Institute of Advanced Studies

Sacred and secularized landscapes in twentieth-century Pacific Islands history and historiography

by Dr Debra McDougall, UWA

Throughout the diverse societies of the island Pacific, places in the landscape rather than abstract timelines have provided the grid for memories of human history.

Historical accounts start with origin places, historical events are narrated as occurring along geographical paths, and contemporary landscapes continue to be punctuated by the powers of the past. This lecture will discuss how the physical environments of Oceania have shaped colonial encounters and how historians and historical anthropologists have incorporated metaphors of islands, voyages, and beaches in their efforts to write decolonized histories. Turning to her own ethnohistorical research on a Solomon Islands society, Dr McDougall will show that, even in the absence of dramatic physical transformations of the environment, Christian missionization transformed both the landscape and social order. Local pastors invoked the power of a universal God to neutralize the powers of localized spirits, effecting a secularization of space. Yet over the course of a century, local sites have been reinvested with new kinds of sacred power and new historical meanings.