Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and New Caledonia

Island

VANUATU — eighty-odd islands and more than a hundred languages for roughly three hundred thousand people, which is the densest language diversity per head anywhere. LAPLAP is the national dish: root vegetable or banana grated to a paste, laid on leaves with coconut cream and meat or fish, and baked in the earth oven under hot stones. Also TULUK, nalot, coconut crab, and KAVA — Vanuatu kava is strong, is drunk nightly in the nakamal, and is a serious export. ⚠ AND BISLAMA, the national creole, is a language of its own. SOLOMON ISLANDS — taro, sweet potato, cassava, sago, ngali nut, fish; POI and motu earth-oven cooking; and a documented history of "blackbirding", the coerced recruitment of Solomon Islanders to Queensland cane fields, which is why there is an Australian South Sea Islander population. NEW CALEDONIA — French, and the indigenous KANAK people, whose BOUGNA is the earth-oven dish of yam, taro, sweet potato and meat in coconut milk wrapped in banana leaf; the YAM carries deep ceremonial and calendrical significance and the yam harvest orders the year. ⚠ NICKEL MINING, French settlement and an unresolved independence question are the political frame, and the Kanak land claim is a claim about the ground food grows in.

Communities and languages

ni-Vanuatu community documented

Solomon Islanders community documented

Kanak community documented

Languages: Bislama, English, French, Nengone, Paicî

What is recorded

Vanuatu is documented as having more than a hundred languages for a population of roughly three hundred thousand, the densest language diversity per head recorded anywhere, with Bislama as a national creole. Laplap is recorded as the national dish. The coerced recruitment of Solomon Islanders to Queensland cane fields, known as blackbirding, is documented and accounts for the Australian South Sea Islander population. Kanak bougna is documented as an earth-oven dish, and yam is recorded as carrying ceremonial and calendrical significance ordering the year. documented

Blackbirding: Solomon Islanders and other Pacific Islanders are coercively recruited to Queensland cane fields, producing the Australian South Sea Islander population. documented

Related foodways

This foodway relates to

part of Melanesian Foodways documented

related to Australian Foodways documented

⚠ "Blackbirding" — the coerced recruitment of Solomon Islanders to Queensland cane fields — is why there is an Australian South Sea Islander population.