THE DARKLANDS

A Melanesian Experience

Brandon Oswald

ABOUT AUTHOR

Brandon Oswald

Brandon is an archivist who founded the nonprofit organization, Island Culture Archival Support, which is dedicated to helping cultural heritage organizations throughout the Pacific Islands.

Pastor Sethy RegenvanuCh.1

“We have always been independent people before white people came to Vanuatu. We were people who were living in our islands independently, depending on subsistence agriculture and our way of life, culture, and custom.”

Charles MontgomeryCh.2

“Kastom is Melanesian history, religion, ritual, and magic, but it also refers to traditional systems of economics, social organization, politics, and medicine. If you say something is kastom, you are attaching it to the traditions of the ancestors.”

Ch.2

“After three shells of kava… Augustine was trying to tell me the legend of the kava. I only heard every other word. Men were the stalk, and women were the leaves—something like that. It was sexual. I think. It did not matter. I was numb, and the world was great.”

Ch.2

“Traditionally, shell money was used to pay for a dowry for a bride, land, pigs, and canoes. Shell money is an integral part of the culture and history of the islands, valued as much for its connection to the traditional way of life as for its monetary value.”

Admiral William F. “Bull” HalseyCh.3

“The coastwatchers saved Guadalcanal, and Guadalcanal saved the Pacific.”

Ch.3

“There were planes, artillery guns, tanks, and pieces of most anything military—simply sitting around and rusting away in the intense environment like unwanted toys left in the rain. The planes were gutted, and the artillery was hollow. Everything stood still, waiting for the jungle to claim it once and for all.”

Ch.4

“These superstitious beliefs would eventually become advantageous to the missionaries in their ultimate goal of converting the natives by including the spirits of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit into their daily list of supernatural beings.”

Ch.4

“Like the ghosts of World War Two creeping about Melanesia and rearing their unfortunate stories from time to time, the ghosts of the early missionaries have also produced their unforgettable grisly stories in the region.”

Beatrice GrimshawCh.5

“To her, the cannibal was not as pictured in fiction—a “howling savage, whose attitude towards plump and eatable whites like that of bird towards the worm.” She believed that they were more of a “nervous, timid, over-excitable creature, distrustful of the strange white race, afraid of it, and anxious to keep out of its way.”

Ch.5

“In many Melanesian islands such as Roviana, Solomon Islands chiefs and warriors used headhunting for their own political legitimacy. An accumulation of skulls was a highly visible display of their status.”

Ch.5

The Papua New Guinea’s Sorcery Act of 1971Ch.6

“Sorcerers have extraordinary powers that can be used sometimes for good purposes, but more often for bad ones.”

Ch.6

“One of the most common stories was how islanders became terrified at night whenever they heard the vele bird that accompanies the sorcerer with his little sack of magic tied around his neck. The vele man would hold his little sack in front of the victim, who then drops dead of fright. He would then quickly disappear.”

Ch.6

“Sorcery was an ancient practice that had played an integral role in the lives of the islanders and had roots in the traditional Melanesian preoccupation with the workings of spirits.”

Ch.6

“The spirituality of the Melanesians that percolates and trickles through the cycle of life within a web of relationships and experiences is orally passed down from ancestors from generation to generation.”

Ch.7

“The ancestors are the pillar and foundation of Melanesian society, and islanders rely on ancestral knowledge to understand the world.”

WilliamsonCh.7

“If the screech of a nighthawk (owl) was heard flying overhead at night, it was a sign of impending doom. If the bird was heard flying outside nearby, nobody was allowed to go out of the hut until daybreak.”

Ch.7

“Half of the archivist’s profession is preserving the memory of ghosts, while the other half is trying to prepare the living peoples’ legacy for that day when they do become ghosts.”

Professor John LennonCh.8

“It’s a crucial way for us all to learn the lessons of our past. To remain silent and not record and interpret these events for tourists may encourage future generations to ignore or forget these terrible periods of human history. Dark Tourism, like our dark history, occupies an important part of our understanding of what it is to be human.”

Ch.8

“For me, the island-shaped as a hat in the thick mist of the rain would be my only and lasting memory of the place—that would be good enough to me. I will let the ghosts grab other tourists’ ankles.”

Ch.9

“The cargo cults led to many ritualistic habits, which would seem strange to people living in a modernized society. Melanesia is full of rituals, and these cults have no problem creating formalities that epitomize modern, consumerist desires.”

Ch.9

“From the window behind me, the sound of the rain over-filling gutters and falling rhythmically onto the pavement put me in a kind of Zen-like stupor. The students at the all-girls St. Anne’s Primary School, which was next door, began to sing their final songs before going home for the day.”

Ch.10

“About an hour later, a woman from the Cultural Center came to the Archive office and reprimanded Anne for being too close to the artifacts. It was kastom taboo for a woman to be near the artifacts.”

Ch.10

“For centuries Melanesia has been composed of oral societies. Writing down stories did not begin until after the colonial governments had packed up and left. However, Melanesians have been practicing a unique and diverse form of artistic expression through artifacts composed of woodcarvings, sculptures, paintings, masks, and statues.”

Ch.10

“The same kind of traveler attracted to dark tourism is also attracted to collecting dark artistic artifacts. Although obtaining a sorcerer’s pouch or a cannibal fork can feel like a macabre experience, Melanesian-made masks and slit drums draw the most attention and have become very popular among tourists.”

Bernard NarokobiCh.10

“Live well, love well, have something good for every person, and die a happy death.”

The Darklands

When the French writer and poet, Andre Breton observed odd sculptures for the first time from Melanesia he wrote, “You frighten. You amaze.” The five Melanesian islands of Fiji, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu were places that were not supposed to be discovered. Explorers feared them. Missionaries were murdered on them. Colonists struggled to govern them...

Mr. Moonlight of the South Seas

Mr. Moonlight of the South Seas describes the adventurous life of American author Robert Dean Frisbie, who lived in South Seas from 1920 until his death in 1948. Although he is part of a long line of South Seas writers that began with Herman Melville and Robert Louis Stevenson, Frisbie managed to do what very few of these writers could do after going to the Pacific...

Island Culture Archival Support

Island Culture Archival Support (ICAS) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of records pertaining to the cultural identity of island peoples in Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia whose national and public archives, libraries, cultural centers, and business organizations are underprivileged, underfunded, and understaffed.

Learn More

THE DARKLANDS

A Melanesian Experience

Brandon Oswald

Brandon Oswald

Books

The Darklands

Mr. Moonlight of the South Seas

Island Culture Archival Support

Brandon Oswald