Trobriand Islander Culture: Customs, Matrilineal Society, Sex and Yams | Sea Life, Islands and Oceania

TROBRIAND ISLANDER MATRILINEAL SOCIETY

Trobriand Islander Yam Festival

The Trobriand Islanders are the residents of the Trobriand Islands, a small group of coral islands about 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of the eastern tip of New Guinea. These islanders were the subjects of Bronislaw Malinowski’s "The Sexual Life of Savages in Northwestern Melanesia", a famous anthropological work published in 1927. Old-timers that remembered Malinowski in the 1990s called him the “man who asked questions”. In his studies Malinowski reported that the Trobriand Islanders were "keen on fighting" and they often fought "systematic and relentless wars" as well as engaging in unusual sexual practices.

Trobriand Islander society is divided into a hierarchy of matrilineal clans and subclans that have different privileges. Garden plots have traditionally been inherited along matrilineal lines. Matrilineal refers to descent through the female line. Garden plots have traditionally been inherited along matrilineal lines. During harvests matrilineal lines are acknowledged by the presentation of yams from brothers to sisters. The status of various clans and subclans can often be traced to wars that took place a long time ago.

From birth, Trobrianders belong to one of four exogamous matriclans, which are not corporate groups. Clan membership determines marriage categories, bringing together members of different matrilines within the same clan in alternating generations. These individuals consider themselves close relatives. These are the people who support each other in important exchange events.

Adolescent boys live in bachelor huts until they get married and then they move into their mother's brother's household and share responsibility over the garden. During harvests matrilineal lines are acknowledged by the presentation of yams from brothers to sisters. The status of various clans and subclans can often be traced to wars that took place a long time ago.

Trobriand Islander Marriage and Family

On the Trobriand Islands, extended families typically live together in the same household. Older people typically take in one of their grandchildren. A villager's personal possessions, including magic spells, are given to those who helped them by planting yam gardens and assisting with other tasks. This is how sons inherit from their fathers. Matrilineal property, such as land and ornaments, is given to the son of a man's sister. A woman may inherit banana trees, coconut palms, areca palms, spells, and banana leaf wealth from her mother. Among Kula men, shells and mates are inherited by either a son or a sister's son. When a man dies, his house and yam garden are destroyed, and his wife usually returns to the hamlet where she was born. [Source: Annette B. Weiner, “Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Volume 2: Oceania,” edited by Terence E. Hays, 1996 |~|]

Most marriages occur between young people living in different hamlets within the same village or neighboring ones. When a man marries his father's sister's daughter, who is usually three generations removed, he marries someone from a different matrilineal line within his father's clan.

Trobriand Islanders in 1911

Endogamous marriages, or marriages within a village or clan, sometimes occur, but they are considered incestuous and not openly discussed. A young man only lives in the hamlet of his mother's brother when he is eligible to inherit the matrilineal leadership. Other couples usually live in the hamlet of the young man's father.

The primary obligation following marriage is the annual yam harvest, produced by the woman's father and, eventually, her brother, in her name. These yams obligate the husband to procure many bundles of banana leaves for his wife when she participates in a mortuary distribution. Divorce is relatively easy to obtain, and although the couple's relatives may try to prevent it, there is little they can do if one of the spouses is adamant about separating. If a divorced man wants his children to live with him, he must give valuables to his wife's relatives. Remarriage is common for both spouses. There are a few permanent bachelors, but women do not go through life unmarried. ~

Young children are cared for by both parents. Since marriages often take place among people living in the same village, grandparents also provide childcare. A man's sister performs beauty magic for his children and acts as a confidant when they reach puberty and seek out sexual partners. Some children attend the Kiriwina high school and live in a dorm during the week, while others who attend high school on the mainland only return for holidays.

Trobriand Island Kin Relations

The strength of matrilineal identity is rooted in the belief that conception occurs when an ancestral spirit enters a woman's body. All members of the matrilineal lineage are believed to have "the same blood" and claim to "the same land." Members of individual matrilines own land, ancestral names, body and home decorations, spells, dances, and taboos. Men may lend the use of land and names to their children, but these must later be reclaimed by their sisters. [Source: Annette B. Weiner, "Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Volume 2: Oceania," edited by Terence E. Hays, 1996]

Kin terms are a modified Crow type with a number of atypical features. For example, the same term is used for the ego's mother and the mother's brother's wife, and the terms for parallel siblings-in-law are merged with those for parallel siblings. The Crow kinship system is somewhat similar to the Iroquois system in that it distinguishes between "same-sex" and "cross-sex" parental siblings, as well as gender and generation. However, it further distinguishes between the mother's and father's sides. In the Crow kinship system, relatives on the mother's side have more descriptive terms, while relatives on the father's side have more classificatory terms. The Crow system is distinctive because, unlike most other kinship systems, it does not distinguish between certain generations. [Source: Wikipedia]

Trobriand Islander Villages, Arts and Medicine

from Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia 1929

Trobrianders live in named hamlets associated with specific garden, bush and beach areas. Typically, four to six hamlets are grouped together to form an independent village with a population of 200 to 500. If a chief is polygynous, each wife has her own separate house. In all other cases, husbands and wives live together with their young children, while adolescent boys, and sometimes girls, have their own small dormitories near their parents' living quarters. These are the houses to which widows and widowers retire when they are too old to remarry. [Source: Annette B. Weiner, “Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Volume 2: Oceania,” edited by Terence E. Hays, 1996 |~|]

The hamlets look much as they did in Bronislaw Malinowski's photographs. The roofs are still thatched (although some metal roofs are visible), and the walls are made of woven coconut palm fronds. The interior of the house is private, with a fireplace and sleeping areas, while most of the social life takes place on the verandas. The burial grounds are located at the edge of the hamlet. From there, footpaths provide quick communication between villages. On Kiriwina, only one road (with several side roads) bisects the island.

Dances said to have been first brought by the original ancestors are still held by members of individual matrilines. Drums are the only traditional musical instruments used in these dances. Jew's harps or flutes made of bush materials are played for personal enjoyment. String bands are now common. Traditional songs are still sung when someone dies. Traditionally, only certain special people had the magical knowledge necessary to become expert carvers of canoe prows, war shields, dance paddles, large bowls, and betel-chewing utensils. Today, many other villagers carve tourist items. |~|

Some women and men are renowned healers, relying on plants and herbs from the bush that they use in magic spells. A small hospital is located near the government station on Kiriwina, and medical posts (usually poorly equipped) are within walking distance of most villages. Adequate medical care is still a serious problem. |~|

Trobriand Islanders and Yams

yam harvest

Much of life on the Trobriand islands revolves around yams. The Yam house sits in the center of the village and it is where most big social gatherings take place. Prize yams, some of them measuring 1.2 meters (four feet) long, hang inside these houses.

The Trobrianders are generally very good natured but arguments break out who has the longest yam or the most beautiful yam house. The most dangerous conflict is the traditional yam competition where the members of one matrilineage line up their largest and longest yams to be measured against the yams brought together by the members of a rival matrilineage. In one incident a man was killed in an argument over yam quality. These days fights sometimes erupt over yams, but the presence of government officials usually keeps these incidents from getting out of hand.

Yams are exchanged among men during every important ceremonial occasions. They are then stored until they rot. Yams rot after three or four months which means they value doesn’t last very long. According to Sawa Kurotani at Redlands University: “A storehouse full of rotted yams is “the public display of a Trobriander man’s ability to develop an extensive social network and harness ever large amounts of critical resources (yams). Gift exchange is not so much about the objects that changes hands, but more about the person who participates in the ongoing exchange , sometimes as a giver and other times as a receiver...The gift is not a mere object; it takes on the ‘spirit’ of the giver, who is communicated to the receiver and the community who witness the gift exchange. In other words the gift is an embodiment of self in a social relationship.

Yam Customs in the Trobriand Islands

Trobrianders are superb yam farmers. Using slash-and-burn methods, the produce large yam harvests once a year. Women and men work together to clear land. Men tend to plant the yams, stake up the vines, build garden fences and do the harvesting. Women produce other garden foods, although occasionally they make their own yam gardens.

During harvest matrilineal lines were acknowledged by the representation of yams from brothers to sisters. The major commitment that follows each marriage is the annual yam harvest produced by the woman's father and eventually by her brother in the woman's name. These yams obligate her husband to obtain many bundles of banana leaves for her when she participates in a mortuary distribution. In regard to inheritance, a villager's personal property, including magic spells, are given to those who have helped him or her by making yam gardens and assisting with other food.

Yam houses stand prominently around a central clearing, dwarfing the individual dwellings built behind this plaza. Chiefs may decorate their houses and their yam houses with ancestral designs and hang cowrie shells indicating differences in ranking. It is bad news if a man accidently happens upon a group of women harvesting yams. Usually outnumbered, he is chased, and caught by the women who slap him around and ridicule his masculinity. His clothes are then forced off him and his sent back to the village naked and thoroughly humiliated.

Sex Among Young Trobriand Islanders

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For the Trobrianders teenage sex is encouraged. 14 year old boys have their own huts where they can entertain their girlfriends. During their annual Yam festival marriage is suspended for many. Paul Theroux reports. During this festival teens run around with coconut oil and bee pollen smeared on their bodies When does a boy know when is time to become a man and get an apartment? Theroux asked 18-year-old Madulo Monubweri, who replied s, "When you go to the garden by yourself, when you can do all the gardening work, then it is time."

Malinowski provides a detailed account of premarital sexual behavior among the Trobriand Islanders. There are no initiations. Infants could be betrothed. On Trobriand copulatory “playing houses”, Malinowski writes: “At an early age children are initiated by each other, or sometimes by a slightly older companion, into the practices of sex. Naturally at this stage they are unable to carry out the act properly, but they content themselves with all sorts of games in which they are left quite at liberty by their elders, and thus they can satisfy their curiosity and their sensuality directly and without disguise. There can be no doubt that the dominating interest of such games is what Freud would call “genital”, that they are largely determined by the desire to imitate the acts and interests of elder children and elders, and that this period is one which is almost completely absent from the life of better-class children in Europe and which exists only to a small degree among peasants and proletarians. [Source: Archive of Sexuality, sexarchive.info ]

When speaking of these amusements of the children, the natives will frequently allude to them as “copulation amusement” (mwaygini kwayta). Or else it is said that they are playing at marriage. It must not be imagined that all games are sexual. Many do not lend themselves at all to it. But there are some particular pastimes of small children in which sex plays the predominant part. Melanesian children are fond of “playing husband and wife”. A boy and girl build a little shelter and call it their home; there they pretend to assume the functions of husband and wife, and amongst those of course the most important one of sexual intercourse. At other times, a group of children will go for a picnic where the entertainment consists of eating, fighting, and making love. Or they will carry out a mimic ceremonial trade exchange, ending up with sexual activities. Crude sensual pleasure alone does not seem to satisfy them; in such more elaborate games it must be blended with some imaginative and romantic interest”.

Thus,“we cannot consider puberty as a condition of sexual interest or even of sexual activities, since non-nubile girls can copulate and immature boys are known to have erections and put their penises in vaginas. “The little ones sometimes play […] at house-building, and at family life. A small hut of sticks and boughs is constructed in a secluded part of the jungle, and a couple or more repair thither and play at husband and wife, prepare food and carry out or imitate as best they can the act of sex. Or else a band of them, in imitation of the amorous expeditions of their elders, carry food to some favourite spot on the sea-shore or in the coral ridge, cook and eat vegetables there, and “when they are full of food, the boys sometimes fight with each other, or sometimes kayta (copulate) with the girls”. When the fruit ripens on certain wild trees in the jungle they go in parties to pick it, to exchange presents, make kula (ceremonial exchange) of the fruit, and engage in erotic pastimes”.

The attitude of the grown-ups and even of the parents towards such infantile indulgence is “either that of complete indifference or that of complacency--they find it natural, and do not see why they should scold or interfere. Usually they show a kind of tolerant and amused interest, and discuss the love affairs of their children with easy jocularity. I often heard some such benevolent gossip as this: “So-and-so (a little girl) has already had intercourse with So-and-so (a little boy)”. And if such were the case, it would be added that it was her first experience. An exchange of lovers, or some small love drama in the little world would be half-seriously, halfjokingly discussed. The infantile sexual act, or its substitute, is regarded as an innocent amusement. “It is their play to kayta (to have intercourse). They give each other a coconut, a small piece of betel-nut, a few beads or some fruits from the bush, and then they go and hide, and kayta”. But it is not considered proper for the children to carry on their affairs in the house. It has always to be done in the bush”.

“As the boy or girl enters upon adolescence the nature of his or her sexual activity becomes more serious. It ceases to be mere child's play and assumes a prominent place among life's interests. What was before an unstable relation culminating in an exchange of erotic manipulation or an immature sexual act becomes now an absorbing passion, and a matter for serious endeavour”.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: CIA World Factbook, 2023; “Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Volume 2: Oceania,” edited by Terence E. Hays, 1991, Wikipedia, Encyclopedia.com, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, Lonely Planet Guides, Library of Congress, The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, BBC, CNN, and various books, websites and other publications.

Last updated November 2025