Image copyright: TePapa Museum, Wellington, New Zealand.
Papua New Guinea has one of the most unusual collections of bark cloth (tapa) in the world. The art of making tapa is a timeless tradition in PNG and many Pacific Island countries. A cultural heritage handed down from generation to generation, tapa making has survived western influences and is still worn by its makers.
While the tapa cloth is made in different parts of the country, the Oro Province is known world-wide for its distinctive designs and patterns. More on tapa in a future post.
Picture by Lonely Planet, courtesy of EMTV PNG website.
The clash of religion and culture – the fight that almost brought the House down How many times do we hear about religion and culture clashing?Does someone’s personal belief make it right for them to destroy a nation’s heritage? Religion versus culture and vice versa is a topic that often raises concerns around the world. In 2013, I remember protesting against the destruction of 19 cultural objects in the Papua New Guinea (PNG) national parliament house on Facebook, with many others. Our National Speaker who comes from Morobe Province, decided that he did not want the 19 statues that represented the provinces to be in the chamber. He ordered the removal and destruction of the statues, build with the house by the first prime minister, Sir Michael Somare.
The lintels removed and damaged in the interface of the parliament chamber. Picture from Dr Andrew Motu, Head of PNG National Museum.
Ryan Shram write this very interesting article about the incident and discusses the argument about religion and culture in the material world. Ryan goes even deeper into the history of the house and the country. Click here to read this story. While I am a christian, I treasure the beliefs and good traditions of my ancestors in Melanesia, and especially in PNG. My grandmother was a great believer of both – you learnt the christian ways and you also use your traditions because that is what your identity is. Your heritage is also one that has given birth to you and there are so many great things you can learn from your culture through your beliefs, foods, celebrations, rituals and many more. It is not easy to separate yourself from your culture and your heritage – unless you choose to. Traditional medicine healed Melanesians and other indigenous people before European medicine came. The rituals and spiritual practices provided – food, water and shelter and created sharing, love and healing in a community that was balanced with nature. All the practices were connected to and derived from nature and the environment. There are traditions in Melanesian heritage that are not good. These include sorcery and witchcraft, confusion between what is an ailment and what is a spiritual curse, the Big Man syndrome (the act of thinking you are wealthier and better with more status so you could manipulate and have several wives). The treatment of women and girls as second class is another Melanesian culture I detest. What are your experiences of your culture and religions – please share your comments here.
The Melanesians including Papua New Guineans produced war shields they used to protect themselves but these shields have a great artistic value. While these large hand-carved rectangular, square or oval-shaped cultural objects were made for protection in tribal war, they are also very beautiful. It is hard to visualise a work of art being used to protect one’s life, but made of hard-wood, the shields serve their purpose.
A shield of the Melanesia is a fascinating object. Many are made from wood and carry intricate tribal and clan markings representing profound spiritual meanings. The maker ensures that the markings incised or painted on this shield would protect someone’s life. In all the cultural objects that come from my heritage (the Melanesia), fighting shields would be my favourite.
From the 80s, I started collecting shields whenever I travelled across PNG. Once the West Papua community had a trade show in Port Moresby and I was extremely delighted to visit and I purchased a couple of shields and a door which was carved with intricate shield designs. West Papua shields, the Asmat, top my list of favourites. Over time, my obsession with shields resulted in over 30 pieces collected.
I have some pictures tucked away in my old computer, unfortunately, I could not find them for this post. Most of the shields from my collection were displayed in a cafe I owned and ran with a friend.
From JKLeahy collection: Eastern Highlands shield-PNGBefore we migrated to Australia, there was a feud over lack of electricity and water to a cafe business I owned with a friend. The landlord kept charging us astronomical amounts when we had to operate the cafe without water nor electricity. We lost business and customers. When we demanded to pay less rent (with power and water), we were locked of the cafe. Th landlord took everything, exceeding the value of the disputed rent. It was not just losing $50,000 worth of cafe equipment and furniture, my shield collection were stolen from the cafe. All gone. What happened after is another story.
It has taken me all these years to put this memory behind me. The pain returns often when I gaze at a beautiful Melanesian shield in a gallery or the thousands of beautiful pictures on Google. While most of the best and unique pieces in my life have gone, I still have a few beautiful pieces to make me smile. And I have this book (pictured below).
With Harry Beran, my friend Dr Barry Craig, anthropologist and a longtime serving curator in Papua New Guinea published a comprehensive compilation on the war shields of Melanesia in their book, “Shields of Melanesia”. The volume illustrates more than one hundred types of shields from all culture areas of Melanesia that used fighting shields. Approximately eighty percent of the shields illustrated in the book have never appeared in print. The book has images of some of the best Melanesian shields.
The Guardian Picture: In 2009, the crater of the extinct volcano Mount Bosavi, in the Eastern Highlands Province, PNG was found. The green beetle pictured was one amongst many species discovered, except that this specie is iridescent.
The green beetle is one of my favourites and the insect possesses a beautiful rainbow shine. The beetles come out in millions during fruit seasons. In Papua New Guinea beetles are eaten as food, but the green beetle is so beautiful that tribal dancers use the insect as part of their fashion. The fashion or their traditional dress, especially headbands and headdresses are worn in singsings. A singsing is a performance of song and dance by a group and it is one of many living rituals, handed down through generations.
An Eastern Highlander (PNG) spotting a row of green beetle in his headdress. The beetles are woven intricately into the golden orchid fibre in diamond patterns.
I have seen the beetles myself in Goroka, Eastern Highlands Province and found these ones on headdresses in Simbai, Madang Province, which prompted this post.
Simbai tribesmen (Madang, Papua New Guinea) wearing their fashionable head wigs made from the green beetle.
Like some of the more unusual legal tender in other cultures of the world, the stone money from Yap is quite unique, and grand.
This is not your typical gold coin or silver coin you could flip. You would need all your friends to help you flip it and I would not wait to catch it coming down.
To continue from my post about the giant Easter Islands Monuments and this is my own theory; I’m speculating that the people who build the giant statues of the earlier post on this blog were part of the same (tribe of) people who manufactured the Rai or the giant stone coins of the Micronesian islands of Yap and Palau. My reason for thinking there may be a connection is because of what I have seen in Palau and Northern Marianas. There are giant statues all over the world and I am no archeologist. The Micronesians also have giant stone monoliths and statues. Yap became part of this ring of exchange and sharing giant objects when they brought the coins from Palau into Yap.
Yap is one of four states of the Micronesia. The large coins pictured above and below were made from limestone disks and each represent wealth in a family group. There is a lot of reading in the history of all these large objects and studies are still being carried out on the mystery that surrounds the objects.
Amusing Planet Picture
Why did the Yapese take to this new kind of money?
John Tharngan, historical preservation officer of Yap explained that the coins were invented during a period when the chiefs on Yap were struggling for power.
“In those days all sorts of commodities were being used as valuables, including shells and turmeric and so the concept of bringing something in from outside, that didn’t exist on Yap, was very attractive. So when they brought this piece home and called it money, it encouraged other people to make the journey and bring stones back. So they went and brought more, this time in the shape of a full moon with a hole in the middle, for ease of transportation, like the ones you can see here on Yap”, Tharngan said.
Jaime Hernandez – March 12, 2012 – Making the Rai.
The value of the stone coins is determined by the number of lives lost during the process of transportation and the workmanship on each stone. They are used for buying land and bride price.
I first saw the Rai at the National Museum of Palau in 2008. I asked many questions and got bemused looks from locals, to say that these coins were part of everyday trades, an undying culture passed through generations. I could not imagine a piece of coin carried by six adult male compared to a dollar you could pull out of your pocket and flick in the air, and in Papua New Guinea, we mostly used shells as our legal tender. Perhaps at one point, we also used stones.
What a wonderful life blog picture.
Yap is about 100 square kilometres and home to 12,000 people. The island of Yap has no precious material like gold or silver instead, they use these giant disks of limestone called Rai as currency for large trades and still use them as small as seven to eight centimetres in diameter to trade with. The larger ones stand as high as 3.65metres (12 feet tall) and weigh five tonne. Many of the Yapese coins were carved in Palau and shipped 400 metres to Yap. There was a story that once a large Rai was transported across the water between the Yapese and it tipped the canoe and sank. This coin was always remembered and its value (for the family that owned that coin) was continued to be used in the trades. Read more on the Yap’s coins on the links below.
A Report from Radio New Zealand International’s Johnny Blades.
Papua New Guinea is at a juncture, experiencing unprecedented economic growth but still mired by poverty, tribalism and parlous human development outcomes. Exxon Mobil’s $US19 billion Liquefied Natural Gas project in PNG began exports last year, marking a major milestone in the country’s development as a foreign investment destination and energy hub.
Yet the benefits from development of PNG’s abundant natural resources – mineral, oil, forestry, fisheries and others – appear mainly confined to a tiny part of the population. RNZI’s Johnny Blades travelled to PNG and, in this video report, he asks if PNG can convert its significant resources wealth into tangible gains for its burgeoning population.
Unsolved Mysteries: The secret of Easter Island. YouTube.
In the most isolated place on Earth a tiny society built world-class monuments. Easter Island (Rapa Nui) is 1,000 miles from the nearest Pacific island, 3,000 miles from the nearest continent. It is just six by ten miles in size, with no running streams, terrible soil, occasional droughts, and a relatively barren ocean. Yet there are 900 of the famous statues (moai), weighing up to 75 tons and 40 feet high. Four hundred of them were moved many miles from where they were quarried to massive platforms along the shores.
Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo began their archeological work on Easter Island in 2001 expecting to do no more than add details to the standard morality tale of the collapse of the island’s ecology and society—Polynesians discovered Rapa Nui around 400-800AD and soon overpopulated the place (30,000 people on an island the size of San Francisco); competing elites cut down the last trees to move hundreds of enormous statues; after excesses of “moai madness” the elites descend into warfare and cannibalism, and the ecology collapses; Europeans show up in 1722. The obvious lesson is that Easter Island, “the clearest example of a society that destroyed itself“ (Jared Diamond), is a warning of what could happen to Earth unless we learn to live with limits.
A completely different story emerged from Hunt and Lipo’s archaeology. Polynesians first arrived as late as 1200AD. There are no signs of violence—none of the fortifications common on other Pacific islands, no weapons, no traumatized skeletons. The palm trees that originally covered the island succumbed mainly to rats that arrived with the Polynesians and ate all the nuts. The natives burned what remained to enrich the poor soil and then engineered the whole island with small rocks (“lithic mulch”) to grow taro and sweet potatoes. The population stabilized around 4,000 and kept itself in balance with its resources for 500 years until it was totally destroyed in the 18th century by European diseases and enslavement. (It wasn’t Collapse; it was Guns, Germs, and Steel.)
The world-class monuments of Rapa Nui
What was up with the statues? How were they moved? Did they have a role in the sustainable balance the islanders achieved? Hunt and Lipo closely studied the statues found along the moai roads from the quarry. They had D-shaped beveled bottoms (unlike the flat bottoms of the platform statues) angled 14 ° forward. The ones on down slopes had fallen on their face; on up slopes they were on their back. The archeologists concluded they must have been moved upright—”walked,” just as Rapa Nuians long had said. No tree logs were required. Standard Polynesian skill with ropes would suffice.
Archaeologists Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo attempt to solve the mystery in this documentary. Easter Island is also called Rapa Nui.
The South Pacific Games opens tonight in Port Moresby. After years of preparation by Papua New Guinea (PNG) and hundreds of regional athletes, the 15th South Pacific Games opening ceremony has begun in the nation’s capital. Australia and New Zealand participate for the first time ever. It is expected 24 South Pacific island countries will compete in the next two weeks. Citizens, visitors, and sportsmen and women at tonight’s opening will also witness the largest group of traditional dancers from across PNG. Up to 900 singsing groups will perform, according to organisers. Artistic director of tonight’s opening ceremony, Airleke Ingram, said it is a celebration of Papua New Guinea’s rich cultural history, while pointing to the country’s future direction. The ceremony’s theme is tied to the local region’s hiri trade, an important cultural influence. “It’s a really key part of our culture. There are a lot of songs, dances and tattoos,” said Mr Ingram, a music producer, traditional drummer and famed percussionist from Central Province. The ceremony pays homage to the trade relationship between the Motuan and Gulf Province people, and the role this played in shaping PNG. ABC News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xVb5pW6Ess AFP News Agency: On the Pacific islands of New Caledonia, it’s feared many of the 28 indigenous languages are dying out. But the success of a local band scoring hits in a native tongue is giving traditionalists cause for hope. Here is one of my own New Caledonian favourites. Ok!Ryos – Kini Kinibut https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6y-uCME1Ts
I have been to Tubuserea Village, Central Province, Papua New Guinea many times with my best friend Anne Kaluwin. These are the scenes from Tubuserea almost five decades ago.
Anne and I grew up together like sisters, after meeting in grade eleven in national high school. I also invited her to my own village, Wagang, in Lae. I found these pictures of her village while reading some old articles and on a website called Nashos. The pictures brought back many great memories especially of our time with her mother and grandmother who have now passed away.
These pictures were taken in 1967 when Anne and I would have been two and three years old. Anne is a year older than I. The photographs are part of a collection gathered by Australian soldiers and those who served in PNG between 1966 and 1973.
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