Thoughts of Papua New Guinea

In a country of over 700 unique Cultures and Languages, Papua New Guinea (PNG) is a vast treasury of art and legend.

In her perceptive introduction to “Gardens of War”, Margaret Mead writes: “One of the most conspicuous things about the culture of preliterate people like the Dani is that it is their whole way of life that is a creation – unique, evanescent, dependant for its very existence entirely on the continued practice of each generation…Unless  we can record with film and tape the sights and sounds of their life, the world loses - and loses forever - part of the rich repertoire of the past on which we must depend to understand the future…”

There is a fable told by a mountain people living in the ancient highlands of Papua New Guinea about a race between a snake and a bird. It tells of a contest which decided whether men would be like birds and die, or be like snakes which shed their skins and have eternal life. The bird won, and from that time all men, like birds, must die. – from the film Dead Birds.

Sing-Sing

Towering bird of paradise feather head-dresses, brilliant red, white, and yellow face paintings, shell nose and earrings, bodies covered with pig fat, tree oil, pearl shells – the “sing-sing” is a ceremonial occasion where each tribe expresses their clan or tribal solidarity.

The collective impression of tens, perhaps hundreds, of clansmen and women in similar dress and face paint stomping, bending or swaying synchronically, is a dramatic and awesome sight.

Sorcery & Cannibalism

From about 1950 to 1965 a tribe known as “Fore” (Okapa district Eastern Highlands) – the women and children were dying at an alarming rate from a disease named “kuru.” They would slowly go mad from this neurological disorder, lose motor control, start to tremble, fall into fits, then seizures and eventually die.

The Fore thought their northern neighbours were systematically killing them and they tried all kinds of remedies and counter-aggression, to no avail.  Over time, they became an insular and paranoid people, wrapped in sorcery and sorcery accusations. Not until 1967 did an American doctor, Dr. D.C Gajdusek, isolate the pathogenic agent involved and, more importantly, discover that it was being transmitted during mortuary ceremonies, when women and children handled and ate the brains of male relatives – a discovery that garnered Dr. Gajdusek the 1976 Nobel Prize.

Exerts taken from: “Gardens of War” by Robert Gardner & Karl G. Heider & “Papua New Guinea” by Nancy Sullivan.