NANCY GROCE*
The Habele Outer Island Education Fund in the Federated States of Micronesia was one of 10 projects chosen to receive a highly-competitive Community Collections Grant from the American Folklife Center (AFC) through the Library’s Of the People: Widening the Path initiative.
Funded by the Mellon Foundation, the grant program supports individuals and organizations to document their communities’ contemporary culture and cultural activities. The resulting documentation — in the form of recorded interviews, photographs, videos, and musical recordings — will be added to the AFC’s archives to enrich and expand the historical and cultural record.
This story highlights the important fieldwork undertaken by Habele’s lead researchers Modesta Yangmog and Regina Raigetal on their project “The Warp and Weft of the Remathau.”
Their year-long study is documenting the knowledge and artistry of women from the outer islands of Yap who weave the beautiful and highly-valued lavalava cloth, which remains an essential element in maintaining cultural traditions and community relationships among contemporary Remathau (People of the Sea).
Both Modesta and Regina come from Ulithi and are themselves respected weavers of lavalava and knowledgeable about local customs and traditions.
Both Modesta and Regina are delightful raconteurs and serious and thoughtful researchers. Like many others born on Ulithi and Fais, both have left their home island for reasons related to work, family and educational opportunities. Today, Modesta lives on Yap, the seat of Yap State, and Regina lives on Guam. Significant numbers of Ulithians live in Hawaii, elsewhere in the Pacific and throughout the US.
Modesta and Regina strongly feel that the ability of women to weave lavalavas is “essential” to maintaining outer island culture. They estimate that as many as a thousand Ulithian women know how to weave, but are concerned that many living off-island are losing the finer points of the tradition.
“We are forgetting,” Modesta told me, “and you must know how.”
“I see (lavalava weaving) as a part of me as a person,” Regina said. It would be an embarrassment to a girl’s family if she did now know how to weave.
Originally, lavalavas were woven from banana or hibiscus fibers and later from agave fibers. In the late 1950s, weavers began using commercially-manufactured imported thread. The idea of using store-bought thread was introduced by an American Jesuit priest, and it proved very popular as it allowed weavers to create softer, more colorful skirts and eliminated the time-consuming work of preparing and dying natural fibers. Although today most weavers buy commercial thread, Modesta told me that one of her most exciting recent discoveries was when she interviewed an older weaver who remembered the traditional methods of coloring lavalava thread, including using a special type of dirt found on the main island of Yap.
On Ulithi, lavalavas skirts are still worn on a daily basis and are certainly the correct thing to wear for ceremonies and special events. However lavalavas are much more than clothing: they carry with them important spiritual and social functions and play significant parts during rites of passage. For example, it would be unthinkable to bury someone without including a lavalava, which functions as more than a shroud. Social and family disputes often need to be resolved with the gift of a lavalava. Marriages and births also are marked by the gift of lavalavas.
Historically, lavalavas were also exchanged in trade for land, although this is rarely done today.
Both men and women wear lavalavas, but weaving is done exclusively by women. It requires tremendous skill, work and patience.
This project will help preserve the history and importance of lavalavas so that Ulithian “daughters and nieces wherever it is they may reside away from the islands (can) hold tight to their islands roots and foundations so that they may not be lost to us.”
- The author, Nancy Groce, is a Senior Folklife Specialist at the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.