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Sacred Place, Taboo Place: Negotiating Roang on Lamotrek Atoll

about the islands of Micronesia

This is a peer reviewed contribution. Received: 1 Nov 2004; Revised: 25 Dec 2004; Accepted: 27 Dec 2004
© Micronesian Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences ISSN 1449-7336
Letao Publishing, PO Box 3080, Albury NSW, Australia 3
MICRONESIAN
JOURNAL OF THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
Vol. 3, nº 1-2 December 2004
SACRED SPACE, TABOO PLACE
Negotiating Roang on Lamotrek Atoll
Eric Metzgar
Triton Films, Camarillo, CA

In 1990, in the process of making a documentary film, three remarkable events were observed on Lamotrek Atoll, an Outer Island of Yap in the Federated States of Micronesia, which showed that the creation of sacred taboo space - called roang in the central Caroline Islands - was still a viable practice in the community. The events observed were as follows: 1) the resurrection of prohibitions relating to a sacred area of land called Lametag, 2) the performance of traditional massage healing techniques called sheosheo, and 3) the performance of a traditional navigator initiation and schooling ritual called pwo. This paper presents an ethnographic description of these roang-related events as witnessed by the author in the field, compares them to earlier reports of roang sites described in the anthropological literature, and discusses the status of roang as it exists today, making conclusions regarding the changing status of roang and the construction of community on Lamotrek.

DEFINITION OF ROANG AND ITSDIALECTICAL VARIANTS
The title for this paper is adapted from the definition of “rang” given in the Woleaian-English Dictionary: “sacred place, taboo place where sacred affairs are performed” (Sohn and Tawerilmang 1976, p.121).1 Even though there are dialectical differences, Woleaian is viewed by linguists as being the same language as Lamotrekese. The Woleaian-English Dictionary is considered the current standard orthography for the language spoken not only by the Woleaian and Lamotrekan peoples, but also the other neighboring populations in the central Carolines living on the atolls of Eauripik, Ifaluk, Faraulep, Elato, and Satawal. Linguistically and culturally this group collectively is referred to in the literature as “Woleai” (Lessa 1950b,1950c; Alkire 1970). The “Woleai” language is linguistically related to numerous other similar languages in the Caroline Islands which make up the Chuukic continuum (see Figure 1), also known as the “Trukic continuum” (Bellwood 1979, p.130). The islands on which Chuukic languages are indigenously spoken range a distance of approximately 1600 miles from Tobi Island in the western Caroline Islands across the central Caroline islands to Lukunor Atoll in the eastern Caroline Islands and includes Chuuk itself (formerly Truk). According to Quackenbush (1968) the entire Chuukic linguistic area is chained together by interlocking links of language cognate percentages greater than 80%. Nevertheless, the differences in the spelling of the term “rang” (meaning “sacred place” or “taboo place”) by various authors who have done field research in these linguistically- related islands is truly diverse as the following examples will show: “ron” (Girschner 1911, p.193), “rong” (Krämer 1935, p. 256 footnote no. 2), “rehan” (Elbert 1972, p. 148), “ranga” (Rubinstein 1978, p. 78), “róóng” (Goodenough and Sugita 1980, p. 313), “ruung” (Thomas 1987, p. 201), and “roang” (Sudo 1997, p. 26).2

Although the Woleaian-English Dictionary spelling of this term is given as “rang,” I have chosen to use the dialectical variant of “roang.” My reasons for this choice are too complex to explain fully in a paper of this length but are discussed in detail in my dissertation (1991, pp. 111-114). The reader will also note that this is the same spelling used by Kenichi Sudo (see above) for Satawal, an island 40 miles east of Lamotrek.

OBSERVATIONS OF ROANG USE AND CREATION IN 1990
When I arrived on the inter-island passenger and cargo ship M/V Micro Spirit at Lamotrek Atoll in April 1990, our objective was to film the pwo navigator ritual.3 Months of preparation and planning had preceded my arrival along with Ali Haleyalur, who wanted to be initiated by his father, Jesus Urupiy, to become a paliuw “navigator.” Urupiy was some eighty years old and a master navigator from Satawal who had married a Lamotrekan and raised his children on both Lamotrek and Satawal. When we had set upon our plan to resurrect and film the pwo ritual, Ali was working as a policeman in Yap, an island 600 miles west of Lamotrek, and Urupiy was in temporary residence on Yap, living with Ali and other members of his extended family. It was here in July 1989 that Ali and I agreed to meet with Urupiy on Lamotrek about nine months later where he would be waiting for us to perform the pwo ceremony. The last pwo ceremony had been performed on Satawal about forty years earlier, between 1950-1952.4 Since then this navigator rite of passage had come closer and closer to extinction with the demise of master navigators qualified to transmit the restricted navigational knowledge and chants which, by ancient custom, were only to be taught after apprentices were initiated in the pwo ceremony.
Continued sacred2


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