ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with understanding the efforts of local people to establish identity and worth in complex contexts of disparate power. It shows that Karavarans shaping and pursuing their objectives in order to enhance identity and worth in a manner they would regard as insistent but not as unreasonable. Several Karavarans told that Karavaran dissatisfaction had been ex acerbated by a local leader whose in-married brother-in-law was promoting his own scheme for developing tourism on Kambakon. The "bloody-minded" were especially likely to be the natives in between, half-transfigured, sometimes half-educated. Their Eden had been shattered, their tradition broken, but their transformation into modernity remained incomplete. The chapter also shows that one thing learned about Karavarans and other Duke of York Islanders as they have determined, negotiated, and pursued their aspirations and interests in long-term engagement with powerful others is that they are comprehensible as people with the ambition and capacity to shape their own lives.
