Secrets of a mass burial

By Louise Southerden, Sun Herald Newspaper, November 15th 2009: Louise Southerden takes a close look at the life and death of an extraordinary island chief. Imagine unearthing a mass burial site on an island regarded as "tabu" for 400 years and bringing a legend to life. French archaeologist Jose Garanger found himself in just that position in 1966. After recording the oral histories of local communities, he uncovered the remains of the long-dead and much-loved Chief Roi Mata, just a short boat ride from Port Vila's luxury resorts and boutique bungalows. But that's not all Garanger found. Just as the legends had said, the chief wasn't alone in his grave: as many as 300 members of his community went with him into the afterlife, voluntarily or not.
In July last year, Chief Roi Mata's Domain which comprises the burial site on Artok Island, an enormous cave on nearby Lelepa Island,
where the chief died, and the ruins of the mainland village he once called home became Vanuatu's first World Heritage site.

"Chief Roi Mata's Domain is a unique cultural landscape," says Dr Meredith Wilson, of the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
at ANU, Canberra, whose team helped Vanuatu's national museum with the heritage nomination.

"It's not just that the mass voluntary live burial is exceptional relative to the small size of the local population but also that the descendant
communities have observed the prohibition on the island for four centuries."
Despite this, Wilson says the local people were initially sceptical: "[They] felt that they were already conserving the place by way of
existing customs, so why would they need to have it on the World Heritage list?"
One idea that stimulated community interest, however, was to run small-scale tours. "In addition to the cultural heritage aspect, it was
about encouraging outsiders to come and appreciate their place as well," Wilson says.

As of June, up to 10 people at a time can visit Chief Roi Mata's Domain. Our tour begins at Vanuatu's National Museum and Cultural
Centre in Vila, where we're introduced to the life and death of Chief Roi Mata. Then a minibus transports us across Vanuatu's main island,
Efate, to meet our two guides, Helen Zacharie and Richard Matanik, both of whom grew up with the legend of Roi Mata. It's when we step
aboard our water-borne "tour bus", a traditional "banana boat", that we're on our way.

Motoring along the coast, we come to Chief Roi Mata's home, the ruined village of Mangaas. No sooner have we waded ashore than we
hear shouts from the forest and war-painted men in banana-leaf skirts appear before us. They're not happy to see each other, until a tall,
dignified man, also in a leaf skirt and wearing a necklace of pig's tusks, talks them into getting along.

This is a re-enactment of how Chief Roi Mata brought peace after an unprecedented period of inter-tribal warfare by introducing a clan
system (which is still adhered to), whereby people have kinship with those in other villages by virtue of belonging to the same clan.
In the forest, we step back 400 years, trying to visualise what this village might have looked like when, for instance, warriors stood guard
where heavy "standing stones" now lie.

Our next stop is Lelepa Island, 15 minutes across the water. As we step ashore this time, Matanik issues us with hard hats. It's a short
uphill walk through the forest to Fels Cave, an impressive, 35-metre-high cavern of white volcanic stone, where Chief Roi Mata drew his
last breath. The walls are adorned with ancient rock art: a man, a turtle, a whale. There's also a line of 500 engraved dots, one for every
ceremony ever performed in the cave.

Back at the beach, there's time for a swim before we head back to the mainland for lunch. These tours are run by the Roi Mata Cultural
Tourism Project, which, in addition to renewing local pride in the region's heritage and ensuring the site is protected, aims to provide
income for two communities, Lelepa Island and Mangaliliu where the women have prepared for us fried banana, fresh papaya, coconut
cake and chicken.

The highlight of the tour is, of course, the burial site on Artok (Hat) Island. A short walk along the rocky shore and under casuarina trees
that whistle eerily in the breeze brings us to the mass grave: a grassy square the size of a living room, marked out with volcanic stones.
There, the guides pass around photos and diagrams to show what's under our very feet.
According to the legend, confirmed by Garanger's excavations in the 1960s, Chief Roi Mata was buried first, along with his youngest wife,
his "magic man" (his guide in the spirit world), his assistant, the assistant's wife, a pig (an offering to the spirits) and valuables such as 25
pig's-tusk bangles (one for each of his wives).

A hundred days of dancing then compacted the grave before a second, more macabre, burial. The men of Roi Mata's community drank
strong kava, a known muscle relaxant, to prepare for their end but the women were sober and at least one was buried unwillingly her legs
were bound, her hands were tied to her sides and her raised head indicates a struggle.

Before our last boat ride for the day, Matanik says a quiet prayer to the chief asking for the choppy seas to calm. Safely back on the
mainland, we step ashore and notice the wind has dropped and the seas have smoothed perhaps because that's just what happens at dusk
in the tropics, or perhaps because the legendary Chief Roi Mata has been watching over us after all.

The writer was a guest of the Vanuatu Tourism Office and Air Vanuatu.