Nearly twenty years have passed since Chiefs Today was published in 1997, yet it is still one of the most important works to consult for investigating the chiefs of postcolonial Oceania. Interestingly, while that book discusses the chiefs of contemporary Oceania, it makes almost no mention of the supernatural power, called mana, that the chiefs are believed to have. The absence of such a reference does not mean, however, that the chiefs no longer have mana on account of being completely demystified: indeed, Oceanic societies still maintain a strong belief in chiefs’ mana. The lack of attention to mana in Chiefs Today shows the intellectual trend during that time, when an interest in mana was waning, despite the abundance of research on the power. Now, general interest in mana seems to have increased once more, as it has become a key term in contemporary Oceanic societies again. In this paper, I will report on kata, a mana-like concept in Nanumea Atoll, Tuvalu, in Polynesia and will illustrate the chief’s mana today.
We cannot see mana directly; all we can see is its “effect,” so we can only know whether there is mana or not by its effects. The chief’s mana is often considered to enable fertility: more specifically, the fertility of the land and sea where he reigns. In Polynesia, there is a strong tendency toward pragmatism, or the thinking that what is “effective” is “true.” So, if they can show the effect of mana, the chiefs are considered to be true. Some point out that this tendency is the background of dynamism of Polynesian chiefs, whose positions are generally considered to be ascriptive and hereditary, though they often gain their power by practical efficacy. However, the connection between effect and truth is often ambiguous in practice. Some cases indicate that although the effect of the chief’s manaa has been made evident through abundance in the land’s fertility, it does not always mean that the chief is true. Some also consider that just because the land is plentiful does not mean that this is direct evidence of the effectiveness of the chief’s mana. Therefore, instead of assuming a strong connection between effect and truth, or that the chief’s status is justified unconditionally by the effect of mana, we should investigate in detail how the effects of mana are interpreted and how such interpretations are actually used to justify the status of chief. In this paper, I investigate a controversy involving a chief and the interpretations of kata in Nanumea Atoll as a case study in order to reveal those points.
