Compensation and the Melanesian State: Why the Kwaio Keep Claiming

Abstract

As Melanesian countries enter their third decade of independence, diverse local communities are seeking to transform their status in relation to the state. Many are attempting to frame their interactions with government in terms of indigenous cultural models that presume social equivalence. When thus applied, these models themselves acquire new meanings. This paper explores this process in relation to ideas about compensation among Malaitans in the Solomon Islands who have since independence pressed several claims against the central government. The focus is on a series of claims made by Kwaio people, beginning in the 1980s, regarding crimes of a 1927 punitive expedition that followed the assassination of a district officer and his party. Ethnographic, historical, and political analyses are combined to explain why Kwaio find this compensation demand such an appealing way to approach the government. The case also illuminates violent compensation riots that rocked the capital, Honiara, in 1989 and 1996.