A Night on the Island: Jean Guiart and Roi Mata on Lelepa

This paper addresses Jean Guiart’s 1958 ethnographic surveys of Efate and the Shepherd Islands – the South Central New Hebrides – in an attempt to articulate what we now owe to Guiart, and how we might best read and understand him. In particular, I focus on his fleeting encounter over the course of a single evening with a small group of elders on the island of Lelepa off the northwest coast of Efate, working between Guiart’s published field journal entry for that meeting, his recollections in interview, and the memories of at least some of the Lelepa Islanders who were present that day. This was amongst the most consequential of his encounters in the New Hebrides, because the details and narratives that he recorded that day related to conditions in the late sixteenth century, and specifically to the “court” presided over by the extinct title of Roi Mata. His notes from the meeting became the primary stimulus for the famous archaeological surveys and excavations by José Garanger in 1966-67, along with the subsequent nomination and inscription of Chief Roi Mata’s Domain as Vanuatu’s first World Heritage site in 2008.