Myths and Music of Futuna, Vanuatu

Nokonofo Kitea (We Keep on Living This Way): Myths and Music of Futuna, Vanuatu, by Janet Dixon Keller and Takaronga Kuautonga, is centered on stories and songs from the Polynesian outlier West Futuna, Vanuatu. It aims to accomplish three goals: found a secular literature, celebrate and interpret the verbal arts, and connect ancestral discourses with the complex fabric of present-day lives. In the narratives islanders past and present enunciate personal and social struggles, articulate power dynamics, and proclaim the cultural geography and cosmology that promote community. History emerges through their perspectives. Gender, marriage, residence, exchange, and alliance are interrogated; gluttony and conservation juxtaposed.

“This volume is a superb example of the kind of quality that a collaborative project, between expatriate academics and Pacific Islanders, can produce. The collaborative strategy has major implications for the discipline of anthropology in general.” —Kirk Huffman, honorary curator, Vanuatu Cultural Center

February 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3113-4 / $50.00 (CLOTH)