Pem Graon: Customary tenants in the case of Tebakor, Port Vila, Vanuatu

Where cities sit on indigenous land, there will be tension between preserving indigenous land rights and finding a way for anyone who is non-indigenous to access the city. Governments must find a way to navigate these tensions. This paper distinguishes forms of customary tenure from introduced forms, and further describes how conflating these forms threatens communities in Port Vila and other places where custom governs how land is owned and used. Pem graon is perhaps the most-common form of tenure in urban Vanuatu in recent times. We argue in this paper that misunderstandings between the market-oriented construct, rent , and these custom-oriented constructs of tenure, have profound consequences for communities in Port Vila. We identify the source of these misunderstandings in the international impetus to protect customary landowners from dispossession. Our case illustrates the tension between the right to the city as a national resource, and the preservation of indigenous land rights. Each time a customary process is undermined, the global understanding of tenure further collapses to a unitary idea based on rent and private property. This paper aims to describe alternative tenure systems and explain how they are being undermined, so that thoughtful governments and communities can challenge their dissolution. • Where cities sit on indigenous land, there will be tension between indigenous land rights and land for everyone else • The dispossession literature focuses on customary landowners; the literature addressing customary tenancies is small. • We describe alternative, indigenous models for non-owners establishing tenure in a Pacific city. • We argue that the courts can fail to recognise the customary land relations, focusing instead on the colonised idea, rent. • Future urban policy could focus on clarifying customary tenancy arrangements for urban land.