This is the language used in the bible, a language that also resonates with Pacific islanders. Most traditional cultures in Oceania, which also lacked rights language, employed the same devices for safeguarding the respect owed human persons. The norms for justice may not be codified, but they exist in oral form throughout the Pacific. Land boundary markers should not be moved. Mechanisms were established for safeguarding the legitimate claims of those without power, usually by placing them under the protection of others, sometimes through adoption or by fashioning a client relationship with those who can provide for them.
Most Pacific islands have strong traditions of compassion and respect.
I have often seen islanders melt when observing a person in real need, whether that person might need a place to stay for a month, a loan of hundreds of dollars, or a job to feed his family. One of the toughest men I knew in Chuuk told me that once when visiting Tijuana, Mexico, he saw some youth scavenging in garbage cans for something to eat. He left the cantina in which he was eating, opened his wallet and handed the kids a twenty dollar bill. His response was typical of the people with whom I have been working all these years. He might have responded to a challenge in the old warrior mode, but when faced with those who made no claims upon him except by virtue of their need, he responded with characteristic Pacific largesse.