maneaban.

1944 G. H. Eastman Front Line Islands 5 Landing at Nui Island we proceeded as our custom was to the public maneaba (meeting-house), where the Resident Commissioner spoke to the people.

1944 G. H. Eastman Front Line Islands 10 Our people at Hull Island..have recently erected a large new maneaba, which is now used as school house and for women's meetings and various other community gatherings.

1952 A. Grimble Pattern of Islands ii. 58 Every Gilbertese village of any size had its own maneaba, or speak-house, in those days.

1970 A. Coates Western Pacific Islands viii. 63 In the absence of any king, the wise men conducted affairs in their council house—manéaba—their jurisdiction extending just as far as was acceptable, which usually meant to the limits of the land occupied by the clans whose senior members had a reserved place in the manéaba, which is somewhat like a hereditary parliament, with the important—and very Pacific—exception that all decisions must be taken on the basis of unanimity.

1974 National Geographic Dec. 753/2 Once ashore, I was escorted to the large meetinghouse, the maneaba, with thatched eaves that stood only four feet above the ground and a roof that soared upward to a crisscross of massive beams a full forty feet overhead.