The many faces

of life in PNG

People of Papua New Guinea.

Edited by A. L Crawford, de signed by M. A. MacKenzie.

Series published by the Cul tural Council of Papua New Guinea. Each 16 pp. K 1 These 17 booklets, delightfully illustrated and each containing a range of useful information, are the forerunners of further volumes planned for publica tion by Papua New Guinea’s National Cultural Council. The texts and photographs have been supplied by residents and research workers in the areas described. Originally the series was planned and produced for release as a part of the South Pacific Arts Festival in 1980. Its potential value, however, goes much wider, since these portraits of people, particularly when read as a set together, could be a helpful aid to cultural studies in schools throughout the country.

Some of the peoples and areas covered are very well known, such as the Motu, Enga, Huli, Abelam, Tolai, and latmul. Others are relatively unknown, for example the Kominimung of Madang Prov ince (a tiny group of 300 people), the Foi, the Bilibil, the Wuvulu, and the Me’udana people. A pleasant variation in the texts is that some are written from the viewpoint of a member of the society: in one case by a father taking his son, who has grown up in Port

Moresby, back to their village among the Abelam; in another by Pita Mangal of Kominimung, who collaborated with Dirk Smidt and Soroi Eoe of the National Museum in the museum’s Ramu project.

Looking through the texts, I see some recurrent themes: for example, different ways of mak ing gardens and of preparing sago; the emphasis on festivals and display; the importance, traditionally and now also, of trade in specialised products; the use of a wide range of first resources as well as those of gardens; and the separate resi dences of men and women, sometimes expressed through the distinction between a cen tral men’s house, used for re ligious rituals, and family houses built around it. The overlapping quality of these themes shows very clearly that underneath the many variations there is a deep similarity in traditional ways of life which cuts right across the barriers of language and geography.

There are highlights in each booklet, and every reader will pick on a different set. Here are some which struck me: the serried ranks of pig jawbones hung on the walls of Telefomin houses; Gogodala masks, brilliantly executed in white,

Motuan boys sail model canoes near Porebada. - A. L.

Crawford picture from the PNG cultural Council’s People of Papua New Guinea.

black, yellow and red; a classic picture of an Abelam initiate, his eyes closed and the lids painted in yellow; the wet taro gardens of the Wuvulu people, where the crops grow in ponds excavated from acres of coral and take from three to seven years to mature; the unusual description of latmul boys and girls dancing, the boys wearing masks of ferns and leaves; a Foi woman placidly beating out sago pith with a stone pounder; and the Enga stone, carved in the form of an ant-eater, once used in their rituals by men of a clan in the Amboin valley near Wabag.

Aspects of the changes which are universally being experi enced by these people are also woven into these descriptions.

We learn that the Enga stone carving which I have just men tioned is now in an Australian museum. Puguraba, a Huli fight leader, is photographed with a Christian pendant around his neck, as well as the badge of office of a tultul. There are many pictures of modern cash crops, business enterprises, food

markets and school lessons, and the author of the Me’udana booklet, Dr E. Schlesier, re minds us that these people now work in other parts of Papua New Guinea as teachers, carpenters, metal workers, nurses, and public servants, thus making their contribution to the nation as a whole.

Contemporary circumstances are most evident in the accounts of the Motu, Tolai and Wuvulu

peoples, but there are signs also of a realisation that traditional skills, knowledge, and customs can retain their significance. On Wuvulu, the people now work their own copra plantation and have begun to talk about re organising it, because ‘the Aus tralian way of managing the plantation is not in line with our way of thinking’. Bilibil elders in 1978 taught their young men how to make a one-mast canoe, of a kind they had not built for 40 years. The Tolai people still value their impressive rolls of tambu currency. Overall the people’s skills in weaving, mak ing netbags and pots, fishing, gardening, and carving are strikingly portrayed.

An enduring impression, in fact, is given of the aesthetic sense of Papua New Guineans, whether expressed in art ob jects, in decorating themselves, or in songs and speeches. As the Kilenge booklet mentions, chil dren are taught ‘how to decor ate themselves’ from an early age. The Mendi, like all Highlanders, take great pride in ‘decorating the body’. The

Kaluli men’s gisaro songs move their listeners so much that they burn the dancers’ backs with flaming torches. Wuvulu people sing love songs to Hawaiian tunes, but the words are tra ditional and their own; for example, ‘the fire has died in my kitchen, you put water on it and killed it’, is a song about a daughter’s lost happiness. This same blending of old and new shows in the account of Port Moresby itself, where the new, post-independence buildings such as the PNG Banking Corporation offices and the National Museum incorporate artistic themes from the country’s own cultures.

This series, with its straight forward texts and good quality pictures, deserves to be distrib uted to every part of Papua New Guinea, and could contrib ute greatly in the aim of helping children to understand how village people in provinces other

than their own live.

Andrew

Strathern.

* Professor Strathern is pro fessor of anthropology at Uni versity College, London.

Abelam initiate B. Hauser- Schaublin picture from the series.