“Feeding the People”
Owning the 120 foot custom net had been contingent on simultaneously owning the canoe large enough to transport it. Village leaders including the net specialist/owner, must still possess such a mighty canoe. Always prized, the giant dugout imbues the owner with powers parallel to the alata and the net itself for “saving people” and “feeding the people.”
The giant canoe has been critical during cyclones, war, and times of sickness to move people to safety. It carries the dead home, as well as to the graveyard on the mainland. And for islanders, much like a truck in the world of roads, it performs essential heavy duties such as transporting house posts, fat pigs, the 30 gallon fuel drums, and 50 kg sacks of rice and flour. When people must travel in groups, they turn to this canoe owner who gains political prestige, alliances, and perhaps direct compensation for providing transportation for the people.
A canoe giant has required a massive tree, found either growing on clan land, or by paying another clan for their tree. And one must then be able to organize labor to first hollow and then haul the rough leviathan down to the seashore, a process that can take up to two days, depending on the tree’s distance up in the steep hills, the group's skills, and the tides.
Resource competition due to overpopulation includes competing for the ever scarcer huge trees. Where rain forests were thinning in the in the 1970s, satellite images on Google Earth as of 2014 show fragile red earth. Fanalei's chiefly clan owns more land, as well as alata, than other clans so has kept control of production. In a parallel to marine tenure, clan members must block others from felling trees and gardening on their land without seeking customary permission.