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autobiographies
RNS89926 (LLINDSTR@TULSA.BITNET)
Wed, 8 Dec 1993 07:43:41 CST
The "auto" part in these *biographies is always problemmatic,
but one could have a look at
'ELOTA'S STORY: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A SOLOMON ISLANDS BIG MAN
(ghosted by Roger Keesing)
FROM PIG THEFT TO PARLIAMENT - JONATHAN FIFI'I (again with
Roger Keesing)
ONGKA: A SELF ACCOUNT BY A NEW GUINEA BIG MAN (as accounted to
Andrew Strathern)
KANAKA BOY (by Sir Frederick Osefelo of the Sol. Islands)
ZOLEVEKE: A MAN FROM CHOISEUL (Gideon Zoleveke)
SANA: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MICHAEL SOMARE (ex PM of PNG)
and one of the earliest from the Pacific I've found is
STORY OF A MELANESIAN DEACON: CLEMENT MARAU (translated by
R. H. Codrington (missionary-anthropologist) in 1906.
In fact, there is an earlier genre of mission-native
autobiographies that precedes and parallels in interesting
places the anthropological sort. E.g., LOMAI OF LENAKEL,
A HERO OF THE NEW HEBRIDES: A FRESH CHAPTER IN THE TRIUMPH OF
THE GOSPEL (as recounted by Frank Paton in 1903). Both
missionaries and anthropologists have found profit and good
work in ghosting the natives---Lamont Lindstrom, Tulsa
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