are playing with fire

'Kubunas' of New Guinea are playing with fire

To attempt to preserve tradition for the mere sake of preserving it, is the surest way of destroying it.

This is the end to which the two issues of Kubuna, which I have be fore me, may well contribute.

Mr D. J. Doyle and Mr K. Dow ner, both of the Madang Teachers College, have compiled and edited the two volumes. Mr Doyle and Mr Downer claim to own the copyright of the publications. Since most of the stories used are traditional, if there is any copyright at all it must be held by the ethnic group to whom the stories rightly belong, or, if it has to be invested in an individual, to the pupils who supplied the original stories.

It is time in Papua New Guinea that somebody made a ruling on this sort of thing. Mr Doyle and Mr Dow ner are by no means the only ones to claim copyright over things classi fied as traditional.

Mr Doyle, in his introduction to Kubuna writes, “The word comes from the language of the Siwai peo ple of Bougainville. It means ‘story’ and simply describes the contents of this book, stories for Papua New Guinea children”. (In which case, Mr Doyle might have rendered it in the plural and not in the singular!!) This first paragraph might belong to the introduction of any of the thousands, yes, thousands of similar productions produced throughout Papua New Guinea and the adjacent islands in schools, by small and large mission groups, and even by more than one government department. I made, a few years ago, a survey for UNESCO of the number of these publications being produced in Papua New Guinea and I cannot now re member how many thousands the total reached, remembering that a great many tiny primary schools have their duplicated folded foolscap reader to be included in these thousands and not taking into account vernacular publications, all of them in some issue or another using traditional legends or stories.

The very fact that Mr Doyle and Mr Downer have taken a Siwai word as the title of the Madang Teachers College publication would indicate that they felt that something is being done by these books to preserve this heritage. Is it carping to point out that the use of the word as the title

to a publication written entirely in English has done nothing more than preserve one word and that without any meaning to all but a very few?

Mr Doyle’s explanation of it in his introduction does not give it mean ing. This has been done from the time Kibi first started at the Sogeri Central Training School, and meant no more then than Kubuna does now.

I am tired of the number of Ku bunas I’ve seen in the past, all iden tical but with a Medlpa, a Tintutz or a Kerewa word instead of Kubuna.

Now, that is not to say Kubuna may not serve a useful purpose, it is not to say they all did not serve a useful purpose. But they might have had an adverse effect too. It is this calculated attempt to preserve traditional stories which is the bad aspect of it. People must not be pushed into a respect and regard for the past.

It is easy to show that those west ern countries, which deliberately tried to crystalise past tradition, stayed where they were and are not numbered among the advanced na tions of the western world.

Kubuna is better produced and the illustrations are better than those of most similar publications and the Kristen Pres, Madang has done a very nice job on them. It is just un fortunate that Kubuna is one of these similar publications which behave in Phoenix-like manner to cross my line of attack on the artificial preservation (whether deliberate or not) of what Kubuna is preserving. The very eff ort at preservation must lead to arti ficiality. (Read also Rev Percy Chat terton’s article in the August PIM.).

The sensible person of good in tentions will leave well alone, and let the traditional take care of itself.

What is needed will survive with the aid of the Madang Teachers College and what is useless will perish. But if it’s mucked about with, all that will be left will be a spurious thing. This is the danger of publications like Kubuna.

Michael Somare has expressed himself on this matter of the pre servation of culture only in the terms used by do-gooding and ill-informed expatriates. It would be interesting to know if he has any of his own thoughts on the matter apart from his tirade about Sepik artifacts. Is he content to leave the mutilation of the

traditions of the country in the hands of the Kubunas of the country?

What do you think about this, Author Vincent Eri? Since it is the habit of PIM to publish correspon dence about its book reviews, and since my reviews seem to provoke correspondence both personal and published, perhaps it is not hoping too much that Vincent Eri might be the first to argue with me on what I have written, or even to hurry to tell me he agrees with me.

Sinaka Goava used once to have strong ideas about the preservation of Papuan culture. Has becoming a magistrate changed his outlook? I don’t think so: I’m sure he still thinks that such stories as appear in Kubuna belong to an oral tradition and are best not tampered with.

To sum it up, Mr Doyle and Mr Downer are not to blame: they are merely following behind a long line stretching away back for 30 years, of producers of Kubunas, and none of them had any suspicion that they might be playing with fire —Peter Livingston.

KUBUNA, numbers 1 and 2, are pub lished by the Madang Teachers College, Madang, New Guinea, compiled and edited by D. Doyle and K. Downer, with illustrations by R. Christensen. Printed by Kristen Pres, Madang. Our copies from the Teachers’ College.