LAND AND CONTESTED STORIES

Tarcisius Kabutaulaka

In Solomon Islands, as in other Pacific Islands places, there are close relationships between stories, land, economic development and land disputes. 

These are complicated issues. This piece does not offer prescriptions, but hopefully it raises issues for us to think about.

Here, I propose that what is at the center of land disputes is not land per ser. Rather, the disputes are over competing stories about relationships between people and landscapes; stories about genealogies, migrations, settlements, tabu sites, etc., which are used by groups (tribes/clans) to claim particular parcels of land. 

These stories are “written” or “told” onto landscapes. I will come back to this theme later. 

As you know, land is central to economic development. But in Solomon Islands, it is also at the center of many disputes that have either delayed or halted economic development projects. 

Only this week, the Tandai landowners filed a case challenging the acquisition of the landing site of the Coral Sea Cable. They have their stories and have resorted to the courts for validation.

Successive governments have contemplated this issue. For example, while speaking toa workshop on land reform in August 2015, the Prime Minister, Manasseh Sogavare, referred to land as a “single most important hurdle to development” and urged Solomon Islanders to,  “make land available for development and whether such a program can be undertaken without the need to alienate land from our people.”Others expressed similar sentiments.

In these discussions, customary land tenure systems are viewed as an impediment to economic development.

The dominant questions have been: What can we do to reduce land disputes and enhance economic development? How can the state and potential investors access land and have security of tenure? 

Consequently, there are suggestions for reforms to customary land tenure systems. Here, “land reform” often means “land recording and registration,” which is assumed will reduce disputes, provide security of tenure to potential investors and enhance economic development.

In 1994, Parliament passed  the Customary Land Records Actto provide a mechanism for recording customary land boundaries and the names of land-holding groups and their representatives for the purposes of any dealing with recorded land. Land identification is also facilitated by the Forest Resources and Timber Utilisation Act. Those wishing to register land, can use Part V of theLand and Titles Act.

The current government intends to push for the enactment of the Traditional Governance and Customs Facilitation Bill, which will have implications on land issues. 

On 19 July 2019, there was a government announcement in the Solomon Star, calling for expressions of interest from those wishing to record their land to contact relevant authorities at the MLHS. 

Despite these efforts, over 80% of land in Solomon Islands is still held under customary tenure. 

Perhaps, this is an indication of people’s reluctance to record and register their stories, or a push back to the privileging of particular stories.

As mentioned above, what is being recorded and registered are stories about relationships to each other and to land. Land boundaries are determined by those stories. 

Traditionally, there are numerous, dynamic and competing stories that reflect changes in relationships. At a particular time, a dominant story takes center stage. But that may change as relationships change.

This allows for the negotiation and accommodation of different kinds of rights to land: rights of ownership, use, access, and to pass it on.

Such fluidity and dynamism is not conducive to capitalism, which requires secured property rights that are indefeasible, meaning they cannot be challenged or defeated. 

Recording and registration is largely about making a dominant story become permanent, and the privileging of ownership rights over other rights.

This is a process that, while creating landowners, could also create landless people who are denied the rights of access and use to land that they would have otherwise had under customary tenure.  

Ironically, the land recording and registration processes are administered by the state, an entity that is largely landless. 

So, in order to legitimize its exercise of power over something it doesn’t own, the state deploys and engages kastom. 

For example, in the land identification process, ‘chiefs’ are involved and kastomforms of ‘evidence’ are accepted as proof of claims to land. Here, kastomfunctions within the state’s legal frames. In other words, kastomi s appropriated by the state for its purposes.

Family and clan stories are therefore alienated – they are recorded and kept by the state, rather than within the kastom realm where they had long existed. That act of alienating stories is ultimately an act of land alienation. 

In Choiseul, to avoid the alienation of stories, the Lauru Land Conference of Tribal Community (LLCTC) utilized a local kastom called, popoloto, to identify and record stories related to land. But they are kept by the LLCTC, rather than given to the state. 

Here, I have scratched only the surface of this complicated issue and have not answered the question on whether or not land recording and registration will reduce disputes and enhance economic development. 

We will deal with those questions in the next Tok Stori. 

But I hope this prompts us to reflect on these issues. Remember, we are on a land of contested stories.

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