S. Pacific Island Harbors Egalitarian Society, Anthropologist Says : Research: Maria Lepowsky describes Vanatinai, between New Guinea and Australia, in her book, ‘Fruit of the Motherland.’ ‘Women are considered the life-givers and men are the death-givers, and life is more important,’ she says.

NEW YORK — Maria Lepowsky, anthropologist, set out to find her very own island.

“I was also interested in a place that essentially was egalitarian, but how do you know if you haven’t been there? Every coral rock in the Pacific Ocean has had an anthropologist on it,” she said with a laugh.

Lepowsky spent hours in libraries searching and found her island, Vanatinai, between New Guinea and Australia, where men and women lived side by side in an almost egalitarian society.

“There was an absence of male superiority. The only edge was polygamy, but that was rarely practiced,” she wrote in “Fruit of the Motherland,” published by Columbia University Press.

It was a society where gender almost did not exist, which interested her most. But, as often as not, the most powerful person in one of the many tiny hamlets that dot the 500-square-mile island was a middle-aged woman.

It was an unusual world.

Snakes were sacred; sorcery was practiced. A few natives ran into the woods when they saw Lepowsky because of the belief that their spirits turned white and went to America when they died. Some would brush her skin to see if her pale color would rub off. Most just stood around and murmured to each other when she arrived.

She was 27 in 1977 when she first went to Vanatinai, a small remote island of 2,000 just southeast of New Guinea. On maps it is called Sudest, but the islanders’ name translates to Motherland.

It is the largest island of the Louisiade Archipelago, the chain of islands that separates the Solomon Sea from the Coral Sea.

Lepowsky, now 43, stayed a few years and went back for two months in 1981 and three months in 1987.

She was surprised to find oldtimers who remembered the battle of the Coral Sea that raged above their heads in 1942 and teen-agers wearing T-shirts with pictures of Bruce Lee or Muhammad Ali, and one man with a shirt that said, “Hobie surfboards, Newport Beach, Calif.”

She suffered bouts of malaria, pneumonia and a dental abscess. The nearest telephone was 200 miles away and the closest two-way radio 17 miles away. She was taken by canoe to a Catholic mission on a nearby island where she was injected with anti-malarial drugs.

Lepowsky became attached to many of the people and is planning to return during her sabbatical this year from the University of Wisconsin, where she is an associate professor of anthropology.

When she first arrived, few people spoke English and her first chore was to learn the language. It was not easy. She was the first outsider to master one of the nine or more dialects, which are largely mutually intelligible. The language is similar to Polynesian and Indonesian. She could speak one dialect, but only understand the others.

In fact, the history of the island was primarily an oral one, although Lepowsky did find writings from sea captains and other Europeans who sold tobacco to extract gold on the island.

Islanders still pan for gold today, but a mother lode was never found. The islanders also differed physically before any foreign influences arrived to contaminate them.

The first Europeans to set foot on the island 140 years ago reported the people ranged from very dark-skinned people less than 5 feet in height to taller, brown-skinned individuals with long, wavy hair.

It is a matrilineal society, where men and women perform nearly the same tasks. Vanatinai people say the central position of women is taubwaragha, which means both “ancient” and “the way of the ancestors.”

While men are in general sorcerers, women are counter-sorcerers. “Women are considered the life-givers and men are the death-givers,” Lepowsky said, “and life is more important.”

Still, the islanders believe that all deaths are caused by sorcery.

Women primarily control the bulk of the wealth of the island, which are the yam gardens, and are responsible for the elaborate mortuary feasts. At least one woman must stay in total mourning for one year, covering herself in ashes and living in nearly total seclusion. It is an honor to be the hostess of the feast.

Lepowsky continued to be amazed at some of the folklore of the island. When she returned the second time she was asked by a close friend if she would someday die. She suggested the friend prick her skin to see if she bled, the same as they did. Still, the notion of her comparative immortality was one she never completely overcame.

The average life expectancy in New Guinea is 48 and Lepowsky assumes it is the same on her island. Childbirth, malaria, respiratory disease and pneumonia are the most frequent killers. It is a polygamous society, but more often relationships remain monogamous. Lepowsky said that one man informed his wife he was bringing home a second wife and she announced she was leaving. He changed his mind.

The delicacy of the island--the one item the young anthropologist could not bring herself to eat--was a sago grub, a large maggot that islanders pluck from trees and eat raw and wiggly.

“They are delicious fried, but that was as far as I could go,” she said.

So far, AIDS has not hit the island, although there are some isolated cases in nearby New Guinea. Given the joyful participation in premarital sex that exists, AIDS could devastate the population.

The island is far more gentle today than it was in times past. In 1910, a notorious individual who beat the islanders and stole from them was finally slain by the warriors and he was cannibalized. He was boiled and his brains were served to the victors.

The island, first British, then Australian, gained independence in 1976.

Lepowsky is working on a second book about the natives’ encounters with Europeans, Australians and Americans. They seem to have liked the Americans the most because the GIs handed out bed sheets, cigarettes and food.

The military was not actually on Vanatinai, but on nearby larger islands during World War II. Some of the young men of Sudest were conscripted and were surprised that some of the GIs were black men. It was the first time they had seen a black foreigner.

The people smoke, but rarely drink. Occasionally beer is brought back from New Guinea, but because everything is communal, it does not last long. The people are fascinated with America and well-versed in the trips to the moon. They believe the landings caused a recent eclipse.

Who knows?

Maybe a civilization that has survived pirate attacks, aerial battles and constant disease has a wisdom beyond that found in books.