Jana Gheuens

Landscape and Identity in Kiribati

Master’s thesis in Global Environmental History

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 Abstract
Gheuens, J. 2017. Landscape and Identity in Kiribati. Uppsala, Dept. of Archaeology
and Ancient History.

In this thesis, I will look into the relationship between landscape and identity on the island
nation of Kiribati, a low lying island nation in the Micronesian region of the Pacific that is
currently under threat by climate change. Based on qualitative research from several islands
in Kiribati (semi-structured interviews and observations), I explore how landscape and
landscape changes, identity, and present and future challenges are perceived by Kiribati
residents. Landscape is more than just physical surroundings, encompassing qualities of
heritage, memory, skills, knowledge and learning, and there is a strong link between
landscape and identity for Kiribati islanders. Respondents stressed the importance of
community and the ‘simple life’ as important qualities of life in Kiribati. People still come
together frequently in their communities where they discuss issues such as building a new
house for someone. Communities have as main purpose helping each other and are based on
strong bonds of love and friendship. Respondents defined the simple life as a life without
violence, without having to worry about money, without any major natural disasters (apart
from climate change), and a life in which people are open and friendly to everyone. When it
comes to present and future challenges, most respondents were worried about issues related to
environmental changes such as changes in fresh water resources and coastal erosion.
Although many respondents felt the effect of these environmental changes and people have
become more aware of the link between those and global warming, many residents remained
sceptical towards climate change, simply because believing it would make it real. A future
challenge respondents were worried about is the risk of having to resettle in the future. They
are afraid that this will affect their community, their Kiribati identity, and that it would mean
the loss of the simple life. For example, the idea exists that in other countries people will not
smile on you on the street and that the only family you will have is your core family. Many
people also never had to find a job and this is something that scares them as well. I conclude
that landscape is a part of every aspect of life in Kiribati. Therefore it is strongly connected to
the sense of identity of Kiribati islanders and many fear what will happen in the case of a
radical landscape change.
Keywords: Landscape, Identity, Kiribati, Migration, Climate Change

Master’s thesis in Global Environmental History (45 credits), supervisor: Anneli Ekblom,
Defended and approved spring term 2017-06-02
© Jana Gheuens
Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, Box 626, 75126
Uppsala, Sweden

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank everyone who helped me in the process of writing my thesis.
First of all, my supervisor Anneli Ekblom who always took the time to guide me in
the development of my ideas and who never failed to give me excellent comments
that have pushed my thesis to a next level of quality. Secondly, all the people that
have helped me in Kiribati. Without their support I would not have been able to talk
to all the people I have talked to and I would not have had the opportunities that gave
me an insight in Kiribati life. Here I would like to thank Pelenise Alofa and the girls
from the Kiribati Health Retreat (Tinaai, Vasiti, Kinaua, and Tetitiria) specifically,
because without Pelenise I would not have gone to Kiribati in the first place and
because the Health Retreat felt like a second home on the other side of the world.
Another person who shaped my Kiribati experience is my good friend Hélène who
constantly pushed me to come out of my comfort zone. The third people I would like
to thank are my parents for supporting me first in coming to study in Sweden and
second in going to Kiribati. Without them I would not be where I am today. The last
group of people are my fellow classmates. Our weekly lunches were always a great
inspiration and gave a welcome break from writing together in the master ‘dungeon’.

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“Te Mauri, Te Raoi ao Te Tabomoa”
“Health, Peace and Prosperity”
Offical Motto of Kiribati

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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................ 4
List of Illustrations ....................................................................................................... 8
List of Figures ............................................................................................................... 9
1. Introduction ............................................................................................................ 10
1.1 Introducing the problem ..................................................................................................... 10
1.2 Research questions ............................................................................................................. 12
1.3 Presentation of the thesis .................................................................................................... 13
2. Background ............................................................................................................ 15
2.1 The Kiribati Creation Legend ............................................................................................. 15
2.2 History of Kiribati .............................................................................................................. 15
2.1.1 History of the Pacific: Prehistoric- European arrival ................................................ 16
2.1.2 History of Kiribati ....................................................................................................... 17
2.3. Everyday life in Kiribati .................................................................................................... 21
2.3.1 Everyday life................................................................................................................ 22
2.3.2 Religion ....................................................................................................................... 23
3. Theory and methods .............................................................................................. 25
3.1 Landscape ........................................................................................................................... 25
3.2 Identity ................................................................................................................................ 28
3.3 Landscape and Identity ....................................................................................................... 29
3.4 Methodology....................................................................................................................... 31
3.4.1 Interview Process ........................................................................................................ 31
3.4.2 Data Analysis .............................................................................................................. 32
4. Landscape change .................................................................................................. 34
4.1 A changing land .................................................................................................................. 34
4.1.1 Sea inundation and temperature changes ................................................................... 34
4.1.2 Population changes ..................................................................................................... 43
4.2 Causes of changes............................................................................................................... 46
4.2.1 Sea inundation and temperature changes ................................................................... 46
4.2.2 Population changes ..................................................................................................... 48
5. Identity .................................................................................................................... 51
5.1 Community ......................................................................................................................... 52
5.2 Landscape ........................................................................................................................... 55
5.3 Kiribati Values.................................................................................................................... 58
5.3.1 Respect for elders ........................................................................................................ 58
5.3.2 Peaceful and simple life .............................................................................................. 59
5.3.3 Virginity....................................................................................................................... 60
6. Present and Future Challenges ............................................................................. 63
6.1 Present challenges .............................................................................................................. 63
6.1.1. Coastal erosion and flooding ..................................................................................... 63
6.1.1 Water resources .......................................................................................................... 66
6.1.3 Unemployment............................................................................................................. 70
6.2 Future challenges ................................................................................................................ 73
6.2.1 Climate Change ........................................................................................................... 73
6.2.2 Migration..................................................................................................................... 74
7. Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 77
8. References ............................................................................................................... 80
8.1 Literature ............................................................................................................................ 80

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8.2 Respondents ........................................................................................................................ 82
8.2.1 Tarawa ........................................................................................................................ 82
8.2.2 Marakei ....................................................................................................................... 83
8.2.3 Abaiang ....................................................................................................................... 84
8.2.4 Abemama ..................................................................................................................... 84
Appendix 1: Interview Questions ............................................................................. 86

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List of Illustrations

Illustration 1: Contemporary maneaba on Tarawa. p.18

Illustration 2: The grave of Hiram Bingham on Abaiang. p.20
Illustration 3: Remnants of World War II on Betio Islet, Tarawa. p.21

Illustration 4: Sea inundation in Tebunginako, Abaiang during high tide p.35

Illustration 5: Marakei as seen from above. p.39

Illustration 6: Vegetation on Abemama. p.41

Illustration 7: Urban area in Betio, South Tarawa. p.46

Illustration 8: Kia kias on Marakei. p.56

Illustration 9: Stone sea wall on North Tarawa. p.65
Illustration 10: Ground water well in Tebunginako, Abaiang. p.68
Illustration 11: Rainwater tanks in Tebunginako, Abaiang. p.69

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List of Figures

Figure 1: Map of Kiribati p.12

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1. Introduction

Kiribati is a nation of islands that has been subject to radical landscape changes in the
recent years as it is, and that will be heavily affected by climate change in the future
(Ives 2016; Weiss 2015). In this thesis I will explore how the people of Kiribati
perceive their landscape, how they use it to construct their identities, and how they
define present and future challenges. I have spent two months on various islands in
the Gilbert Group during which I have talked to numerous Kiribati residents, formally
and informally; these conversations will form the base of my thesis.
I first directed my interest to Kiribati as I had the idea of doing my thesis on climate
refugees. I knew I wanted to do something related to climate change and climate
refugees so I started looking at which regions are already experiencing the effects of
climate change. I then stumbled on the islands in the Pacific. Because most of them
are low-lying atoll islands, rising sea levels threaten their existence. Doing research
without an initial contact seemed impossible to me, therefore I started reaching out to
different organizations that work on the topic of climate change in the region. At one
point Pelenise from Kiribati Climate Action Network (KiriCAN) responded that she
could help me so I decided to go to Kiribati. As scientists predict that Kiribati will
partly or completely disappear in the next decades, questions surrounding climate
migration and environmental refugees are highly applicable to the islands (see
Worland 2015). The debate around climate refugees has been highlighted especially
since the previous government under Anote Tong made ‘migration with dignity’ one
of its main focuses (see below). However when I actually arrived on Tarawa, the main
Kiribati island, and started talking with people living here, I realized that Kiribati is
more than just climate change and migration. The lives of the people of Kiribati are
not focused on climate change, on the contrary it is not a big worry for a lot of people,
as I will discuss in Chapter 4. Therefore I decided to widen my research scope to fully
understand what it means to be from Kiribati and what their islands mean to them.
Migration is still a part of this thesis, as many residents fear that they will have to
move to another place. It is just no longer the main question or sole focus of the
thesis. I believe that to fully understand what moving to another country means to
Kiribati islanders, it is important to understand first what their landscape means to
them today and how they draw identity from it.

1.1 Introducing the problem

Kiribati consists of a group of 32 atoll islands and one higher island, Banaba, situated
in the Micronesia region (Macdonald and Foster 2016; Republic of Kiribati 2017).
The nation is divided into three main groups of islands; the Gilbert Islands that are the
most populated ones, the Phoenix Islands that are largely uninhabited and the Line

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Islands that are on the dateline border. Around 112 000 people inhabit the Kiribati
islands and more than half of them live on the main island Tarawa. The main source
of income today in Kiribati is copra, a type of dried coconut flesh, and fish. As the
country is one of the poorest in the world almost half of its budget comes from
international aid. The political system consists of an elected president who appoints
its government and an elected parliament where delegates from the different islands
come together.
As mentioned before, Kiribati is subject to a number of changes. Some scholars argue
that the islands will completely disappear within the next 50 to 70 years (Worland
2015; Weiss 2015). With the continued and projected sea-level rise the probability
that the islands will disappear is highly likely, as the highest point in Kiribati is only
three meters. However some scientists such as Arthur Webb and Paul Kench do not
agree with this doomsday proclamation. They both argue that the islands have to be
viewed as active entities that can grow and that are more resilient than we think.
Research shows that atoll islands can respond to changes and that a lot of them are
actually growing instead of sinking (Warne 2015). Of the 600 islands they have
researched, 80 per cent stayed at the same level or grew. Often when one side of an
island is being washed away, the other side will grow. Important to note here is that
this is the case for islands that do not have a lot of permanent structures on them.
Densely populated islands such as Tarawa, do not have the same capacity to react to
changes since they have many permanent structures that lock them in place. On
Kiribati, a system of ancestral land exists to divide the land between the population.
Families own land that has been passed on through generations before them. This
makes moving houses to the other side of the island very difficult. Yet, even if the
islands do not completely disappear people might still be forced to migrate due to
water shortages and overpopulation issues, both issues that are brought up by
islanders and that will be discussed in Chapters 4 and 6 (Weiss 2015; Edwards 2013).
In addition, as Kiribati has few resources (see above) combatting negative effects of
climate change and related problems is very difficult and islanders are mostly
dependent on other countries to help them out.
As already discussed above, in recent years when Kiribati was discussed in the media
it was mainly in the context of climate change and migration. Some of these headlines
include ‘Life on the next Atlantis: Doomed Pacific island which will be swallowed by
the sea within 60 years’, ‘Kiribati's climate change Catch-22’, and ‘Drowning
Kiribati’ (Edwards 2015; BBC 2015; Goldberg 2013). The former president Anote
Tong became a voiced activist in climate change debates, and he became also known
as a climate activist leader (Worland 2015; Ives 2016). He gave a TED talk on the
topic and spoke to numerous media outlets and international organisations about it,
trying to spread awareness about the climate change threat that Kiribati faces. Under
the government of Anote Tong, Kiribati has also purchased land in Fiji to have a
place to move to if the islands disappear. Anote Tong also tried to set up programs for
‘migration with dignity’. These programs are based on long-term merit acquiring so
that people can move to countries such as Australia and New Zealand (Maclellan
2012). Because people learn skills, they can contribute something to their new
society. It also aims at making sure migrants are treated as citizens and not just
refugees. The focus of the previous government on migration was not always well
received by both receiving countries and the Kiribati population. Many people in
Kiribati want to stay because they do not want to leave their land behind (see Chapter
6). The current government (previously in the opposition) is trying to find other

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solutions for climate change that do not require the population to migrate. One of the
things they are looking into is raising the level of the islands or creating floating
islands.
As most of these news stories about Kiribati and its people are negative, I wanted to
give a voice to the people of Kiribati themselves to get their story about being from
Kiribati. It is impossible to represent the full story of their landscapes, their identities,
and their Kiribati, so I will focus on the voices of a few selected individuals. The aim
of this thesis is to give an idea on what a Kiribati identity means to the Kiribati
people, how they view the landscape around them, and what they identify as the
biggest challenges for their islands.

Fig. 1: Map of Kiribati (US Dept of Congress 1989).

1.2 Research questions

In this thesis I will address three main research questions that each have a
corresponding analytical chapter:
1. Do Kiribati residents see a change in the landscape? (Chapter 4)

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 - If so how do they define it and what do they see as causes of it?
2. How do Kiribati residents define and construct I-Kiribati-identities? (Chapter 5)
3. What do Kiribati people define as present and future challenges for their island?
(Chapter 6)

My analysis is based on around 20 interviews I did on the islands of Tarawa, Marakei,

Abaiang and Abemama carried out from 1/09/2016-27/10/2016. I tried to select my
respondents at random by talking to people on the street and I also talked to some
people that were pointed out by facilitators on site. When a translator was not
available I had to focus on people who speak English, which of course also creates a
bias in the people I talked to. All in all I think I interviewed a wide variety of people
with each their own stories to tell about how they view their island. I will discuss my
methodology more in Chapter 3.
Each person I talked to had their own ideas and explanations about what it means to
be from Kiribati and about the changes happening around them. The aim of this thesis
is to present these ideas and explanations based on the conversations I had with
Kiribati residents.

This thesis draws inspiration from studies of scholars such as Escobar, Gupta and
Ferguson, Tilley, and Woodward, as they all have done research in some way related
to the relationship between space and identity. Their literature will be discussed in
Chapter 3. Most of the literature about Kiribati is related to climate change or related
problems such as water resources (see above). Putting in a google scholar search for
Kiribati usually gives you related searches such as ‘Kiribati climate change’ (around
15 400 results), ‘Kiribati sea level rise’ (around 13 700 results), and ‘Kiribati
environmental refugees’ (around 5 510 results). As mentioned above, this thesis aims
to widen that scope and look at how landscape and landscape change have an effect
on Kiribati identity.

1.3 Presentation of the thesis

This thesis consists of seven chapters. The first chapter, the introduction, aims at
introducing the problem of landscape and identity in Kiribati. In it I discuss how
Kiribati is commonly viewed in the media and in the literature. I also talk about some
of the problems Kiribati faces and what led me to decide on my thesis topic. In the
introduction the research questions and the objectives of the thesis are also included.
The background chapter (Chapter 2) has the purpose to give a short background of the
history of the Pacific in general and of Kiribati more specific. It also includes a short
introduction to the everyday life in Kiribati (which will be elaborated on in Chapters 4
and 5) and a short analysis of what religion is like today on the islands. To understand
what Kiribati is today, it is important to know its history and where it comes from.
This chapter aims at creating a basic understanding of Kiribati society by including its
history, one of its creation stories, and stories of everyday life.
In the third chapter I will explain the concepts of landscape and identity that have
shaped this thesis and how they are discussed in the existing literature. I lay out my
argument in this chapter. Landscape is seen as cultural landscape that is more than
just physical surroundings. Where you come from will have an effect on how you

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view the landscape. Therefore it is not a stable entity. Identity is defined from a non-
essentialist viewpoint. Same as landscape, it is also constantly changing. From there
on, I argue that landscape and identity are closely related. Because they are both never
fixed, this link is not problematic. I will also explain the methods I used while
conducting and analysing my research. In this part I also touch upon the ethics of
doing research.
Chapters four, five and six, are analytical chapters in which I will discuss what the
people of Kiribati view as their landscape and how it changes (Chapter 4). People
mostly identify landscape as physical surroundings but when they discuss it, it
becomes clear that is more than that. Landscape changes can be divided in two
groups: changes related to sea inundation, and changes related to population. In
Chapter 5 I discuss how Kiribati people define their identity. This is different for
every respondent but a few main elements came forward. These are community,
landscape, and Kiribati values. In the last analytical chapter (Chapter 6) the
respondents talk about what they see as present challenges (coastal erosion, water
resources, and unemployment) and future challenges (climate change and migration).
Lastly, in Chapter 7 I sum up what I have described in the analytical chapters and I
give answers to the research questions formulated in Chapter 1. Chapter 7 also
includes recommendations for further research.
A short introduction to the people I have interviewed and where I met them, can be
found at the reference list. They are organized on the basis of the island where I have
interviewed them. I also included some of my interview questions in the appendix.

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2. Background

2.1 The Kiribati Creation Legend

According to the old stories and legends Nareau (‘spider’) the Creator created the
islands and the people living on them (Beiabure et al 1979: 1-6). He managed to
separate ‘Te Bomatemaki’ which means the Earth and the Sky sealed together. While
doing this he had help from other figures such as Nareau the Wise, Na Atibu, Nei
Teakea and several spirits like Uka, Nabawa and Nei Kika. As the first island he
created was Samoa, this creation story then shows us already the role of the Samoan
migration in Kiribati culture. Some other, more northern islands have different
creation stories that have more similarities with the Marshall Islands’ stories. As
Samoa is Polynesian and the Marshall Islands Micronesian, Kiribati has older
relations with these Marshall Islands’ stories. But the Samoan migration in the 14th
century had a big impact on Kiribati culture (see below), especially on the southern
Gilbert Islands (Peterson 2009: 216; Fischer 2013: 62-63). As Hiram Bingham only
introduced the written word in the 19th century, finding these creation stories is
difficult. Therefore this small part includes only one of many variations that exist of
it.

2.2 History of Kiribati

As Kiribati mainly consists of atolls, constructing a coherent narrative of the
archaeology and the history of Kiribati is rather difficult (Fischer 2013: 28-30). As
Gupta and Ferguson (1992) argue, cultures are formed in a connected space. In
Kiribati, as on other island countries, there is no radical separation between islands as
they are always in some way connected to each other. At the same time, as I will
discuss here there are also cultural differences between islands. Due to the
connectedness between islands and island countries in the Pacific, it is important to
understand the broader history of the Pacific and the different trade empires that
existed, to understand the formation of Kiribati. Oceania is a place of ‘trans-localism’
where interactions took place between places that were dependent on the ocean
(Matsuda 2012: 5). To understand the history of one place, it is important to
understand the histories of the places that were linked to it. A lot of the values that
exist in Kiribati today have their origins in the history of the country and in old
practices. For example, elders still have a high position in communities today, in the
past a community of elders was in charge of the village.

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2.1.1 History of the Pacific: Prehistoric- European arrival
I will begin by shortly discussing migration patterns that shaped the islands in the
Pacific and the different trading networks and cultures that came into existence. The
first people to migrate into the Pacific came around 50 000 years ago from South East
Asia (Matsuda 2012:14; Fischer 2013: 4; Macdonald 2001:1). They first arrived in
Australia, New Guinea and some islands in Melanesia. At that point it is most likely
that they were seafarers already to whom canoes had great importance. In New
Guinea for example, the Kula Ring was established (Matsuda, 2001: 16). Between
islands in New Guinea a trade system came into existence in which bracelets and
necklaces were exchanged. From historical observations it is known that much of this
trade was not for economic purposes in the conventional sense of the word. It
happened for symbolical and ceremonial reasons as a way to reinforce political
alliances and marriages.
Around 8000 to 4500 years ago another wave of migrants reached the Pacific, the
Austronesians (Fischer 2013: 11-13; MacDonald 2001:1; Ridgell 1995: 24).
Austronesians travelled into the Bismarck Archipelago and further into Melanesia.
Here the Austronesians formed the cultural complex of Lapita, which is characterised
by a certain kind of pottery (Fischer, 2013, pp. 13-17; Matsuda, 2001, pp. 16-17). It is
believed they settled as far as Samoa, opening up the Pacific to be populated.
Important to note here however is that the Lapita pottery never reached Micronesia
and thus Kiribati, which suggest that Austronesians did not go that far. The
Austronesians were able to populate the Pacific because they invented new types of
canoes that were able to carry heavy loads. The Lapita people domesticated animals,
cleared land for agriculture and mostly lived on the coastline. Same as the earlier Kula
Ring (see above), they set up a trade system between different islands, not only for
economic reasons but also for political or ceremonial purposes.
At around the same time as the Lapita, a different group of Austronesians travelled to
the islands of Yap, Palau and the Marianas in what is now called Micronesia (Fischer
2013: 28-29; Matsuda 2001: 23-24; Ridgell 1995: 24). Here the Austronesians also
established complex trading systems, for example the Yap trading and tribute network
around 600 BP. Yap is a group of islands that received political and ritual power from
the fact that they were the only high islands surrounded by a ring of atoll islands.
Because of their geography Yap was less vulnerable to famines or drought, although
the people at the time attributed their prosperity to the power of the gods, which
assured them dominance over the region. People on the coral islands would offer
them goods in exchange for rewards. If an island would not give these offerings, the
Yap threatened to use their power to cast disasters on them. During this time, people
on the Caroline Islands developed a seasonal circuit to migrate between the islands to
search for food (Matsuda 2001: 24). This led to the establishment of trading rings
between them in which they would help each other if one of the islands was struck by
disaster. Around the tenth century a new dynasty from the Pohnpei Island took over
the Yap empire (Matsuda 2001: 24-25). The Saudeleur dynasty had the city of Nan
Madol as its base. Nan Madol was said to be created by the two gods Ohlosipa and
Ohlosopa and consisted of more than 90 artificial islets. The Saudeleur eventually
took control over Pohnpei, keeping Nan Madol as their spiritual, ceremonial and
administrative centre. You can still visit its ruins today. There is no evidence that
Kiribati directly traded with Yap and the Saudeleur Dynasty but to its proximity to the
Marshall Islands and the Caroline Islands we can assume that it might have felt some

16
indirect effects of it (Beiabure et al 1979: 6). Evidence of this can be found in stories
on the northern Gilbertese Islands. These stories talk about links and connections with
Micronesian islands such as the Marshall Islands.
Thus, Polynesian culture developed out of the Lapita complex on the Fiji-Tonga-
Samoa-Crescent around 3200 years ago (Fischer 2013: 31-32). People in this area
traded and interacted with each other, while at the same time gradually losing contact
with Western Lapita and therefore establishing their own culture. From this crescent
they also travelled to the more distant islands Tokelau, Niue, Rotuma and others.
Eventually they voyaged as far as Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and Hawai’i (Fischer
2013: 36). Not only did they explore the seas and conduct voyages in search of
resources but sea voyages also had become a vital part of their culture. Important to
note here is that the Polynesians colonized Tuvalu around 3000 years ago (Fischer
2013: 32-33). Tuvalu is located between Fiji and Kiribati, therefore an important
‘gate’ from Polynesia to Micronesia and the other way around. As this short history
introduction shows us, migration and trading has always been a big part of Pacific
Islands’ cultures. Islanders did not exist by themselves, and interaction between
islands and travels (and also migrations) between them were part of their culture.
Therefore when discussing the culture and history of one island, it is important to
keep in mind that these are heavily linked to and influenced by the cultures and
histories of other islands. As Matsuda (2013: 29) put it, “ the Pacific is shaped by
overlapping histories”.

2.1.2 History of Kiribati

Kiribati is a part of the Eastern Micronesian Islands and as mentioned before part of
the Fiji-Tuvalu-Kiribati chain (Fischer 2013: 28). It is believed that the first people
who lived on Kiribati came from the west, being related to the Austronesians that
reached Melanesia (Macdonald 2001: 1; see above). When talking about Kiribati
people in its ‘early’ days, it is important to note that this mainly refers to the Gilbert
Islands as the Phoenix Islands are still mostly uninhabited and the Line Islands were
found uninhabited by the first Europeans (Thomas 2003: 4). The Austronesians
probably reached Kiribati via the Caroline and Marshall Islands. Around 4000 to 5000
years ago, a new wave of Austronesians reached Kiribati, overtaking the first people
that lived there. One theory posits that these new people came from southern
Melanesia. However there is reason to believe that people from Kiribati previous to
this actually migrated to Melanesia. Linguists have reconstructed languages and found
linguistic similarities between the two regions. In addition, the direction of the
currents and the winds makes it more likely that people migrated from Micronesia to
Melanesia. Still today some Kiribati myths and stories, for example the creation story,
relate how there were migrations to Samoa and after some time migrations back to
Kiribati (MacDonald 2001: 3). Cultural links with Samoa are still strong, for example
the use of a maneaba (eg. communal meeting house), and researchers believe that
there was a recent migration from Samoa to Kiribati around 500 years ago (Kirion
and Karaiti 1979: 10).

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Illustration 1: Contemporary maneaba on Tarawa.

Links and connections can also be found between Kiribati and more northern
Micronesia (Macdonald 2001: 3). This again shows us that Kiribati culture cannot be
properly understood without knowing the history of the other islands in the Pacific.
The migration of Samoans around the fourteenth century marks an important event in
Kiribati history, though in some legends as related above this is explained as a return
of Kiribati islanders (MacDonald 2001: 3; Petersen 2009: 213). The Samoans
introduced maneabas and certain socio-political forms to Kiribati (Petersen 2009:
216; Fischer 2013: 62-63). Stories point to Beru as the first contact island and from
there new traditions spread in Kiribati.
Over time two separate entities, the northern and southern complex, had developed on
the Gilbert Islands in Kiribati (Petersen 2009: 216; Fischer 2013: 62-63). The
southern islands were influenced by the Samoan traditions and ruling lineages
whereas the northern islands were independent. Eventually, probably around the 17th
century, the northern Islands where colonised by the southern islands, leading to two
centuries of resistance and conflict between the old traditional chiefs and high-ranking
landowners, and the new southern elites. Before the invasion the southern and the
northern islands had different socio-political systems. Councils of old men ruled the
southern islands, and elders still play an important role today as I will discuss in
Chapter 5. On the northern islands however, powerful chiefs and landowners
controlled land and people. A shared system of power like on the southern islands did
not exist.
There was some early contact between Europeans and I-Kiribati but since Kiribati
does not posses a lot of resources, most contact was brief (Onorio 1979: 29; Fischer
2013: 86; Macdonald 2001: 16). For example, Darwin visited some of the Phoenix
Islands during his five-year travel (1831-1836) (Phoenix Islands 2017). He visited the
islands to explore the creation of low-lying atolls. Around 1788 the Gilbert Islands

18
were formally named (Fischer 2013: 96-97; Macdonald 2001: 15). Two captains of
the British East India Company called Gilbert and Marshall, accidentally happened on
what are now called the Gilbert Islands and the Marshall Islands. When they
‘discovered’ the two big island groups they decided to not so modestly name them
after themselves.
The first real long-term contact with Europeans began with the interaction with the
whalers and traders (Fischer 2013: 97; Onorio 1979: 33; Macdonald 2001: 16). From
around the 1830’s whalers began to visit Kiribati regularly since there are a lot of
sperm whales in the area (Onorio 1979: 29-32; Macdonald 2001: 17-18; Macdonald
2001: 23). This first contact was not always peaceful, as Kiribati islanders viewed
these strangers as enemies. Kiribati islanders claimed that the natural resources of the
island belonged to them and that they were not available for exploitation by the
Europeans. Despite this, some trade was established in which Europeans would trade
iron hoops and tobacco for food and women. In some cases Kiribati islanders would
even work on the whaling ships and Europeans would move to one of the islands,
becoming beach combers who often acted as teachers or mediators and who were
fully integrated into Kiribati society (Onorio 1979: 29-32; Macdonald 2001: 20-21).
At the same time as the whalers became active, permanent traders started to settle
themselves on the islands (Onorio 1979: 33-34). They mostly traded for the same
things as the whalers with the only difference that traders brought regular commerce
to the islands. Another source of interest from the side of the Europeans lie in the
trade of labour. Around the 1860s labour trade was introduced in Kiribati (Onorio
1979: 34-37). At first people were often kidnapped as slaves to work on plantations,
for example in Fiji, but later voluntary recruiting became the norm. Many of the
people that sold their labour expected to return to the islands as wealthy. But not all of
the workers returned, a lot of them died while others decided to migrate to different
islands (Onorio, 1979: 34-37).
In the 19th century missionaries started to travel to Kiribati as well (Etekiera 1979: 38-
39; Macdonald 2001: 31). The early missionaries were met with resistance as beliefs
in traditional gods and customs were very strong. The most famous missionary in
Kiribati was Hiram Bingham, a protestant missionary who went to the island of
Abaiang. Hiram Bingham is often viewed as the pioneer of Christianity in Kiribati
and as the person who developed the written form of the Kiribati language (Etekiera
1979: 38-39; Macdonald 2001: 33). You can still visit his grave today in Abaiang.
Other Protestants working for the London Missionary Society (LMS) went to the
southern Gilbert Islands from Samoa. Many residents converted to Protestantism
though the LMS. Reportedly, when the first missionaries from the Roman Catholic
Church arrived, they did not receive a friendly reception as many residents had
already converted to Protestantism. Catholic priests tried to lure people to come to
their services by giving them gifts such as tobacco and cloth (Etekiera 1979: 41;
Fischer 2013: 168). Catholic priests also sent more missionaries to the central and
northern Gilbert Islands, as the Protestant Church was less present there. Eventually
the Catholic priests also gained many followers. In their services, missionaries urged
Kiribati islanders to give up some parts of their culture. For example, the church
advocated against the practice of magic and the practice of having more than one
wife. Later when the church was stronger they also made laws about this and people
who did not comply were punished by for example being banned from the church.
Today most people belong to Roman Catholic Church or the Gilbert Islands

19
Protestant Church but there are also smaller churches such as the Seventh Day
Adventists (Etekiera 1979: 43).

Illustration 2: The grave of Hiram Bingham on Abaiang.

In the 19th century the British Empire involved themself increasingly (following the
missionaries) on Kiribati and ultimately they claimed Kiribati as a protectorate
(Takaio 1979: 65-66; Macdonald 2001: 76-77). Unlike the missionaries and traders
who never actually tried to control Kiribati societies, the British sought to rule and
dominate Kiribati. They established a government and introduced a law and order
system. After a while the British also invested in schools and hospitals. In 1916 the
Ellice Islands or what is now called Tuvalu, were also included in the Protectorate
(BBC: 2011). Most Kiribati islanders did not resist the British leadership, their
traditional leaders had given their consent to accept the status as protectorate and at
that point they were also used to foreigners being present on the island (Takaio 1979:
65-66; Macdonald 2001: 76-77). Some residents even argued that the British could
stop internal warfare that had been present on the island. The British allowed Kiribati
islanders to appoint their own island officials, giving them a sense of autonomy and
inclusion. According to Takaio (1979: 70) there was a generally positive attitude
amongst Kiribati residents to the British Protectorate (Takaio 1979: 70). But Kiribati
islanders also disputed land claims made by the British. They felt that the land the
traders occupied was given to them in unfair agreements or agreements that Kiribati
islanders did not understand. They therefore tried to claim land back. Another
problem was the mining industry on Banaba Island (Schutz and Tenten 1979: 74-75).
Banaba had a large supply of phosphate and industrious mining destroyed a lot of the
land owned by Banabans. At first Banaban islanders could protest openly against
selling their land but later they were pressured by the British Phosphate Commission
(BPC). The British government also made appropriation of land by BPC compulsory.
In addition, the discovery of the large phosphate supplies on Banaba led to the neglect
of the other islands (Macdonald 2001: 75). British headquarters were moved to

20
Banaba and from then on their policy was focused on extracting as much phosphate as
possible rather than developing commerce in other sectors.
In 1941 the Japanese army occupied Tarawa (Fischer 2013: 208). Only in 1943 they
were liberated by the Americans after the bloody Battle of Tarawa in Betio in which
more than 6000 people died in less than 72 hours (Fischer 2013: 210; Dean 2016). All
of the casualties were American, Korean or Japanese and until today cannons and
other military equipment are still present in Betio. After the war the Gilbert Islands
and the Ellice Islands never actively claimed independence from the British
Government (Fischer 2013:259-260). Neither Gilbert Islands and the Ellice Islands
had the resources to be states of their own. Only Banaba had generated income
enough, but around that time the phosphate reserves were almost completely gone
(BBC 2011). But when the British initiated the process of independence, the Ellice
Islands asked for their independence from Kiribati as they view themselves as
Polynesians. What used to be Ellice Islands became independent in 1978 under the
name of Tuvalu. Kiribati eventually became independent in 1979 (BBC 2011).

Illustration 3: Remnants of World War II on Betio Islet, Tarawa.

2.3. Everyday life in Kiribati

In this chapter I will try to give a first idea of what life in Kiribati is like. Most of this
will be discussed more broadly in Chapters 4, 5, and 6 in which I discuss how my
respondents view the landscape around them, their identity, and present and future
challenges. Life in Kiribati is often viewed as a ‘simple life’ but it also has its
complexities. In the first part I will give a short introduction to the subsistence
lifestyle on the outer islands and the different lifestyle on Tarawa. Then I will discuss
religion on Kiribati as it has become increasingly important on the islands.

21
2.3.1 Everyday life
Every day life in Kiribati is different on the outer islands than it is on Tarawa. Much
of this difference has to do with a different landscape, as I will discuss in Chapter 4.
This part aims to give a first, basic idea to understand what life in Kiribati is like.

Most people on the outer islands survive on subsistence. Therefore most of their days
are focused on looking for food. Iutita gave me an example of what a normal day
looks like to her during our conversation:
“I wake up, do the clean up around the house and boil the water for the
breakfast with the coconut. We have breadfruit in our home so we collect the
breadfruit, then some shellfish.”1
Iutita lives on Abaiang, which is one of the outer islands in the Gilbert Group. Most
people living there have a similar lifestyle to her. They collect things such as
breadfruit, pandanus and coconut during the day and also go fishing or looking for
shellfish. When I was talking to people who live like this they mentioned two ways
they were able to earn some money. The first one is the most popular one, selling
copra. Especially recently when the current government doubled the price of copra,
selling copra is a good source of income. I will discuss this more in detail in Chapter
4. Copra is made by first cutting up the coconut and then letting its flesh dry in the
sun for a couple of days. It can be used to make for example coconut oil. The second
way people can earn some money is by selling fish that they have caught. When
taking a plane or a boat people often send dry fish with someone to be sold on
Tarawa.
Of course not everyone on the outer islands survives on subsistence. There are also
for example teachers or government officials who earn a monthly salary. However,
they often still help collect food for their families, as Teraoi, a police constable on
Marakei, describes:
“I live at the far-east village of Marakei and everytime we wake up, the first
thing we do is collect coconut for copra. That is our first job of the day. And
later we do the fishing for the family.”2
Even though he has a job as a police constable he still helps collecting food for his
family. He also mentions here that they still sell copra as well. This quote shows us
that many people on the outer islands still collect their own food, regardless if they
have a job or not. As Teraoi mentioned, collecting food and fishing is important to
sustain the whole family.
On Tarawa less people are able to live this way due to space issues, as I will discuss
in Chapter 4. More people have to have jobs there because otherwise they will not be
able to provide for themselves due to the high population density of the island.
However, there are not a lot of jobs available, which leads to a big problem of
unemployment and of youth unemployment especially. Again, I will discuss this more
in Chapter 4. The government is trying to give people incentives to move back to their
original island by raising the price of the copra but not everyone possesses traditional
skills anymore, causing them not to be able to go back to their home island.

1
Tebunginako, Abaiang, 04/10/2016
2
Rawannawi, Marakei, 16/09/2016

22
2.3.2 Religion
When I talked to people in Kiribati, all of them were members of some kind of
church. As I have discussed above, missionaries came to Kiribati in the 19th century
and although there was some initial resistance, in the course of the 20th century many
islanders converted to a Christian faith in most of the islands (Etekiera 1979: 38-39;
Macdonald 2001: 31). Before the introduction of new religions, every island had their
own ancestral gods and spirits (Macdonald 2001: 7). They each had their own shrine
to which sacrifices (first food, later tobacco) could be made. Some of these shrines
still exist and are respected today. On Marakei for example, the old goddesses are still
very important and sacrifices are mandatory upon arriving on the island. It was
common belief that when two islands that had different gods fought against each
other, the island that won had the strongest gods (Ridgell 1995: 32). The defeated
island would then sometimes replace their old gods with the new stronger ones. This
belief could help explain why so many Kiribati islanders took Christianity as their
new religion as many of them viewed Europeans as stronger and more powerful.
Today amongst many Kiribati islanders, two views exist on the combination of
ancestral gods and spirits, and Christianity. In the first view, the traditional gods are
not mutually exclusive to the Christian god; a hierarchy exists between them. Kaaibo
explained this difference when I was talking to her:
“For the church we pray and they will repent you and invite you to the heavens
and for the old gods only honour.”3
This quote shows us that Christianity is viewed as the most important religion. It is
the one you pray to and it is also the one that will get you into heaven in the end. The
old gods are still important as a heritage to honour both the tradition itself and also the
ancestors. However, the old gods can also have special powers. One woman I talked
to on Abaiang said that if you for example wanted a love potion or to murder
someone you have to go to the old gods. Connected to the old gods are witches that
would use the magic of the old gods for example to heal people. Iacinta from
Abemama told me the story of the one time she asked her grandmother, a witch, for
help when her husband divorced her. Her ex-husband had moved back to Tarawa:
“My grandmother taught me what to do. Ok tomorrow, you go and catch the
sunset, I catch the sunset and I don’t know why. She just told me to catch the
sunset. She said to me: “after two days you will receive a call from him.” She
just predicted the thing and it came true. I went the second day and then I was
told that my husband wants me to talk with him. It was nine o’clock so I had to
find a transport to get there because there is no communication telephone, it’s
just like the radio to have contact with people on the outer islands from Tarawa.
And my grandmother told me “I tell you if he calls you, you don’t have to go.”
And if I go then something will happen to me and if you don’t go something
will happen to me, the spell will go back to me. So I didn’t go, made myself
strong.”4
Iacinta asked her grandmother for a spell to make her husband come back to her. It
worked and everything her grandmother predicted that would happen came true. In
the end she chose not to answer the call and by doing so stopping the spell from

3
Tebunginako, Abaiang, 04/10/2016
4
Binoinano, Abemama, 13/10/2016

23
happening. This example shows us in which way the old gods and the spirits might
still be important today in peoples everyday lives.
The second view of the old gods amongst other Kiribati islanders holds that that the
old gods are still very important but bad. The old gods are viewed as satanic and they
should not be worshipped in any way anymore. Even though Iacinta once asked for a
spell, she deeply regrets it as it conflicts with her Christian faith:
“I feel sad because maybe I betrayed the faith, the way of living in a mission
life. And to me I feel sad and downhearted because of what I have done. I think
it’s something bad and I have to confess.”5
Going to the ancestral gods and spirits for help is viewed a sin. As Iacinta mentioned,
she felt like she had to confess it to the parish and ask for forgiveness to be able to
still be a member of her church. One woman I talked to, mentioned that even if
witches were able to heal people, they were still evil as it was Satan trying to divert
people away from God.
Thus today an embedded duality and negotiation still exist between traditional,
ancestral practices, and belonging to the church and being a good Christian. For some
this duality is not a cause of conflict whereas for others it is.

5
Binoinano, Abemama, 13/10/2016

24
3. Theory and methods

In the first part of this chapter I will discuss the different ideas about landscape that
have been influential in shaping my study. This part is mostly focused on the concept
of ‘cultural landscape’ as that is how I define landscape in my analysis. Then I will
talk about definitions and ideas on identity. This discussion is centred around the
debate between an essentialist and a non-essentialist view on identity. Afterwards I
will discuss the relationship between landscape and identity, using the definitions of
landscape and identity from the previous parts. The final part of this chapter is
focused on the methodology I used while doing the interviews and while analysing
the data. This part also includes a discussion of the ethic decisions I made while doing
my research.

3.1 Landscape
When looking at definitions of landscape, landscape is usually viewed as
“the landforms of a region in the aggregate, a portion of territory that can be viewed at
one time from one place” (Merriam-Webster 2017). In dictionaries landscape is
defined as something purely physical, the features of a certain land. In the academic
literature, there are two main ways to look at landscape, a natural landscape and a
cultural landscape. When looking at landscape with a naturalistic perspective,
landscape is separated from human activity and it functions as a neutral background
on which humans act (Ingold 1993: 152). As Merriam-Webster put it, landscape is
merely something that can be seen, the physical landforms of a certain region. A
cultural landscape on the other hand, entails that the landscape is part of human
activities, it contains memories and histories and it can be viewed as “an expression of
cultural identity” (Strang 2008: 51-52). In this definition, landscape is more than what
you see, it has certain meanings attached to it that are defined differently by different
individuals (Strang 2008: 51-52; Escobar 2001: 143). Every individual constructs
their own identity and society, and is constructed by them. How you view yourself
and your society will define how you view the landscape. This is related to the
anthropological concept of perceptual relativism (Ingold 2000: 15). Perceptual
relativism means that people with different backgrounds and histories experience
reality in a different way because they have different frameworks to process it
through.
In this thesis I will use the idea of a cultural landscape instead of that of a natural
landscape. As I will discuss in Chapter 4,5 and 6, landscape is more than just ‘nature’
or the ‘environment’. Although respondents usually referred to changes in their
physical surroundings when discussing landscape change, it is clear that ideas about
identity and culture are intimately tied to the landscape. For example, the concept of
‘ancestral land’ is still used by families to divide Kiribati land and define ownership.
Ancestral land means that the land you own is passed on to you by your ancestors.

25
Therefore land has a cultural value and is also connected with individual identity. For
example, often your ancestors are buried on the land you inherit from them. This
example, and others that will be discussed in detail in the coming chapters, show us
the importance of looking at landscape in a holistic way so that it encompasses culture
and identities. When looking at landscape with a naturalistic view, things like
ancestral land and the importance of it, might be ignored in the analysis, creating big
gaps in the understanding of a certain society (Escobar 2001: 141).
A first implication of looking at landscape as a cultural landscape is that the
opposition between human and nature disappears (Ingold 1993: 154). In Western
countries nature is often viewed as something separate from human society (Radkau
2008: 1; Heinrichs and Gross 2010: 1-2). Nature and humanity are viewed and treated
as two different spheres that have a relationship to each other but that are also
completely opposed to each other. A human-nature duality is presented where
‘human’ denotes everything that is artificially produced and in which ‘nature’ is
everything that is not. Human and nature are not just represented as different from
each other but humans are also perceived as dominant over nature (Byrne et al 2013:
1). This is less present in Pacific Island cultures like Kiribati culture (Dickie 2005: 1).
People are generally strongly connected with their land. It feeds them, supports them
and supplies them with necessary items for the household. For example, in Kiribati a
lot of people still live off the land. Kaaibo explained this dependence on the physical
surroundings when she talked about her everyday life:
“I wake up in the morning, no breakfast, go straight to the bush to collect the
pandanus to make the roof and come back to boil water, look for the coconut
and boil the rice. Eat it. And then go to the sea to catch some fish. Then boil
rice, cook with the fish, eat it for lunch. And the same in the afternoon, we go to
the papaya pits and cultivate it.”6
We can learn from this quote that I-Kiribati get their daily food and their materials to
build their houses from their immediate surroundings, creating a deep connection with
nature. I will give more examples of this connection to nature in Chapters 4, 5 and 6.
Because people in the Pacific and in Kiribati in specific are deeply connected to their
environment, the distinction between nature and humanity is not present (Dickie
2005: 1-2). This is also another reason why a broader interpretation of landscape is
used here so that it also includes culture, traditions, ancestors, and identities. Physical
surroundings are still viewed as something sacred and having a close relationship with
it is important. Active interaction with your surroundings is not only a tradition but
also an important part of daily life (Escobar 2001: 146). The difference between the
European and Pacific worldview teaches us that landscape is more than just physical
surroundings and that nature and humanity are linked to each other (Strang 2008: 52).
Importantly, landscape is not something humans just act upon, people interact with it
(Strang 2008: 52; Escobar 2001: 143). Every time someone goes into a certain
landscape they bring their own identity into it. Through this interaction identity is
reproduced and knowledge is transmitted, thus humans are part of the landscape and
are not distinct from it. For example, one of the people I talked to, Pelenise, expressed
that it is important for I-Kiribati to maintain this practical knowledge as it makes you
a “resilient I-Kiribati”7 who “knows when it’s going to be rainy or sunny, when to cut
copra or dry the copra, when to do the laundry and when not to do the laundry, when

6
Tebunginako, Abaiang, 04/10/2016
7
Temwaiku, South Tarawa, 23/10/2016

26
to go fishing and which time of the year you are going to catch this type of fish.”8This
example shows us that being I-Kiribati is closely tied to a certain landscape and that
knowledge is transmitted through the landscape, I will discuss this more in Chapter 5.
Related to topic of knowledge, Ingold (2000: 21) argues that every landscape consists
of different cultural forms in the same way every language consists of different
sounds, inspired by the ideas of de Saussure who made a difference between the
signifier and the signified. Because these cultural forms are encoded in the landscape,
knowledge can be transmitted by someone showing the forms to you. The information
alone about the cultural forms is not enough. Knowledge exists when you can situate
the information and understand its meaning in relationship to the landscape it is in.
Again, this is similar to the way language is constructed. Just knowing separate
sounds is not enough, to understand a language is to understand the sounds in their
context.
Ingold (1993: 162) calls this interconnection between practical knowledge and
landscape ‘taskscape’, or the space of human activity. It is constantly being formed.
Ingold (2000: 20) argues that there cannot be an organism without a landscape in the
same way that there cannot be a landscape without an organism. Because you give
meaning to the landscape, it exists and develops itself around and with you. The
landscape is made by human activity but it also creates human activity (Ingold 1993:
162). For example, in Kiribati, leaves from the pandanus tree have proven to be good
material to weave mats with it, having thus an impact on human activity. Because
these leaves are an important material for building houses, Kiribati islanders plant and
maintain pandanus trees, thus shaping the landscape. Through this interaction, both
people and landscapes are in a constant process of building themselves. Therefore
landscape is never stable, it is always in the process of being produced (Tilley 2006:
7; Ingold 1993). Important to note here is that of course not only people interact with
the landscape, animate objects, animals, and inanimate objects (for example trees) are
in a constant interaction with the landscape (Ingold 1993: 164). In this thesis, I will
mainly focus on the interaction between human activity and landscape, rendering both
animate and inanimate objects as parts of the landscape that people interact with. For
example, one respondent, Francis, described how there are “few fish”9 in the sea now
when discussing landscape changes. Francis viewed fish as part of the landscape and
a decline in fish therefore means a change in the landscape, showing us that other
animate objects are part of the landscape.
The definition of what landscape is and does to the individual also has implications on
how identity-landscapes are connected. Escobar argues that the ‘lived body’ or
identity is “the result of habitual and cultural processes” (Escobar 2001: 143). As
discussed in this part, individuals and the way individuals construct their identity and
are constructed by it, construct the landscape. Therefore identity is linked to
landscape, it is both the product and the producer of it. I will discuss this connection
more in Chapter 3.3 and in Chapter 5 in which I will discuss how Kiribati people
define the connection between their identity and their landscape. This link is also
present in Chapter 6 when respondents discuss what they think will happen to their
identity when they would move to a different country.

8
Temwaiku, South Tarawa, 23/10/2016
9
Binoinano, Abemama, 13/10/2016

27
3.2 Identity
When asking someone about his or her identity it is often defined by what it is not
(Gilroy 1997: 301-302; Woodward 1997: 2). The difference between you and
someone else is what distinguishes you as a person. This is something that came up
during my time in Kiribati as well. When talking with some people in Kiribati they
often used other countries, ‘overseas’ as a tool to talk about their own culture. I will
give examples of this in Chapter 5. This shows us that identity is often defined
through opposites (Woodward 1997: 2). By defining what identity is not, it becomes
clear to a person what that person’s identity entails. Using difference as a way to
construct your own identity fits into the debate between essentialist and non-
essentialist views on identity and can be used in different ways.
In general we can divide views on identity in essentialist ones and non-essentialist
ones (Tilley 2006: 9). The first idea is the oldest one and argues that identities are
stable and grounded. The social and historical context might change but in their core,
their essence, the identity stays the same. This position argues that there are some key
features of identity that never change, no matter the space or time. These key features
can either be biological or traditional/historical (Woodward 1997: 28). Identity is
fixed and has not and will not change across time (Woodward 1997: 11). From an
essentialist viewpoint identity consists of “past experiences and expressions of
previous generations” (Tilley 2006: 9). Defining identity in such essentialist and static
terms has several implications on the definition of particular social groups. The first
implication is that because a core of key traits exists, not a lot of variation in identity
is possible within groups (Tilley 2006: 10; Woodward 1997: 9). The second, and
related, implication is that because each group has their own essence, there are strict
boundaries between different groups. Belonging to more than one group becomes
impossible, because, in an essentialist view, definition of identity is based on
similarities in the own group and differences with another one. A non-essentialist
view posits something completely different. It argues that individuals do not have a
stable identity (Tilley 2006: 8-9). Identities are in constant process of formulation and
reformulation as individuals respond to changes and redefine themselves. This view
implies that within groups there can be variation in identities, and boundaries between
groups are not that strict but fluent. Every identity is merely a reflection of who you
are at a certain time in a certain space. Woodward (1997: 18-20) argues that even
national identities can be different from each other because of the different ways they
are imagined and constituted. So even if the idea exists that there is a national or
community identity, it is always being re-imagined. Through your identity you are
still connected to your past but not completely as in the essentialist view. Someone
with a non-essentialist position can look at differences and similarities in and between
certain groups to define an identity (Woodward 1997: 11). As identity changes over
time, it can also be valuable to look at how the definition of a certain identity has
changed and thereby opposing the same identity with itself. Even the way the past is
remembered is constantly transforming and changing.
Bourdieu adds to this discussion that people live their lives in different fields or social
contexts (Woodward 1997: 21-23; Inglis and Thorpe 2012: 216). Each of these fields
has its own social expectations and norms. Therefore identity is experienced
differently in each field and people thus have multiple identities. Bourdieu’s social
theory can be viewed to align with a non-essentialist view on identity, as identities are
considered diverse and always changing. One person does not posit one rigid identity,

28
on the contrary he/she has multiple ones that adapt to the social expectations and
norms of each field.
During the interviews and conversations with Kiribati residents, identity was part of
the discussion. Firstly there is the shared concept of ‘being Kiribati’ I-Kiribati, but the
content of that concept varied between individuals. However, respondents talked
about traits that were for them typically ‘Kiribati’, for example, community,
landscape and certain values. I will discuss these more broadly in Chapter 5. Defining
the key traits of an I-Kiribati identity can at first sight give the expression of an
essentialist viewpoint, however it does not need to be. For example, when looking at
community, it is clear that how they way community is defined has changed over
time. Traditionally, communities on Kiribati consist of the people of a certain village.
Now, however, with the rise of the church communities are often made up of people
who go to the same church. The church does not have to be in the same village, as
long as it brings together people of the same faith. Even though it might feel that a
certain identity has some core traits, the combination of those traits only exist in a
certain moment and is always in a process of change. Another important note to make
here is that the traits I identified were all based on answers the people I interviewed
gave to me, they identified being I-Kiribati in this way. The elements of community,
landscape, and certain values, are all elements that were brought forward by the
respondents.
A lot of fear of migration comes from looking at identity from an essentialist
viewpoint. If your identity is stable and fixed, moving to a different country, a
different group will leave no possibility to maintain your ‘old’ identity because there
are strict distinctions between different groups (Tilley 2006: 10; Woodward 1997: 9).
You cannot belong to two at the same time. A lot of respondents expressed this fear of
losing their community and their identity. This will not necessarily be the case. When
using a non-essentialist viewpoint, people can adapt to their new surroundings and
find ways to integrate part of their ‘old’ identity into their ‘new’ one. Migrating to a
different country does not mean you lose all connection to where you come from. I
will discuss the relation between landscape change and identity more in the next part
(3.3 Landscape and Identity).
A side note we can make here is that sociologists also make a difference between
identity and roles (Castells 2009: 6-7). The main difference between the two is that
roles are norms constructed by outside institutions and identity is constructed by the
individual to create meaning. Of course identity is influenced by outside constructions
as well but it is something the individual has internalized. When I talked with people
in Kiribati they often had formal roles as representatives of the community. I talked to
elders who are basically the leaders of the communities and one of the people I talked
to, Tebau, was not only an elder but also a former mayor of Marakei. Therefore
besides talking to them as individuals, I was also talking to them as representatives of
their communities.

3.3 Landscape and Identity

When you imagine identity, it is often tied to a certain place (Tilley 2016: 14; Ingold
1993: 162). Landscapes entail certain ideas or feelings about identity and as discussed
earlier the taskscape is also part of it. Because human activities are part of the
landscape, identities can be formed and passed on through the landscape. For

29
example, certain practices also tell a history and reinforce a practice as customary and
as identity construction. Above I have discussed the role of certain practices of
resource use and knowledge (eg everyday practices) but there are also ritual and
ceremonial practices. An example of this is the anti-clockwise tour of the island you
have to perform on Marakei when you first get there. According to the legend, a King
sent two warriors to tour the island to look for any obstacles, the one who made the
clockwise tour died and therefore visitors should always make an anti-clockwise tour
of the island. During this tour it is important that you bring some sacrifices to the
goddesses as well. Marakei is the only island where this is still the custom and is
therefore often viewed as the most superstitious island. This example shows us that
through an activity in a landscape, certain ideas about identity and the history of a
place are passed on. How particular groups engage with the landscape depends on
their beliefs and practices (Strang 2008: 52). For example, people living on different
islands in Kiribati do not have the same rituals even though they have almost the same
physical surroundings. Marakei’s strong superstitious beliefs impose a certain
meaning on the landscape. Every landscape has its own memories and cultural
traditions that ultimately shape it (cf. Strang 2008: 52).
Some authors argue that the link between identity and place is becoming more and
more problematic because more people are wholly or partially deterritorialized (Gupta
and Ferguson 1992: 9; Malkki 1992). There is a rapid increase in people moving away
from their ‘homelands’, often taking their own cultural practices and products with
them, introducing elements of a different culture in an already existing culture. As
migration is a concern for many Kiribati residents, this discussion is relevant for
them. As I will discuss more in Chapter 6, they often fear that they will lose their
identity and culture if they move. I argue that this is only the case when using an
essentialist idea on identity and culture. As discussed in the previous part, from an
essentialist viewpoint, identity is stable and definable through a group of key traits
making variation within groups impossible and creating strong boundaries between
them. A changing landscape can destroy these strict boundaries and thereby leaving
people without identities (Gupta & Ferguson 1992). However, if you look at identity
in a non-essentialist view, identity can change and there are no clear boundaries to
social groups. As both landscape and identity can change, increased mobility does not
threaten the relationship between landscape and identity, it simply means that it will
take on a different form. Bender (2001) argues that ‘home’ landscapes are always
changing as well, using a non-essentialist viewpoint. A stable landscape does not exist
as it might change because of people leaving or because of external forces affecting it.
The ‘home’ landscape is an illusion created by memories and stories. To give a
practical example, I refer again to the transformation of village communities into
church communities (see above). As people from the outer islands migrate to Tarawa,
these church communities act as their ‘second family’, their ‘home away from home’.
This example shows us that even though an aspect of Kiribati identity has changed,
from village communities to church communities, it does not mean landscape and
identity have become separated from each other. It simply means that both
‘landscape’ and ‘identity’ to the individual has changed with circumstances. Another
example of how both landscape and identity change without it being problematic was
given to me by Francis, when we were talking about changes in Kiribati culture.
Francis is a music teacher so naturally he brought up that in the past, they only had
access to their own music. However in recent years with for example the introduction
of radio, new music made its way into Kiribati culture:

30
 “The changes we have are we mix our culture with other cultures and we do it
with like our dancing. We can use music, there’s no music here long ago. But
now we use it for our dancing and our traditional dancing.” 10
This shows us that an element from a different culture, music, has been introduced
and that Kiribati culture has adapted itself to it. During traditional dancing, Kiribati
islanders will now often use a mix of old village songs and new foreign songs to
dance to. Again this taps into the idea that both landscape and identity respond to
change and that they are never fixed or stable.
We can conclude that landscape and identity are linked to each other. Landscape and
identity are in a constant process of constructing and reconstructing each other and are
therefore never stable.

3.4 Methodology

3.4.1 Interview Process

I used qualitative interviews in combination with participant-observations.
I conducted 25 interviews in total but as the quality of the interviews got better with
the later interviews I will not use all of them. I tried to let the respondents define their
own concepts and let them talk about their own experiences by doing semi-structured
interviews. This means that I had a list of topics and questions I wanted to address but
that there was also room for the respondents to give some of their own ideas without
me guiding them too much. Some examples of the questions can be found in the
Appendix. As I only had the opportunity to talk to each respondent once, I could
collect the information I needed and I let the interview open for possible new insights.
I also found that using this format, put the respondents at ease. Often the interviews
were very similar to conversations in which my respondents felt comfortable.
I developed these questions through informal conversations and while interviewing,
as I gradually built up a better knowledge about the people and the landscape.
Through allowing respondents to take over the interview, the resulting conversation
also brought out some very interesting things. For example, after I had a conversation
with a woman about what community means to her, I decided to start asking questions
about this. All of this led to me testing my interviews constantly and to me refining
them. As I had never done interviews before it was a learning process to discover
what works and what does not work. As mentioned before, I will not use the first
interviews I did because of their poorer quality even though I have learned a lot from
them. They helped me refine my later interviews and gave me valuable insights to life
in Kiribati. Doing semi-structured interviews also helped me in this process as
respondents would give information about things I did not think of before.
I have tried to select my respondents at random to get a diverse group of people.
However this was not always possible because of a language barrier. Not everyone
spoke English and I had little to none knowledge of Gilbertese, the local language. I
overcame this partly by using a translator when I could but this was not always
possible. I used two different translators, both of them were my friends who I met in
the places I was staying at. They also helped me find people to interview. Because of
10
Binoinano, Abemama, 12/10/2016

31
this there is a bias in the people I interviewed as most of them were well educated.
Even when I used a translator this might have had an effect on the interview as well,
as sometimes some of their own ideas might have slipped in. Nonetheless I still feel
like I assembled a good group of respondents and that the information I got from them
is still valuable. It still taught me a lot about how people in Kiribati live and how they
experience the world around them.
Before I started the interviews, I would always explain who I was, what I was doing
and what would happen to the information they shared with me. If people did not
want to be interviewed, I did not press the matter and respected their wishes. After I
conducted the interviews, I asked them to write down their names and where they
were from so I would know how to spell it. All the interviews I did happened with
consent and people were always happy to tell their stories.
As I mentioned before I also did some small scale ‘participatory’ observations, I tried
to emerge myself as much as an outsider could for such a short period in time in the
Kiribati lifestyle. This means that for example I went fishing on several occasions, I
particapted in cultural events such as traditional dancing and celebrations, I tried to
learn where to find the good coconut for cutting copra, etc. This gave me a better
impression of how Kiribati people actually live than by just doing interviews. For this
reason I tried to always stay at small local-owned hotels or even just stay with
families. Most places I stayed at I stayed for ten days to two weeks, allowing me to
get to know the people I was staying with and their lifestyles. Because I stayed for
this amount of time in places, it was possible to form friendships and build
relationships on mutual trust. I believe that because of this, I got a good insight in
how people live on Kiribati. For example, because I knew people I got invited to
participate in cultural events such as the celebration for a girl’s first menstruation to
which I otherwise would not have had access to. However, even though I tried to
engage as much with Kiribati residents as I could, I always remained an outsider.
Doing research and analysing the data, happened from an outsider perspective.
While I was doing the interviews I would always tape-record them and transcribe
them later. I tried to transcribe as much interviews as I could while I was doing my
research so it would be easier for me to see if I actually got all the information I
wanted out of them. This really helped in the process of refining them. I also kept a
research diary in which I would write down any observations I made during the day or
any interesting things that came up during informal conversations. This again helped
me as well in refining my interviews and in processing the data later.

3.4.2 Data Analysis

To be able to analyse the data I collected I transcribed all the interviews I had carried
out. I chose to not add these interviews in the appendix for several reasons. The first
one is an ethical reason. After I transcribed the interviews I did not have a chance to
read them back to my respondents. I feel comfortable with using parts of the
interviews in this thesis to illustrate what I have learnt, but for including the whole
interviews I feel I need the approval of my respondents. As Kiribati is so remote, I
have no way of accessing my respondents again without actually being physically
there. The second reason has to do with language. I slightly edited the quotes I use
here in the text, to make sure that the answers of the people I interviewed are easily
understable to he reader. However to edit the whole interviews (as the English

32
translations is not always of high enough quality), I would have needed to read back
final versions tot he respondent to ensure that they were transcribed correctly. This
has not been possible as I have been unable to go back to the Islands since I
transcribed the interviews. Even though I have slighty edited what the respondents
said, I always made sure that the meaning of the text and the context of it has not
changed. As I will not include the interviews in the appendix, I will include many
quotes in the actual text so that the reader has a good view of where my interpretation
comes from.
I have decided to keep the first name of the people I have talked to. This because I
made them aware of what our conversations were used for and they gave their oral
consent for it.
The most important thing to me when writing the analytical chapters (Chapter 4, 5
and 6) was to make sure that the people I interviewed are presented correctly. Often
the interviews were more conversations in which persons decided to tell me about
their lives. I have tried to capture the individual character of each of these
conversations to give a more personal understanding of the person who has shared
his/her stories with me and also to give the reader a better understanding of the
context of each interview.

33
4. Landscape change

In this chapter I will discuss how the people I have interviewed describe landscape
changes and what they think causes these changes. When it comes to landscape,
people usually understand it as the environment around them. This means that they
refer to things like changes in the coastline, or houses where there used to be none.

4.1 A changing land

I spent a great deal of time conversing with people how the landscape has changed
and possible causes behind change. They usually defined landscape in terms of
physical changes. I have structured the discussion on the basis of the different islands
as they each have their own characteristics. For example, Abemama is located almost
on the equator while the other islands are above the equator. Marakei is the only
island that has the shape of a full circle with two narrow channels connecting the
lagoon with the ocean. This means that the lagoon side is not as much exposed to big
waves as the lagoons of the other islands. It also means that there is almost no fish
population inside the lagoon. On Abaiang a village, Tebunginako, had to move
already because of a sea inundation. I will discuss this later in this chapter. More
importantly, and as I explained in the background chapter Tarawa is the most
populated island in Kiribati. I will start with the outer islands Abaiang, Marakei and
Abemama, and then I will discuss the main island Tarawa. As in the coming chapters
I will base much of the discussion on the actual interviews and quotes from the
interviews to let my respondents tell their own stories and their own ideas. Most
respondents comment on sea inundation and its effects, but when listing landscape
changes many also bring up changes in demography. I will begin with exemplifying
how sea inundation is discussed, focusing on the different islands.

4.1.1 Sea inundation and temperature changes

Sea inundation occurs when the ocean enters previously dry land because of repeating
storm surges and/or strong tides. When I was doing my research I encountered two
places in Kiribati where this has lead to the forced movement of part of the
population. The first place is the village of Tebunginako on Abaiang. Here a sea
inundation destroyed a plantation and it forced the people living there to move more
inward. Even after the move, some houses get flooded every year because of a king
tide. Important to note here is that the flooded area was land reclaimed from the ocean
by closing off small channels. The second village is the village of Eita on Tarawa.
However I was not able to do research here because of time and budget limitations.

34
On the other islands, Marakei and Abemama, respondents also discussed some
changes in the coastline, although not as dramatically as on Abaiang.

Illustration 4: Sea inundation in Tebunginako, Abaiang during high tide.

Abaiang
Respondents on the outer islands, such as Tebuntintaake and Aata, usually point out
changes in the sea level and in the abundance of trees, as landscape changes. Many
respondents related how the sea level has risen (or rather the tide) and how it has
affected their food and water production. In some cases it also affected where they
live. This is especially true for the people I interviewed from the Tebunginako Village
on Abaiang Island. As mentioned before, the Tebunginako villagers already had to
move their settlement to the other side of the island because of a sea inundation. I also
interviewed some people from Tebero Village who had similar experiences. The
inundation from the sea had other effects on the landscape such as salinization of
freshwater and increase of mosquitos. I will lift out two examples here both from
Tebunginako Village of how this is discussed by informants.
We begin with Tebuntintaake who is an older woman from Tebunginako Village. She
lives on subsistence and selling copra. Tebuntintaake was interviewed in the village
Maneaba in Tebunginako where at the time local women were playing bingo and
preparing food. I came into contact with her through my friend and translator Kabua
who thought the Maneaba village was a good place to meet people. We had a long
conversation focusing on how she experiences daily life in Kiribati and what she
thinks is important about being from Kiribati. We also discussed the sea inundation,
as Tebunginako Village is an extreme case of it. She describes some changes she saw:

35
 “Before this place (pointing to where the ocean entered the land) was land. I
used to live there but now I moved to here. There’s a well there to collect water.
Before it was fresh but now it has become salt. Those are the changes I saw.”11
In this quote Tebuntintaake mentions the sea inundation and the consequences it had
on her own life. She mentions having to move and the salinization of the fresh water.
Especially this last part is important as fresh water is becoming more and more scarce
which I will discuss under present and future challenges in Chapter 6.
Another interview I did in Tebunginako Village was with the elder Aata. I met him
also through Kabua and we had a conversation in his kia kia (a local hut). To
welcome us in his home he offered us some coconuts and afterwards we went for a
walk around the village. Aata lives on subsistence farming; he collects shellfish,
coconut, breadfruit and taro and occasionally he goes fishing as well. He planted the
trees needed himself and he also takes care of a papaya pit. Aata recounted in detail
his experiences with water inundation and in particular with the growing problems of
mosquitos.
“Because I was born here and I grow up here, before people stayed around the
coastal area, and before, this was land (pointing to where the ocean entered the
land), people prefer to live near the coastal areas because of the mosquitoes.
Because here in the main land, there are lot of mosquitoes because there are a
lot of ponds. You know the ponds produce a lot of mosquitoes so a lot of
people, most of the household, stay there in the coastal area. 12
Aata also gave more details on the process of inundation and how it affected the crops
that people grew. According to Aata the flooding started about 17 years ago, when
“strong wind and wave” caused inundation on land that was formerly dry. Aata now
refers to the land as “broken” saying how:
“ […] the waves, you know when the sea inundation occurs, it kills all the
papaya, and the bananas and people move to the inland because of sea erosion.
And you can see now it’s only the church here, and the church is almost
gone.”13
The reference Aata makes to the land as broken, alludes to an image of the coastline
acting as a wall against the tide, protecting the land that lies behind it. Aata also gives
already some explanations for the sea inundation by pointing to strong winds and
waves. Changes in wind patterns is also something people on the other islands noticed
(see below). Similar to Tebuntintaake, Aata refers to consequences of the inundation
when talking about it. For him, the effects of inundation mean less land for food
production and an increase in mosquitoes.
Another change Aata mentioned during the interview is that not only on land
producing enough food is getting harder but that he also has more trouble catching
enough fish to support himself:
“The same with the sea, before I went out fishing, I used to get a full bag of rice
[for the fish] but now no only small size. So there’s a decline in fish too.”14

11
Tebunginako, Abaiang, 04/10/2016
12
Tebunginako, Abaiang, 02/10/2016
13
Tebunginako, Abaiang, 02/10/2016
14
Tebunginako, Abaiang, 02/10/2016

36
One of the main foods in Kiribati is rice that is usually sold in bags of 25kg. This
quote shows us that often surviving on your own food is not enough anymore and that
some part of it needs to be sold in order to buy other products such as rice and flour. It
also shows us that changes in the landscape are not only defined as changes on the
land, but also changes in the ocean surrounding the land. As Aata and many others in
Kiribati depend on the ocean for their livelihood, this should not surprise us.
As I mentioned earlier I also went to Tebero Village on Abaiang. There I visited a
catholic community together with the translator Kabua. After lunch, when it is usually
too hot to do some work around the house, I met with an elderly couple, Tiria and
Atanea, While I was doing the interview with Tiria and Atanea, two of their
grandchildren were present as well and Tiria was making a bag out of an empty rice
bag for her granddaughter. In the background a radio was playing; that radio is their
main source of information of what is going on in the rest of Kiribati. Tiria and
Atanea also had problems with inundation, they had built a sea wall made out of
wood and other organic materials next to their kia kia to stop their house from
flooding during a spring tide. I mostly talked with Tiria during the interview but
towards the end Atanea became more engaged in the discussion. Tiria and Atanea
both live on the food they collect themselves and Tiria discusses some changes she
has noticed when collecting shellfish:
“… In the past when they go fishing it was easy to get fish but now it’s very
difficult. Like we turn around the stones, there’s the reef and we can find fish
there. But now we turn around the stone but there’s no fish.”15
For Tiria the decline in the fish population is related to another change in the
landscape, coastal erosion that causes people to live more closely together than
before. Most of these people collect shellfish for their food, which leads to a decline
in the amount of shellfish available. Over the years land has been decreasing,
resulting in that people live more densely on the island. Tiria explains the changes in
terms of populations increase, like this:
“And because of the growing population because before there were only there
one house, you know, no houses near them. And now their house is there and
another one and another one so the growing population is one of the problems
creating the problem. [...] Near the coastal area, a lot of places that used to be
there, before we used to build homes, before we have homes near the beach but
now no more. And the place we were building our houses has been eroded”16
At the base of the problem of the decline in the shellfish population and the increase
in the population density, is the erosion of the coastline. Less place to build houses
means living closer together. Living closer together means more people are making
use of the same resources, shellfish in this case. Tiria has noticed a fourth change in
the landscape around her. She mentions that the vegetation is changing, describing
how vegetation is affected:
“You know before they were green leaves but they have become brown because
of hot, they are feeling too hot.”17

15
Tebero, Abaiang, 26/09/2016
16
Tebero, Abaiang, 26/09/2016
17
Tebero, Abaiang, 26/09/2016

37
Where plants and trees used to be green and healthy, now they are brown and too dry.
Tiria attributes this to a change in temperature. She mentions that it is hotter than
before and that this has negative effects on the vegetation.
These examples show us already some other problems that are related to the change in
the landscape; people are having more and more problem collecting enough food for
themselves and water resources are becoming scarce as well, as Tebunintaake
mentioned. I will discuss these related problems later when talking about the
challenges Kiribati faces in the present and will face in the future in Chapter 6.

Marakei
As mentioned earlier, Marakei is different from the other islands because it is the only
island that forms a full circle. This has some implications for the lagoon side of the
island. Only two narrow channels connect the lagoon with the ocean. During low tide
the channels are so shallow that it is not possible to steer a boat on them. During high
tide however, the Baretoa pass between Tekeran and Baretoa becomes a playground
for children. During high tide the channel is deep and has a strong current making it a
favourite spot for children to play in the water. A bridge connects the two villages
with each other and this bridge is perfectly located for the children to jump off into
the channel. Marakei is also viewed as the island with most “superstitious” people,
both by people from other islands but also by Marakei islanders themselves. For
example, every visitor to Marakei has to take an anti-clockwise tour of the island
upon arrival to give some sacrifices to the goddesses of the island. If this is not done,
people are hesitant to take you in because they will consider you as you are cursed.
Another example of this spirituality is related to the traditional dancing, before the
dance the dancers drink a kind of potion that allows the spirits to come out during the
dance. The dancers often go in trance, a psychological and physical condition that is
highly regarded and aspired in Marakei communities.

38
Illustration 5: Marakei as seen from above.
People see the same changes in the landscape as in Abaiang although not as
pronounced as in Tebunginako. The Marakei people I have interviewed mostly see
changes in the coastline and in the vegetation. I will illustrate this using quotes from
four different people I have met and talked to.
I first met Tebau when I was looking to rent a bike to make my way around the island.
As there are no bike shops on the island I had to rent it from a private person. The
guesthouse I was staying at brought me into contact with Tebau who was the
grandfather of one the people managing it. I met up with Tebau later in the week and
we sat down and drank some toddy together. During that conversation Tebau
mentioned that he used to be the mayor of Marakei and a retired teacher that still
teaches sometimes. Tebau is an important elder who has lived in Marakei all his life. I
met up with him for lunch after he had guided some other visitors around the island
for their customary anti-clockwise trip. We mostly conversed about the rich
experiences of Tebau, but also about Marakei and Kiribati culture more generally. At
one point he described some changes in the landscape:
“Maybe the ocean because the ocean is the most vicious to our lives in Kiribati
with the coast. [...] The waves, the current, the winds, the whole thing changes
compared to before.”18
Here Tebau identifies the ocean as the biggest threat to Kiribati because it is eroding
the coastline of Marakei. Changes in the landscape are viewed more broadly than just
physical changes on the land connected with the ocean. Tebau also mentions that the
winds and the currents are changing, similar to what people like Aata experienced on
Abaiang. When I was in Marakei I also got in touch with the local police department.

18
Rawannawi, Marakei, 17/09/2016

39
I met them through Urea, a police constable who also owns a small business. Urea
suggested I could meet up with some of the other constables in the police office. The
police office was built during colonial times and is very small boasting two small
cells for offenders. Both Urea and Teraoi, another police constable I interviewed,
reassured me that the two cells were not used a lot and also pointed out to me that
police on Kiribati do not even have to carry guns. During our conversation we talked
about what it entails to be a police constable on Marakei and about Marakei life in
general. Teraoi also mentioned some changes he has seen in the landscape:
“[...] especially around the coast and when you look at the east, some trees are
falling down cause the waves eroding the coast.”19
Teraoi, as Tebau above, talks about changes in the coastline as the biggest change in
Kiribati. Important to note here is that he also links this to a decrease in the
vegetation. This can be viewed as another change in the landscape but also as an
effect of an earlier landscape change.
Another occasion I met with people to do interviews with, was when I visited the
elementary school, next to the place I was staying at. First the principal welcomed me
and he introduced me to two of the teachers, Tanua and Atanimoa. As it was a normal
school day, I did not want to interrupt the classes so I did my interviews during the
break or when the children were working on an assignment. When I was in the
teacher Atanimoa’s class, she was teaching the children a song to learn different
animals and the sounds they make. A good teacher as she is, she persuaded me to sing
along and afterwards I taught the children an animal song I remembered from when I
was young. I think this was a good start of a more personal conversation between us.
With Tanua and Atanimoa I talked about what it is like to be a teacher in Kiribati and
what they think is important for the children to learn. We also talked a bit about life
on Marakei and how it might have changed over the years. During that conversation
Tanua mentioned that he is worried about the changes he sees in the coastline:
“[...] there’s a lot of erosion. Most of the islands are heavily affected by the big
waves. [...] some of the tides are very close by. I think the sea is now very
close.”20
Again like with Tebau and Teraoi above, the changes in the coastline are the most
visible changes for Tanua. This has to do with both erosion of the coastline and tides
that come closer. Similar to the way Tebau talks about the ocean, it is very much seen
as a threat for the islands. Atanimoa however, talks mostly about changes in the
vegetation and changes in the wind when she discusses landscape changes:
“[...] Here on Marakei it is very hot and now in our school we just do gardening
and now the water for plants can’t grow up well so it is sad for the plants to not
grow up well because there is no water for them. And the wind, there’s no
wind.”21
In this quote, Atanimoa identifies two changes in the landscape of Marakei. The first
one is a decrease in vegetation caused by a temperature change. Another effect of this
temperature change is implicated by the mentioning that there is less water for the
plants, so from Atanimoas reflection we can assume there is less water in general. The

19
Rawannawi, Marakei, 16/09/2016
20
Rawannawi, Marakei, 21/09/2016
21
Rawannawi, Marakei, 21/09/2016

40
second landscape change Atanimoa lists is the change in wind patterns. According to
Atanimoa there is no more wind on Marakei. This is the opposite of what Aata
mentioned that happens on Abaiang, as stronger winds are there partly responsible for
the sea inundation in Tebunginako.
All in all the changes in the landscape on Marakei are similar to the ones in Abaiang.
They are mostly changes that happen around the coastal area, that are related to the
vegetation on the island, and that are changes in weather and wind patterns.

Abemama
Abemama is part of the Central Islands Group of the Gilbert Islands and it is located
almost on the equator. The other islands I have visited, Tarawa, Marakei and
Abemama, have a more northern location; therefore they are part of the Northern
Islands Group of the Gilbert Islands. Because of its proximity to the equator there are
some physical differences between Abemama and the other islands. I personally
experienced some of these differences: there were fewer trees and more shrubberies,
and Abemama also feels hotter than the other islands.

Illustration 6: Vegetation on Abemama.

People also pointed out some cultural differences. Abemama used to have a king
called King Binoka and even though he has been dead for decades, his presence is
still felt around the islands. When King Binoka was still alive, many feared him
because of how he interacted with other people. Local historians related how, for
example, you were not allowed to touch King Binoka or speak about him. King
Binoka used spirits to spy on people to ensure that people followed his rules. If
someone had a certain skill he wanted, he used the spirits to kill them and to take their
skills. When girls had their first menstruation they had to visit King Binoka and lose
their virginity to him. According to the legend he would even sleep on a pillow made
of their pubic hair. Abemama is still viewed today as the island where they speak
about sex the most freely, partly, as many claim, because of all the stories surrounding

41
King Binoka. Eventually King Binoka was killed by I-Matang, European people. The
degree of fear amongst people against King Binoka, is perhaps shown that, according
to legend, nobody dared to check his coffin to see if his body was actually in there.
Even today you are not allowed to approach his grave because of the spirits
surrounding it.
In spite of these physical and cultural differences between Abemama and other
islands, residents on Abemama, that I interviewed told me about the same kind of
landscape changes as the interviewees on the other islands. They focused mainly on
changes in the coastline and in the vegetation. On Abemama I first stayed at the house
of the principal of Chevalier College, a catholic high school that has a strong
relationship with a high school in Australia. The first days I spent in Chevalier
College, the Australian high school was visiting the school, so the guesthouse next to
the school was completely full. After three days they went back to Australia, so I
moved into the guesthouse. In the guesthouse I met Iacinta who is the owner of the it.
Iacinta is originally from the Southern Islands but has been living for a while on
Abemama. One evening we got together and we had a long conversation about her
life in general and her life on Abemama. During the time she has lived there she
noticed some changes in the landscape around her:
“I think sometimes there is more ocean in a place because the place somewhere
is what you call it (eroding). The tide is coming and taking away sand and
before the tide did not come to a place and now it’s ruining your land, the tide,
especially near the ocean side.”22
From this quote we learn that coastal erosion is a problem on Abemama as well and
that it is more of a problem for the ocean side than for the lagoon side. Stronger tides
are seen as the cause for this, as they now come to the places they did not come
before. This is not the only change in the landscape Iacinta has observed. She also
talks about how there are fewer trees on Abemama now:
“We get sometimes lack of foods in the stores and the people now depend on
overseas food like rice and flour and they can neglect growing coconut trees and
pandanus, and neglect making their papaya pits.”
However, this decline in the amount of trees in not attributed by Iacinta to higher
temperatures or coastal erosion as on Abaiang and Marakei. Iacinta instead points to
the introduction and availability of overseas food such as rice or flour. Because
people can now just go to the store to buy some food now they do not depend solely
on their environment for their survival. According to Iacinta this leads to the fact that
less people are now planting and collecting their own food. But, as summarised by
Iacinta, the introduction of new food itself can be viewed as a change in the
landscape, as it has an effect not only on the way people live but also on their
surroundings.
Another person I interviewed on Abemama Island is Keanteang. Keanteang owns a
small shop and moved to Abemama around 30 years ago. I first met him when I was
looking for some bottled water to buy as the water in the school and in the guesthouse
only comes from a well. Everyone had strongly advised me against drinking it.
Luckily for me Keanteang had some bottles in his store and on one of my daily visits
to him we got talking, a conversation which I expanded into an interview. During our

22
Binoinano, Abemama, 13/10/2016

42
conversation Keanteang mentioned that he has noticed some changes in the tide and
in the temperature:
“[...] you know the high tide is coming more nowadays and that’s because the
climate change. And the sun is very hot.”23
Here, Keanteang gives already a cause for the stronger tides, however, and as I will
also discuss in Chapter 4.2, Keanteang himself does not believe in climate change. As
Keanteang explained to me, he has been taught that climate change is responsible for
the changes in the landscape but that does not mean he agrees with it (see below).
Despite this scepticism Keanteang, also mentions a change in temperature, something
other respondents have also mentioned.
Francis I met when the principal gave me a tour of the school and when I got invited
to have a welcome lunch with the teachers of Chevalier College. Francis is the clerk
at the school and he also teaches music and religious courses. I went to visit him one
of the days afterwards to discuss what he thinks of life in Kiribati. We met again
during lunch and he also mentioned the fact that people plant fewer trees now:
“Yeah the changes on this island have to do with the trees, most of the trees are
planted a long time ago. There are no new trees.”24
Thus, as there is no planting of trees there is no regeneration of trees, But the standing
trees are now all “very high”25 as explained by Francis. Francis also states that “most
of Kiribati people cut and groom the trees”26. This shows us that although there are
fewer trees being planted, access to trees is not a problem at the moment because
people on Abemama can still depend on the old trees for resources like coconut and
breadfruit. However lack of regeneration could potentially be a problem in the future
when the trees die or when they become too high to climb. In addition to the concern
for continued provisioning of tree resources needed, when asked about landscape
change Francis also brought up the challenge of sea resources. Francis claims that
there are fewer fish in the sea right now, saying that:
“There is a problem with the sea when you go fishing. The fish, what can I say,
when you go get your food from the sea, there are fewer fish, not a lot.”27
Francis here again reminds us of the importance of sea resources, and the problem of
declining fish for a fishing dependent community. Changes in the landscape are not
only changes on the land but also in the ocean. The decline in fish population is
something Aata and Tiria on Abaiang mentioned as well, showing us that this is a
bigger problem than a problem just for one island.

4.1.2 Population changes

As mentioned in the Background Chapter, the population of Kiribati has grown in
recent years. This especially happened on Tarawa, the main island. On top of normal
population growth, people have migrated to Tarawa for different reasons, which I will

23
Binoinano, Abemama, 13/10/2016
24
Binoinano, Abemama, 12/10/2016
25
Binoinano, Abemama, 12/10/2016
26
Binoinano, Abemama, 12/10/2016
27
Binoinano, Abemama, 12/10/2016

43
discuss in Chapter 4.2. This chapter will therefore focus on Tarawa where population
changes often come on top of the changes discussed just before.

Tarawa
I spent most of my time in Kiribati on Tarawa Island where I stayed at the Kiribati
Health Retreat, an organization that gives workshops on health and that treats people
who have for example diabetes. They also rent out of some of the rooms for guests
visiting. The founder of the organization is Pelenise who is also national coordinator
of the Kiribati Climate Action Network (KiriCAN). She is the person I contacted
before I came to Kiribati and she helped me set up my research. Pelenise and the other
girls working at the Health Retreat, Tinaai, Vasiti, Kinaua and Tetiria, also assisted
me during the process of my research and without them I could have made the
contacts necessary to carry out the research for the thesis. Pelenise is one of the most
driven women I have ever met and I was privileged enough to spend many days and
evenings in her company. On one of these occasions she described some of the
changes she has seen during her time on Tarawa:
“[...] there are places that have I noticed that have grown and there places that
have been washed away. [...] There is a lot of deposit of land in this place and
very soon we won’t have the sea wall, it is going to be just land you know. But
on other places, totally gone. People living there sitting, I mean their home of
the people has just washed away. Even though they keep on trying to build sea
walls. It just got washed.”28
Interesting here is that Pelenise not only talks about land that has washed away but
also about land that has been created by the use of for example sea walls. However
these sea walls are not effective in every place as some of the tides are too strong for
them. She also points to “the currents and the tides” to explain why this happened. I
will discuss the various explanations of landscape changes more in Chapter 4.2.
Ieru is a carpenter I met when I accompanied the girls from the Health Retreat to one
of the outreach programs they do in Betio. Betio is the largest urban area in Kiribati.
The Health Retreat program is focused on people with diabetes who during four days,
learn how to eat well and how to exercise more. Ieru joined the Health Retreat
program because he wants to improve his quality of life and he wants to be able to be
there more for his children. As Ieru’s English was not very good, Vasiti offered to
translate for him during the interview. During our conversation Ieru mentioned some
changes in the landscape of Tarawa:
“Before we have space and we have a space for a backyard and to do gardens.
Now every house are packed together and everyone lives closely to each other.
You have little space and you have little privacy. And people living together,
with the usage of water just dumping it everywhere, it makes the place untidy
and not a pleasant place to live. So yeah compared to when I first arrived until
today, yeah it’s getting overcrowded and it’s getting untidy.”29
Here Ieru mentions the effects population growth has on the landscape, it forces
people to live more closely together and they are often no longer able to grow their
own food. Because of the increase in population density, Tarawa becomes more and
28
Temwaiku, South Tarawa, 23/10/2016
29
Betio, South Tarawa, 08/09/2016

44
more polluted. Later in the interview Ieru mentions two other changes that are related
to population changes. The first one has to do with the lack of toilets on Tarawa:
“Because everywhere is so populated and there is not enough space for the
toilets. Some people they don’t have a toilet so they go to the sea and that
makes it so disgusting and so unhygienic.”30
Again changes in population also cause more pollution. In this case the pollution does
not happen in the urban areas themselves but on the beaches surrounding them. On
the outer islands using the sea as a toilet is not a problem because there are not as
many people. On Tarawa, however, the lack of toilets is becoming a big problem as,
especially during low tide, beaches are very dirty. A second effect a growing
population in a smaller area is related to an increased unemployment:
“Our government does not have enough resources for everyone, to employ each
individual. So unemployment as well is a big issue. And then that drives
especially the youth, it drives them to do mischievous things and it’s sad that
here in Tarawa there have been a lot of people who have been doing things like
abusing people. Maybe they are stressed because they don’t have jobs so it leads
to a lot of things, problems. Especially in Betio.”31
The increase in unemployment is something I will discuss in Chapter 6 as well.
Important to note here is that Ieru links unemployment to especially male violence.
People I have talked to pointed to domestic abuse as one of the main crimes in
Kiribati. Often they mentioned it in combination with the use of alcohol. Apart from
the effects of population changes and unemployement, Ieru also specifically discussed
the physical changes of the coastline:
“The rising sea levels take away our land and our water and also for health it is
threatening. The ocean and the water is polluted, you know, on Kiribati we have
a limestone soil, so there is not a lot of water and the seawater pollutes it. You
know it is only a small island and only around 2-3 m high with water
everywhere. There is nowhere to go for us, we are trapped.”32
This again shows us that the rapid population growth come on top of physical changes
in the landscape that exist on the outer islands as well. The coastline is eroding and
fresh water wells are subject to salinization. What to me is most striking from the
conversation with Ieru is his phrasing how they are “trapped” on the island. When the
water comes in they have nowhere to go.
People from other islands, like Iacinta from Abemama, who was quoted above, talk
about how Tarawa is overcrowded at the moment and that it is better for people who
have migrated to Tarawa to move back to the outer islands. If people moved back to
their original island, they would be able to provide for themselves again. On
Abemama Iacinta stated that:
“It’s good that they are coming back because they are all packing up Tarawa
and crowding up all the places and people. The way the people live in Tarawa is

30
Betio, South Tarawa, 08/09/2016
31
Betio, South Tarawa, 08/09/2016
32
Betio, South Tarawa, 08/09/2016

45
 too hard for them. It’s just the main money they just get it from the wages they
get, no other. It’s better for them to come back here.”33
Not only Tarawa residents is feeling the effects of population changes on other islands
but it also creates some problems for people on the outer islands. Most of the people
that migrate to Tarawa do not come back.

Illustration 7: Urban area in Betio, South Tarawa.

4.2 Causes of changes

Here I describe how the people I have interviewed explain the changes they saw in the
landscape. I used the same kind of division as in the previous chapter: a divide
between sea inundation and temperature changes, and population changes.

4.2.1 Sea inundation and temperature changes

Most respondents declare that they do not know why the changes they see are
happening. They notice that the sea level is rising and that it is getting hotter but they
don’t know why. Aata gives an example of how he notices it is getting hotter:
“Because we feel that the sun is very hot and we see the trees, because the earth
is very dry so it affects the production of the plants. Also for the fish too. It is
very hot in the sea.”34
In this way a rise temperature explains a change in vegetation and a decline in the fish
population. The temperature rise is thus a cause of landscape changes but what causes

33
Binoinano, Abemama, 13/10/2016
34
Tebunginako, Abaiang, 02/10/2016

46
it is unknown. In the previous chapter, people like Tebua and Tanua have pointed to
stronger tides to explain erosion of the coastline. However the reasons why the tides
are stronger is something most people are hesitant to say, or they say they do not
know.
Only a few individuals point to global climate change as the cause for the physical
changes in the landscape. Even those individuals that do mention global climate
change stress that they are not sure if it is actually the reason or if there are other
factors at play as well. Pelenise from Tarawa is one the few that brings up global
climate change saying that it could be the reason parts of Tarawa are being washed
away, but she also adds:
“[...] there is a lot of coastal erosion a lot of places have been washed and
because I am not scientist I couldn’t tell you whether it’s all climate change or
it’s man’s made doing, but maybe we did something to create that but I
know.”35
Pelenise suggest that coastal erosion could be caused by climate change or something
else man made but that it may also be a natural phenomenon. Important to remember
here is that Pelenise also stressed how people were creating more land by using sea
walls. This shows us the idea that people can be responsible for both decreasing and
increasing the size of the islands
Iacinta from Abemama also mentioned climate change as a possibility when I asked
her why she thought the landscape was changing:
“We don’t know why it is changing but maybe because of the changing of the
climate, maybe.”36
As many other informants, Iacinta is not entirely convinced that climate change is
responsible for the landscape changes. Iacinta tells me she heard about climate change
when she helped her niece out with an assignment on the topic. As mentioned before,
the way Iacinta thinks about climate change, is similar to the way Keanteang thinks
about it, although he declares that he does not believe in it at all. He commented the
physical changes saying that it could be climate change, but adding that:
“…we don’t believe in climate change. They say the islands are going to
disappear, that’s what the scientists say.”37
It is noticeable that many informants talk about global climate change as something
“you believe in or not”. As I have shown above, many people recognise the physical
effects of landscape changes (flooding, salinization of freshwater, loss of vegetation).
People also speak about warming, and claim the experience that temperatures now are
becoming hotter. It is also clear that most individuals are aware of that the outside
world explains these processes in terms of global warming and climate change. Yet,
many informants are hesitant whether the believe climate change is happening.
There are several reasons why people do not believe in climate change or why they
are not completely convinced climate change is real. For residents, the knowledge that
their island and everything they have will sink in a not so distant future is simply too
frightening and overwhelming. People have also expressed that they believe that once

35
Temwaiku, South Tarawa, 23/10/2016
36
Binoinano, Abemama, 13/10/2016
37
Binoinano, Abemama 13/10/2016

47
they think climate change is real it will become real. Denying its existence is for them
a way of coping with it.
Manikaoti is manager of the Kiribati Adaptation Program, a program that assists the
Kiribati government to adapt to and create more resilience to climate change. The
interview I did with Manikaoti differs from the other interviews as this one was aimed
at getting a better understanding of the organization. Manikaoti is thus conversing
with me as a representative of KAP. The other interviews I conducted were more
styled as personal conversations in which we talked more broadly about everyday life
in Kiribati. When I was talking to Manikaoti Timeon, the manager of the Kiribati
Adaptation Program, he pointed to politics to explain why people do not believe in
global climate change:
“That is a political problem. Before this new government came into power in
March, they were the opposition in the previous government. And the previous
government was very much promoting climate change [as a problem], as you
can see the president Anote Tong was very vocal on this topic. Not only here
but also in the region and on the international forum. And then when this
present government was the opposition, I think they believed that climate
change is a reality but [use it as] just a political thing to go against the [the
sitting] government. But you can see if you talk to them now, they have
changed side you know, they have changed their mind and they are now very
supportive of climate change.”38
Manikaoti blames the current government for scepticism towards climate change.
However, now that they are in the government they are taking measures against
climate change. Manikaoti has hopes that in the future, people of Kiribati might have
a better understanding of why certain things that are happening to their island. A few
of the people I interviewed were in contrast very convinced that global climate change
was responsible for some of the landscape change. For example Tanua explicitly
refers to climate change to explain the coastal erosion he witnesses on Marakei:
“I think it is climate change, as you can see there’s a lot of erosion. Most of the
islands are heavily affected by the big waves.”39
Here Tanua points to climate change to explain bigger waves and stronger tides. The
waves and tides are responsible for the coastal erosion but climate change is
responsible for the waves and tides.
To conclude, when it comes to explaining coastal and temperature changes, the
people I have interviewed can be divided into three groups: a group of people who are
reluctant to explain or do not know why these changes happen; a group of people that
thinks climate change is partly or fully responsible for these changes and a last group
of people that has been told that climate change is responsible for them, but refuse to
believe it.

4.2.2 Population changes

As discussed above, population changes are mostly visible on Tarawa: this is due to a
natural population growth and an increased migration flow to Tarawa from the outer
island. There are several reasons why people decide to move to Tarawa but the most
38
Bairiki, South Tarawa, 18/10/2016
39
Rawannawi, Marakei, 21/09/2016

48
common reasons are for education and employment. Tarawa has a wider variety of
jobs and schools are often deemed better than the ones on the outer islands. In some
cases families also follow their children who have previously migrated there, this is
something Tebuntintaake from Abaiang describes:
“Because some of them, some of the families their kids stay in Tarawa for
school so they move to them.” 40
Though people migrate to Tarawa for jobs, many families become disappointed as
unemployment rises as well. People moving to get jobs often end up without. This
causes them to become dependent on their relatives living in Tarawa. Pelenise
discusses this in our conversation:
“The parents [of the unemployed youth] are on the outer islands but they [the
youth] are staying here with their uncles and their aunties who are working on
Tarawa who are maybe providing all the needs. All the things that they need but
with the understanding that these kids will try and look for a job or go back to
study. And the unemployment also causes a lot of stress on those who are
working on Tarawa because all their family members and the children, they
send the children to come and live with them and to support them while they are
here.” 41
In this quote Pelenise mentions why the children moved to Tarawa, for jobs or
education, and she also mentions some of the effects the migration has. Relatives
become burdened with the task of looking after the children and making sure they
have everything they need. In Chapter 4.1.2. Ieru also talked about what the
unemployment can do to the youth. Ieru himself actually moved to Tarawa to find a
good job and to give his children the opportunity to go to school in Tarawa. After I
conducted the interview with Manikaoti, we had an informal talk afterwards in which
we discussed the population issue on Tarawa. Manikaoti mentioned that usually the
people moving to Tarawa do not have a lot of resources because they are unemployed.
So they either have to be supported by relatives on Tarawa or they have to buy their
own piece of land. However the pieces of land that are still available are often located
in areas vulnerable to flooding and the houses regularly get flooded.
As mentioned in Chapter 4.1.2 the decrease in youth population on the outer islands
because of the migration to Tarawa can become a problem on the outer islands as
well. The current government is trying to tackle the population issue by giving
incentives to people to move back to their original islands. For example, they have
recently doubled the price of copra (that is dried coconut flesh) to encourage copra
production and provide a livelihood in smaller islands. A bag of one kilo copra used
to fetch 50 cents, while now producers receive one dollar through government grants.
Iacinta mentioned this livelihood opportunity when I was talking with her:
“[...]now they are getting more money from copra because the way, the prices
getting high. They are getting, they receive much money from the kilo. Before
it’s only 50 cent a kilo and now it’s two dollar a kilo. [...] You know people
who leave their island they all go to Tarawa and now they are returning back
because of the change of the copra, the price of the copra.”42

40
Tebunginako, Abaiang, 04/10/2016
41
Temwaiku, South Tarawa, 23/10/2016
42
Binoinano, Abemama, 13/10/2016

49
Here Iacinta mentions people migrating to Tarawa from Abemama. She also discusses
them coming back because now they can make more money selling copra. Not
everyone is happy with the new price either. Some residents fear, people will move
back to outer islands, harvest all the copra and then move to Tarawa again. The
government measure could potentially lead to a decrease of the population of Tarawa
and an increase of the population of the outer islands but as the measure was only
implemented last year (2016) it is too early to make any judgements on it.
In an informal conversation I had with a shopkeeper in Tarawa on the second of
September, he related the increase to population to climate change as well. As the
islands are getting smaller because of coastal erosion or sea inundations, people have
less space to live and are forced to live closer together. In his case his family was now
living with the pigs inside the house. Although not an explanation for why the
population growth, it can be one for the increase in population density.

50
5. Identity

People living in Kiribati base their identity on different sources. Respondents

mentioned community, landscape, and values as important to their identity. When
people of Kiribati talk about themselves and their culture, they usually use the term I-
Kiribati. This in contrast to I-Matang, which means Europeans or Westerners. I-
Matang originally means ‘people from the heavens’ and according to the creation
story I-Matang and I-Kiribati were never supposed to live in the same country
(Beiabure et al 1979). When I was talking to Atanea, an elder from Abaiang, he
discussed some of these aspects of identity and related them to each other:
“[...] And we need to die here because we don’t change our culture. Because
once you move to another country your identity, your cultural concepts will be
changed you know, in future times. Because you have to follow foreign culture
and here is simple.”43
Here Atanea mentions that culture is tied to your country, your nationality. Another
country will not have the same “cultural concepts” as Kiribati. Related to this is what
he mentions as the “simple” life in Kiribati. In Kiribati it is possible to provide for
yourself without having a job because you still can collect your own food from your
surroundings:
“Living in Kiribati is simple compared to other countries like if you go there
and sometimes you might don’t have a job, no money, you end up in the street
like begging for money. But here if you have no money you can get food
easily.”44
Atanea notes that in Kiribati you do not need money to buy food. If you have no
money you can still survive without having to beg on the street. For Atanea this
monetary independence makes life easier and simpler than in other countries.
Monetary independence is also part of the Kiribati identity. You do not have to go to a
store to buy your food, on the contrary you can just find it around you. Another issue
related to Kiribati identity was brought up by Tebero, and is that people in Kiribati
will always help each other:
“…or people here, we can help each other. In your system it is very hard to go
to your neighbour, they might close their doors and chase you away.”45
This identity trait is related to the community aspect of Kiribati culture. Everyone
helps each other; if you need something, you can go and ask your neighbour for help.
This community support is also related to the idea that life is simple in Kiribati. The
community ties make life simpler as well because even if you do not have money you
can still go to someone else for help. Again you do not end up begging on the street
for money. An interesting note here is that when discussing Kiribati culture and

43
Tebero, Abaiang, 26/09/2016
44
Tebero, Abaiang, 26/09/2016
45
Tebero, Abaiang, 26/09/2016

51
identity, Atanea compares them to other countries’ identities and cultures as a way of
explaining what Kiribati is about. As Woodward (1997:2) and Gilroy (1997: 301-302)
mentioned, this is strategy to define identity (see Chapter 3). I will discuss all these
aspects of Kiribati identity and culture more in detail in this chapter. I have decided to
divide the chapter in three parts: a community part, a landscape part and a values part.
These were the three main aspects/themes that came out of the interviews,
conversations and observations. Important to keep in mind here is that this is a
generalisation based on the answers of the respondents. This is not a full
representation about what it means to be I-Kiribati as this varies even for the islanders
themselves.

5.1 Community
Community is an important part of Kiribati identity. Respondents defined community
usually as a church group or a village community in which everyone helps each other.
A woman I talked to on Abaiang mentioned that the way communities are organized
now on Tarawa helps people who have migrated there. She herself is a nurse who
grew up on the Southern islands, but then moved to Tarawa to enroll in nursing
school. She talked about how before your community usually consists of the people
living around you and your family. However now communities are increasingly
centered around the church. This can help people from other islands to not feel alone
and to still have a structure they can fall back on in their new home. On Tarawa there
are also different maneabas, or community centers. Some of these maneabas were
also linked to local maneabas in the outer islands. These outer island community
centers enable people who migrated to still connect with people from their original
island and their customs.
My conversation with Tiria on Abaiang, took place at their church community center
so naturally we discussed what her church community means to her:
“Our community is, because this place is a catholic community, it consists of
members of the church, members of the Catholic Church in this village. So in
our community we have a catechist and his wife and this is their home. So every
time we come here and meet. Every Sunday we have a meeting and in our
meeting we talk about looking after the village, the big house and fundraising
for the church.”46
Here Tiria mentions two aspects of her community: the first one is that it is a church
community that consists of member of the Catholic Church is their village. Because it
is a church community they get together in the house of the catechist and his wife.
The second aspect is that they have a big meeting every week on Sunday in which
they discuss what needs to be done in their village and how to collect money for the
church. During this meeting they can ask for some help for their household, for
instance in building a house. Tiria also mentioned a second way community members
may help individuals:
“In our community we also have like a money scheme in which we can apply
for a loan. It’s not a big loan, the money they have now is almost 1000 dollars
and if you need to borrow some money they give you 50, 20 and by next week

46
Tebero, Abaiang, 26/09/2016

52
 you have to pay back with interest. That’s one of the ways to help their
members.”5
Tiria explains here that they can also apply for a small loan. In Tirias community,
they have collected in total a sum of almost 1000 dollars that can be used to grant
loans to community members. If you receive a loan, you have to pay it back by the
next week but with a small interest. As there are almost no banks in Kiribati, this can
be a good way to help people set up small businesses or to help them out when they
need money urgently because of an unforeseen problem.
When I talked to Aata about what community means to him, he gave a similar
description of the importance of community, but Aata also defined community in a
broader sense focusing on various community associations:
“In our community there are a lot of associations, like church associations,
village association, youth and women. In the village association, you know it’s
all the people in the village. In the maneaba if we, if the leader or the people ask
for us to do this one thing, everyone should do this one thing. Like if the leader
say today we are going to build that house so everyone obey the rule and
everyone should work together to build the thing what the leader said. As well
as the church, if we do fundraising for the church everyone should help the
fundraising. And the community for us is like this, what do you call it,
combination of different associations in one area. So we have each other to do
this one thing, to do things.”47
Here Aata mentions that for him a community is made up of different associations,
giving examples of the village association and the church association. He also talks
about some of the activities and roles that the different associations have. When the
village association meet in the maneaba, they discuss things that need to be done in
the village, Aata gives building a house as an example. Ultimately it is the leader of
the village association, often an elder, who decides on what activities will be carried
out. To illustrate what the church association does, Aata gives the example of
fundraising. Everyone will try to collect some money to for example to do some
repairs on the church. Similar to what Tiria discussed, we can see the element of
people in the community helping each other present in Aata’s description. One
respondent, Tebuntintaake from Abaiang, makes a good general description that
combines the different elements that make up a community:
“Community means a place to live and to have meetings and a community is a
place a combination of households. A place to meet, to make decisions and
live.”48
Tebuntintaake defines community both as a function, but also by who makes up the
community. A community is a combination of households tied to “a place to live”.
The function or purpose of the community is, according to Tebuntintaake, to meet, to
make joint decisions and to help each other out. The quote from Tebuntintaake above
is highly interesting as he also defines community as “a place to live”. Thus
community is localised and tied to a place, many of the respondents also fear that if
they have to move to other places they will lose what they define as community,
which is also relevant to their definitions of themselves as individuals (see Chapter 6)

47
Tebunginako, Abaiang, 02/10/2016
48
Tebunginako, Abaiang, 04/10/2016

53
However, communities also have another important element that has not yet been
mentioned, namely the love and friendship that exist between different members of
the community. Without it communities would not be able to function the way they
do. For people in Kiribati the idea that your family is bigger than just core family is
also an important aspect of their identity. When I asked Atanea what he would miss
about Kiribati if he lived in another country, he described the love that exists on
Kiribati:
“Because here love is very important. You have to love one another and if you
go there, because if you live overseas, there is only you. Maybe your wife or
husband or children but very close house. So you know the love that you share
here, you know it will disappear. So you have to love only your husband or your
family but your neighbours will not. And here, sometimes people when you
walk around here they are like come have a drink and a smoke you know.
That’s the life we have to maintain the friendship face, especially the smiling
face. And if you go there it’s going to disappear.”49
Atanea mentions that in Kiribati everyone is always very friendly towards each other.
When you walk on the street people will invite you over for dinner or for a
conversation. The idea exists that your neighbours are part of your family. Because
your neighbours are part of your family, it is easier to go them and to ask for help
when you need it. He also puts this in contrast again to life overseas where all of this
will disappear. Aata also mentioned love and friendship toward your neighbours, as
an integral part of Kiribati culture and Kiribati communities:
“Because normally here people are social, you can go to your neighbours and
talk. Sometimes the people in the village gather together in the maneaba to have
meetings to discuss things there.[...] Love in Kiribati is one of the most
important in our culture. You have to smile to people, show love, help each
other.”50
Aata mentions here that love and friendship is important to keep the communities
going. People should feel that they can go visit their neighbours or that when they
need something they can go to the maneaba to discuss it. Important to remember here
is that communities are not only about people helping each other out, community
associations are also a place in which people can just meet and hang out. The
community associations are also not closed but other people can join in on activities
as well. Tanua mentioned how the love and friendship is extended to visitors:
“First when we receive visitors from outside we really welcome them. There are
really other cultures that you can entertain in the maneaba, dancing, maybe
handicrafts, local things I guess.”51
Here Tanua talks about how visitors are always welcomed. Tanua also mentions that
they are invited to join community events such as dancing and making local
handicrafts. This shows that communities are open to outsiders as well. As a visitor in
Kiribati I felt this welcoming spirit. Walking around on the various Kiribati islands
you can feel this sense of community and the love that respondents talk about.

49
Tebero, Abaiang, 26/09/2016
50
Tebunginako, Abaiang, 02/10/2016
51
Rawannawi, Marakei, 21/09/2016

54
Anyone may greet you on the street or invite you over to have dinner with them. On
several occasions I was also invited to take part in community activities. For example
one time I went to a community meeting on Marakei in which they also sang their
traditional songs and danced their traditional dances. The whole village came together
to eat, celebrate and discuss village issues. Another opportunity for me to appreciate
the community spirit was when I was travelling between the different islands.
Airports are social places in Kiribati where people come together to meet and to send
some dried fish or coconut to relatives on different islands. A different example of
their welcoming spirit is that every time someone from a different island or country
visits a certain island, a welcome dinner will be thrown in their honour to which
important members of the community are invited. The maneabas also play a function
for solving unexpected crises: on Tarawa some people even live in the maneabas
because their homes have become overcrowded due to population issues as discussed
in Chapter 4. These examples show us that communities are a vital part of the identity
of the individuals I have spoken with. Without communities Kiribati would simply
not be Kiribati, as many of them mentioned.

5.2 Landscape
As discussed in Chapter 3, landscape and identity are closely linked together. Cultural
practices, knowledge, rituals, etc. are being passed on in and through the landscape.
Landscapes can be viewed as expressions of cultural identities that are encoded with
cultural forms (Ingold 2000: 21; Strang 2008: 51-52). This means that people will
derive some part of their identity from the landscape around them. During my time in
Kiribati, in the interviews I did and in informal conversations I had, I discovered that
for many people in Kiribati the landscape around them is an important aspect of their
culture and of their identity. As mentioned in Chapter 4, landscape is usually defined
by physical surroundings both on the islands and the marine areas surrounding the
islands. For that reason, from the perspective of Kiribati respondents landscape and
environment can be used as synonymous. People on Kiribati get their food from the
landscape, the landscape is intimately connected to certain landscape practices, and
people pass on traditional skills such as cutting toddy through it. Important to
remember here is that people in Kiribati very much depend on the landscape for their
livelihoods. Many people I met and talked do not have jobs but get their food and
their income from their surroundings. They go fishing or collect things like coconut
and breadfruit. The two main sources of local monetary income, copra (eg dried
coconut flesh) and fishing, are also directly derived from the landscape. This is
especially true for the outer islands, where most people live on incomes or resources
generated locally from natural resources. During my conversation with Ieru, at one
point he paused to exemplify why the landscape or the environment around him is so
important to him:
“The environment is very important to us, we depend on it for our livelihood.
The fish in the sea, the trees,… When I was young my father taught me how to
make the toddy and to preserve it so it becomes sweet toddy and how I can feed
my wife and children from it. It is important for passing on traditional skills like
that. The relationship with the environment is a very important one.”52

52
Betio, South Tarawa, 08/09/2016

55
Ieru mentions that he and his family depend on the environment for their livelihood.
They get fish from the seas, and fruit and coconut from the trees. This subsistence
dependence is not the only reason why the environment is important to him. Ieru feels
that he can pass on traditional skills (like cutting toddy) through the environment as
well. All of this makes his relationship with the physical landscape and the locality a
very important one. The similar relationship was decribed by Tanua, who stressed
why the environment is important to him:
“We depend on the plants like coconut trees, we get our living from those kind
of trees. Breadfruit trees, it is very important to take care of them.”53
Here, Tanua explains that the landscape is important to him because they depend on it
for their food and living. Some trees are important because they provide food, like
breadfruit trees. Other trees like coconut trees and pandanus trees are also important
in for example building kia kias (local huts) or weaving mats.

Illustration 8: Kia kias on Marakei.

The possibility of living of your own food is also something I-Kiribati are proud of, as
is shown in the quotes presented in Chapter 4. Looking at local food production from
the perspective of some of the informants, it is not a necessity but rather a privilege.
The privilege of being able to produce your own food is related to the idea that in
Kiribati life is simple. One of the individuals I talked to, Tokanikai, explains why he
is proud of being able to live from the surroundings:
“The food in Kiribati, in Kiribati we don’t have to buy food. For fish you can go
fishing, breadfruit and other things. But I think in the other side, I mean the
people from the other side they have to buy food and in Kiribati we don’t have
to buy food. I mean coconut you can get and you don’t have to buy it.”54

53
Rawannawi, Marakei, 21/09/2016
54
Binoinano, Abemama, 13/10/2016

56
The fact that people in Kiribati do not have to buy food gives them financial freedom.
They do not have to have a job in order to get money in order to get it; people can just
collect it from their surroundings. I argue that because of this local self-sufficiency
(and interdependence on environment), the landscape is an important part of Kiribati
identity. However as mentioned in Chapter 4, this dependence is decreasing as
imported food such as rice and flour becomes widely available. Tokanikai talks about
this when discussing food production during our conversation. He mentions some of
the kinds of food that have been introduced in Kiribati:
“Different people, I-Matang come to Kiribati. They introduce a sort of food like
rice, meat, all sort of things.”55
Rice has become one of the main ingredients of meals and flour and sugar are also
becoming widespread. The few restaurants that exist on Tarawa are often Chinese
restaurants that sell food like fried rice and chicken curry. Thus, especially on
Tarawa, many are no longer dependent on locally produced food. Pelenise once told
me the story of when people used to go to Banaba or Nauru to mine phosphate for the
United Kingdom, half their salary was paid in boxes of biscuits and corned beef.
Often this was too much for the employees to consume solely by themselves so they
sent some home to their families. This created a dependency on corned beef and other
canned meat, giving it the status of luxury Western food and rendering it an important
part of the Kiribati diet. In Chapter 4 Iacinta pointed out that the availability of
overseas food in shops could lead to a neglect of trees formerly used for food such as
coconut trees.
As discussed above, the landscape is also important for passing on traditional skills
like for instance cutting toddy (as Ieru already mentioned). Cutting toddy is usually
viewed as something men do. Women traditionally carry out and are responsible for
passing on other traditional skills, like for instance weaving mats from pandanus.
Kaaibo mentions this:
“I learn a lot of things like weaving the mats to sleep on, how to make ropes and
how to cultivate the papaya.”56
The skills she mentioned, liking weaving mats, making ropes and cultivating papaya
are skills she learned from her parents and she will pass them on to her children as
well. This shows to me that without the surroundings people in which I-Kiribati grew
up, traditional know-how would be lost. In Chapter 3, I already gave the example of
how for Pelenise traditional knowledge is important part of being I-Kiribati. Most of
this knowledge is stored in the landscape as it is practical knowledge that makes you
resilient and that teaches you the Kiribati way. Pelenise showed me some of this
knowledge by pointing out the different kind of coconut trees and the different
purposes they serve.
To conclude, the landscape can be viewed as important aspect of Kiribati identity for
several reasons. The first one is that people in Kiribati still mostly depend on the land
for their livelihoods. A second reason is that the fact that they can rely on the
landscape for their livelihoods, which fits in with the narrative of a “simple life”, self-
sufficiency is a matter of pride and part of the identity of being a Kiribati Islander.

55
Binoinano, Abemama, 13/10/2016
56
Tebunginako, Abaiang, 04/10/2016

57
The last reason is that their traditional knowledge and many of their traditional skills
are embedded in the landscape around them.

5.3 Kiribati Values

A third important part of Kiribati culture and identity are the social norms and values
that they community shares. During my conversations with respondents, they often
mentioned things like having respect for elders and living a peaceful, simple life. A
third value, virginity, came up in interviews and conversations, and took me by
surprise at first. It was mentioned and stressed by many informants and I therefore
think it is important to bring up here. In this part I will give some examples of how
people brought these values up, and of how they were defined as important by the
respondents.

5.3.1 Respect for elders

Elders are still regarded as wise and important people and often they lead the
community meetings in the maneaba. When an important event takes place, such as
the celebration of a girl’s first menstruation, elders will always be invited along with
church leaders, government officials and I-Matang. Previously, it used to be only the
old men who took up the position of chief in society, but in recent years more and
more women are invited to discuss community meetings as well. As discussed in
Chapter 2, elders have always had an important position in the community. During
my conversation with Pelenise from Tarawa, she mentioned the importance of having
respect for elders:
“And our values are the elders, the values we have are rules we have for the
boys and the girls, the elders, parents, you know. Things are changing but I
know for our Kiribati culture we have very strong rootings you know, some
things are very strong for us.”57
Here Pelenise stress that everyone has a certain role to play in the community and that
these things are difficult to change. We can also learn that the respect for the elders is
one of the most important values in Kiribati society. It is a strong value that goes back
centuries. The importance of respect for elders is something Tebuntintaake mentions
as well:
“Respect, the culture is one of respect for elderly people. That’s one of our main
aspects of our culture.”58
As stated by these individuals respect for elders is one the key aspects of Kiribati
culture and identity. When I was talking with Ieru, he also discussed in more detail
what this respect for elders actually entails:
“The most important part of our culture is respect. And I think that’s what
defines me as a person. Cause everywhere I go, I know that there are people
whom I have to respect which are elders. Our elders they are the ones who are
the chiefs and are highly respected here in the community. Even when a boss is

57
Temwaiku, South Tarawa, 23/10/2016
58
Tebunginako, Abaiang, 04/10/2016

58
 younger than the people working for him, he will still have some respect, some
way of acting towards them. That is a very important part of the Kiribati
culture.”59
Ieru mentions that elders should always be respected, even though you have a higher
working position than the elder in question. He also talks about that they are the
chiefs of the community. For him respect goes deeper than display, respect for elders
is part of him and defines him as a person. As mentioned before, the respected
position of elders in Kiribati communities is something that is very noticeable as well.
When important visitors arrive the elders are the ones that welcome them and during
traditional events they will almost always receive a flower crown as well, as a sign of
blessings.
From all of this we can conclude that respect for elders is an important part of Kiribati
identity and culture. However some people expressed fears that this respect might
now be disappearing for several reasons. For instance, when talking with Pelenise
about what effect climate change and migration would have on Kiribati identity, she
mentioned that Kiribati identity will disappear and that “soon we won’t have the time
for our elders” (see also Chapter 6). In my conversations with Ieru he also raised this
problem and connected youth unemployment with less respect for elders:
“Young people are just laying around and they do not have a lot of respect for
the elders anymore.”60
The issue of loss of respect for elders and also unemployment will be discussed more
thoroughly in Chapter 6.

5.3.2 Peaceful and simple life

As discussed before, many respondents mentioned how easy and simple living in
Kiribati is. As I have already talked about in Chapter 5.2, the fact that people can just
survive on the things they find in their surroundings also forms a base of the ideal of
the simple life. On many islands people do not need jobs, which gives them a high
degree of freedom. This freedom is seen as part of an ideal and what identifies the
“simple life”. However self-sufficiency is not the only reason why people view life in
Kiribati as simple and peaceful. I have already discussed another aspect of this as well
when I was writing about community in Chapter 5.1. For example, because you can
ask your neighbours for help, begging does not exist in Kiribati as Atanimoa has
mentioned. Another important part of the peacefulness is the fact that Kiribati does
not have a lot of natural threats such as for instance hurricanes, and there are no
threats from other countries either. This is something Tiria mentioned during my
conversation with her:
“I am proud to be Kiribati because of life here is simple [...] Life here is simple
and also, like, we don’t have terrorists, you know, terrorists or like natural
hazards like cyclones only the rising sea level. That’s it.”61
Tiria defines the rising sea level as the only threat to Kiribati, other than that Kiribati
is pretty safe and peaceful place to live in. The historical absence of any natural
threats or human conflicts, make life in Kiribati a simple one. As mentioned in
59
Betio, South Tarawa, 08/09/2016
60
Betio, South Tarawa, 08/09/2016
61
Tebero, Abaiang, 26/09/2016

59
Chapter 4, the two prison cells on Marakei were almost always empty and the police
constables noted that there rarely was some kind of violence. Pelenise mentioned
another factor that also defines the simple life:
“And one thing I found with Kiribati it is a very stable government. We have
politicians and politics is strong but it is quite stable compared to other
countries.
Pelenise feels that she can trust her government to make the right decisions, this is
important in creating a feeling of security in a country. Same as Tiria, Pelenise thinks
Kiribati is a great place to live and has a bright future ahead, but adds that this may all
be changing now with the threat of the rising sea levels and global climate change.
This also shows something that I discussed in Chapter 4.2, it is not because people
know climate change exists, they think it will have a big influence on their life. It is
something that is happening, but that for now does not threaten their lives a lot.
Another aspect of what makes life in Kiribati simple is the absence of violence in
Kiribati. For example, police in Kiribati do not carry guns because it is not necessary.
Of course there is some violence also in Kiribati. Ieru mentioned already that young
unemployed people often get aggressive and most people I have talked to point to the
use of alcohol as the main cause for violence if it takes place. When I talked to Aata
he also discussed what Kiribati made a safe place:
“I am proud to be a Kiribati because here it is very safe. No guns, bomb, no
terrorists here. I live longer here because I eat fresh things like fruit and the fish,
not the chemical things, and that’s why I am healthy. I am working hard for to
feed ourselves and the food we eat is organic food, it’s natural.”62
Aata says that Kiribati is a peaceful place to live in because there are no human
threats like guns or terrorists. An important part of the simple life that is mentioned
here again is the food that comes from the surroundings.
Concluding on the peaceful and simple life as an ideal and as a reality, life in Kiribati
is simple because you can always rely on your surroundings for your survival. If you
do have a problem, you can always go to your neighbours or family for help. Kiribati
is a safe place to live in because there are no natural or human threats, except for
climate change but that is not viewed as a major problem yet. The government of
Kiribati is viewed as a stable government, which only enhances the feeling of being
safe.

5.3.3 Virginity
When you get married in Kiribati it is important that you are still a virgin. This is a
value that came up during some of the interviews and in informal conversations as
well. When it came up, women were the ones who brought it up. For example, when I
was talking to some girls on Abemama they mentioned that if your husband finds out
that you are not a virgin on your wedding night, he can send you back to your family
with or without clothes. Your family then can beat you for the shame you brought
upon them. Related to this, it is important that you always cover your body enough to
preserve it.

62
Tebunginako, Abaiang, 02/10/2016

60
Important to note here is that most of the Kiribati Islanders live in a patriarchal
society; when women get married, they do not belong to their family anymore but
they belong to the family of their husband. On Banaba however, people live in a
matriarchal society. When people marry there, the husband moves in with his wife
who stays with her family to look after them. It also means that the daughters of the
family inherit the land and property. I will here give two examples of women who
mentioned that virginity is an important part of Kiribati identity. The first woman is
Tebwebwe, I met her when I went to a football tournament in Buariki. The
government tries to encourage young people to play sports as this gives them
something to do and stops them from “just hanging around and drinking alcohol” as
people told me. As Tebwebwe was at the time running for election to the village
council, she was there to campaign for herself. Right now she works at the Ministry of
Finance and she is married and has two children. Tebwebwe brought up the
importance of virginity when we were discussing Kiribati culture.
“Our culture is based on the American culture, you know that our culture is
depending on the virginity. That is the first marriage and I am a lady or a boy or
a man I will be a virgin. That is our culture.”63
For Tebwebwe, the value of virginity is one that has its origins outside of Kiribati.
When the missionaries first came, they introduced clothing in Kiribati as before, as
Tebwebwe say “they were only wearing leaves”. Tebwebwe raise the possibility that
missionaries also introduced the concept of virginity. This, as Tebwebwe says, is just
a speculation, as nobody I have interviewed has any memories (or have shared
memories with elders) from before the missionaries came. Tebwebwe also points out
is that the virginity rule also applies to boys or men. However, in practice, it is only
the woman that is tested for it by looking if she bleeds on the wedding night.
Another respondent who mentioned the importance of virginity is Iacinta from
Abemama. She explains that when you are a virgin you “shouldn’t have to go by
yourself or you shouldn’t go out with boys.”64 Here again we see that in practice the
virginity rule mostly exists for girls, while in theory it also applies to boys. Iacinta
also explained why it is so important that you are a virgin at the time of your
wedding:
“When you are getting married, you have to be checked if you are a virgin or
not because your family would have to spend most of their time preparing the
wedding and if you are a virgin, all your families will come and they give all
their efforts for your party and they are happy to spend the time doing
everything for the party.”65
Being a virgin, as Iacinta explains it, is important because your family will put a lot of
effort in preparing the wedding building on the trust of the purity of you as a bride. If
you are not a virgin, you have broken that trust and thereby, insulted your family and
the time they spent on your wedding. Thus being a virgin when married is related to
the pride and love of your family. Iacinta also points to the church for the importance
of the virginity because “it’s the rules of the church to do that and that.” 66 This can
support the assumption that the missionaries brought this value with them.

63
Buariki, South Tarawa, 10/09/2016
64
Binoinano, Abemama, 13/10/2016
65
Binoinano, Abemama, 13/10/2016
66
Binoinano, Abemama, 13/10/2016

61
Regardless of where it comes from, virginity is to this day still an important value in
Kiribati. Not being a virgin can cancel your wedding and it can bring shame on your
family. But this seems to be a value and tradition reserved for women as in theory
both men and women should be virgins before marriage, but in practice it is only the
woman that is being checked.

62
6. Present and Future Challenges

Kiribati is faced with a number of challenges both in the present and in the future. The
most important ones in the present are water resources, coastal erosion and
unemployment. Important future challenges include effects of global climate change
and the migration that might follow it. These challenges are all interrelated to each
other, for example due to coastal erosion fresh water wells become polluted with
seawater and are not usable anymore. In this chapter I will discuss these challenges in
more detail based on the interviews and conversations I have carried out.

6.1 Present challenges

6.1.1. Coastal erosion and flooding

Both coastal erosion and fresh water scarcity are the focus points of the Kiribati
Adaptation Program Phase III (KAP III). When I asked Manikoati why these areas are
especially important he gave me the following answer:
“They are important because in terms of coastal protection our country is
basically all coastal. And therefore the government thinks that this should be a
priority because it affects everyone’s life, no one can escape from problems that
are caused by erosion and by flooding. Once the island is flooded that affects
everyone. It affects the ground water on which we depend for the drinking and
it affects the vegetation where they depend on for food.”67
Here he explains why coastal erosion is one of the biggest challenges Kiribati is
facing right now. As almost all Kiribati islands are atoll islands, they are very thin and
low and surrounded by the ocean on every side. The highest point on the Kiribati
Islands is only 3 meters, thus it is very vulnerable to coastal erosion. Because of this,
when coastal erosion occurs it will affect everyone on Kiribati, not only in terms of
people losing their land but flooding can also cause the fresh water wells to become
polluted (see 6.1.2).
Because of flooding, as Ieru stated in chapter 4, and from the perspective of many
Kiribati islanders there “is nowhere to go for us, we are trapped.”68 Therefore coastal
erosion and flooding affects everyone on the islands. The problem has already been
discussed thoroughly in Chapter 4 but I will repeat it here quickly and I will also
discuss some possible solutions for the problem. Coastal erosion poses several
problems for Kiribati; the first one is the erosion of land on which houses are built. A
difference can be made between coastal erosion on Tarawa and coastal erosion on the

67
Bairiki, South Tarawa, 18/10/2016
68
Betio, South Tarawa, 08/09/2016

63
outer islands. As Tarawa is the most populated island, there is no space for people to
move more inland. On the outer islands however, people still have the possibility to
move to a different place once their land has been flooded. An example of this that
has been discussed before (Chapter 4) is the village of Tebunginako on Abaiang that
had to move after a sea inundation. However even after the resettlement parts of the
new village still get flooded during a king tide. The islanders have no other possibility
than to move again “and once it’s going out we move back.”69 After the last king tide,
Tebunginako villagers had to rebuild everything they once had. This example shows
us that even if people have the possibility to move more inland after coastal erosion
has taken place, their land can still get flooded and their problems are not solved over
long term.
A second problem that coastal erosion poses is the effect it has on the vegetation in
Kiribati. Coastal erosion impacts vegetation in two ways, the first one is that it erodes
land that once provided food. An example of this was brought up by Teraoi and is
mentioned already in Chapter 4:
“[...] especially around the coast and when you see at the east, some trees are
falling down cause the waves eroding the coast.”70
Here coastal erosion affects the vegetation simply because the land were the trees
were growing on, has been eroded away. Another way coastal erosion can impact the
vegetation is because of flooding. When plantation areas get flooded the plants
usually die because of the salt water. To some extent this is what happened in
Tebunginako. Before Tebunginako used to have a big plantation but it got flooded.
Aata mentioned this during our conversation:
“And when the waves, the sea inundation occurs, it kills all the papaya, the
bananas and people move to the inland because you know sea erosion.”71
The difference here is that the land did not erode into the sea but it got flooded. When
the ground water becomes salinated, the plants cannot survive.
The most popular solution against coastal erosion is the building of sea walls. Sea
walls can either be made of rocks and concrete or of organic materials such as wood.
The type of sea wall you can build depends on the place you live.

69
Tebunginako, Abaiang, 02/10/2016
70
Rawannawi, Marakei, 16/09/2016
71
Tebunginako, Abaiang, 02/10/2016

64
Illustration 9: Stone sea wall on North Tarawa.

KAP II has facilitated the building of sea wall on the islands but Manikoati, the
manager, told me that they “do not allow the people on the outer islands to construct
hard structures like sea walls.”72 KAP II does no facilitate sea walls in outer islands
because people on the outer islands still have space to move inland. To stop the
coastal erosion people can use things like timber constructions and mangrove
planting. On Tarawa most of the sea walls are built under KAP II, these sea walls are
concrete structures. However these sea walls are not effective in stopping coastal
erosion wholesale. For example, they easily break when the tide gets really strong as
Pelenise mentions here:
“People living there their home has just washed away. Even though they keep
on trying to build sea walls. It just got washed.”
This shows us that the location of your house and proximity to and quality of a sea
wall will determine more if you are vulnerable to coastal erosion or if you are not.
Manikoati mentioned a KAP II project in which they used larger rocks to make more
durable sea walls:
“The normal coral stone is quite light and during big storms they get washed
away. These stones are designed to withstand the strength of the wave they are
quite big and very heavy to lift. So maybe unless a tsunami comes and washes
the sea wall, I don’t think they will go during a normal storm.”73
Using larger stones could help fortify sea walls, however the risk exists that when
they do get washed away, they can be dangerous for the people living behind the sea
walls. Manikoati, however, thinks that this will not happen unless a really extreme
weather event takes place. A second problem with sea walls is that they are often not

72
Bairiki, South Tarawa, 18/10/2016
73
Bairiki, South Tarawa, 18/10/2016

65
well designed. This is something Manikoati discussed when we talked about the
efficiency of the sea walls:
“Because they are designed by our people and our engineers are not that
experienced and qualified. And we found that there are a lot of defects on the
sea walls. These are the task of the ministries on hand to provide money and to
provide the repair for the sea walls. So there should be a monitoring program, a
repair program ongoing by the ministry concerned.”74
Here Manikoati mentioned that the people designing the sea walls are not trained for
it. Because of this, a lot of sea walls break down easily and they need to be repaired
on a regular basis. However, maintenance is not the responsibility of KAP III, once
the sea walls are built one of the ministries has to take care of them.
The current government is also looking at a second solution to stop coastal erosion.
Instead of building sea walls they want to raise the islands to a higher level.
Manikoati explained this solution a bit more:
“We will be looking at that possibility of undertaking projects that will see
some of the islands of Kiribati being raised to a level quite high that will not be
affected by the sea level rise. And we will see that in Temwaiku, that is the first
village. If you heard New Zealand is interested to do that in Temwaiku and the
government is very supportive of that. Because they want to stay, to remain
here.”
Raising the islands will be an expensive undertaking and as Kiribati is one the poorest
countries in the world, they will not be able to do it by themselves. Manikoati
mentions here that New Zealand might be interested in helping Kiribati with this.
Already New Zealand has a lot of construction projects going on in Kiribati as for
example building a road on Tarawa. This is a project that has not been undertaken yet,
so it is hard to say if it is actually doable and if it is doable if it will be a long-term
solution.

6.1.1 Water resources

A second and related future challenge is fresh water resources on Kiribati. Again,
when talking to Manikoati, manager of the Kiribati Adaptation Program Phase III
(KAP III), he said:
“And water of course because it is our basic need, it’s a very very precious
resource for us. When we don’t have enough water like now people are now
becoming frightened and very worried about the long drought that we are facing
now. And there is not enough water for them to live.”75
Because of some of the characteristics of atoll islands, fresh water is scarce. One of
these characteristics is that the year is usually split in wet and dry seasons. When I
was talking with Pelenise she mentioned why this might be a problem:
“Well, Kiribati is an atoll island and we have the dry seasons and we have the
wet seasons but right now I think in the problem is we do not have enough

74
Bairiki, South Tarawa, 18/10/2016
75
Bairiki, South Tarawa, 18/10/2016

66
 catchment to catch the water during the rainy days to last during the dry
seasons.”76
Manikoati states here that water is a basic need, people need it to survive. With
inundation of land ground water is becoming salinated. Changing weather patterns
can also have an effect on the availability of water. Thus, mitigation for coming water
scarcity is a must in Kiribati.
During the dry seasons there is almost no rain. Because of this proper rain tanks are
needed so that the rain from the wet seasons can be used in the dry seasons as well.
This can help people if the dry season lasts a bit longer than expected, or if the well
they depend on, becomes polluted with seawater or with something else. However
when there is a long period of drought, even the rainwater tanks might not be enough.
This is something Aata brought up, he mentioned that the rainwater tank in the village
“is now finished because no rain this month.”77 This brings us to a second
characteristic of atoll islands. As mentioned just before, atoll islands are very thin,
low and their soil consists mostly of coral and sand. This makes is very easy for
seawater to pollute the ground water. Ieru explained this problem to me:
“The ocean and the water are polluted. On Kiribati we have a limestone soil so
there is not a lot of water and the seawater pollutes it.”78
Here Ieru mentions that because of the characteristics of the soil, fresh water is not
retained in the soil, there is little recharge of ground water and seawater can easily
pollute the ground water. Once a well becomes salinated, it is impossible to use it for
water or cooking, and people have to find other places to get their water from. Often
this means they have to go more inland and they have to carry heavy buckets back to
their home. Manikoati mentioned why this is a problem:
“That can be a long way away and the problem is that the task of getting water
is put on the shoulders of women and children and it’s not good for them to
carry water maybe a kilometre or two from the bush.”79
As Manikoati mentioned mostly women and children are responsible for the task of
getting water. The time that this takes up could have been used for other things such
collecting food, paid labour, or education. In this way, the task of having to carry
water can force individuals in the household or village that are already vulnerable
positions to become even more disadvantaged.

76
Temwaiku, South Tarawa, 23/10/2016
77
Tebunginako, Abaiang, 02/10/2016
78
Betio, South Tarawa, 08/09/2016
79
Bairiki, South Tarawa, 18/10/2016

67
Illustration 10: Ground water well in Tebunginako, Abaiang.

Another issue is that even when well water is available, there is a high chance that it
is polluted with for example bacteria and parasites as water sources are fewer. The
well needs to be properly covered so that it is not exposed to too much sunlight and so
that no organic material can fall in the well. When I was talking to Iacinta, she told
me that most people on the outer islands do not know how to properly use the water.
She mentioned that:
“Here if the well is not good, sometimes the well water gets green things. There
are green things inside because of the sun. They still use it to bathe with it.”80
This quote shows us that people might not be aware of the potential dangers that
polluted water poses. This is a problem easily solved by creating better awareness on
water usage and the importance of clean water. On Abemama, Tokanikai told me that
doctors had come to tell them how to properly use the well water. Before the doctors
came children would drink the water straight from the well causing “the kids to get
sick, to get diarrhea”.81 He also mentions “you can see the difference between well
water and the boiled water”. 82 This shows us that good education can already solve
some of the problems.
When it comes to the water resource challenge, three solutions have been presented to
tackle this problem. The first one I have mentioned before, the installation of
rainwater tanks. Rainwater tanks make people less dependent on the groundwater and
it can help with health problems as well as it is usually cleaner than the groundwater.
Manikoati has observed this positive health effect after the instalment of a rainwater
system in North Tarawa:

80
Binoinano, Abemama, 13/10/2016
81
Binoinano, Abemama, 13/10/2016
82
Binoinano, Abemama, 13/10/2016

68
 “After building the water systems in North Tarawa, things like diarrhea and
baby illness has dropped very significantly.”83
This example shows us the positive effect rainwater tanks have on health, especially
for young children. So rainwater tanks have a lot of benefits when they are installed
properly and taken well care off. However, as mentioned before, when the dry season
last especially long, the rainwater tanks might get empty. It is not an unlimited supply
of water and much of its benefits depend on how much rain has been caught in the
wet season.

Illustration 11: Rainwater tanks in Tebunginako, Abaiang.

A second solution is the instalment of pipes and pumps that transport water from one
place to the other. Once these pipes are installed, people do not have to walk to a well
to get their water anymore. Everyone would be supplied with water this way. Pipes
can solve problems associated with the salinization of groundwater, however they do
not stop the salinization process.
The third solution is already discussed before as well, the need for proper education
on how to use water. As the example of Abemama shows us, teaching people how to
use well water can have significant health effects. Just by boiling the water in the
households, fewer children will get sick. KAP III has a program for this as Manikoati
explained to me:
“People also need to be educated on how to use water properly. It’s no use
providing this when they don’t know how to use this in a hygienic manner, so
part of the program is also teaching people the importance of cleaning your
hands and keeping the water covered, the well and the rain water clean so they
don’t become a source of illness for the people.”84

83
Bairiki, South Tarawa, 18/10/2016
84
Bairiki, South Tarawa, 18/10/2016

69
Manikoati mentions here that just the instalment of rainwater tanks or pipes is not
enough to tackle the health problem. People need to be educated on how to use the
water in a hygienic way. If the tank or the well is not properly taken care of they
might have adverse effects on people’s health.

6.1.3 Unemployment
A third challenge for Kiribati is unemployment of the people. I have discussed this
problem already in Chapter 4, from the perspective of some voices from islanders, but
I will discuss it here in more detail. A lot of people in Kiribati are unemployed and for
most of them this is not a problem; they live on the outer islands and they manage to
sustain themselves, and even earn some money by collecting things from their
surroundings. On Tarawa, and especially on South Tarawa, life is different. Because
Tarawa is so densely populated, collecting food and growing it is not an option
anymore. There is simply not enough space for it. Therefore people on Tarawa often
need jobs to be able to buy food. Pelenise made this difference between
unemployment on Tarawa and unemployment on the outer islands during our
conversation:
“We have unemployed people on the outer islands but because they are on their
own land in their own homes. Tarawa is like a town, it is an urban area. And
when you come and stay here, the youth on Tarawa they don’t really occupy
their time with work but in the outer islands unemployed people they work and
when they work, they go fishing, they cut their toddy, they plant, they go to
their plantation. That’s employment, they provide food for themselves and the
children are staying with their parents in the outer islands would be expected to
do so. They cut copra to earn money, they do all that. But when you are on
Tarawa you have no copra to cut, you should go fishing but maybe the family
you are staying with do not have fishing gears so they do not go fishing”85
Pelenise summarises several important factors that have an effect on type of
unemployment. The first one is the difference in landscape between Tarawa and the
outer islands. On the outer islands people possess lands and can therefore plant trees
and collect vegetation. Tarawa however is defined as an urban area where this is not
possible. Pelenise also mentions that even though people on the outer islands are not
formally employed, they are still employed in the sense that they can provide for
themselves and for their families. During the day, they are busy with trying to get
food on the table for that day. On Tarawa however, unemployed people do not have
these things to occupy their days with. They cannot go fishing, cannot cut toddy, or
cannot plant some trees. They have nothing to do all day. Because they cannot do
anything, they are also not able to provide for themselves so they often depend on
family members that do have jobs. So unemployment is mostly a problem for people
living in Tarawa, on the outer islands they have different ways of taking care of
themselves.
Because people do not have anything to do, they often cause problems or get married
young. When I was talking to Pelenise, she mentioned why people marrying young is
a big problem for Kiribati:

85
Temwaiku, South Tarawa, 23/10/2016

70
 “Many of them get married because they have nothing else to do. And so when
they get married they quickly have children and the population gets high and
these children are brought up by very young children who are not even ready to
get married.”86
Getting married young is problematic for several reasons, which Pelenise mentioned
here. The first problems arises when young couples gets children. They are often not
ready to take care of children yet; as they are both still young themselves and they do
not have jobs. Often the relatives that are supporting the unemployed youth are put
under more stress, as now they have to take care of even more people. A second
problem is that unemployment causes emotional and social stress. Ieru connects
people getting bored and frustrated with people that start drinking, which then often
leads to abuse and violence. Ieru put these two in relation to each other:
“Unemployment as well is a big issue. And that drives especially the youth to
do mischievous things and it’s sad that here in Tarawa there have been a lot of
people who have been doing things like abusing people. Maybe they are
stressed because they don’t have jobs so it leads to a lot of things, problems,
especially in Betio.”87
Here Ieru mentions that people who do not have jobs feel stressed. Because of this
stress they often act out by for example abusing people. Both Pelenise and Ieru have
mentioned that unemployment is especially problematic for the youth. It is unclear to
me if the mean this in terms of that young people act out more, or simply because
there are more young people unemployed.
A third problem related to unemployment is that people become dependent on their
relatives who do have jobs and salaries. This is something I have already discussed in
Chapter 4.2.2. People migrate to Tarawa to get better education or to find a job. On
Tarawa there are, however, a limited number of jobs and not everyone is able to get
one. Despite education, once students have graduated, it is still difficult to find job
opportunities. Unemployed people become dependent on their relatives, a problem
that Pelenise has discussed:
“The parents [of the unemployed youth] are on the outer islands but they are
staying here with their uncles and their aunties who are working on Tarawa who
are maybe providing all the needs. All the things that they need but with the
understanding that these kids will try and look for a job or go back to study.
And the unemployment also causes a lot of stress on those who are working on
Tarawa because all their family members.”88
Here Pelenise relates how the family members will give some household members
everything they need with the understanding that they will be able to look after
themselves after a while. When they stay unemployed, however, their relatives need
to look after them for a longer time than anticipated which puts them under a lot of
stress. The individuals that do work are forced to work more so that they can afford
taking care of their family that live in with them. As mentioned before, this problem
increases if young people get married young. In addition, young people from the outer
islands that went to school in Tarawa might not even be able to move to the outer

86
Temwaiku, South Tarawa, 23/10/2016
87
Betio, South Tarawa, 08/09/2016
88
Temwaiku, South Tarawa, 23/10/2016

71
islands again because they do not possess the skills to take care of themselves there.
Pelenise mentioned this problem when talking about the education system. According
to her the education system today is very much focused on “Western science”89 and
not on Kiribati science.
“We educate our children without skills. We take them all the way to form 7
without having one skill. And a skill can be cooking like to become a chef or a
pastrymaker or a tailor who can sow or a fisherman. When I say a skill a real
good skill apart from the from learning whatever subjects they are learning in
high school the students must have a skill because if they couldn’t make it in
high school form 7 and they drop out, they couldn’t make it in university they
already have a skill with them and that skill they can use for their own self
employment.”90
For Pelenise, if the students were taught a skill, they would have a back up in case
they cannot get into university or in case they cannot get a job with the things they
learned in high school. If they know a skill they can move back to the outer islands to
provide for themselves or they can start their own business as for example becoming a
tailor, to name just one. A more diverse education could be one of the solutions for
the unemployment issue.
As mentioned in Chapter 4.2.2 the government also tries to get people to move back
to the outer islands by doubling the price of copra. If you as an individual do not
know how to climb a coconut tree and how to make copra, copra production is not a
viable work. Often people are also reluctant want to move back to the outer islands, as
they have got accustomed to life on Tarawa Island. Especially if people have been
raised on Tarawa since they were children, it might be difficult for them to move back
again.
On a side note, some people on the outer island find the lack of jobs on the outer
islands a problem as well. They do not have real options to earn money; they have to
rely on collecting food from their surroundings and hope that they will be able to sell
some of it. Tiria talked about how she experiences the lack of jobs to be a problem:
“Because we don’t have jobs so we have to work hard to get food like we have
to go to the sea during the low tide and get shellfish and fishing. That’s the main
challenges, everyday life we have to go looking for the food and we try to find a
place to get money.”91
This quote shows us that having no well-paid job can create insecurity. You have to
go look for food everyday because otherwise you will simply have no food to eat.
Living day by day on natural resources also makes it hard to save money of any kind.
The small amount of money you get from for example selling fish or copra, will often
not be enough to make a big investment. An example that was raised by one
informant was, as most people have some relatives living overseas in Fiji or Australia,
it is very hard for a person in the outer island to go see relatives abroad if you do not
earn money. This also related to the next part, future challenges, in which I will
discuss migration.

89
Temwaiku, South Tarawa, 23/10/2016
90
Temwaiku, South Tarawa, 23/10/2016
91
Tebero, Abaiang, 26/09/2016

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6.2 Future challenges
Kiribati faces two important challenges in the future that are related to each other,
global climate change and migration being the foremost. Climate change is already a
present challenge as I have discussed above but here I will focus on the future effects
of it.

6.2.1 Climate Change

As discussed in Chapter 4.2.1 people in Kiribati have an ambiguous relationship with
climate change. They do not always believe in it and even if they do it is seen as
something that can or they hope to be able to overcome. Uera has expressed this
feeling during our interview:
“Because we know that there is climate change but we feel not fear now we just
go and live as normal.”92
The quotes I have presented elsewhere suggest that awareness of global climate
change exist amongst at least some individuals in Kiribati but that coastal erosion and
flooding is not seen as necessarily linked to global climate change. As pointed out by
Uera above, for most individuals it is simply not possible to deal with global climate
change as a problem. It is easier to just carry on with your daily life than to worry
about what will happen in the future. It is difficult to accept that your island, your
home might disappear in a not so distant future. As Manikoati mentioned it is a
political problem as well. The previous government under Anote Tong was very vocal
about the negative impacts on Kiribati of global climate change and was very active
in global forums. The current government was then in the opposition and was
claiming that climate change was not a big problem. In this chapter I will discuss
some of the problems that climate change might cause in the future. The main
problem that respondents have brought up is the fear that global climate change will
cause their islands to disappear.
The danger of flooding is also linked to the fear that they will be forced to move to
another country. Ieru talked about the difficult situation for Kiribati by saying that
“there is nowhere to go for us, we are trapped.”93 I have used this quote several times
in this thesis as I think this very personal statement summarise shows the predicament
Kiribati islanders find themselves in. If the sea levels rise to a level where they are
high enough to flood all the islands, Kiribati islanders have nowhere to move to.
Often in other countries when a natural disaster happens like for example a forest fire,
there are evacuation places people can go to. Because the whole of Kiribati is low
with the highest point being 3 meter, no islander will have a safe place to go to once
their island is flooded: they are trapped. When I was talking to Atanimoa she
expressed her personal fear that Kiribati might get flooded one day:
“It is very dangerous because I think if the climate change continues and you
know that our island in Kiribati is very small and if the sea rises up we can’t
survive because it is very small and the water will come to our land and we
can’t live.”94

92
Rawannawi, Marakei, 16/09/2016
93
Betio, South Tarawa, 08/09/2016
94
Rawannawi, Marakei, 21/09/2016

73
Here Atanimoa mentions that if climate change continues going the way it is going
now, she is afraid that Kiribati will disappear because the islands are so small and
low. In the case that happens, she thinks Kiribati islanders will have to move; they
cannot survive on Kiribati anymore. Ieru mentioned the same concerns when I talked
to him:
“It’s threatened by the climate change. The rising sea levels take away our land
and our water and also for health it is threatening.”95
Ieru talks about how rising sea levels caused by global climate change will wash away
Kiribati. He also thinks that because of more flooding, Kiribati water supplies will
become polluted. Water shortage might be a problem caused by climate change that
will manifest itself before the islands disappear. As discussed in Chapter 6.1.1 the
problem may be worsened by changing weather patterns. Uera expressed the same
concern that Kiribati will sink. He already sees this happening around him:
“As you know climate change as our president went to the rest of the world, to
talk about the sea rise.[...] Some sea walls are already broken and some new
ones are to be made to protect. So we like to migrate to some other countries
cause we know Kiribati will how many years later will be sink.”96
Here Uera mentions that he heard about climate change from the former president,
Anote Tong. He also talks about some of the effects the sea level rise has right now in
Kiribati. Sea walls that are supposed to protect Kiribati have already collapsed
because of the waves and the tides. He also mentions his belief that Kiribati will sink
and that they will have to move to another country.
Tebau is pretty certain that Kiribati will disappear but only after 60 years:
“Kiribati will disappear. I agree with what the wise men said that we will be in
the water after 60 or 70 years.”
He got this information from wise men or scientists and he believes that Kiribati will
disappear. However, only after 60 years which Kiribati still some time to prepare for
it. These quotes show us that people are mostly afraid that Kiribati will disappear in a
couple of years because of climate change. When this will happen, they can only
guess but it is something that is present in their thinking about the future.

6.2.2 Migration
As mentioned in the previous part, people are afraid they will be forced to migrate to
another country in time. In this part I will discuss how people think this will affect
them and how they think about and discuss migration as a future possibility.
Many respondents I talked to expressed fears of moving to a different country because
they have never been overseas. They worry that they will not know how to do things
because life is so different. As mentioned before in several chapters, the idea exists
that life in Kiribati is simple. Most people collect their own food and they hardly have
to go to the store to buy anything. In another country however they might not be able
to get their own food and they have to find a way to make money to buy it. This is
concern Atanimoa expressed during our conversation:

95
Betio, South Tarawa, 08/09/2016
96
Rawannawi, Marakei, 16/09/2016

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 “We think about moving but how to survive there if we don’t know how to find
our food or our job in another country.”97
This quote is representative of several other individual’s statements about the risk that
they might have to move. Migrating is scary for Kiribati islanders in the same way
that moving to Kiribati may be scary for a European. For example, if I had to move to
Kiribati outer islands I would not know how to climb a tree and get the coconut or
even how to manage the fishing necessary to sustain myself. I would need someone to
explain or to show me how things are done. I would need to know people to introduce
me to the new landscape and people. The example relates to a second worry about
moving abroad. People are afraid they will lose their community and nobody will help
them out. As discussed in Chapter 5.1 community is very important for Kiribati
islanders and often when they explain what their community is they compare it to the
Western world where nobody smiles or says hello on the street and where you do not
even know your neighbours. Atanea expressed this well in our conversation:
“Because if you live overseas, there is only you. Maybe your wife or husband or
children but very close house. So you know the love that you share here, you
know it will disappear.”98
This quote (and others presented in previous chapters) shows that many Kiribati
individuals share the idea that in other countries there are not the same kind of
connections and cohesiveness in communities as in Kiribati. Your family is only your
core family; you do not have anyone else besides them.
A third and related reason why people are hesitant to move is because they are afraid
they will lose their culture and their identity. When I was talking to Ieru he mentioned
that he thinks they will have to move but that when they move they will lose
everything:
“I love my island but in this kind of situation I don’t have any other kind of
choice, I am forced to move and migrate. And for the sake of my children and
for myself as well, if we have no other option here we’ll move. But everything
will be affected, our traditional skills, our culture, everything.”99
Ieru feels that he has no other option but to move to keep his family safe. However if
they do move, they will lose much of what defines them as individuals. This
exemplifies how landscape and identity are closely connected to each other. If you
move to a different place, you will have to adapt to a different culture and in that
process you might lose some of your own culture. Pelenise talked about how she
thinks Kiribati identity and culture will change if people are forced to move to a
different island:
“Because it is not easy to move a total population and a culture to just out and
move them to another country, no. It will be extinct or if they are not extinct
they lose and change. They’ll change and I know the culture will continue to
grow and change but it will change quickly and we will mainly lose as I-Kiribati
people and soon we won’t have the time for our elders, we won’t have the time
for our children, all we do is learning how to survive by working.”100

97
Rawannawi, Marakei, 21/09/2016
98
Tebero, Abaiang, 26/09/2016
99
Betio, South Tarawa, 08/09/2016
100
Temwaiku, South Tarawa, 23/10/2016

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First of all, Pelenise mentions that it will be impossible to move the whole population
to the same place. That will already have an effect on Kiribati identity, as
communities will be forced to split up. A second reason why migrating would be bad
for Kiribati identity, is that living in a different country will change it rapidly.
Pelenise states one of the reasons for this; because people will have to get jobs they
will not have as much time as they have now for their children and their elders.
Another concept is related to this is the concept of ancestral land. Ancestral land
means that I-Kiribati own the land their houses were built on because they inherited it
from their ancestors. Formally the government of Kiribati does not own any land, but
the people of Kiribati do own land through customary use and customary property
laws. Because the land has passed on through generations, people are very attached to
it, as people have explained. It has a meaning to the owners that succeeds ownership
of land, as for example your whole family may be buried in the same place. It is not
easy to just leave this legacy and inheritance behind.
However not everyone is averse to moving to a different country. Some people I
talked to said that they personally would like to migrate to someplace else.
Tebuntintaake is one of them:
“Yes, I’d like to move because here the jobs are limited so maybe overseas or
any other place in the world, if we move there we it’s easy to find jobs, get
money. Here it’s the daily life you know. In the morning get coconut, shells,
rice.”101
Tebuntintaake does not like the “simple way of life” in Kiribati. She would prefer to
get a job and earn some money so that she does not have to collect food everyday.
This quote from Tebuntintaake shows us that what might be a reason for one person
to want to stay on Kiribati might be a reason for someone else to want to leave. The
issue of migration is very complex one, and I did not have the time to fully explore
this issue with the respondents. The previous government was very focused on
‘migration with dignity’ (see Chapter 1) and trying to make agreements with other
countries about it. The current government is looking more into staying and raising
the level of the islands. What I have been able to capture here is the sentiments of a
few individuals. I believe that exploring the sentiments around migration more fully
would in fact be a topic deserving a few theses on its own.

101
Tebunginako, Abaiang, 04/10/2016

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7. Conclusion

This thesis was aimed at trying to answer the following research questions:
1. Do Kiribati residents see a change in the landscape?
- If so how do they define it and what do they see as causes of it?
2. How do Kiribati residents define and construct I-Kiribati-identities?
3. What do Kiribati people define as present and future challenges for their island?

Before summarising changes in the landscape it is important to discuss how I-Kiribati

define landscape and what they mean by it. The people I have talked to mainly
discussed landscape in terms of physical surroundings (natural landscape) but it is
clear that the landscape is more than that. Cultural practices and traditional skills such
as cutting toddy, fishing, and cultivating papaya, are also passed on through it. On
page 40, Iacinta in Abemama gave one example of how everyday practices are
present in the landscape. As Iacinta mentioned in Chapter 4, one of the reasons why
there are fewer trees now than before on Abemama is the fact that people prefer
imported food such as rice. Mainly because it usually takes less time to prepare. The
landscape on Kiribati also contains memories and heritage. For example, the use of
maneabas is a result of the Samoan migration in the 14th century. Maneabas were also
used to pass on navigational skills as the balks on the ceiling represent different stars
in different times of the year. Another example of how landscape is tied to memory
and heritage this is the system of ancestral land that has come up a few times before,
in Chapter 6 the most elaborated. The most important changes that the respondents
noticed were related to changes in the coastline and temperature, and population
changes. These changes are also related to each other. For example when coastal
erosion happens on Tarawa, like in Eita, it exacerbates problems of population
increase as it forces people to live even more closely together. From the interviews
presented here it is clear that there are many explanations of landscape change. When
asked what caused coastline and temperature changes, respondents usually stated that
they did not know why theses physical changes happened (see Chapter 4). Some
individuals said that they had been told that it was because of climate change.
However some of them remained sceptical of the climate change explanation, as they
did not believe it for personal or political reasons. Believing in it often makes it real
and the previous opposition party (now in the government) expressed disbelief in
climate change as a way to oppose the party in the previous government (under Anote
Tong). Now that they are the leading party, they have changed their stance on climate
change. Other individuals knew about climate change and identified it as the cause for
these changes. There was a stronger consensus around the cause for population
changes as most people pointed to migration from the outer islands to Tarawa as the
main reason for the population increase on the main island. However, as pointed out
above, the effects of these population increases have been aggravated by the loss of
land due to floods from the sea.
As landscape is more than just a natural landscape as I have exemplified above and
several times in this thesis, it is an important part of the I-Kiribati identity. Apart from
being linked with memory and heritage, people also depend on the landscape for their

77
livelihood. As already discussed above, traditional skills, knowledge and practices are
passed on through landscape practices. Importantly the landscape enables the ‘simple
life’. Amongst other things this means self-sufficiency and was brought up by many
residents as something positive. Two important qualities that were brought forward in
the interviews are also linked to the landscape. Community was continuously brought
up as an important quality related to identity. On Kiribati everyone is part of a
community that looks out for each other and that is important for your social life.
Traditionally, every community is linked to a village, but new communities have also
emerged through the church, especially for people that have moved from their native
villages. Important parts of the community are the friendship and love that exists
between community members and the elders who are usually in charge of the
community. People still come together frequently in their community or church
maneabas. Another quality interviewed informants raised as important in relation to
their I-Kiribati identity are what they defined as I-Kiribati values. The most important
value is having respect for your elders. Elders still play an important role in the
community, a role similar to the one of elders in the past. The importance of elders for
holding the community together was already discussed above. Another value brought
up by respondents is the peaceful life they live without any major conflicts or
problems encompassed in the expression the ‘simple life’. For a large part
respondents and other people I have talked to attributed ‘simple life’ to the friendship
and happiness on the islands and to the fact that they not have to worry about money
or buying food. Another value that was brought up by respondents and that was
somewhat unexpected for me was the importance of being a virgin before marriage. It
is unclear to me if this is related to the church or an older tradition. In theory both
men and women have to be virgins, but in practice it is mostly enforced on women.
The biggest present and future challenges are related to questions of landscape and
identity. People fear that their island and their resources will disappear, as they are
already experiencing coastal erosion and problems with their fresh water resources.
People are afraid that these environmental problems will force them to migrate in the
long term. For I-Kiribati leaving their country behind often means fear of losing their
identity and community. To compensate for the absence of their ‘homelandscape’,
people might start imagining their home through memories they have of it, to try to
re-establish the link between landscape and identity they experienced before (Gupta
and Ferguson 1992: 10; Malkki 1992: 24). One way to recuperate parts of your
cultural identity might be to look up people from where you are from so you could for
example speak your language. This is a coping strategy one of the people I talked to,
Francis, mentioned when we were talking about what he would miss about Kiribati:
“Especially if you leave Kiribati and you can’t speak Kiribati. If you see an I-
Kiribati that speaks Kiribati you can talk to him, you like him better.”102
This example shows us that for Francis moving to another country would have some
effects on his identity. To compensate for the fact of not being in Kiribati anymore
Francis would look up other I-Kiribati to shape a new community and ‘landscape’ that
would make him feel more at home. This to me exemplifies how migrating to another
country does not necessarily mean losing one’s identity. As discussed in Chapter 3
identities are not fixed and can change. Another present challenge that has an effect
on both the I-Kiribati landscape and individual identity is the rise of unemployment
on Tarawa. On the outer islands being unemployed is not a big problem because

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Binoinano, Abemama, 12/10/2016

78
people have learned how to produce their own food and they also have enough land to
do so. On Tarawa however, not everyone possesses these skills anymore and even if
they do, they might not have the land to produce food. Some of the respondents
mentioned that being unemployed has several effects on people. They often get
married and have children at a younger age. To pass the time some of them start
drinking which often leads to violence and abuse. Unemployment also puts stress on
relatives who have to support them, as explained by Pelenise in Chapter 6.
As the research has shown us landscape and identity are related to each other in
several ways (see above). The landscape is constantly changing which has an effect
on identities and identities are always in process, which has an effect on the
landscape. Each of the analytical chapters (Chapter 4, 5, and 6) can be researched
more deeply in separate studies. It would also be interesting to visit people who have
already migrated to different countries to see how they identify themselves and their
relationship to their landscape.
The future of Kiribati is uncertain as scientists predict the country might disappear
over the next few decades (Worland, 2015). Much of its fate lies in the hands of
climate negotiations where the world’s biggest emitters are slow in taking measures to
stop global warming. The previous government of Anote Tong accepted the grim
future of Kiribati and purchased land in Fiji to migrate to. He also set up programs for
migration with dignity to facilitate the process (see Chapter 1). The current
government, however, still has hope for Kiribati and is more focused on finding ways
to be able to stay on the islands. One of the measures they are looking at is raising the
islands, possibly with the help of New Zealand.
In case of a resettlement, it is important to keep in mind the issues that I have brought
up in this thesis. A key part of migration would be to work through the community
associations and to not divide them up. This would help people to cope with living in
a different country as they still have the support from their community in case they
need it. A second important issue is a focus on what Anote Tong called migration
with dignity. If Kiribati residents have a skill or knowledge, resettling will be easier
as they have a bigger chance on finding a job.
However, despite these bleak predictions the people of Kiribati have not given up
hope yet, and many still see a future for Kiribati as Pelenise mentioned:
“I know there is a bright future for Kiribati, we just have to give Kiribati a
chance to survive.”103

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Temwaiku, South Tarawa, 23/10/2016

79
8. References

8.1 Literature
BBC., 2011. BBC News - Timeline: Kiribati. [Online]. [16 March 2017]. Available
from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/country_profiles/2944816.stm
BBC., 2015. Kiribati's climate change Catch-22. [Online]. [22 May 2017]. Available
from: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35024046
Bender, B., 2001. Landscapes on-the-move. Journal of Social Archaeology, 1(1),
pp.75-89.
Byrne, D., Brockwell, S. and O'Connor, S., 2013. Introduction: Engaging culture and
nature. In: S. Brockwell, S. O'Connor and B. Denis (eds) Transcending the Culture–
Nature Divide in Cultural Heritage : Views from the Asia–Pacific region, 1st ed.
Canberra: ANU E press, pp.1-12.
Castells, M., (2010). The Power of Identity: The Information Age: Economy, Society,
and Culture Volume II. 2nd ed. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.
Dean, M., 2016. Battle of Tarawa Facts. [Online] World War 2 Facts. Available at:
http://www.worldwar2facts.org/battle-of-tarawa.html [Accessed 16 Mar. 2017].
Dickie, R., 2005. Indigenous Traditions and Sacred Ecology in the Pacific Islands.
UW-L Journal of Undergraduate Research VIII, pp.1-9.
Edwards, A., 2013. Life on the next Atlantis: Doomed Pacific island which will be
swallowed by the sea within 60 years. [Online] Mail Online. Available at:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2340804/Beautiful-Pacific-island-nation-
Kiribati-claimed-sea-60-years-rising-ocean-levels.html [Accessed 21 Mar. 2017].
Escobar, A., 2001. Culture sits in places: reflections on globalism and subaltern
strategies of localization. Political Geography, 20(2), pp.139-174.
Etekiera, K., 1979. Te Aro: The New Religion. In: A. Talu (ed) Kiribati: Aspects of
History, 1st ed. Suva: University of the South Pacific: Institute of Pacific Studies and
Extension Services; Ministry of Education, Training and Culture, Kiribati
Government, pp. 38-43.
Fischer, S., (2013). A history of the Pacific Islands. 2nd ed. New York: Palgrave.
Gilroy, P., 1997. Diaspora and the Detours of Identity. In: K. Woodward (ed) Identity
and Difference, 1st ed. London: Sage Publications Ltd, pp. 299-346.
Goldberg, J., 2013. Drowning Kiribati. [Online] Bloomberg.com. Available at:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-11-21/kiribati-climate-change-
destroys-pacific-island-nation [Accessed 22 May 2017].
Gupta, A. and Ferguson, J., 1992. Beyond “Culture”: Space, Identity, and the Politics
of Difference. Cultural Anthropology, 7(1), pp.6-23.

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Inglis, D. and Thorpe, C., (2012). An Invitation to Social Theory. 1st ed. Cambridge:
Polity Press.
Ingold, T., 1993. The temporality of the landscape. World Archaeology, 25(2),
pp.152-174.
Ingold, T., (2000). The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood,
Dwelling and Skill. 1st ed. London: Routledge.
Ives, M., 2016. A Remote Pacific Nation, Threatened by Rising Seas. [Online]
Nytimes.com. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/world/asia/climate-
change-kiribati.html?_r=0 [Accessed 21 Mar. 2017].
Kirion, M. and Karaiti, B., (1979). Migration: From Samoa and Beyond. In: A. Talu
(ed), Kiribati: Aspects of History, 1st ed. Suva: University of the South Pacific:
Institute of Pacific Studies and Extension Services; Ministry of Education, Training
and Culture, Kiribati Government, pp.7-11.
Macdonald, B. ,(2001). Cinderellas of the Empire: Towards a history of Kiribati and
Tuvalu. 1st ed. Suva: Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific.
Macdonald, B. and Foster, S., 2016. Kiribati. [Online]
Academic.eb.com.ezproxy.its.uu.se. Available at:
http://academic.eb.com.ezproxy.its.uu.se/levels/collegiate/article/Kiribati/117362
[Accessed 21 Mar. 2017].
Maclellan, N., 2012. Kiribati’s policy for “migration with dignity”. [Online]
Devpolicy Blog from the Development Policy Centre. Available at:
http://devpolicy.org/kiribati_migration_climate_change20120112/ [Accessed 28 Mar.
2017].
Malkki, L., 1992. National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the
Territorialization of National Identity Among Scholars and Refugees. Cultural
Anthropology, 7(1), pp.24-44.
Matsuda, M., (2012). Pacific worlds. 1st ed. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Merriam-webster., 2017. Definition of LANDSCAPE. [Online] Available at:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/landscape [Accessed 27 Feb. 2017].
Onorio, A., 1979. I-Matang: Early European Contacts. In: A. Talu (ed), Kiribati:
Aspects of History, 1st ed. Suva: University of the South Pacific: Institute of Pacific
Studies and Extension Services; Ministry of Education, Training and Culture, Kiribati
Government, pp. 29-37.
Petersen, G., (2009). Traditional Micronesian Societies: Adaptation, Integration, and
Political Organization in the Central Pacific. 1st ed. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i
Press.
Phoenixislands., 2017. Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA). [Online] Available at:
http://www.phoenixislands.org/history.php [Accessed 14 Mar. 2017].
Radkau, J., (2008). Nature and Power: A Global History of the Environment. 1st ed.
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Republic of Kiribati,, 2017. About Kiribati. [Online] President Taneti Maamau.
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Ridgell, R., (1995). Pacific Nations and Territories: The Islands of Micronesia,
Melanesia, and Polynesia. 3rd ed. Honolulu: Bess Press.
Shutz, B. and Tenten, R., 1979. Adjustment: Problems of Growth and Change, 1892
to 1944. In: A. Talu (ed), Kiribati: Aspects of History, 1st ed. Suva: University of the
South Pacific: Institute of Pacific Studies and Extension Services; Ministry of
Education, Training and Culture, Kiribati Government, pp. 71-85.
Strang, V., 2008. Uncommon ground, landscape as social geography. In: B. Davis and
J. Thomas (ed), Handbook of Landscape Archaelogy, 1st ed. Walnut Creek: Left
Coast Press, pp.51-59.
Takaio, A., 1979. Control: ‘E Taku te Kamitina’. In: A. Talu (ed), Kiribati: Aspects of
History, 1st ed. Suva: University of the South Pacific: Institute of Pacific Studies and
Extension Services; Ministry of Education, Training and Culture, Kiribati
Government, pp.65-70.
Thomas, F., 2003. Kiribati: "Some aspects of human ecology." Forty years later. Atoll
Research Bulletin, 501, pp.1-40.
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Material Culture, 11(1-2), pp.7-32.
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Identity and Difference, 1st ed. London: Sage Publications Ltd, pp. 8-62.
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change/ [Accessed 21 Mar. 2017].

8.2 Respondents

8.2.1 Tarawa
Ieru – Betio – 08/09/2016
I met Ieru during a community outreach project focused on diabesity by the
Kiribati Health Retreat. Ieru was one of the people participating in the
program as he wanted to become healthier for his children. Ieru is in his 30’s
and a carpenter by profession. During his interview I used a translator. We
talked outside the maneaba the outreach program was taken place.

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Tebwebwe – Bairiki – 10/09/2016
Tebwebwe currently works at the Ministry of Finance but was running for
office at the time I met her. She invited me to a local football tournament
where she was present for her campaign. Tebwebwe is 25 and I conducted the
interview with her in English.
Manikoati (KAP III) – Bairiki – 18/10/2016
I scheduled an interview with Manikoati to learn more about the Kiribati
Adaptation Program Phase III (KAP III) as they work closely together with
the government and donors to adapt Kiribati to the changing landscape. We
talked in his office mostly from the viewpoint of KAP III but sometimes he
would also give me his personal opinion. We talked in English.
Pelenise – Temwaiku – 23/10/2016
Pelenise is the person I contacted before going to Kiribati and she helped me
set up my research and find accommodation. She works for the Kiribati
Climate Action Network (KiriCAN) and that is how I came into contact with
her. Without Pelenise’s help I would never have been able to do all things I
did, as she was always ready to help me out and to assist me in understanding
the Kiribati way of doing things. We had numerous interesting conversations
during breakfast and dinner and a more formal interview on the 23rd of
October.

8.2.2 Marakei
Uera – Rawannawi – 17/09/2016
Uera owns a small business where I met him and he is also a police constable
on Marakei. He always made sure that he some big water bottles in store for
us and he gave us tips on what to do on the island. For the interview we went
to the police office, which is a small colonial building with two holding cells.
This interview was in English.
Teraoi – Rawannawi – 17/09/2016
Teraoi is also a police constable on Marakei. I met him when Uera invited me
to the police office. He also works on the land his family owns to help them
provide their food. This interview was in English as well.
Tebau – Rawannawi – 17/09/2016
I first met Tebau when I rented a bike from him; afterwards I met with him on
several occasions as he was the grandfather of one of the people managing the
guesthouse I was staying in. Tebau is an elder, a former mayor of Marakei,
and a retired teacher currently teaching again. He also guides people on tours
on Marakei. As he has lived his whole life on Marakei and possesses a lot of
knowledge about it, he was a very interesting person to talk to. I talked with
him in English.
Tanua – Rawannawi – 21/09/2016
Tanua is a teacher at the local elementary school. I talked to him during the
break under the watchful eyes of a lot of school children. He has lived his
entire life on Marakei as well and the interview was conducted in English.

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Atanimoa – Rawannawi – 21/09/2016
Atanimoa is a teacher at the same school as Tanua. I stayed during her class
for a little while as she was teaching the children an English song about the
sounds the animals make. I remembered a song from when I was learning
English and taught that to the children too. We talked in English

8.2.3 Abaiang
Tiria and Atanea – Tebero – 26/09/2016
I met Tiria at the community house of her local church. She is an elder and
during the interview she was making a school bag out of an empty rice bag for
one of her children. Towards the end of the interview Atanea joined in as well.
He is also an elder and is still active as a carpenter sometimes. For this
interview I used a translator.
Aata – Tebunginako – 02/10/2016
Aata is a village elder of Tebunginako and my translator introduced me to
him. We talked in his kiakia while drinking some coconut. He lives on
subsistence and for this interview I used a translator.
Tebuntintaake – Tebunginako – 04/10/2016
I met Tebuntintaake during a game of bingo in the village maneaba of
Tebunginako. My translator took me there to find some people to talk to you.
They were also preparing some bread wrapped in pandanus leaves.
Kaaibo – Tebunginako – 04/10/2016
Kaaibo was present in the same maneaba as the one I met Tebuntintaake and
Iutita in. During the interview she was also taking care of her son. I used a
translator for this interview.
Iutita – Tebunginako – 04/10/2016
Iutita is the last person I spoke to in the maneabe. She did not participate in the
bingo but was preparing food for her family. I also used a translator to talk to
her.

8.2.4 Abemama
Francis – Binoinano – 12/10/2016
Francis is the religion and music teacher of the high school our guesthouse
was located next to. We met before lunch between his classes in his kiakia.
Francis has lived his entire life in Abemama. This interview was in English.
Keanteang – Binoinano – 13/10/2016
Keanteang owns a small business in Binoinano but lives in the village next to
it. We met when I was looking for water as the rain water tank we were
previously using became polluted. He also sold some traditional lava lava’s
that are worn when you want to enter a maneaba. We talked in English
Tokanikai – Binoinano – 13/10/2016
I met Tokanikai in the school maneaba after classes. He was marking some
tests but did not mind having a conversation with me. Tokanikai is an elder

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 and he had a lot of stories to tell about Abemama’s history and customs. This
interview was in English.
Iacinta – Binoinano – 13/10/2016
Iacinta owns the guesthouse we were staying at in Abemama. She was always
happy to talk to us during breakfast or dinner. Right before we arrived she had
rescued three small pigs as their mother was sold or stolen and they were left
behind. She also had two small kittens that played with the pigs. This
interview was in English.

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Appendix 1: Interview Questions

These are some examples of questions I used during my interviews. As discussed in

Chapter 3 I used a semi-structured format in which I had some guiding questions but
there was also room for new ones.
- How would you describe your normal day?
- What is the greatest challenge/problem for Kiribati?
- Do you see any changes in the landscape?
- Why do you think these changes happen?
- How would you define being I-Kiribati?
- Is this changing?
- Where do you get your food/water from?
- Is there any change in the food production/ water resources?
-What does your community mean to you?
- Is this changing?
-Would you ever consider migrating to a different country?
- What would you miss if you lived in a different country?

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