SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang

3
Transactional Symbolism in Belauan
Mortuary Rites
We people are clever in fixing what is becoming too long
We lessen what is getting too big, and what is growing too long we cut short
This making smaller and making shorter balances out
But death is the one thing about which there is nothing that can be done
When I was growing up 1 yearned to see the world
Cursed and now dead, death is all that remains
If it was human, seen by us, we would lash the canoe board and
anchor the world
These houses and the chebtui-tree on the hillside are just the same
Who is going to sneak away, passing by this way or that?
If one goes around death, then we just travel in circles
Death still tips us over in the end
These mothers who bore us exhausted themselves giving answer to
the falsehood
That we would not become people wiped out together by sickness
Death is all that remains
If it was human, seen by us, we would lash the canoe board and
anchor the world
These houses and the chebtui-tree on the hillside are just the same
Who is .going to sneak away, passing by this way or that?
If one goes around death, then we just travel in circles
Death still tips us over in the end
—Augustin Krämer (1917-29, 4:297-98; my trans.)
Responses to Death
1 HEDEATHOF a mature, married person in Belau (Palau) in western Micronesia
sets into motion a series of ritual processes which regulate the successive termination
of four aspects of the deceased's social status: as a "titleholder" (male
rubak and female mechas), as a living human being, as a senior kinsperson, and
as a "spouse" (buch). 1
Correspondingly, the ritual action, lasting in some cases
as long as six months, (1) transfers the male or female title (dui) to a successor,
(z) transforms the dead person's dangerously proximate "ghost" (deleb) into a
controllable yet distant "ancestral spirit" (bladek), (3) redraws the ties of kinship
solidarity and affection among the living, and (4) channels the inheritance of
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