Custom Comes

To A Head

Gilbertese workmen at Ocean Island have protested against being required to live in ex pensive two-storied quarters recently built for them by the Phosphate Commission.

The protest was based on the ancient custom that it is offensive and shameful to move above the head of another. The same objection is reported to have been made by Gilbertese in Nauru.

The official “Colony Informa tion Notes”, published weekly by the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony, says that this custom was followed strongly in the colony two decades ago but it is now observed mainly by elderly people.

Expansion in education services had given the Gilbertese people a degree of sophistication against which “the attempted invocation of an obsolete custom strikes a discordant and false note”.