Debunking Pacific utopias : Chief Roi Mata's domain and the re-imagining of people and place in Vanuatu

The view of Pacific island countries (PICs) as paradise has persisted since the arrival of Europeans over two centuries ago (Daws, 1980; Connell, 2003). Juxtaposed against utopian ideals is the reality that island countries in the region labour under a multiplicity of serious threats including climate change, economic vulnerability, political upheaval and persistent underdevelopment. Yet the paradise narrative endures in the imaginings of people and place, most notably through tourism destination marketing that constructs and manipulates place image. Associated with this has been the attendant fetishising of islanders as stereotypical noble or ignoble savages (Campbell, 1980; Fry, 1996), or their infantilisation as congenial, subaltern hosts, reinforcing notions of Pacific island communities as a latter-day Shangri-La in the Pacific (Douglas, 1997). In stark contrast, PIC prehistory suggests that islanders had enormous resilience, ingenuity, fierce warrior cultures and a reputation as seafarers of enormous competence and sophistication - attributes far removed from the docile and indigent exemplifications of recent times