Kastom

Mats were used in kastom ceremonies, but they were not identified as kastom themselves. By coming to Ambae to promote, document, and revive weaving skills and mats, emphasizing that women have their own kastom and contribute to the kastom life of the community, we gave women a new perspective on their own activities. […] As the identification of traditional knowledge as kastom enables communities to turn from the past to the future, so it seems possible that identification of women's activities as kastom will create a means by which women's status in Vanuatu can change.

Men were adamant that I should not go near the tower [for the land-dive ritual] since my presence there, like the presence of any local woman, would threaten the strength of the wood and lianas, would imperil the sacred integrity of the ancestor embodied in the tower, and endanger the lives of those men diving from its breasts, shoulders and head. I bitterly accepted this, but was livid two days later when I spotted a woman from a Vila tourist agency breezily speeding towards the tower in her jeep. […] [B]eing one of those ai salsaliri, the floating ones, whites, she posed no threat. Since I knew kastom, spoke the language and was a 'woman of the place', I was in contrast a danger.

At the same time many of these politicians established an intellectual rapprochement between kastom and Christianity.

Analysis, policymakers, government and aid officials operating in Solomon Islands need to avoid depictions of kastom and Christianity as stable and conservative forces or, alternatively, as important for nation building. Kastom and Christianity are inherently dynamic world-views and, moreover, have come under considerable stress in recent times.