Fānanaua

Ethics education in an indigenous Solomon Islands clan

Abstract

A key reason for many leadership development programmes in Pacific Islands countries is to teach ethics to Pacific Islands leaders. However, as interventions, these programmes are exclusively reliant on Western ideas about ethics and ethics education. To counter such impositions, this paper discusses the nature of indigenous clan ethics and how ethics education is undertaken in an indigenous Solomon Islands clan. Based on an insider-research project of the Gula'alā people of the Solomon Islands, the paper reports on the differences of indigenous ethics education to how ethics is taught, as reported in the global literature and seen in leadership development programmes in Pacific Islands countries.