# Cannibalism in Oceania

Cannibalism in Oceania is well documented for many parts of this region, with reports ranging from the early modern period to, in a few cases, the 21st century. Some archaeological evidence has also been found. Human cannibalism in Melanesia and Polynesia was primarily associated with war, with victors eating the vanquished, while in Australia it was often a contingency for hardship to avoid starvation.
Cannibalism used to be widespread in parts of Fiji (once nicknamed the "Cannibal Isles"), among the Māori people of New Zealand, and in the Marquesas Islands. It was also practised in New Guinea and in parts of the Solomon Islands, and human flesh was sold at markets in some Melanesian islands. Cannibalism was still practised in Papua New Guinea as of 2012, for cultural reasons.

## Australia

While it is generally accepted that some forms of cannibalism were practised in Australia in certain circumstances, the prevalence and meaning of such acts in pre-colonial Aboriginal societies are disputed. Reported cases of cannibalism indicate that that small children were sometimes killed and eaten (infanticide) as a means of population control and that burial cannibalism was widely practised. Community members killed during ritual initiation ceremonies as well as enemy warriors slain in battle were sometimes eaten.
In the late 1920s, the anthropologist Géza Róheim heard from Aboriginals that infanticidal cannibalism had been practised especially during droughts. "Years ago it had been custom for every second child to be eaten" – the baby was roasted and consumed not only by the mother, but also by the older siblings, who benefited from this meat during times of food scarcity. One woman told him that her little sister had been roasted, but denied having eaten of her. Another "admitted having killed and eaten her small daughter", and several other people he talked to remembered having "eaten one of their brothers". The consumption of infants took two different forms, depending on where it was practised:
   When the Yumu, Pindupi, Ngali, or Nambutji were hungry, they ate small children with neither ceremonial nor animistic motives. Among the southern tribes, the Matuntara, Mularatara, or Pitjentara, every second child was eaten in the belief that the strength of the first child would be doubled by such a procedure.
Usually only babies who had not yet received a name (which happened around the first birthday) were consumed, but in times of severe hunger, older children (up to four years or so) could be killed and eaten too, though people tended to have bad feelings about this. Babies were killed by their mother, while a bigger child "would be killed by the father by being beaten on the head".
Historian William Rubinstein writes that both "deliberate infanticide" and "the practice of the cannibalism of a murdered baby [were] apparently common" in Australia. A number of reports indicate that newborn infants were sometimes killed by their mothers, who then feed the flesh to an older sibling in order to strengthen the older child in that way. The Norwegian ethnographer Carl Sofus Lumholtz confirms that infants were commonly killed and eaten especially in times of food scarcity. He notes that people spoke of such acts "as an everyday occurrence, and not at all as anything remarkable."
Another frequently reported practise was funerary endocannibalism, the cooking and consumption of the deceased as a funerary rite.

### New Guinea

As in some other New Guinean societies, the Urapmin people engaged in cannibalism in war. Notably, the Urapmin also had a system of food taboos wherein dogs could not be eaten and they had to be kept from breathing on food, unlike humans who could be eaten and with whom food could be shared.
The Korowai tribe of south-eastern Papua could be one of the last surviving tribes in the world engaging in cannibalism.
A local cannibal cult killed and ate victims as late as 2012.

### Fiji

One tribal chief, Ratu Udre Udre in Rakiraki, Fiji, is said to have consumed 872 people and to have made a pile of stones to record his achievement. Fiji was nicknamed the "Cannibal Isles" by European sailors, who avoided disembarking there.

## Polynesia
### New Zealand

The first encounter between Europeans and Māori may have involved cannibalism of a Dutch sailor. In June 1772, the French explorer Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne and 26 members of his crew were killed and eaten in the Bay of Islands. In an 1809 incident known as the Boyd massacre, about 66 passengers and crew of the Boyd were killed and eaten in Whangaroa, Northland.
Cannibalism was a regular practice in Māori wars. In one instance, on 11 July 1821, warriors from the Ngāpuhi tribe killed 2,000 enemies and remained on the battlefield "eating the vanquished until they were driven off by the smell of decaying bodies". Māori warriors fighting the New Zealand government in Tītokowaru's War on the North Island in 1868–1869 revived ancient rites of cannibalism as part of a radical interpretation of the Pai Mārire religion.
According to the historian Paul Moon, the corpses of enemies were eaten out of rage and in order to humiliate them. Moon has criticized other historians for ignoring Māori cannibalism or even claiming that it never happened, despite an "overwhelming" amount of evidence to the contrary. Margaret Mutu, professor of Māori studies at the University of Auckland, agrees that "cannibalism was widespread throughout New Zealand" and that "it was part of our [Māori] culture", but warns that it can be hard for non-Māori to correctly understand and interpret such customs due to a lack of contextual knowledge, though she did not elaborate on what knowledge they might lack.
Australian cultural anthropologist Russ Bowden wrote that:
   Apart from the passing European, however, Maori cannibalism, like its Aztec counterpart, was practised exclusively on traditional enemies – i.e., on members of other tribes and hapuu. To use the jargon, the Maori were exo- rather than endocannibals. By their own account, they did it for purposes of revenge: to kill and eat a man was the most vengeful and degrading thing one person could do to another."
   In addition to eating the bodies of enemies slain in battle, one way in which an injury could be avenged was by digging up a corpse belonging to the offender's group and eating it. Stafford in his history of the Te Arawa tribe describes how the Ngati Whakaue chief Manawa revenged the killing, by some Ngati Raukawa tribesmen, of people who had been staying with him as guests. Manawa went to a Ngati Rau burial ground and dug up the corpse of a man who he knew had been recently buried there; he took the body home, cooked and ate it. Afterwards, Stafford writes he made the bones into "utensils".

### Marquesas Islands

The dense population of the Marquesas Islands, in what is now French Polynesia, was concentrated in narrow valleys, and consisted of warring tribes, who sometimes practised cannibalism on their enemies. Human flesh was called "long pig". Rubinstein writes:
   It was considered a great triumph among the Marquesans to eat the body of a dead man. They treated their captives with great cruelty. They broke their legs to prevent them from attempting to escape before being eaten, but kept them alive so that they could brood over their impending fate ... With this tribe, as with many others, the bodies of women were in great demand.