Another Kind of Gold: an Introduction to Marijuana in Papua New Guinea

Widespread as marijuana has become in Papua New Guinea (PNG), little ethnographic investigation has been done on problems raised by its cultivation, consumption and traffic there. In this essay, we survey the legal contexts of its production and circulation both in PNG and throughout the Pacific. We assess how the drug has been depicted in the regional literature. While our primary focus is on PNG, our point in offering these broader perspectives is to begin to outline political and comparative issues suggested by the arrival of this substance on Pacific shores. Our overall goal is to encourage rigorous and comprehensive discussion of the ambiguous relationship among society, the state and global capitalism that the drug constitutes, in addition to the many other, rather smaller‐scale problems raised in each of our four essays about the ongoing construction of and debate about its meaning at the local‐level.     

Drug Bodies: Relations with Substance in the Wau Bulolo Valley

Over the past decade, marijuana has become a significant element in the lives of Papua New Guinean youth. While placing them in conflict with community leaders, young men find meaning in marijuana. Used to affect agency, differentiated according to strength and color, and compared to plants once used by their ancestors, the drug is attributed with properties that do in fact change the substance of the body. Contrary to Strathern (1987), marijuana is now seen as transforming the bodies of its users, giving the power to overcome shame, understand ancestral stories, and work without tiring. Non‐users' discourses against use likewise evoke changes in substance, drying the blood of men who smoke it and oversee its circulation. Offspring of such men are characterized by their weak bones and they often die as infants. In this paper, I will examine these competing discourses of marijuana as they emerge in the communities around Wau (Morobe Province, PNG). I examine the way in which this new commodity begins to take on locals meanings and emerges as a powerful substance in the lives of young men and women.     

Singing about the Land among the Biangai

This paper examines Biangai (Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea) expressions and transformations of environmental imaginaries through women's mourning songs (yongo ingi) and the songs of string bands. Biangai personhood, once intimately connected to garden lands and trees, hunting and forest paths, is increasingly influenced by global capitalism. Through their songs, they betray an increased tension between acting as an individual person and acting in terms of kin based relationality. While yongo ingi still memorialize the social spaces and land rights of the deceased, they also express conflicts in Biangai engagement with gold mining. Biangai string bands emerged just prior to Papua New Guinea's Independence in 1975, with the first band recording and releasing a national cassette in 1982. Dominated by young men, they depict the intersection of local music with a Melanesian modernity composed of compensation payments, gold mining, love, travel, and marketing. Both yongo ingi and string bands inform each other and provide insight into how local music engages images of both global economy and global ecology. By examining the uses, meanings, and performative contexts of these songs, this paper contributes to our understanding of the role of such expressive forms in connecting persons and their environment.