The role of indigenous diplomacy in the success of the 1997 Burnham talks

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Abstract

This chapter analyses how indigenous diplomacy shaped the success of the 1997 Burnham peace talks that helped end the Bougainville Civil War. I argue that Melanesian trautim and Māori pōwhiri operated as substantive diplomatic practices that reconfigured relationships, lent legitimacy, and secured commitment in ways conventional negotiation models could not. The chapter finds that, alongside ripeness theory, indigenous diplomacy provides a more complete explanation for the durability of the Burnham outcomes and demonstrates the diplomatic power of culturally-grounded Pacific practices.

Citation

Jayden Evett. “The role of indigenous diplomacy in the success of the 1997 Burnham talks.” In Oceanic Diplomacy: Reasserting indigenous pathways through the contemporary Pacific, edited by Salā George Carter, Greg Fry, and Gordon Nanau. Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, University of Canterbury, 2025.

@inbook{evett2025c,
    title = "The role of indigenous diplomacy in the success of the 1997 Burnham talks",
    author = "Jayden Evett", 
    chapter = "17",
    pages   = "355–384",
    year    = "2025",
    publisher = "Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, University of Canterbury",