‘Polygons are not kastom!’

The legacy of colonial land demarcation in Melanesia

Abstract

This article considers the effects of European colonial systems of surveying, measuring and mapping lands on land issues among Melanesians, particularly in the context of land claims in formal courts in the late-colonial and post-colonial periods. It reviews traditional land-holding and perceptions of territorial boundaries in Melanesian societies, contrasting them with the representations resulting from European surveying and cartography. The issues arising from this contrast are illustrated with an account of a late-colonial Papua New Guinea land claim originating in nineteenth-century colonial land acquisitions. Overall, the discussion problematizes the idea of 'customary land ownership' in contemporary discourses of land-holding and land issues, particularly in legal contexts where 'customary land' is an abstraction framed by European notions of land-holding for which there is no traditional equivalence in Melanesian lifeworlds.