Tea and Tinned Fish: Christianity,Consumption and the Nation in Papua New Guinea

This paper explores the intersection of consumption, Christianity and the nation in Western Province, Papua New Guinea. It examines the significance of the adoption of European‐introduced clothing and the consumption of trade store foods like tea, tinned fish, rice, sugar and tinned milk for Gogodala communities of PNG. Although initially disgusted by the idea of consuming substances that seemed reminiscent of mother's milk, Gogodala now embrace trade store foods with enthusiasm. The paper traces the transformation of Gogodala attitudes to such products in terms of the development of a ‘national culture’ as well as a more globalising Christianity. It suggests that, for the Gogodala, consumption is an arena for what Foster has termed ‘everyday nation making’. Yet, in this case, ‘the nation’ is understood and realised through a metaphoric association with Christian others, particularly Europeans. The basis of national subjectivity for the Gogodala, then, is an enduring relationship between Gogodala and expatriate Europeans.     

‘Turning Sex into a Game’: Gogodala Men's Response to the AIDS Epidemic and Condom Promotion in Rural Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT Rugby league is the national sport of Papua New Guinea and the game's huge popularity and international profile has been used in recent condom promotion campaigns in the nation's fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In this paper, I argue that the promotion of condom use through rugby league requires a national campaign strategy that includes understandings of condom use and masculinity at the rural level. I demonstrate this through a study of Gogodala men's understandings of the epidemic and condom use in Western Province. The Gogodala are a Christian‐based society and many blame the national condom promotion strategy for an increase in promiscuity and for ‘turning sex into a game’. Condom availability in this rural area continues to be restricted to a family planning program that promotes Christian values and excludes unmarried men. I explore the male condom dilemma where young men are more concerned with avoiding accusations that their sexual behaviour puts them at risk of contracting HIV despite acknowledging the preventative value of using condoms. In this context young men disassociate themselves from the disease and condom use through a process of calculated risk or risk minimisation.     

‘Smoke in the Hills,Gunfire in the Valley’: War and Peace in Western Highlands,Papua New Guinea

The paper discusses accounts of recent tribal fighting and peacemaking processes in the Nebilyer Valley, Western Highlands, Papua New Guinea. My analysis is based on interviews conducted in January 2000 with Ganiga, and other peoples, who featured in Connolly and Anderson's film ‘Black Harvest’. I examine different strategies of peacemaking and peacekeeping employed in relation to the Nebilyer war, particularly the efforts of local Christian church representatives. I also explore how people in the Nebilyer Valley, construct particular events as significant, and the relevance of these constructions in processes of peace making.     

Gogodala Canoe Festivals,Customary Ways and Cultural Tourism in Papua New Guinea

Gogodala Canoe Festivals, held in the Western Province of Papua New Guinea, are important and recurrent regional events that constitute as well as reiterate and reconfigure local relatedness as sites of potential engagement between Gogodala villagers and foreign tourists. Canoe races have been part of Gogodala practice since before the 1900s, when early colonial administrators noted the presence of magnificently painted and carved racing canoes. Since then, racing canoes have been part of local and exogenous discourses about culture and identity in colonial and postcolonial PNG. This paper explores the extent to which Gogodala Canoe Festivals, while primarily regional events concerned with relationships between people, groups and villages, are also designed to attract foreign tourists and as such constitute moments of potential relatedness outside of the region. In a wider sense, the paper explores these festivals as one way in which Gogodala engage global others through the establishment of a network of potential relationships based on ‘customary’ practices and objects.     

The Missing Rib: Mobilizing Church Women for Change in Papua New Guinea

This paper examines the particular shape taken by a modern instance of ‘Third World’ feminism. In Papua New Guinea, an emerging nexus between grassroots female activism and Christian churches is helping to liberate and empower some female citizens in a state which in practice has neglected women's interests and gender relations despite early national rhetoric about the importance of women to nation‐building. Tracing the origins of modern women's fellowship groups to the early work of female missionaries with indigenous women, the paper considers the increasing politicization of women's organizations during the last two decades as they expand their ‘traditional’ preoccupation with spiritual, domestic, and welfare matters to embrace wider social, political, and human rights issues. In the course of surveying church women's groupings in Papua New Guinea, the paper looks specifically at the National Council of Women, women's groups in East New Britain Province, the United Church Women's Fellowship, and women's involvements in the developing ecumenical movement. The paper concludes by contrasting the class dimensions of grassroots Christian women's activism to official denial of the existence of class differentiation or exploitation in this purportedly egalitarian Melanesian state.     

Sit,Cook, Eat,Full Stop: Religion and the Rejection of Ritual in Auhelawa (Papua New Guinea)

ABSTRACT The Auhelawa people of Normanby Island (Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea) typically observe the death of an individual through a series of feasts in which the lineage of the deceased and its lateral relatives exchange food and perform rituals of mourning. Recently, a number of people have decided to reject all forms of ‘custom’ in favor of a practice of ‘Christian custom’ in which no food is exchanged and no rituals are performed. This paper examines the way people view custom and its Christian alternative. It argues that the basis for Christian forms of mortuary feasting is a shift away from thinking of feasts in terms of reciprocity and towards thinking of them in terms of traditional customary rules. In this context, active church members have begun to represent the absence of markers of custom as itself a marker of an alternative Christian custom. I argue that this reformulation of the relationship of custom and change is meant to give concrete form to the value of Christian individualism as the basis for sociality. The paper then concludes that in order to explain historical changes in ritual systems, the study of ritual needs to examine ritual in relation to the values that underlie it.     

Warrior Women,the Holy Spirit and HIV/AIDS in Rural Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT This article analyses a group of Gogodala Christian women in the Western Province of Papua New Guinea who are referred to as ‘Warrior women’ and who pray, sing and call upon the Holy Spirit to cleanse their own bodies and ‘turn their eyes’, so that they are able to see those who threaten the health and well‐being of the wider community. These women have focused primarily on bringing male practitioners of magic — iwai dala — shadowy and powerful men who operate covertly and away from the gaze of others, out into the open. Whilst this has been happening for many years, the spread of HIV and AIDS into the area, fuelled by what many in the area believe is the rise of unrestrained female and male sexuality and the waning of Christian practice and principles, has meant that those perceived to bring harm to the community through their sexual behaviour have become recent targets for Warrior women. HIV/AIDS, referred to in Gogodala as melesene bininapa gite tila gi — the ‘sickness without medicine’ — is understood as a hidden sickness, one that makes its way through the community without trace until people become visibly ill. Warrior women seek to make both AIDS and those who, through their behaviour, encourage or enable its spread more visible. In the process, however, a small number of them are overcome by the Holy Spirit, so much so that they become daeledaelenapa — mad ‐ their behaviour increasingly characterised by childishness and uncontrolled sexuality.     

Great Ancestral Women: Sexuality,Gendered Mobility,and HIV among the Bamu and Gogodala of Papua New Guinea

Faced with a potentially devastating epidemic of HIV/AIDS in Papua New Guinea (PNG), sexuality and mobility have become a focus of national research and prevention programs. In Gogodala and Bamu communities in the Western Province, gendered mobility and sexuality intersect with ancestral narratives that form part of a wider series of Hero Tales found in the southern regions of PNG and Irian Jaya. In this paper we highlight the way these stories detail the travels and activities of female ancestors – known as Sagalu among the Bamui and Sawiya among the Gogodala. We outline the way such ancestral figures are now linked to understandings of contemporary STIs such HIV/AIDS as well as gendered mobility and sexuality more generally. Among the Bamu such links are sometimes directly asserted, with Sagalu represented as the origin if not cause of a uniquely defined variant of HIV/AIDS. Among the Gogodala, however, HIV/AIDS is predominantly understood as something external to the Gogodala and unrelated to ancestors like Sawiya. To explain this difference we note that, historically, Gogodala women have been less mobile and less transactable than their Bamu counterparts who have continued to enact unique understandings of the intersection of heterosexual marriage, gendered mobility, and illness. We argue that the mobility and sexuality of gendered ancestors is salient to understanding these contemporary enactments and their potential implications in light of the HIV epidemic in PNG.     

Noble Traditions and Christian Principles: The Integral Spirituality of Bernard Narokobi

ABSTRACT

This article describes some of the major events in the Catholic Church in Papua New Guinea (PNG) following the Second Vatican Council, the ‘self study’ of the church in PNG in the 1970s, and the General Assembly of 2003–4. An outcome of the self study was the establishment of a national Catholic council in which Bernard Narokobi played a significant role. The article continues with a reflection on how Narokobi’s promotion of Melanesian spirituality finds links with a Catholic theology of grace and sacrament and how these two contribute to his understanding of the dual pillars of the PNG Constitution with its noble traditions and Christian principles coming together in the ideal of integral human development. The article lays out different ways Bernard Narokobi was formally involved with the church over his lifetime and how his bringing together of Melanesian experience and Christian faith provided a model for the integral liberation he envisaged and expressed – both in his work in the church and in the National Goals and Directive Principles of the PNG Constitution.     

Nupela Masta? Local and Expatriate Labour in a Chinese-Run Nickel Mine in Papua New Guinea 1

Abstract

Studies of mining projects in Papua New Guinea, since the development of the Panguna copper mine in Bougainville during the 1960s, have contributed to our understanding of the politics of interactions between resource companies, host governments and landowners. The Ramu Nickel mine, situated in northern Papua New Guinea, is China’s largest investment in the Pacific to date at US$1.4 billion. The project is managed by a state-owned enterprise, China Metallurgical Corporation, and financed by China ExIm Bank. This venture presents an opportunity to understand Chinese resource investment in a comparative perspective. While many issues, such as conflict over land, internal migration, and the limited involvement of the Papua New Guinean state, are constant, one aspect specific to Chinese resource investment is the use (or non-use) of host country labour, and the high proportion of Chinese labour employed at the mine sites. This practice differs from the relatively limited, short-term use of expatriate labour common to Western mining projects in developing countries. The attitudes and experiences of local and Chinese workers and managers will be examined to determine what is new in this approach to resource extraction.     

Torres Strait and Dawdhay: Dimensions of Self and Otherness on Yam Island1

When Papua New Guinea attained independence two decades ago an absolute distinction was created between Papua New Guinea and the Torres Strait: Papuans were firmly placed in Papua New Guinea territory and Torres Strait Islanders in Australian territory. In constituting themselves as Torres Strait Islanders and more specifically as Australians, Yam Island people's contemporary expressions of their connection to, yet distance from, lowland Papua New Guinea can be best described as ambivalent, pulsing between identification and incorporation, distance and disavowal. I argue that this ambivalence is not an artefact of the establishment of the border per se, but rather it was through the establishment of the border that a new layer was added to Self and Other constructions by Yam Island people in terms of how they see themselves and their Papuan neighbours. The sometimes fraught nature of this relationship can be understood in light of the continuing socio‐political impacts of these international border lines on people who have recently combined a somewhat legalistic and political definition of themselves, and of Papuans, with perennial extra‐legal definitions. I suggest it is in isolating and exploring domains of interaction that we can see the fluidity and dynamism of Self and Other definitions in operation, and in so doing better appreciate their essential imbrication.     

Petztorme Women: Responding to Change in Lihir,Papua New Guinea

The goldmining project on Lihir Island in New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea, has brought dramatic socio‐economic changes. In this matrilineal society, while women's economic contributions were substantial, their political status was not. Women's participation in decision‐making about the mine has been restricted, mainly because men have excluded them. The mining company established a women's section that has supported the development of women's organizations and a range of economic development projects. The women's organizations provide the context for new political roles for women but have experienced many setbacks that are common in such groups across Papua New Guinea. Through the Lihir experience in the first five years of the mine, this paper examines the tensions and divided loyalties that constrain women's organizations and often lead to the failure of income‐generating women's projects in Papua New Guinea.     

The Struggle to Establish Islam in Papua New Guinea (1976–83)

A vast literature about the religions and histories of Papua New Guinea (PNG) exists, but less than a handful of items mention the history of Islam or Muslims in PNG. This paper contributes to an initial attempt to establish a comprehensive historical account of Islam in PNG's broader history by detailing the formal establishment of Islam there from 1976 to 1983. Beginning with Islam's expatriate Muslim founders, it examines the challenges and events that led to the religion's institutionalisation and consolidation. This period of early effort provided the basis for a self-sustaining and, of late, growing religion. The ideational, material and migratory effects of globalisation and decolonisation appear as factors in the growth of Islam in PNG, despite persistent Christian resistance to its presence. The paper draws upon numerous unpublished archival records and interview data collected during fieldwork to PNG in 2007.     

The patrol officers and Tom Kabu

In 1946, Tom Kabu returned to the Gulf of Papua determined to reinvent the communities of the Purari Delta. A man of quiet determination, in the first few years he and his followers resisted the assistance of the Australian Administration in Papua and New Guinea. Kabu's popularity in the villages of the Purari, coupled with his independent stance, caused resentment within the local expatriate community. The field staff working for the Department of District Services and Native Affairs especially felt threatened by Kabu's influence and sought to regain government control by opposing his ventures. Through the study of patrol reports written by these officers, this paper seeks to examine the reasons for this resentment and the methods employed by the officers to crush Kabu's company.     

Regional History and Ethnic Identity in the Hub of New Guinea: the Emergence of the Min1

Recent approaches to the ethnography of Papua New Guinea stress the historicity of local cultures and their encompassment in larger fields of relations. In this paper I consider the historical and cultural background to the emergence of the ‘Min’ as a novel ethnic designation among the Mountain Ok peoples of the Fly-Sepik headwaters. While Min identity draws much of its impetus from responses to mining operations and resistance to provincial governments, it is also clear that it grows out of a complex interaction between pre-existing cultural identities, a history of colonial administration and Christian evangelism. Emerging at the intersection of local and global processes, Min identity constitutes a regionalization of ethnicity which has led to agitation for the creation of a Min province, producing a movement that may outlive its immediate political aims.     

Transformations of cultural heritage in Melanesia: from kastam to kalsa

In this article, I look at the reverberations of the global discourse about heritage at the margins of the global system in the Pacific. To this end, I analyse the development of indigenous concepts of cultural heritage on Baluan Island, in Manus Province, Papua New Guinea. I discuss how over the past 50?years two different heritage concepts have developed on the island, which have been used to reflect upon and direct cultural and social change. Further I show how the genesis and transformation of this local discourse about heritage is driven by local concerns and politics, as well as national and international developments.     

The Politics of Incorporation: Masculinity,Spatiality and Modernity among the Ngaing of Papua New Guinea

In this paper I argue that the way in which masculinity and spatiality are reconstituted among the Ngaing men of Madang Province (Papua New Guinea) is pivotally implicated in how they articulate their ongoing claim to incorporation in modernity. The manner in which they strive for progress is indicative of identifications coupling Christianity and whiteness with the hope of redemption from a condition of blackness, inferiority and marginality. With the help of recent discourses and secret ritual practices, in which Christian components combine with local cultural patterns, the men make clear that indigenous participation in modernity is prefigured on the inside of external manifestations of body and space. This discursive and ritual empowerment of the men rests on a culturally specific construction of the inside and the outside in which the knowledge, power and mobility possessed by whites are construed as an integral part of the local world.     

Study of the Technique and of the Materials of a 19th‐Century Polychrome Wood Mask from Papua New Guinea

This paper presents the results of the analysis carried out on a polychrome wood mask from Papua New Guinea during conservation work at Pigorini Museum's restoration laboratory. The significance of this study is that no prior work has characterized the painting materials of Papua New Guinea masks both with spectroscopic and internal microstratigraphic analysis. In fact, these objects were studied especially from an anthropological or conservative point of view and the wood was wrongly defined by its visual appearance. Microstratigraphic and spectroscopic investigations discovered a refined execution technique that up to now has not been demonstrated. The stratigraphy of the painted layers demonstrates a deep knowledge of the materials and of the application techniques on the part of the Papua New Guinea people, together with the ability to foresee the aesthetic result for the artefact. The analysis of the constitutive materials and of the stylistic features supplied valid results in favour of provenance of the mask from Papua New Guinea.     

Jumping Fish: Engendering Contestation and Development on the Waterways of the Aramia River in Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT Set in the Aramia River basin, this article explores the intimate and interactive relationship between communities in Western Province, Papua New Guinea, and the water that dominates the environment in which they live. Located amongst tidal rivers, creeks and lagoons, Gogodala villages sit high on ‘islands’ of land. In this environment, water is the site of seasonal change and the space of movement. The Aramia River is synonymous with an ancestral figure called Sawiya who travelled in her canoe, naming, creating and populating the water and land of the area. As the ‘mother of all fish’, Sawiya controls the movement and abundance of fish and other aquatic resources. Water is embodied in Sawiya, whose capacities to both nourish and punish are the basis of seasonal variations in fish, and in the colour and clarity of water in the local lagoons and rivers. Set against the backdrop of the Ok Tedi Mine and recent logging operations on the Aramia, the article explores some of the ways in which water and its resources are defined and experienced in this rural community and the impact this may have on the exploitation and development of natural resources in PNG.     

Nostalgia for Rabaul1

In September 1994, an eruption of the Rabaul Volcano in East New Britain, Papua New Guinea, devastated the town of Rabaul and many surrounding Tolai villages. Many villagers were resettled or lived in refugee camps far from their homes. Many non-Tolai residents of Rabaul were repatriated to other parts of Papua New Guinea. Tolai villagers and former residents of Rabaul, be they Papua New Guineans or expatriates, mourned the passing of ‘Rabaul’. This article examines the different nostalgias for Rabaul which are articulated in the Australian print media, by Tolai villagers, and by migrants from the Sepik provinces who had lived in Rabaul prior to the eruption. The article concludes with a reflection on Rabaul as a symbol for the Papua New Guinean nation.