Abstract:

The Ivatan notion of a vanua (port) has linguistic connections to thewider Austronesian world. This article explores the term vanua in the verb form Mayvanuvanua or “making a port,” which refers to a sacrificial rite performed at the beginning of the summer fishing season by mataw fishers in Batanes. “Making the vanua” reproduces port polities of fishers competing to attract and successfully capture the fish dorado for a limited (seasonal) period of time. The article outlines the rite’s symbolic elements and shows ethnographically the resulting collective as an organized group of fishers under a system of government, and moreover one which also relates to two other kinds of social groups in Batanes life: cooperative work groups (payuhwan) as well as groups of persons that drink together.

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