Pileni paualala. Dried giant clams in the Reef Islands

The Reef Islands Ethnographic Film Project was started in 1994 by the two anthropologists, Jens Pinholt and Peter I. Crawford, and village communities in Bekapoa, Ngasinue/Fenualoa and Vaiakau. Field and film visits took place in 1994, 1995-1998, 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2017. This film is based on one such visit in June 2015, by Peter I. Crawford and Birgitte Hansen, a nutrition expert. The focus was on a diachronic study of nutrition, collecting information in three villages and comparing it with material from the 1970s and the 1990s. Pileni was one of the villages.

Pileni is a so-called Polynesian outlier. Although the atoll is located outside the main reef lagoon, it forms part of the Reef Islands, Temotu Province, Solomon Islands. A clam shell is called paua and the dried meat called paualala. In this case it is the meat of huetea or giant clam (tridacna gigas). An entrepreneurial young man, John Knoxson, helped by family and friends, has found an innovative way of earning some cash income from what nature provides.