Book Reviews

Chuave Politics: Changing

Patterns Of Leadership In The

Papua New Guinean Highlands

by Wayne Warry. ANU Political and So cial Change Monograph No 4, SUSI 2.

Reviewed by JOHN CONNELL IT IS barely 50 years since Mick

Leahy, explorer and gold prospec

tor, crossed into what is now the Chuave district of Simbu (Chimbu) province in the Highlands of PNG.

So much has changed since that first fleeting contact that, for the Chuave people, “the past seems distant, cloudy and elusive”. Already it is interpreted in different ways; men delight in showing battle scars from wars fought before pacification while simultaneous ly stressing that pre-contact life was harsh, even evil.

Examining contemporary Simbu politics is no easier than recording his tory, not least because the Simbu have

a passion for politics. Virtually every

man aspires to be a big man, a leader in one or more spheres of activity, and every discussion and transaction has

political implications; rivals manoeuvre

in intricate circles of innuendo and in trigue to protect and enhance their reputations. The Simbu are agressive, argumentative and litigious, and in ev ery way leadership has become much more competitive since the 19305.

Wayne Warry has produced a finely

grained analysis of Chuave that does justice to the richness of contemporary politics and reveals that new political institutions have not been without

teething problems. Community gov

ernments were slow to develop, since many confused them with communist government and the missions were said to have taught that communism is “evil, Satan’s work and a portent of the second coming”. Warry himself, because of his interest in politics, was

initially regarded by villagers as an

agent of Satan! Fortunately, however, he managed to overcome this dis

advantage.

Chuave villagers have rapidly be come disillusioned and disenchanted with the local government councils thrust on them: their operations were poorly understood and promised pro jects often failed to materialise, funds were mismanaged and finance went primarily to the wards of councillors who sat on the finance committee.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the region

has contributed a new phrase, wokim sistim, to the Pidgin language.

Partly because of this ability to man

ipulate the system and because poli

tical leadership has retained its great

traditional significance politicians

remain more prestigious than businessmen. So, too, are the village court magistrates, whose local author ity is much greater than that of the councillors. Missions have created a further rank of new village leaders.

Nevertheless it is the emergence of wealthy businessmen, with vast incom es built on coffee, store and vehicle ownership, that so dramatically char acterises the contemporary Highlands of Papua New Guinea. In all these contexts the Chuave play out old struggles for power and authority in completely new arenas. Symbolic of the novelty of the new and of the vast changes to Chuave life is the role beer has come to play in transactions of any and every kind.

No ceremony is complete without gifts of beer. In parts of the High lands bottles of beer are so important that they have come to be known as “little pigs”, while pigs begin to fade into an earlier era. Drunkenness, moreover, has become the camouflage for challenging the authority of lead ers. Beer has played a manifold role

in transforming the Highlands.

Conventionally, most accounts of so cial, economic and political life in the

Highlands have thoroughly ignored

women, hitherto regarded as of little or no account in the important issues of life. Warry hammers another nail into the coffin of this particular myth

by revealing the extraordinary signifi

cance of Kafaina, or work meri (women’s work), a loose organisation linking thousands of women from different tribal and language areas and drawing them closer to economic and political equality with men. The new movement was sparked off as far back as 1953, when the coronation of Queen Elizabeth resulted in three

days’ public holiday, and many

Chuave then believed tnat the Queen, Jesus and God lived together in Heaven. For Chuave women Queen Elizabeth remains the symbol of a politically dominant woman.

Despite their new power women still have few political and legal rights in comparison to men: no woman has ever been elected to political office, their words are politely listened to but

ignored in practice, and though

women provide the bulk of labour they retain only a tiny share of the income from the coffee they grow.

Men, on the other hand, continue to both fear and mistrust women. Men strual blood still threatens men, and women are believed to be more closely in tune with the ancestral spirits new mission beliefs cannot challenge. All

Chuave witches are female.

Males may dominate public affairs but, in private, women’s power can be awesome. Women have, however, established a fundamental new rela tionship between female power, pro ductivity and material success. Kafaina groups run businesses, maintain sub stantial savings accounts and employ men; so the women in these groups have achieved an unprecedented de gree of political power and status.

They have created an alternative political domain where they dominate men: unable to join them, they have in some respects beaten them. Men mistrust, even fear, Kafaina groups.

Wayne Warry tells the tale well, though the detail and extensive cross references betray the signs of a doc toral thesis and are likely to discour age casual readers. It is rarely light

reading, despite many intriguing case

studies, but there are no better accounts of political change in the Highlands of PNG. With this substan tial illustrated volume the Australian National University has provided a real bargain in an era of extravagant

publishing. □

Integrated Renewable Re

Source Management For Us In

SULAR AREAS, Congress of the US Office of Technology Assessment (Washington, DC: Order No 052-003-

01055-1) Susib.

Reviewed by DAVID S NORTH FROM time to time Washington has been criticised for ignoring important Pacific issues wit ness the snail-like progress of the tuna treaty but this awkwardly titled document is quite different; a remark ably useful, thorough study of the re

gion’s ecological problems and what to

do about them. While the focus is on US-flag territories, much of it could be read profitably by island leaders in other Pacific jurisdictions.

The Office of Technological Assess ment (OTA), the newest of the think tanks attached to the United States Congress, has invested close to half a million dollars in this volume. A re search team headed by Alison L Hess has been working on it for several years; the report is based on both ex tensive OTA staff work and on 43

commissioned papers by specialists

such as Paul Callaghan and Lucius Eldredge of the University of Guam and the University of Hawaii’s Profes sor Robert Kiste (an occasional contri butor to Pacific Islands Monthly).

The report covers the inherent and

growing ecological problems in the is

lands, some efforts now under way to cope with these problems, and options the Congress has evolved to help solve them. The territories covered are Guam, American Samoa, the North ern Marianas, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and, in the Caribbean, Puerto Rico and the

Virgin Islands.

An underlying thread in the discus sion of ecological matters is concern about the islands’ dependence on the United States. The report lists five fac tors as contributing to this depend ence: lack of full political status and benefits of statehood; scant natural re sources and large distances between is lands and markets; rapidly growing

populations; tropical resource charac

teristics with generally high natural

productivity but extreme vulnerability

to disruption; and common histories of resource degradation. One of the report’s great strengths is that it pro vides in its text and effective graphics, descriptions of the way different kinds of islands were formed and their vul nerability to a variety of assaults, from nature to Western civilisation.

Island resources have been buffeted

by typhoons, wars, exploitative mining

and fishing practices and widespread

thoughtlessness. (The villains are not all colonisers, it seems; island resi dents’ use of explosives in fishing and the virtual extinction of the Marianas fruit bat are not ignored.) On the more positive side, the OTA report provides Brief descriptions of a range of ecologically sound economic practices either under way or under study. The Pacific islands could, for example, do much more with two different kinds of fish: sharks and fish for First World aquariums. There is

unrealised potential for development

of the spice trade (high value agri cultural products that could be ship ped by plane), but there are problems.

It is difficult for an island grower to appreciate that one variety of cinna mon, for example, may be beloved in Europe but economically useless in the USA. Similarly, the once-bright prom ise of exports of black pepper from Pohnpei nas faded as quality control problems reduced sales.

OTA is an arm of Congress and it has made some recommendations, cal led ‘options’, to that body. There are in fact dozens of these, such as sugges tions that Congress support studies of typical small-scale farmers and ‘arti sanal’ fishermen so that appropriate technologies could be designed for them. Support for the retention of traditional skills such as the Palau Museum’s Master-Apprentice program is recommended, as is the educational work of Hawaii’s East-West Center.

Congress is also urged to provide

marketing assistance for the new agri cultural crops and aquacultural har vests discussed in the report.

This is a well-written, well-edited,

well-produced book though the

drawings are of higher quality than

the photographs. It is also a gentle book replete with careful research,

sound analysis and unthreatening

proposals. The authors are under standably pleased that one of their re commendations has already been adopted: the modest suggestion that the House of Representatives Subcom mittee on Insular Affairs be restored,

following a two-year lapse.

The history of resource exploitation and the horrors of war are covered rather too blandly: there are only mild suggestions that Washington’s sea of dollars has all but wiped out the in centive in many islands to engage in farm work. The options proposed are in research, education, dissemination and experimentation each sound in itself but there is little on more

grating subjects such as tighter regula

tions of exploitative commerce, invest ment of Government funds in island based enterprise, and removal of some of the subsidies that have so badly skewed life in the US islands.

These caveats aside, the Office of Technological Assessment has found the Pacific, and has done something useful about it. □

SONGS OF BELLONA by Jane Mink Rossen. Acta Ethnomusicologica Danica 4, 1987, 2 volumes Reviewed by DR ALLAN THOMAS ONE of the delights of the Fes tival of Pacific Arts is to see among the many cultural groups the dancers of Mungiki Island (Bellona) in the Solomon Islands. No one viewing the performance of this group can fail to oe impressed by the ancient classical arts displayed: res traint, dignity and power are manifest in the concentrating rhythm of the papa (sounding board), the distinctive costumes, the unusual circular dances (‘hovering like a shark’) and the ancient chants. For the people of Bel lona these are clearly treasures, but in the pantheon of Pacific arts they are also precious in that they are the sur vivors of arts taken westward from a Polynesian homeland some 30 or so generations ago. They may even rep resent (albeit with Melanesian mix tures, and later additions) early

Polynesian forms.

It comes, therefore, as a shock to learn that the local Christian missions prohibit the performance of these dances and that they have suspended from membership those who have taken part. This prohibition does not

seem to derive from any erotic quality or sacred purpose in the dances, but is simply church policy; of course, such

prohibitions were commonplace in

Pacific missions a century ago.

So the arts of Bellona may well

qualify as an endangered species. Only

a few fortunate circumstances provide for their continuing survival. The first of these is the chance for the arts to be shown at the Festival of Pacific Arts: this gives a focus for rehearsals and an incentive to teach younger people, as well as to counteract the

local prohibition.

The second support for tradition has come from a group of foreign scholars who have meticulously documented Bellona’s language, his tory, arts and culture. The recent two volume work by Jane Mink Rossen is a part of this documentation, immensely valuable to the Bellonese as it carefully probes the complexity of their music system, relying on the skill and know ledge of outstanding native scholars (some of whom have died since the work was begun). Like the best ethno musicology the work does not solely deal with scales, melodies and technic al detail though it does not neglect them, either; composers so often neg lected in Pacific music studies are named and a biographical sketch given. Dance is explored as an impor tant accompanying art in most per formances. Poetry, history, special ter minology and categories of music making are all documented, and the musical system presented is outstand ing for its quantity of terminology a feature unravelled with great care.

Jane Rossen also places herself in the study, with a record of her in volvement, as it is indeed essential for an ethnomusicologist if the particular qualities of a work are to be under stood. I particularly liked the ack nowledgment of the numan dimension of the music: when, after years of analysis in Denmark (of tapes re

corded by linguistic researchers) Jane

Rossen came to hear the music of Bel lona, she writes that: “the place, the context, and especially the people who sang and explained the songs, have enriched the music for me many times over. When listening ... I also re member the occasion on which a song was sung and the human being who sang it. How much stronger the asso ciations must be for a person who has lived on Mungiki all oi his or her life, whose father or grandfather is sing ing, and for whom the symbolic and historical implications of the song have

personal significance.”

This is a valuable work, sensitively undertaken and significant for scho lars and musicians throughout the Pacific especially for the Bellonese who wished that their music tradition be recorded for future generations. □