GILBERT ISLAND TRADITIONS

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25741, 1 March 1949, Page 2

GILBERT ISLAND TRADITIONS

RESEARCH BY WOMAN SCIENTIST FIVE MONTHS’ EXILE ON LONELY ATOLL “The Press” Sneclal Service AUCKLAND, February 28. . The study of the customs ana traditions of primitive Gilbert Islanders meant five months of exile on a lonely tropical atoll for an American woman scientist, Dr. Katharine Luomala, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Hawaii. With bulky notebooks that tell something of the story of a little-known Pacific people, she is now in Auckland awaiting a passage to Honolulu, after attending the Pacific Science Congress in New Zealand. When a’ Government cutter put Dr. Luomala ashore on the island of Tabiteuea she began a new and strange life 9n one of the largest but most isolate atolls of the group. Seven months’ supply of tinned foods provided her larder, and an unoccupied station house became her home. When the house was destroyed later by a westerly gale, she moved to another native hut. Distant and rarely seen neighbours were a Roman Catholic priest, whom she met several times, and two Roman Catholic sisters in charge of a mission, whom she visited once. For weeks on end, her only companions were the islanders among whom she worked. Preliminary research in the Gilberts had been carried out by Sir Arthur Grimble and Mr H. E. Maude, two former Commissioners, but Dr. Luomala was the first anthropologist to make a special study of trtb native habits and history. Walking across miles of burning coral, wading through shallow sea passages, and sometimes travelling by outrigger canoe, she visited 14 of Tabiteuea’s 17 villages in search of material to fit into the pattern of mythology and tradition. After five months, she felt she had only scratched the surface of her assignment.