The Last White Canoe of the Lau of Malaita, Solomon Islands

This invaluable bilingual ethnographic account records with care and respect the social and religious life of a Pacific Islands community. The Last White-Canoe describes a people struggling against the challenges of colonial and Christian modernity through the revitalization of the craftsmanship and sacred knowledge of canoe-making during the transition from traditional religion to Christianity. With their experience of working with local experts and appreciation of indigenous historical and cultural knowledge, the authors confidently take the reader into the sacred world of this Lau community and the cultural heritage of Malaita and Solomon Islands. It is a task well done. Revd Dr Ben Wate, Solomon Islands National University;This bilingual, international collaboration in scholarship offers rich insights into the complexities of making a major cultural object in Solomon Islands in the mid-twentieth century. This is not just a matter of the technical and practical manufacture, but of the day by day sourcing of resources, provisioning of food and shelter for the makers, the negotiations among men and with other beings, the ritual procedures and offerings,the eating and the talking and the celebrating. Vividly detailed, and illustrated with photographs taken throughout the process, the book makes a way of living and thinking alive to the reader.Dr Lissant Bolton, Keeper of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, British Museum