Hezel, Francis X.

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BOOK REVIEWS 221Silent Voices Speak: Women and Prohi-bition in Truk, by Mac Marshall andLeslie B. Marshall. Wadsworth Mod-ern Anthropology Library. Belmont,CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company,1990. ISBN 0-534-12384-8, xiii + 190pp, illustrations, tables, appendixes,index. US$15.made by the Maori people for repara-tion for past and continuing breachesof the 1840 Treaty ofWaitangi, partic-ularly in relation to land. This problemthreatens to disrupt the New Zealandpolitical scene, and there are Maorisand Islanders who see themselves ashaving common cause.This book brings together a wealthof experience and perceptive research.This reviewer might question points ofemphasis in material that falls withinthe range of his experience, but theessentials are accurate. Frequent refer-ences to constitutional provisions docall for ready access to that pile ofconstitutional texts. There is anindex to particular constitutional pro-visions, but the general index doesnot list the places in the text in whichthere are references to each islandcountry.Yash Ghai and his fellow contribu-tors, the Institute of Pacific Studies,and the University of the South Pacificare to be congratulated on this impor-tant addition to the university's list ofpublications on Pacific governmentand politics.c. C. AIKMANNew Zealand Law Reform Commission::- ::- ::-In October 1977, an ordinance wassigned prohibiting the sale and con-sumption of alcoholic beverages onMoen Island. A few months later, thedistrict center and capital of Truk (nowChuuk), the most populous state inwhat would shortly become known asthe Federated States of Micronesia(FSM), was officially "dry." In SilentVoices Speak, the authors record theinterplay of forces that led to the enact-ment of prohibition on an island with awidespread reputation for drink-induced mayhem. But the book is farmore than that; it is a clear-eyed lookat the effects of prohibition on thecommunity and, in the final analysis, achallenge to the ethnocentrism thatcolors the general public's perceptionsof prohibition in such island communi-ties.This is not the authors' first forayinto the problems of alcohol in Chuuk.Weekend Warriors, published by theMarshalls in 1979, is an ethnographicdescription of what could be called thesubculture of youth drinking on Moen.In this earlier book, the authorspainted a vivid picture of the ritualsthat make up drunken behavior whileillustrating the pain and suffering thatoften result for families and society atlarge. Ten years after their fieldworkfor this earlier volume, the Marshallsreturned to Chuuk to study the effectsof the prohibition that had been inforce for more than seven years by thattime.The "silent voices" of the title are thevoices of women who, as in most otherparts of Oceania, have traditionallybeen denied a public role in communityaffairs. For a year or so prior to the222 THE CONTEMPORARY PACIFIC· SPRING 1991enactment of the prohibition law, how-ever, Chuukese church women as-sumed an uncharacteristically activerole in petitioning for the law. Theauthors trace the sequence of eventsfrom a Hawai'i church conference onalcohol, attended by two prominent. Cl1tiukese women, through a series of .petitions, demonstrations, and otherattempts to win support for prohibi-tion in the months before the law waspassed. In all this, the women, particu-larly Protestant church women, areportrayed as the initiators and themajor support group for prohibition.The authors see in this the seeds of asocial revolution that could allowwomen a much greater public politicalrole in the future. Yet, they acknowl-edge that female involvement in theanti-alcohol crusade was actually justan extension of the very traditionalroles that women have played inChuuk as restrainers of the men andkeepers of the peace. In this case, how-ever, women stepped into the publicarena to perform these roles-and inthat lies the difference.The book is as much a volume onwomen's changing place in Chuukesesociety as it is about prohibition. Forthis reason, perhaps, the role of malepolitical elements, particularly theMoen Municipal Council, is under-stated. Even the role of Catholic wom-en's groups is seen as peripheral in themarch toward prohibition. The silentvoices recorded and amplified in thebook, then, are largely those of a singleProtestant church group, althoughadmittedly broad-based and influen-tial. This framework, limited as it is,allows the authors to do much morethan chronicle a social reform move-ment. It allows them to trace thegrowth of awareness and empower-ment of one women's group and todelineate the issues related to changingwomen's roles with sensitivity andfocus.And what of the effects of prohibi-. tion 6n -Moen after more· than tenyears? Speakeasies and a thriving blackmarket notwithstanding, the prohibi-tion law has had an undeniably benefi-cial impact on the community, theauthors maintain. More than 90 per-cent of the Chuukese people inter-viewed by the Marshalls in the courseof their study agree. Despite the laxityin enforcement, the law continues toenjoy overwhelming support from menand women alike. In explaining whythis is so, in the face of mounting skep-ticism from outsiders, the authors areat their best.The law was not so much an at-tempt to eliminate drinking as an effortto control drinking and check itsdestructive effects on the community.The drive for prohibition was not amorality crusade, but an attempt tocheck the social disruption brought onby drinking. At first sight, the successof even this pragmatic goal would seemopen to question. Hospital records forthe early 1980s showed that emer-gency-room treatment for trauma wasup to its preprohibition rate, and alco-hol-related arrests increased as theblack market became established.Indeed, my work on this review wasinterrupted twice in a single day: firstwhen a neighbor asked to use thephone to call police to subdue adrunken member of the family, andagain when a parishioner asked forprayers for his son who was stabbed byBOOK REVIEWS 223Pies Blong Iumi: Solomon Islands, ThePast Four Thousand Years, edited byHugh Laracy. Suva and Honiara: Uni-versity of the South Pacific, 1989. ISBNa drunk (and died later in the day, as itturned out). Yet when I drove to SapukVillage, formerly a notorious troublespot, on that same payday evening, Ihad no fear of having to dodge rocks orthe knife thrusts of young men leapingonto the road.Drinking continues and so doesviolence, the authors acknowledge, butwith some notable changes. Publicdrunkenness and violence occur lessfrequently, police arrests for drunkenand disorderly behavior short ofassault are more numerous, and drink-ers are far more cautious than in thepreprohibition days. While this mayseem to have driven the alcohol prob-lem from the streets into the backyard(homicides occur increasingly withinthe family or neighborhood circle), thisin itself is no small achievement. Butperhaps the greatest gain is that localpeople have successfully altered thepattern of alcohol use and in doing so,have reasserted their control over theircommunity. The significance of thismay have gone unnoticed in the contin-uing debate over prohibition if theMarshalls had not underscored it intheir valuable little book. Before judg-ments are passed on the wisdom of theMoen law or on similar attempts ofother traditional communities to"exorcise their evil spirits," SilentVoices Speak is must reading.FRANCIS x. HEZEL, SJMicronesian Seminar~. ::- ~.982-02-0027-X, xiv + 151 pp, appen-dixes, photographs, select bibliogra-phy, index. US$12.The book Pies Blong Iumi is importantin three ways: it represents the firstattempt by Solomon Islanders to rein-terpret, produce, and add an indige-nous perspective to their history; itcontributes to the development of liter-ature by Islanders emerging from thiscountry and the Pacific; and by usingand documenting indigenous sourcesof knowledge, it underscores the valueof the experiences and achievements ofthe people of Taem Bilo.In the chapter entitled "Digging,"Alec Rukia presents two indigenousviews of Islander origins and examineslinguistic theories on the settlement ofthe Solomons by two distinct languagegroups (Papuan and Austronesian) thatcame from Southeast Asia between fivethousand and thirty-five hundred yearsago. He summarizes the nature, devel-opment, and findings of archaeologicalinvestigations. Remains are catego-rized into three broad "cultural com-plexes," the Lapita Cultural Complexbeing the only one that can be corre-lated with a linguistic group whoseearliest settlements go back in timesome three thousand years. The ques-tion of why Papuan speakers arepresent on Lapita sites cannot beanswered at this time since no investi-gations have been conducted on themajor islands (except Guadalcanal)where the oldest settlements are likelyto be found. The current evidence doesnot represent the earliest settlements.In "Remembering," Jan Sanga dis-cusses how the various bodies of tradi-tional knowledge were preserved

Review of Silent Voices Speak: Women and Prohibition in Truk, by Mac Marshall and Leslie B. Marshall

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Review of Silent Voices Speak: Women and Prohibition in Truk, by Mac Marshall and Leslie B. Marshall

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