# “Sun brings all things”: Sun and moon lore as biocultural knowledge on Aneityum island, Vanuatu

## TL;DR

This paper explores how Aneityum islanders in Vanuatu use traditional Sun and Moon lore to guide sustainable living and environmental practices.

## Contribution

The study contributes new ethnographic insights into biocultural knowledge systems centered on celestial bodies in Vanuatu.

## Key findings

- Aneityum islanders use Sun and Moon lore to inform agriculture, fishing, and health practices.
- Traditional knowledge is communicated orally and is vital for biodiversity conservation.
- Globalization threatens the continuity of these biocultural practices.

## Abstract

Across the Pacific, traditional myths and contemporary narratives describe the origins, animacy, and importance to daily human activities of the Sun and Moon. In Vanuatu, Indigenous local knowledge systems interpret ways that the Sun and Moon interact with humans and plants to achieve productive and sustainable lifeways. In this ethnographic study, we explore how residents of Aneityum Island perceive and narrate the Sun and Moon’s interactions with animals, humans, and plants. We consider the influence of the Sun and Moon on domains of daily life on Aneityum, including agriculture, architecture, fishing, health care, navigation, time-reckoning, and diverse ritual activities. Aneityum islanders possess generationally accumulated understandings of their relationship to the environment, framed within the local cosmology and communicated orally. Sun and Moon lore—as expressed through myths and stories—directly informs Aneityumese people’s actions and efforts at sustainable living, survival technologies, and biodiversity conservation on land and sea. This body of knowledge reveals the causes and manifestations of natural phenomena, and strategies for responding to their impacts. Due to the influences of globalization, many biocultural tools that focus on Sun and Moon lore are at risk of being forgotten. The Aneityumese people—aided by outside experts—are undertaking efforts to document and revitalize this knowledge to ensure the continuity of their resilient and sustainable lifeways.