temsThe Reef Island Ethnographic Film Project started in 1994. This presentation will focus on how long-term film-based reaearsh may help us understand the impact of climate and environmenatl changes on local communities, and how it may seriously affect different aspects of life and livelihood, such as food production and the threats of rising sea levels.
One of the first things we filmed in 1994, was the harvesting and processing of breadfruit (artocarpus altilis). Sara Kamale, a young woman on the island of Nifiloli, climbed s breadfruit around twenty feet high, demonstrating an astonishing agility. She would twist off and drop the ripe breadfruits, which would land on the ground with a loud thunk. These would be collected by Sara and a group of women who would the sit in a circle, first peeling the breadfruit and then cutting them into small square bits. Later these would be put on a large grid over a slow fire in a special leaf hut until they were complete hard and dry. They had produced that iconic food item known all over the Solomons Islands as nambo, the Aiwoo name, or tupoe, the Pileni Polynesian name, a special food from the Reef Islands, available even in the central market of the capital Honiara. Nambo/tupoe is so dry that it will last almost forever, and has always been considered the most important emergency food items, together with coconuts enabling them to survive even serious cyclones.
When I returned in 2005, just about a decade later, it was becoming clear that this food item had come under swrious threat, most possibly due to climate change, that was affecting the harvesting seasons, no longer resulting in a 'small] harvest at the begiining of the year and a large harvest in August. Nambo/tupoe was seriulsy threatened.
