On Tanna, Vanuatu, an island in Oceania, the sun is more than a source of life, it’s a cultural cornerstone of the Indigenous people. Viewed as a living, interactive being, the sun serves as a connection between all living things. It grants the requests of Tanna’s tupunus (or spiritual “workers”), influences agricultural cycles, determines the placement of homes and gardens, and shapes cultural practices like timekeeping and ceremonies.

Professor of Linguistics K. David Harrison recently co-authored an article based on original ethnographic and ethnobotanical research, exploring these dynamics.

“I was fortunate to spend time in Vanuatu working with local environmental experts, who shared some of their knowledge. Together we created Talking Dictionaries for eight Vanuatu languages, which are hosted at Swarthmore College, and we co-authored several scientific papers,” says Harrison.

Published in the peer-reviewed, open access journal PLOS One, the article entitled “‘The children of the Sun and Moon are the gardens’—How people, plants, and a living sun shape life on Tanna, Vanuatu,” highlights the sun’s historical and contemporary significance in Tanna. Through interviews with residents, Harrison and his colleagues recorded oral narratives that reveal the evolving role of the sun alongside shifts in linguistic, cultural, and agricultural practices.

Harrison and his team combined anthropology, botany, and linguistics to explore how ecology and culture are interconnected with daily life on the island. The oral histories they recorded explain how natural phenomena shape not only what people eat and how they cultivate their land, but also their spiritual beliefs and social practices.

The sun has an immense impact on the lives of Tanna residents: It sustains the gardens that feed the community and also has the power to destroy these very gardens with scorching heat. In some narratives, the sun is viewed as an active, personified character; in other contexts, the sun is an object created and controlled by greater powers.

The narratives also highlight Indigenous scientific practices. Elders explained how the position of the sun is tracked using natural landmarks, trees, and even flowers that signal specific times of day or shifts in seasons.

Harrison’s work documenting the plant, fungal, and linguistic diversity of the country’s Tafea Province began in 2017. It is part of a four-year project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Velux Stiftung. Velux funding was awarded through the New York Botanical Garden’s Center for Economic Botany, where Harrison is an honorary researcher, and Swarthmore served as a sub-grantee.