meal, Vutu gave the eehe the 22.5222.2£2 whale's tooth.

The significance of this feast was increased by the
spectacle of the long lines of women solemnly carrying
cooked food to the deceased's house. They came in mataqali
groups, walking in the order of their respective seniority.
The paramount, who joined the bikabika, had decided that
all women would bring food to this meal and had his eldest

son announce his decision the day before.

Summary

The funerals of this old man and old woman are struc—
turally the same -- a four-day celebration replete with
mourners, exchanges, and feasts. The resources, personnel,
and time invested in these respective rituals differed
because of the deceased's qualities, position, and gender.

In each case the wexa, the mother‘s relatives, is acknowl-

220

edged as the significant ritual actor. In the man's
funeral, the 3222 sought to express its important role by
bolstering its numbers and lavishly bestowing gifts: in the
woman's funeral, the E253 was asked not take on its full
duties, but in so doing was given the respect owed it. The
strength of uxoral ties and the nurturant behavior asso-
ciated with women were more clearly and variously portrayed
at the old manfls ritual, not only in his eehefs involvement
and in his children's ere—xe's assistance but in the partici-
pation of others uxorally related to him.

I stressed the care-giving expectations for women and
connected these to woman-woman dyads as a means for bring-
ing some women to the ritual as helpers. Women's solici-
tousness is also shown in the description of the widow's
daughter, who cared for her dying mother. (This is an
interesting ascription of terms and meaning, viz., the
woman who stayed with her daughter I describe as doing so
because she and her action are nurturant, yet the sons who
attended their father for several days are not given the
same adjectives.) Likewise, I maintain that some of the
women's ritual involvement may be attributable to notions
of them as being more socially concerned because of their
generous natures and care-giving roles. ‘Women's natures
and roles appear to allow Fijian culture to expect much
from them, that is, to steadfastly support their affinal

units, to remain loyal to their consanguines and natal

221
villages, and to be able to function as bridges between

mataqali and locales.

 

Women are defined as malleable beings whose plasticity
allows them to be many things to many people. These
ductile women, the various criteria available to judge
their behavior, and their ambivalent structural position
produce problematic situations for them, as illustrated by
the old man's daughter's funeral preparation. Women's
occasionally onerous social and cultural position in terms
of conflicting expectations, values, and norms, and their
lesser cultural worth, have been provided some expression
in these rituals -- for instance, when they were used to
resolve a dilemma for their husbands in the cohabitation
ritual: when their dual mataqali affiliation was delineated
by their representations of natal and conjugal groups at
the bisaba: and when the less-elaborate funeral for the
widow is considered. Womenfls presumed silliness, volatili-
ty, and formlessness, which places them under men's
guidance, was partially confirmed in the grievances vented
in the kinds of prestations made by some women at the
widow's funeral. ‘Whereas women may sometimes blurt out
dissatisfaction over exchanges, communal decisions, or
relationships, either symbolically or verbally, men strive
more often to state their opinions or discontent graceful-
ly. This difference between the genders' characteristics
and communicative styles paints women as potential dis—

rupters of social harmony, yet this depiction is culturally

222
juxtaposed against the view of women as symbols of
continuance.

In each of these rituals, women have dealt with sub-
stance and actions related to social and biologic regenera-
tion. Even at the funeral, their gift is created from a
floral source that is not destroyed in the manufacturing
process. They and their kin's funeral roles direct atten-
tion to their respective life-giving functions and capaci-
ties -- and their potential for withholding them. Womenfia
food sustains the mourners during this crisis and is con-
sidered the ”real food" necessary to existence, whereas the
cow killed by the men is, regardless of its quantity and
desirability, only "the relish" (e eel). For example, the
old man's fourth-day feast did not begin until all mataqali
women deposited their trays of tubers at the house of the
death. I perceive something additional in the womenfls food
giving that day: their long queues streamed through the

village like ropes, tying their mataqali to that of the

 

deceased. The women, it will be recalled, were directed to
bring takitaki by the paramount, but as usual, on behalf of

their husbands and conjugal mataqali. Yet the chief's

 

request was specifically for the women, whose function as
social pathways cannot, apparently, be assumed.

The deceasedfls maternal kin, who bury the dead and may
determine the funeral's format and to whom the death is
announced, play an important funeral role. Within the 100

days of mourning the maternal kin must receive from the

I. ..’J A". AOL-fl'fi'LA‘h

H

223
deceasedfls group a whale4s tooth (he kena ulu, its head) or
the wexa may cause calamity to befall these people. At the

time of death, the mother's mataqali's behavior reflects

 

the woman's power to regenerate or destroy life. I main—
tain that the dominant female status that the eehe portrays
is not that of woman as mother but that of mataqali sister
as mother.

Women's funeral roles were focused on giving mats and
food, both possible representations of nurturance. Womenhs
care-giving behaviors and qualities were again extended to
those related through them, and there were several examples
of uxorally related people assisting at the rituals.

Metaphoric analogies were drawn between the sexes and
their respective ritual contributions. The relative quali-
ties of funerary expenditures were also associated with the
cultural evaluations of men and women and exemplified in
the funerals of an old man and an old woman. Additionally,
social structural explanations were proferred for the dif-

ferences between men's and women's funerals.

Notes

1 No one should touch another's head or reach over it,
especially an adult's. There are tabu on touching a
chief's head and on sitting higher than his head. If a
person wants to stand over someone who is sitting or
wishes to extend an arm over the other's head, this
action must be accompanied by at least the word tulou
(excuse me) and, if possible, a few short claps to show
respect for the seated person.

2 Villagers talked of a recent case in another village

where a number of illnesses and accidents happened to a
mataqali who did not present this tooth to the
deceased's wexa.

‘t-uxw- 5“: t.‘ 5. “t Jana-9‘
u .

3

224

I was told not to enter the house, not to stand in a

doorway, and not to look into the window when the body
was being unwrapped for the burial while I had nwr
toddler daughter with me. There is a fear that a child
will be damaged spiritually by the potent forces operat-
ing at such a time. When I inquired why and how a child
would be harmed, I received vague responses. Their main
reason for demanding this behavior of me was that at
such a time, and in graveyards, a child whose soul is
still yalo wai (a watery soul), iJLu a child under the
age of seven, can be harmed by the presence of recently
deceased beings. Villagers are concerned that the dead
will try to rejoin their living fellows, and I hypothe-
size that they are afraid that the dead will attempt to
take a loved one with them in their new dimension.

Carcasses are presented in different ways, depending on
the reason for the exchange and the parties involved.
For example, at other funeral exchanges the cow's hide

is completely stripped. Ewm'presentation to the wexa

this day, the carcass's lower legs were severed and,
except for that on the head, all the hide was removed.

:1-

‘..:4L .7.- .'4 'I‘M-ufl’. A A-flh—J‘

Nu

CHAPTER 5

SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS

I have illustrated in these rituals the several topics
that I discussed in the introduction -- womenfls intercalary
position, their facilitation.of‘affinal bonds, their cul-
turally defined characteristics, and the significance of
cross-sex sibling and cousin ties. I will now look at what
these rituals do. I will concentrate my remarks on how
they define and affect women, who, I maintain, are malle-
able but potentially unruly beings and may be what Durkheim
called "actual living and animated force" and thus of
primary concern in Matailobau life.

"Ritual is, above all,purposive action” (La Fontaine
1982:xxxvi). Matailobau values are stated as these rituals
assign basic conceptions, relationships,,and tasks to the
sexes. And so in these rituals we learn what women are and
how they differ from men. Villagers believe that females'
weak, fluid natures need more social assistance to take on
approved forms and that their fertility must be controlled
lest it result in inappropriate, nonnurturant, or revenge-
ful actions. Thus, in the cohabitation ritual the girl is
transformed into a woman and a male elder lectures her on
appropriate behavior for her new status: the bisaba encour-
ages good parenting: and in the funeral her kin, who share
some of her characteristics, receive a whalefls tooth, or a

promise thereof, to prevent them from supernaturally

225

226

harming her affines as revenge for the loss of her child.
Woumnnand girls are also ritually guided because they are
perceived of as being potentially unruly, or at least
unpredictable. This feminine quality is somewhat extended
to womenfls kin and probably springs from a fear of their
supposed influence over women's maternity. Women's fecund-
ity is a central concern in this culture, where fertility,
continuity, and well-being are core values. In societies
like this one,
A . .. contrast may be found .. . between the
"hard” legal line of descent, patrilineal or
matrilineal, through which authority, property,
and social placement pass, and the "soft,"
"affectional" side of the family through the
parent of so-called "complementary filiation,"
mother's side in patrilineal systems, father's
side in matrilineal systems. This side, as dis-
tinct from the legal line, is often attributed
with mystical powers over a person's total wel-
fare. Thus in many patrilineal societies, the
mother‘s brother has powers of cursing or bless-
ing his sister's child, but no legal power. In
others, the mother‘s kin may act as a sanctuary
against paternal harshness (Turner 1974:235).
These rituals portray women as being directed and repre-
sented by men and their relatives as being assuaged and
respected, much as in the custom of a couple presenting the
supplies for Christmas Day tea to the women's kin as a
means of "thanking them for our children." Women, who
occupy an interstitial position and have qualities that
elicit pity and love, are the perfect messengers of the
holiday tea because they preserve their husbands' dignity

by bearing the prestation and they engender an affectionate

response from their relatives (cf. Strathern 1972).

 

EA~H“‘
- , .
I

227

These same rituals also display the similarities
between women and men, iae., their incorporations into and
the significance of their respective kin groups. Mataqali
determine daily activities and personal identities and are
sustained by cultural values. Villagers say that they do
things in groups -- celebrate events, dispose of some types
of resources, start enterprises, and so forth: their state-
ments are meant to be empirical and instructive. The
Fijian orientation toward group-centered activities is
echoed in these three rituals: the marital coupler simi-
larities are based on their matagali's proprietary interest
in them and the salience of their respective units in the
cohabitation ritual: the women at the bisaba act on behalf
of their groups, the infant's parents' units are addressed
in the speeches, and the importance of the father's
sister's role reflects her commitment to her natal and
conjugal kin: and the relationship between the groups of
the deceased determines the ritualfls format, the disposal
of the corpse, and the potential for supernatural sanctions
being employed by one matagali against the other.

If, however, we look at one aspect of a groupfls ritual
participation, we see something that again separates men
from women even in terms of their common mataqali member—
ship: men represent groups at rites of passage and women
do not. Indeed, some of the values communicated in these
rituals concern the qualitative differences between the

genders that allow men to speak for groups at rituals

_‘ .J‘nl .D‘al’“ -_‘_‘ bf-

228

involving intergroup relations and that limit women's rep-
resentational roles to the domestic ritual, the bisaba,
where no structuring of mataqali associations occurs.
These differences in the genders"representational roles
illuminate a basic distinction and problem involving them,
viz., the conditions and qualities of their respective
mataqali memberships.

The argument could be made, as I did in analyzing the
differences in expenditures and interests between the old

man's and the old woman's funerals, that men's mataqali

 

affiliation is viewed as being unequivocal whereas women's
is indeterminate because of their ability to join with
their own and their husbands' units. But why does a woman

not speak for her natal mataqali when her membership is

 

unquestioned? This question also requires one to explain
the avunculate and the strength and longevity of uxoral
ties, if Fijians do not see women as having the same kind
of mataqali membership as their brothers. But perhaps
these are separate issues: women's kin group affiliation
is of a qualitatively different kind than that of their
brothers but does not affect the permanence and
obligations, sentiments, and privileges emanating from
their siblingship.

If siblingship is separable from the siblings' respec-
tive mataqali memberships, this would be reason for the
tenacity of the siblings' bond and of the avuncular rela-

tions upon which it is dependent. It would also be a way

.7; 1‘

 

229

of retaining sisters (and their children) and of regulating
them to secondary political rights in and on behalf of the
corporations. The distinction between cross-sex siblings
could also be argued on the basis of the sexes' respective
qualities, which represent the males as governors and the
sisters as being in need of governance. Sisters as women,
then, can be cared for and supervised, respected because
they transmit sacred blood, but prevented from political
functions by virtue of their feminine characteristics.
Sisters, like women in general, are kept in the domestic
domain, as is clearly indicated by the devotion to domestic
issues in the bisaba, where they are celebrated and where
they officiate. I will return to this point a bit later.

Women's mataqali affiliation may be based on their

 

identification with their fathers and brothers, who act on
behalf of the unit. As wives, women are also identified

with their husbands, who speak for the mataqali at all

 

rituals affecting intergroup relations. That women are
linked to men, who appear to enjoy a different kind of
group membership (or at least an authoritative position
vis-a-vis their groups), is neither unusual nor without
purpose. Women}s attachment to statuses through men allows
them flexibility in affiliation and eases them into an
interstitial position that may have social value and func-
tion. "An ambiguity or looseness in the position of
females 'deliberately' built into the social system"

resolves somewhat the problem of concentrating "political

.1"!

 

230

roles within one sex" while having to place "members of
this second sex vis-a-vis the political organization"
(Callan 1975:101). Women are not only politically but
otherwise socially and culturally kept in positions second-
ary to menfls: this is confirmed and substantiated in these
rituals. Yet, as ritual depicts them as being subordinate
to men, women are also the "completers" of ritual and, in
this respect, become men's equals.

These rituals indicate that female cooperation is

 

needed for satisfactory group participation. The elements
that mark ritual completeness are tendered by women: "real
food" and mats. The "real food," as represented by taro,
is the hallmark:of the bisaba. Weddings and funerals are
only clearly underway when women have given their mats,

which are placed under the bridal couple and under and

 

around the deceased. Likewise, the extravagant mataqali
prestation utilizes the impressive sight of women throwing
down many large mats. As noted in the description of the

widow‘s funeral, the mataqali2s generosity can be dimin-

 

ished by women's gifts of cloth. Men encourage a liberal
donation of mats, which are women's wealth, but they
suggest more often than demand that women give them.
Womenfls potential for noncooperation obtains alongside
their recognition that men are culturally and otherwise

superordinate (vakaturaga, chiefly), and their leaders.

 

Yet women say that along another dimension "men are to

women as lesser chiefs are to the paramount.” This other

 

r w!._ _-__~ 1... -—-——

231

dimension has to do with womenfls acumen and power regarding
the continuous flow of life, which is facilitated by their
industry, social concern, and regenerative potentials.
Regeneration appears to be associated with women in a sense
that it is not with men. It is a series of ideas that
interdigitate nurturance/food and social continuance/expan-
sion with women. As noted before, maternal kin are
credited with a mystical hold on fecundity, as women, whose
qualities are somewhat shared by these relatives, can co-
operate or not in daily activities and in reproduction.
All of this is variously noted in these rituals, particu-
larly in regard to women's roles in intergroup relations
and the cross-sex sibling bond to which it is essentially
tied.

In each of these rituals, affinity and intergroup
relationships are central elements, partly because in each
ritual a valuable substance is passing from one side to the
other. The girl leaves her kin to reside with and become
integrated into her spouse‘s mataqali, and as she does, so
does she presume to yield her kin's sacred substance to her
affines. In the bisaba the promise of her fertility has
been realized, and yet she and her consanguines must be
blessed and encouraged to continue the life that she has
borne. As in the cohabitation ritual, at the funeral the
transaction of a precious gift between the affines is
distinctly marked, but this time the transfer of a sacred

substance has moved completely through the developmental

' ~_ «2:. 4 «Hr: snu‘go.‘ .13.,

232

cycle -- a person promised, delivered, and now expired --
of affinal relations. The funeral depicts a fracturing of
mataqali relations, a cleft that generates a question about
whether the death was due to jealousy and revenge on the
part of the eehe, and whether the affines will retain their
amity or become enemies. The dubiousness of affinal rela-
tions contrasts with the constancy of mataqali membership,
which is also portrayed in each of these rituals.

Affinal ties and matagali affiliation are opposites in
this sense, but they are also elements in a process dedi—
cated to reproducing each other. The recycling process may
be said to rest on the tenacity of the brother-sister dyad,
which, as Weiner notes for the Trobriands, is neither
”conceptually [nor] structurally split apart at marriage"
(1979:331). But the unity of cross-sex siblings is subse-
quently maintained by the avunculate and the preference for
cross-cousin marriage. In these two institutions, men have
control over the fecundity of their sister's daughters,
thus assuring to some degree their mataqali's continuity.

Power over a woman's fertility is not sufficient to
ensure a group's existence if there is little guarantee of
claiming her in the first place. The claim to a woman is
more definite when groups agree to give each other spouses.
A way of establishing such an agreement can be for a
brother and sister to vow to provide the other‘s children
with his or her own offspring as spouses. This promise

reaffirms the sibling bond by producing new members for the

-\ u Harmumi
’ I
.

233

two groups. But additionally, when cross-cousins marry,
they return to a sibling set a marital partner in exchange
for the one given in their parental generation. The cross-
sex sibling set has not been sundered by the sister's
marriage and production of children for her husband's
group, because these children marry and give offspring to
her and her brother in the next generation.

As in the Trobriands, marriage is a requirement for
kin group existence in Matailobau. In both cases, an
exchange of members is needed to continue each exogamous
group. This need is a cultural construction, because a
group may be maintained by children born out of wedlock,
but there is the notion that its existence will not be
confirmed if spouses are not brought in. For the
Matailobau, this orientation is dependent upon agnatic
transmission for appropriate membership: jural rights are
transferred in this line, and men are viewed as the
mataqali core.

An apparent oddity exists here. A group relies on its
in-marrying women's blood and their brother's avuncular
powers to sustain itself. Reliance on their affines for
their existence is a feature of some unilineal descent
systems, for partners given in marriage in one generation
are replaced by members of the receiving group in another
generation. This replacement happens in the next genera-
tion for the cross-cousins of the patrilineal Matailobau

and in two generations for the patrilineal second-cross-

_ ‘1’ . -..—.~a'."~7;3 {“130-1n

In!"

234
cousins of the matrilineal Trobrianders.

Matailobau funerary ritual marks the significance of
the deceased's mother's brother and its cross-cousins as
the categories of persons responsible for the life of the
individual and his or her group. They are similar to what
Weiner describes for the Trobriand mortuary rituals. The
strength of what has been labeled "ties through women"
persist, it is suggested, in much the same way in
Matailobau, and for the same purpose as Weiner describes
for the patrilateral ties in the Trobriands, whose

kind of marriage represents an expansive, repro-

ductive system in which networks of relationships

are produced by the reproductive efforts of women

and men that may be regenerated through patri-

lateral lines for generations. The tama [father]

- tabu [father's sister] sibling set, furthest

removed genealogically from ego, crosses dala

[matrilineage] boundaries and establishes the

closest and most important keyawa [relatives of

ego's children's spouses, who contribute mortuary
wealth for ego] relationships for ego as it
establishes marriage partners for ego's children

(Weiner 1979:345).

For the Trobriands, the

process linking [matrilineages] with "others"

result in the reproduction and regeneration of

extensive networks of intergeneration relation-
ships basically held together through the
material transactions of yams and women's wealth

(Weiner 1979:333).

Matailobau linkages are maintained through avuncular rela-
tionships, prescriptive cross-cousin marriages, cross-
cousin participation at mortuary exchanges, the gifts pre-
sented to maternal kin when "entering” their village/house

for the first time after the birth of a child, and the

funerary exchange of he kena ulu. The matrilineal

 

 

W.

235
Trobriand symbolize their transactions of persons and sub-
stance with women's wealth, whereas the patrilineal
Matailobau utilize the tabua, men's wealth, to express
them. In each society the gender-specified valuables
reflect their respective kin groups' gender line or core.

In unilineal systems, the parent who does not affili-
ate a child to its group often has a special nurturant
quality or role with which it sustains the child. For the
Matailobau, the mother”s nurturance has been referred to
throughout in the descriptions of the rituals. Now I want
to restate that the mother's people have a proprietary
relationship to a person because they have nurtured him or
her. In Namatai, peOple spoke of the avuncular uncle as
being like the mother, who gave the child life by giving it
her breast milk. The mother‘s brother was likened to the
mother as one who also cared for the child. It was the
mother's and her brother's respective nurturing of the
child that made it theirs.

As I reported earlier, women and their kin's suste-
nance makes them the "affectional" kin for a person and
thus places their activities within the domestic domain.
Also, as I mentioned before, women are retained in this
sphere by being precluded from representing mataqali at
public functions, such as the rites of passage, because of
their intrinsic qualities and the apparently qualitatively

different mataqali membership imposed on them. Women's

 

ritual roles lucidly confirmed their confinement in the

236
domestic sphere and reiterated that their nonritual tasks
involve them in it. Cultural values are used to keep women
within this domain. Women state that they are important
when they perform their culturally defined jobs in domestic
service and are respected for their domestic responsibili-
ties. Additionally, as mothers traditionally taught their
daughters, to be ”feminine" is to show respect to, to defer
to, and to serve men, even younger brothers (Griffen 1975).
What the Matailobau say about themselves supports Hoch-
Smith and Spring's cross-cultural generalization about
women's position in ritual.
Women draw sacred attention primarily in connec-
tion with their reproductive statuses. . .
Society sees their "reproductive potential" as
both highly positive and highly negative and in
need of much control. . . . Women who spend
their sexually active years in childbearing
channel their reproductive potential into posi-
tive cultural ends and their ritual roles are
domestic rather than public (Hoch-Smith and
Spring l978:l).
The bisaba rallies support for women's nurturance, and the
other rituals also repeat that women do things related to
the nonpublic aspects of social life. Women's culturally
defined traits are used to legitimize why they occupy these
roles: they are not fit for political roles because they
tend toward intemperance, frivolity, and a lack of self-
restraint. They are fit for the myriad, time-consuming
domestic tasks required to continue social life because
they are qumutua (industrious).

Although Matailobau women are associated with the

domestic sphere, as are women in many other societies, I

”"_~r"
‘

‘. -nr'“"n‘

237

maintain that one explanation often advanced for this
situation does not necessarily apply to the Hill Tribes.
For example, Rosaldo (1974) has said that retaining women
in the domestic domain is owing to their reproductive
biology, which involves them in nursing and caring for
children and of necessity keeps them out of the public
domain. Although it might be argued that the bisaba con-
firms Rosaldo's explanation about the basis of women's
domesticity, Matailobau define the sexes' natures as sets
of biologic traits that do not include reproductive sexual-
ity. Women's nurturance is ascribed to their motherhood,
which is an achieved status and not ascribed to and antici-
pated by them, as Van Baal (1975) assumes. Thus, I view
Fijian women's domestic status as imposed upon them by
virtue of characteristics attributable to them, which in
turn are not acceptable to public, representational
positions.

The domestic sphere in which women are culturally and
socially placed, like their interstitial position vis-a-vis

mataqali, can be seen as being separate from the social

 

structure founded on the relationships among statuses and

roles and mataqali. The domestic domain is a time and

 

place in which the usual status and roles can be temporari-
ly forfeited: for instance, at a bisaba in his home a chief
can deliver a speech that a commoner usually presents in
his public, political role. The domestic sphere allows

such a minimal leveling of rank and status differences, for

 

238
instance, so that men assist other men as kinsmen and not
as vassals, because it is somewhat separate from the usual

structure forming interactions. Persons and situations

 

relatively independent of this structure facilitate the

emergence of a kind of communitas, as Turner (1976) says,

 

that minimizes social differences and stresses communality.
Women can enjoy a kind of communitas because they are of a
lower status than men and because they are in one sense
liminal -- they occupy an interstitial position (cf.
Strathern 1972): persons of low status are often associated
with communitas and liminality.

Communitas is, existentially speaking and in its

origins, purely spontaneous and self-generating.

. . . It is often believed that the lowest

castes and classes in stratified societies exhib-

it the greatest immediacy and involuntariness of

behavior (Turner 1976:234).

Matailobau women are associated with conviviality, and
with being less controlled than men, and can generate
liveliness or communitas. A social energy emerges from
communitas, a revitalization that can assist structures to
maintain themselves or that can spark revolution. Women
fuel the social system, but there is probably the worry
that someday something may go awry and they will change the
extant order. Women's ties to such social regeneration
means that they may not be amenable to the dictates of the
social structure, and for that reason a way to confine

their energy has to exist. Ritual may provide'a means of

containment of female vitality. Thus, their conjugal and

 

[4 .A ‘ Vt.“

239
maternal behavior, associated with the domestic sphere,
where they do salubrious things for society and where their
energy flows most freely, is the cohabitation ritual and
bisaba's focus.

Nonritual means must also be found to temper womenks
unruly natures and weak souls in the domestic domain, where
they may harm society and, particularly, their affinal
mataqali. Some of the problems women may promote stem from
their identification with their natal groups. When they
marry, women's group loyalties are expected to shift to
their conjugal groups. In practical terms, this affinal
group integration and identification can be aided by many
interpersonal factors and by the birth of children, who
cement the women's commitments to their affines.

One of the reasons women give for not feeling truly
part of their conjugal unit concerns their mothers-in-law.
Women complain that their mothers-in-law do not like their
children as much as they like their own daughters'
children. The mothers-in-law's favoring of their
daughters' children can be attributed to the daughters'
feminine natures, which elicit their mothers' love, and to
the established bond between mothers and daughters. This
parent-child dyad that links generations and mataqali can
have unpleasant repercussions in a society with virilocal
residence. Therefore, one of the means for adjusting
married women's loyalties and affections is the ideal of

conjugal mataqali identification, which discourages their

 

240

natal mataqali ties and builds a common bond between in-

 

marrying women. This tactic for forging reciprocal support
amongst the women is more successful when a woman's kin
lives some distance from her affines. Otherwise, young
matrons often visit their natal homes, even though they are
sometimes characterized as "bad" by other women, who say
that they should stay in their husbands' homes and with
their mothers-in-law.

The ideology concerning a householdfls womenfls commit-
ments to their common conjugal mataqali and to each other,
however, is bolstered by the bisaba ritual. The bisaba
stresses that women help the newborn's mother: these are
in-marrying women who are village or household co-
residents. The frequency of bisaba in Matailobau, as I
suggested, is derived from their colonial experiences, but
I hasten to add that it also possibly emanates from the
characteristics of the Hill Tribe women. These women
appear to be relatively bold, assertive persons who, while
burdened by cultivation tasks, nevertheless are not limited
to their households and thus, figuratively speaking, escape
from the domestic spherefls spatial dimension. The women's
garden work signals men's dependence on their labor and
perhaps on their spiritual regenerative qualities, which
benefit at least their main crop, taro. Matailobau womenhs
cultivation skills are respected by men, and it may be that
this respect makes the purported weakness of women suspect.

Also, women's gardening prowess may undermine men's ability

 

 

241
to keep women within the domestic domain and to keep them
from challenging menhs political hegemony.

It is this recognition of women's ability to be in two
domains, the village and the veikau (nonvillage area,
forest) that may trigger men to think of women as being
capable of entering the public sphere. To prevent womenfls
entrance into the public domain, ritual can be used to

state the cultural verities that women and men are distinct

beings who occupy different and separately valued spheres..

Thus, we see in the rituals women serving men by bringing

food in takitaki, remaining silent while men represent

 

groups, supervising the bisaba (the‘domestic ritual), and
at funerals, showing that their sexuality is controlled by
men, who bury their children, thus indicating that groups
headed by men act upon such important matters.

While focusing attention on women in ritual, I pre-
sented information about the genders and the construction
of social life -- how Matailobau life should be lived, what
the divisions of labor are and why they are this way, the
nature of the relationships of the genders, the place of

mataqali, what siblingship entails, and what roles affinity

 

plays in society. We learn from these rituals who does
what to maintain life. Women are involved with life-
sustaining activities, but they must go about these
silently. Men speak for society, but they do not create
society. Indeed, food may be the symbol of sustenance, the

substance that is tendered by women, and which "speaks" for

1.; cn-xn‘

 

242
them. Men, who do not give such a physical token of their
social contribution, must "say" that they participate in
the social process. And thus the genders are complementary
in one sense, but each is ascendant.in another way -- men
represent society, women provide sustenance.

Coming to this conclusion about the genders' respec-
tive parts in the construction of social life may be where
current anthropological discussion about women and genders
is heading. Pursuing the complexities of gender relations
has moved research and analysis from previous questions of
why women are subordinate to men and how this subordination
is maintained to how women have power and prestige in their
own right, and perhaps now into what each gender contrib-
utes to social life.

As this dissertation portrays the complexity of gender
relations, so too does it provide information that sustains
some theoretical propositions, while it also questions
other accepted assumptions and suggests different theoreti-
cal considerations. For instance, many anthropologists
have associated women with "self-interest," exp, Llewelyn-
Davies(l982) discussing the Maasai and Marilyn Strathern
(1982) describing the Mt. Hageners of New Guinea. The
Matailobau say exactly the opposite: women are credited
with having more communal interests than men, and this,
women in particular claim, is why they give so many bisaba.

Matailobau women's gemeinschaft produces their "communal

 

value," which prevents them from occupying the difficult

 

~h-_-b\_ —
,. ’.

243
"in between" position of Mt. Hagen women, who do not have
such value.

Matailobau also do run: maintain the cultural opposi-
tion of men being to culture as women are to nature, a
paradigm found in the social science literature from at
least the writings of Talcott Parsons. Instead, the
Matailobau say that it is the nature of women that needs
cultivating.

Another theoretical observation made in this study is
that although Matailobau men can be seen as the ones who,
as Radcliffe-Brown said, "really constitute the corporate
kin group” and that men and women have different member-
ships in corporated groups, as I.bL Lewis notes, little
attention has been given to how women are tied to these kin
units and how avuncular relations can be maintained. I
suggest that the solution to this‘enigma is that sibling—
ship is viewed as isolable from kin group membership that
entails differential membership for men and women and that
assigns representational roles to men. Making siblingship
isolable from corporate group membership is taking one
theoretical step further the perception of Nayacakalou
(1971) that siblingship is not a monolithic phenomenon
because there are kinds of siblingship, ine., parallel and
cross siblingship (cf. Marshall 1983). Nayacakalou's
insights are doubly useful to this dissertation and perhaps
twice as applicable because he was a Fijian anthropologist

who was influenced by his own culture and siblingship.

 

“m.

 

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APPENDIX

CRITERIA DEFINING WOMEN AS GIRL'S PEOPLE

There were six ways to categorize women with the
girl's side at the cohabitation ritual. Table 1 lists

these women and their natal and conjugal mataqali, and the

 

following outline describes the six groupings (numbers in
parentheses refer to women/girls listed as having attended
the couple at the river).

I. Women born in girl's mataqali, Nasau (l, 9, and
14)
II. Women born in mataqali that were sibling-mataqali
to the girl's group (2, 4, and 7)
III. Women married into girl's sibling-mataqali (3, 9,
10,and 12)
IV. Women married into youth's mataqali, Nakoroniu (S)
V. Women married into youthfls sibling-mataqali (6 and
11) '
V1. Other relationships: born in same mataqali as
youth's mother and from same village (8), mother
born in same mataqali as youth's mother and from
same village (l3)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Women in Group I attended the girl because mataqali

 

members are obliged to assist each other. Likewise, women
in Group II joined the girl because they were sibling-

mataqali and thus equivalent to her mataqali.

 

A woman's identification should be with her husband's
mataqali: therefore, Group III women were the girl's people
also. According to the principles underlying the kinship
system and reflected in the terms, however, cross-cousin
marriage should be the norm. Thus, Group IV women are the
girlfs sisters because they, like she, married men of the

same mataqali.

 

250

251

 

 

 

 

 

Table 1. Women who participated in the vakamamaca at the
river and in the village
.52 the River
Natal mataqali Conjugal mataqali
1. Nasau* Sika
2. Navulavula** Sika
3. Waivou Navulavula**
4. Nabena Sika
5. Vutu Nakoroniu***
6. Nadovunisili Mate
7. Navulavula** Sika
8. Navua Sika
9. Nasau* Navulavula**
10. Navanualevu** Navulavula**
11. Mate Nadovunisili
12. Sika Navanualevu**
13. Sika Waivou
14. Nasau* Sika
I_ the Village
Natal mataqali Conjugal mataqali
l. Nakoroniu*** Naceicolo
2. Waimaro ”Navulavula"**
(This is the schoolteacher, who "stays with"
Navulavula. Her husband's ”sister" is married
to the youth's brother's son. She therefore
calls the youth "father.")
3. Nakoroniu*** Navulavula**
4. Nakoroniu*** Sika

*
**

***

girl's mataqali
girl's vassals
youth's mataqali

 

252

Because their mataqali are siblings of the youth's,

 

Group V women are also the girl's sisters since the
couple's groups are considered siblings. From another

perspective, the mataqali represented by Group V women are

sibling-mataqali of Nakoroniu, because Navulavula and

 

Nakoroniu are.sibling-matagali: this association was not

 

salient on this occasion. The principles of equivalence
and substitution are also displayed in this group by the
woman listed as number 12, whose chiefly husband "stays
with" Navulavula.

Group VI women exemplify that, when the tie between
their spouses' mataqali and the principles are not close or
structurally significant, they can act upon other connec-
tions. Both of these women had two reasons for escorting
the girl to the river. One was that women are expected to
return to their natal villages in order to assist at
rituals. A woman's identity with her natal village is
designated in the term yalewa heee (woman of the village).
Thus, one woman (8) attended as a "woman of the girl's

village” and also honored her shared natal mataqali member—

 

ship with the youthfis mother. And, too, there were matri-
lateral ties that obliged the two women in this group to
participate.

The other woman (13) is sister's child to the youth's

mother‘s mataqali. In this capacity, this woman and the

 

youth might have been considered cross-cousins. If this

was the case, this woman and the girl belonged to the same

253
group at this ritual. On the other hand, if the youth and
this woman (13) were directly related through two sisters,
they would have been "siblings." This woman (13) acknowl-

edged her matrilateral tie to this mataqali in the way that

 

such statements are made, by helping at their events.
Because the two women in Group VI (8 and 13) were asso-
ciated with the youth's mother, they would be in the posi-
tion normally represented by the girl's people if the
system of cross-cousin marriage were operating perfectly.
Within this marriage system, the custom is that the youth's

mother's mataqali sisters (and wives) take the girl, who is

 

ideally of the youth's mother's mataqali, for the fourth

 

day's bathing and fishing.
Matrilateral ties of a more distant connection were

also responsible for some of the women's involvement in

this ritual. The natal mataqali of one woman (4) is

 

veiwekani (related through a cross-sex sibling link) with
the girl's group. It was to this distant tie that people
referred when explaining the matron's participation.
Typically, villagers explain their own (and others')
ritual involvement in terms of the earliest connection
between themselves and the ritual's principals. For
example, this was the case with the schoolteacher's assist-
ance. Like all long-term visitors in the village, she had

to be affiliated with a mataqali. Thus, she "stayed with"

 

Navulavula. Given her connection to Navulavula, one might

have expected her to attend the girl at the river, but she

 

lam-"r

254
was the youthfs "child" through the series of relationships

depicted in Figure l.

l

 

l
A A youth
I I I
I l l
teacher 0 = A g = A
Figure l. "Navulavula" teacher related as youth's "child"

The schoolteacher's husband's "sister" was her cross-
cousin. This cousin's spouse was her "sibling." The
sibling's father was the youth because brothers are
equated: therefore, the teacher was the youth's "child"
and, as such, should minister to the girl along with his

other matageli women.

 

Later connections between persons and groups may make
their relationships more effectively secure, more utilized
in daily activities, but it is to the original ties that
people refer when telling outsiders why they did things and
why they associate as they do. Yet individual bonds and
more recent ties exert special influences. Such was the
case with the woman (13) who spent more time helping at the
wedding than any other matron in the same structural posi-
tion. Daily, she brought several portions.of cooked food
to the dining hall because her mother, who came to the
village for the ritual, was staying there. Her mother

attended the ritual because she and the youth's mother were

255

namesakes. A namesake is an important person because names
are highly significant to Fijians and, second, because
there are notions about the continuance of names and con-
nections between namesakes through time. Third, the name-
sake relationship is deemed to be full of caring, assist-
ance, and sentimental attachment. Sharing an appellation
bonds individuals and produces a kind of equivalence
between them. Namesakes are referred to as yecadrau (those
two with the same name).

Another example of the influence of more recent
connections, and indeed multiple ties, is also found in the

case of the same woman (13), one of the vakavuru performers

 

(Figure.2L. When this woman entertained, people said she
did so because she is the youth's brother's wife. Her
natal mataqali's relationship to the youthfls group was not

used as a rationale for her vakavuru role. Members of the

 

woman's mataqali had married twice into the youth's group.

 

Her daughter was married to a Navulavula man, whose mother

belonged to this performer“s natal unit.

I A
OT“ 1"”.
A A=® OTA
8 A

Figure 2. One woman's (13) connections to Nakoroniu

matagali

 

 

256

Sometimes, however, several reasons are given for
someone's involvement in a ritual: such a situation often

arises when veiqalaki ties between chiefs and commoners

 

exist. Such was the case for the woman who presented the
yagona to the girl's sisters. Her participation was under-
stood by different people according to either her kinship

or her political ties, and sometimes through both routes.