Genealogy or Genealogies: Path and Birth The Elder and the Younger — Foreign and Autochthonous Origin and Hierarchy in the Cook Islands Genealogy or Genealogies: Path and Birth The origin narratives which at the same time tell both about the migration of the original ancestors from the mythical homeland to the present day islands and give their genealogies, create the qualitatively separate island populations. The role of the resulting genealogical accounts consequently is not only to provide a genealogical link to the ancestor, or even to his divine forefathers, but to convey the qualities connected to the ancestor in question. This in turn can ensue in several ways, and accordingly there has to be several kinds of genealogies. The genealogical representation of the present day population on the islands is a complex one. We do not have a simple distinction between historical narratives and uniform genealogical accounts, and even the genealogies are of varied kinds. My argument is that we have to make a clear distinction between genealogical information on the basis by which we as anthropologists are able to construct extremely encompassing genealogies and different genres of genealogies as they are used and recited on the islands. The politically significant ones are these genres, and not the possible sum of information in our notebooks. To draw conclusions based on comprehensive reconstructions in the way of the early anthropologists and colonial administrators is, of course, a legitimate pursuit. What is not tenable, however, is to claim that these kinds of conclusions are based on local genealogical representations of the society. For this purpose one has to look for the genealogies as they are really used. Visually and logically, the simplest kind of genealogy is a straight list. It begins with the name of one of the founding ancestors, lists all the intermediating ancestors, and ends with the individual whose ascent is being represented. The term used for such a genealogy is ara, the road or the path. To give an example from a Ma‘ukean familybook, one ara reads: Te ara is Koumu (The road of Koumu) Tekeunui Tekeumaina Upokonui Teenui Tekatake Atiuru Upoko Utatakienua Oe Utaavarau Tangaavarau Koumu Koumu’s road to an ancestor called Tekeunui is thus represented with the help of a list of names which is claimed to be a genealogy. Te Rangi Hiroa describes this kind of genealogy in Tongareva: “a particular line of descent from a specified ancestor is called ara (a path) … A person who is descended from more than one member of that family has more than one path (ara) to [a specified ancestor] and in a recital runs them down in order of seniority” (Buck 1932). In the Cook Islands, especially in the minute books of the land court, numerous examples are to be found in which an individual’s “path” to a common ancestor is given through a number of different “paths”. This is especially important in the case of candidates for a chiefly title. A combination of several paths can be claimed to provide a candidate with a stronger case, and the production of these combinations naturally requires more comprehensive genealogical knowledge, too. Rongomatane Ngakaara presented five versions of his genealogy as “different paths” in an argument over his chiefly position to the Land and Titles Court in 1903 and all of them were recorded as “genealogies of Rongomatane through different lines of ancestry”. The interesting point in these chiefly paths is the way in which they combine the ascent to different original ancestors. So we have a picture in which the three chiefs of the islands construct their paths to the two ancestors of their own island. The paths give a clear image of the independent origin of ‘Atiu and Ma‘uke. Only Mitiaro seems to be dependent. The paths lead, however, also to the ancestors of the neighbouring islands. These paths can be used as supporting evidence for a chiefly candidate’s claims. Alone, the connections to “wrong” ancestors are not sufficient; on the contrary, vague links to the ancestor of one’s own island and strong links to the ancestor of the neighbouring island can be used as counter argument. In the case of ‘Atiu and Ma‘uke the autochthonous origin of chiefly titles is a rule. As Tura is the hierarchical descendant of the ‘Atiu chiefs, so Uke is his Ma‘uke counterpart and they are the end points of the paths of the genealogies of their islands. The ara form of genealogy seems to correspond closely to the western concept of descent. The focus of the paths is not, however, unilineal descent, but ascent, and the path can, in fact, not be directly translated into inheritance rights, although this legalistic reinterpretation of paths of ascent as lines of descent is now the norm, according to which the people in the Cook Islands have adapted their own interpretation of their genealogical data. The connotations of ara have begun to deviate even from the Tikopian ones described by Raymond Firth. During the ritual of the sacred canoes in generally patrilineal Tikopia, ara is a term used to refer to the relationship between mother’s father and daughter’s son, between Kafika and Taumako clans (Firth 1967:135, see also Hooper 1981:19). In eastern Polynesian languages ara alludes to progeny and birth in general, without any patrilineal connotations (see Koskinen 1963:68-69).
Posted on: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 21:13:36 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015