Torres Islands - Culture

Culture

The islanders divide themselves ethnically into essentially two groups, matching their linguistic division. The cultural differences existing within the Torres Is., at least in the perception of the islanders, essentially match language boundaries: that is, two groups are recognised — the 'people of Hiw' vs the 'people of Toga'; however, a secondary, less essential division is drawn between the two populations of Lo and Toga. The islanders were first described in very general - and not always accurate - ethnographic terms by W. J. Durrad at the beginning of the twentieth century (fragments of Durrad's notes were eventually published in the 1940s), and have been the bailiwick of the anthropologist Carlos Mondragón since 1999.

Today the inhabitants of the Torres Islands continue to follow to the same general patterns of subsistence agriculture and supplementary fishing activities that their ancestors did. In addition, key aspects of their ancestral knowledge and ritual cycles are still generally extant. These are dominated by two male-centred institutions, known as the hukwe (which is the equivalent of the sukwe in the Banks Islands) and the lēh-temēt. The hukwe constitutes the local complex of status-alteration rituals by which men are able to acquire greater status and power, while the lēh-temēt is the name given to a smaller group of men who have been initiated into specific types of ritual knowledge that are directly relevant to the manipulation of mana (generative potency or power) and, more specifically, to the relationship between the living and the dead. The most impressive and visible aspect of the activities of the initiates of the lēh-temēt are the manufacture and use of ritual headdresses known as temēt (primordial spirits) during special singing and dancing ceremonial rituals. In fact, the headdresses are known as temēt because they are considered to BE the temporary physical manifestations of temēt; hence, the use of headdresses is considered to be an extremely delicate operation, during which the possibility of spiritual pollution has to be closely monitored and controlled. It is partly for this reason that the headdresses are always destroyed immediately at the end of the ceremony. Notwithstanding the continuity of certain core customary practices, many important and profound changes have transformed the lives and worldviews of these people as a result of more than a century of contacts and interpenetration by the Anglican church, colonial administrators and traders, and, most recently, the postcolonial influence of the nation-state and the international world market - whose greatest direct manifestation is in the form of cash, independent travellers, sailing ships and luxury cruise liners which visit this island group every so often.