Keith Jackson & Friends: PNG ATTITUDE

The rambunctious Leonard Roka is now in print

PHIL FITZPATRICK

FOR ALL THOSE FANS OF CAPTAIN BOUGAINVILLE, the immutable champion of island verisimilitude and the sudden nightmare of the pusillanimous, Pukpuk Publications is proud to announce the publication of Leonard Fong Roka’s first volume of poetry.

The Pomong U’tau of Dreams: A Bougainvillean Collection of Poetry is vintage Roka.  Every page promises a new way to subvert the English language and jar the sensibilities of the mind.

This is what Roka is famous for and his collection of poetry delivers from the first page right through to the end.

This stuff is awe-inspiring and remains wholly unleavened.

Colonial days in PNG: A blog you must get to see

KEITH JACKSON

THE OTHER DAY I came across a blog entitled Colonial Days in Papua New Guinea: Picturing the Past which is a treasure trove of wonderful photographs by Veronica Peek.

Unfortunately I can’t reproduce even a single one of them here because Veronica has, as is her right, copyrighted them for now and posterity, but they can be viewed on her blog here.

[Since I wrote this, Veronica had generously allowed PNG Attitude to republish her photographs, with attribution of course. This one of a young Michael Somare is a fine example.]

One series of pictures was taken in 1973 in Sir Michael Somare’s home village of Karau, in the Murik Lakes District of East Sepik Province. The occasion was Somare’s initiation as Sana [peacekeeper] of his own people and his initiation as Onkau [headman] of the family of Lady Veronica Somare.

Social media changes PNG political dialogue

LIAM FOX | ABC

LAST WEEK WAS A ROWDY WEEK in Papua New Guinea's parliament. Allegations that the government made millions of dollars in bogus payments to prominent law firm Paul Paraka Lawyers dominated the sitting.

But it was a controversy that almost wasn't.

When the opposition leader Belden Namah first tried to raise the matter, the Speaker prevented him from asking questions, saying a court order prevented parliament from discussing the matter. That prompted a massive backlash on social media.

Facebook is the most popular avenue for Papua New Guineans wanting to express themselves online, and the biggest discussion group is called Sharp Talk. It has more than 11,000 members and some of them vented their disgust at the Speaker's decision.

Yo ho ho & a book – full speed ahead; damn the critics

PHIL FITZPATRICK

UNLESS SOMEONE HAS GOT a blockbuster ready to go and poised to spark a bidding war among international publishers, the way ahead for writers in Papua New Guinea is digital and web-based.

Get the book up there for the world to see and you never know, maybe one of those big global publishers will snap it up.  It’s happening already and e-books are morphing into million sellers everywhere.

We live in hope.

With that philosophy in mind Pukpuk Publications is proud to announce from its backyard headquarters that the following titles are now available on Amazon, the behemoth of internet booksellers.  You can buy them either as e-books for your Kindle or as a hardcopy.

Simbu author Sil Bolkin releases the Galkope CD

PHIL FITZPATRICK

LAST YEAR SIMBU WRITER Sil Bolkin published a stunning history of his people called The Flight of Galkope. 

The book was the culmination of several years’ work trekking through his rugged Simbu homeland visiting men’s houses and talking to and recording the memories of venerable elders.

The book wove a magical path from the mythical origins of the Galkope right through to the diaspora that has seen many of them leave their homelands. 

I had the privilege of helping Sil with the editing and came away feeling that I had experienced something truly special.  I’m not a great fan of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings but this Simbu version had me really hooked.

Real-life book drama has happier ending than story

PAUL THOMAS | New Zealand Herald

IN HIS 1889 ESSAY, The Decay of Lying, Oscar Wilde, argued that "life imitates art far more than art imitates life".

New Zealand writer Lloyd Jones' celebrated 2006 novel, Mister Pip, tells the story of a teacher on Bougainville, the only white man for miles around, who introduces his class to literature and opens a window to a world beyond their village by reading them Charles Dickens' Great Expectations.

But a civil war is going on and the protagonists are callously indifferent to the teacher's noble exercise and the children's flickering aspirations.

After Mister Pip came out, Jones had the idea of creating a library for Bougainville. Many people in New Zealand, on the island and further afield, were captivated by his vision and enlisted in the cause of making it a reality.

For a change, here is some good news for writers

PHIL FITZPATRICK

PUBLISHING A BOOK in Australia is getting harder and harder.  In Papua New Guinea it is well-nigh impossible.

In Australia the small boutique publishers are crumbling before the onslaught of digital publishing and ebooks, while the big publishers are surviving by amalgamating and running with their established stable of saleable authors.

The same trends are evident globally. My own publisher finally gave up the game last year.

The only alternatives in the past have been self-publishing, using companies set up for the purpose, or printing your own books and trying to market them.  Both are expensive options.

PACMAS media report dodges elephant in the room

DAVID ROBIE | Café Pacific

A RECENT PACMAS (Pacific Media Assistance Scheme) report is a constructive diagnosis for the ailing state of the region’s media association, and a prescription for how things can get better. But it manages to dodge the elephant in the room – accountability.

For months, social media outlets and journalists have been asking about the fate of the Media Council of PNG, once one of the strongest in the region and an example to the rest. But it has been dogged in recent years because of allegations of fraud.

AusAID funding and the executive director, Nimo Kama, were suspended pending an inquiry.

But the outcome of this has been kept very quiet. AusAID reportedly funded the PNG Media Council to the tune of $500,000 in 2010.

‘The World Until Yesterday’ redux. Not so bad really

PHIL FITZPATRICK

WHO SAID ‘NEVER BELIEVE what you read in the newspapers’?  Whoever it was could probably now add ‘never believe what you see on television, hear on the radio or read on the Internet either’.

That sage advice was brought home to me when I finally got round to reading Jared Diamond’s new book, The World Until Yesterday.

Like the several commentators on PNG Attitude, I added my tuppence worth of criticism based on reviews of the book and a few articles on the net questioning his sources.  One of the latter pieces was particularly virulent and I should have picked it up then.

What we commentators blithely did was accept the view that the book was (a) pop-anthropology at its worst and (b) full of inaccuracies about some of the more apparently sordid attributes of past and present customary practises in Papua New Guinea.

The book, in fact, is neither of these things.

Collision of values: how advertising came to the NBC

KEITH JACKSON

I ARRIVED IN WEWAK in November 1963. I was 18 and had just finished teacher training at the Australian School of Pacific Administration.

A decade later, by the end of 1973, I’d spent three years teaching in Simbu, a year editing school publications in Konedobu, two years as an ABC producer at its Boroko studios, and four years managing government radio stations in Rabaul and Bougainville.

I’d also just returned from six months as a UNESCO consultant in Java - and was very glad to be back in Papua New Guinea.

Independence wasn’t far away. The National Broadcasting Commission was about to be inaugurated. It was an exciting time.

Song the giant gave producer more than he expected

THE FILM ARCHIVE

IN 2001 WELLINGTON (NEW ZEALAND) film maker Paul Wolffram went to New Ireland where he spent two years living and working among the Lak people while filming Stori Tumbuna (2011).

Although he started the film with the detached perspective of a cultural researcher, he eventually found himself at the centre of a deadly series of events.

Wolffram went to Papua New Guinea to document the music, dance and cultural rituals of the Lak. He was able to do this with great success.

Harvard University anthropologist Michael Jackson noted of the film: “I know of no more successful or ingenious film that draws the viewer into another life-world while keeping faith with the tenor of its traditional narratives and respecting the lived experience of his/her interlocutors.”

However, Wolffram got more than he bargained for. Over the course of his research he uncovered dark secrets looming in the Lak people's history.

New website delves into the Bougainville conflict

KRISTIAN LASSLETT

I HAVE SPENT the best part of a decade studying the Bougainville conflict. To that end I have interviewed over 50 senior officials from Australia, Papua New Guinea and Bougainville Copper Ltd.

Also, I have gone through thousands of documents including internal records from BCL and PNG and public records in Australia. Given the suffering and hardship caused by the conflict, it deserves nothing less than rigorous scholarly accounts.

Now I have developed a website which features a case study on the Bougainville conflict, focusing on the period 1987-90.

The historical account includes primary and multimedia materials including the aforementioned records and interviews as well as documentary footage from Bougainville and letters written by the Panguna Landowners Association and the Bougainville Revolutionary Army during 1988-89.

PFF calls for clarity on Peter Kasia sacking affair

PACIFIC FREEDOM FORUM

THE LACK OF FACTUAL INFORMATION surrounding the recent sacking of a Papua New Guinea journalist poses another warning to newsrooms there on the need to steer clear of political spin, says regional media monitoring group the Pacific Freedom Forum.

PFF co-chair Titi Gabi (pictured) says it's important that journalists remain vigilant and independent of political bias, and ensure they have all the facts at hand when going public via media platforms with a political agenda.

She made the call after video footage of former Sunday Chronicle journalist Peter Kasia has been uploaded to the Internet in the last week. In the video published to a pro-Opposition blog, Kasia states he was sacked on the written orders of the PNG prime minister, whose office says this is untrue.

Kasia's sacking in late 2012 had been attributed by PNG media colleagues to a series of retractions and apologies from his Sunday Chronicle employers over his work. But his name resurfaced on 21 February when Opposition leader Belden Namah accused PNG media watchdogs and 'others' of remaining silent on the sacking.

Online media important to PNG says corruption fighter

RADIO AUSTRALIA

THE WINNER OF A MEDIA anti-corruption award says online media has the potential to inform and mobilise the people of Papua New Guinea.

Blogger Martyn Namorong won the overall prize at the 2012 Excellence in Anti-Corruption Reporting Media Awards in PNG.

Mr Namorong says that because social media in PNG is quite new, there's still a lack of understanding about how it could be influential.

"Those of us who are willing to speak out, particularly online... have the spotlight on them such that people react more quickly," he said.

He is in Australia on a two-week study tour to meet with investigative journalists and community groups involved in fighting corruption.

Angry West Papua leaders demand Diamond’s apology

Survival International

LEADERS ACROSS WEST PAPUA have demanded controversial author Jared Diamond apologises for describing them in his new book as warlike, and strengthening the idea that indigenous people are ‘backwards’.

The West Papuan leaders attack Diamond’s central arguments that ’most small-scale societies … become trapped in cycles of violence and warfare’ and that ‘New Guineans appreciated the benefits of the state-guaranteed peace that they had been unable to achieve for themselves without state government.’

Mr Diamond makes no mention of the brutality and oppression suffered by the people of West Papua at the hands of the Indonesian occupation since 1963, which has led to the killing of at least 100,000 Papuan tribal people at the hands of the Indonesian military.

Benny Wenda (pictured), a Papuan tribal leader, said to Survival, ‘What he (Jared Diamond) has written about my people is misleading … he is not writing about what the Indonesian military are doing … I saw my people being murdered by Indonesian soldiers and my own Auntie was raped in front of my eyes.

'Indonesia told the world that this was ’tribal war’ – they tried to pretend that it was us that was violent and not them – this book is doing the same. He should apologize.’

Markus Haluk, a senior member of the Papuan Customary Council, added, ‘The total of Dani victims from the Indonesian atrocities over the 50 year period is far greater than those from tribal war of the Dani people over hundreds of thousands of years.’

Matius Murib, Director of the Baptist Voice of Papua, condemned Diamond’s assertion that tribal peoples live in a ‘world until yesterday’.

He said, ‘This book spreads prejudices about Papuan people … that indigenous Papuans still display a way of life from hundreds of years ago. This is not true and strengthens the idea that indigenous people are ’backwards’, ‘live in the past’ or are ‘stone age.’

Reverend Socratez Yoman, Head of the West Papuan Baptist Church, has also demanded an apology from Mr Diamond to the Papuan people.

Dominikus Surabut, currently jailed for treason for peacefully declaring West Papuan independence, described the relationship of indigenous West Papuans and the Indonesian state as political apartheid.

In a statement smuggled out of his jail cell, he said, ‘This is the very nature and character of colonial occupation of indigenous peoples, where they are treated as second class citizens whose oppression is justified by painting them as backwards, archaic, warring tribes – just as suggested by Jared Diamond in his book about tribal people.’

Survival International and TAPOL received the messages of outrage following condemnation of the book by Survival last week. The book has since been the subject of heated debate during Mr Diamond’s visit to the UK

Bush doctor: Challenge & casual racism of colonial PNG

KEITH JACKSON

Singsings, Sutures & Sorcery by Anthony J Radford, Fairfield Press, 2012, 430 pp, ISBN 9781743240601, $45 RRP

SINGSINGS, SUTURES & SORCERY, a compelling fusion of memoir and compendium, relates a bush doctor’s struggles against disease, superstition and bureaucracy with the backdrop being the vast, colourful canvass of colonial Papua New Guinea, or ‘the Territory’ as we called it in those now distant days.

Many works of recollection have been written by Australians who lived and worked in the Territory before it attained independence in 1975, but Dr Anthony Radford brings to raging life the colourful characters, bizarre experiences, hard drinking and what the late Professor Hank Nelson called “the casual racism” of that extraordinary period in Australian (and Papua New Guinean) history.

As a senior medical student, Radford first worked in TPNG, to which it was customarily abbreviated, for a couple of months between November 1959 and January 1960 after being recruited as a “Cadet Medical Officer”.

From that brief but intense experience, he made sure his studies at the University of Adelaide were directed to acquiring the range of skills – from surgery to dentistry - he would require in pursuing a career as a bush doctor before being despatched to his outpost in TPNG in 1963.

As chance had it, although I have never met Radford, he and I – then an 18-year old newly-qualified teacher - arrived in the New Guinea highlands at around the same time and shared both the identical cast of larger than life characters and the same culture shock delivered as much by them as by the indigenous people themselves who, unbeknownst to all of us, were even then moving rapidly towards nationhood.

While Singsings, Sutures & Sorcery offers useful (and well written) chapters on subjects such as the history of medicine in PNG, an epidemiological profile of the country and even an elementary primer on Tok Pisin, the best part of this book is Radford’s sparkling and gossipy romp through the social, medical and bureaucratic challenges he faced in the Territory.

Like me, upon arrival he was confronted by that “casual racism” – unstructured, unremarked and unconscious - which led a visiting Gough Whitlam to observe in 1969 that it must have been a different breed of Australian who chose to live in TPNG because their attitudes were unrecognisable from those of the people “down South”.

Australians consider themselves to be a fair and easy-going people but, when confronted with the exigencies of TPNG, such vanities were severely put to the test.

“How I detested those two words ‘Native’ and ‘Boy’,” Radford recalls. “This was my first experience of cross-cultural living in a country where the predominant group had little power and the whole structure in the Territory seemed to be based on master-servant or mistress-servant relationships, and the colour code was obvious… I was witnessing apartheid Australian-style….”

It was the colonists’ dirty little secret; one which few other Australian expatriate authors recording this period have deigned to address, an exception being Phil Fitzpatrick in his elegant Bamahuta: Leaving Papua.

The last vestiges of such misbegotten attitudes still hang around Port Moresby’s Papua Yacht Club and, in Australia, amongst some elements in the Papua New Guinea Association, but a modernising and newly energised PNG is seeing them discarded. By the end of this decade they will be gone.

Rev Threlfall’s Rabaul: The story of a beautiful town

BARBARA SHORT

‘Mangroves, Coconuts and Frangipani – The Story of Rabaul’ by Neville Threlfall. Copies from Rev Neville Thelfall, Unit 91, Nareen Gardens, 19 Bias Avenue, Bateau Bay, NSW 2261 or email here (Australia $45 plus p&p, New Zealand, NZ$56 plus p&p)

IN 1980, AFTER ABOUT 20 YEARS of working in Papua New Guinea, the Rev Neville Threlfall was asked to write a history of Rabaul.

Most of the written records of Rabaul were destroyed during the Pacific War in the early 1940s and by 1944 the town was obliterated by Allied bombing.

So Rev Threlfall faced the long job of researching colonial records, mission papers, old newspapers, private letters, papers and diaries, locating Rabaul identities and interviewing them, finding old photographs, and reading war histories and naval, military and air force files.

Thirty-two years later, after much research and the lengthy re-typing of the book in digital form by his daughter Beth, it has finally been published.

The book includes 533 A4 pages of text and includes a detailed and methodical account of the history of Rabaul, with 150 photographs, many from the 1920s and 1930s and numerous from wartime, portraits of noted leaders, official ceremonies and volcanic eruptions.

There are also six maps, a bibliography, an index and a foreword by Dr Allan Marat, MP for Rabaul.

The book tells of the geological reasons for the site’s instability; of the first human settlers; of European navigators, whalers, missionaries and traders; colonisation by Germany and development of a port and town with a cosmopolitan community, which came under Australian rule as a Mandated Territory after World War I.

There follows an often-stormy history up to and after PNG’s Independence, including three volcanic eruptions but with the town surviving in 2012, with its emblem the frangipani blossom still blooming.

The book is full of stories of colourful personalities, eye-witness accounts of the volcanic eruptions, the heartbreaking stories of Lark Force, the mystery of the Montevideo Maru, the recurrent question “Should the town be rebuilt?”, the Mataungan uprising, the long road that eventually led to Independence for PNG, and many more stories, all told in much detail and with great understanding.

This book will be a wonderful asset for Papua New Guinean students of history and for the Tolai people in particular.

It is dedicated to the people of Rabaul, past and present, and to Roma, the Rev Threlfall’s late wife, who shared his years there and who helped him greatly during his work in the book’s production.

The book will be launched in PNG at a special event in Rabaul in the coming weeks.

Lower photo: Steven Gagau, Barbara Short and Dr Jennifer Gagau, the paediatric registrar at Maitland Hospital, (all of whom first met at Keravat National High School) at the launch of Rev Neville Threlfall's book on the history of Rabaul last Saturday at the Uniting Church at Croydon in Sydney. Jennifer is organising for a choir to sing at a special service for the Rev Threlfall when he returns to PNG for the launch of his book in Rabaul in the coming weeks.

The tribe that promised peace; & would kill to keep its word

BEN JACKSON

'The KomKui Who Made a Covenant with God' by Brother Pat Howley FMS, The DWU Press, dwupress@dswu.ac.pg, ISBN978-9980-9932-5-0

THE KOMKUI IS A RELATIVELY NEW TRIBE, formed in 1980 from the coming together of the of two Mokei tribes (the Komunka and the Kwipi) of the Mt Hagen region.

Both were descendants of the Melpa people who have lived in the Highlands for tens of thousands of years.

The amalgamation was a result of a push to end ancient grudges that existed amongst the Mokei causing continuing tribal tensions in the region.

While the original source of the angst had been long forgotten, the feeling and hatred passed down the generations resulted in sporadic incidents of fatal violence.

When the Covenant with God referred to in the title was agreed in 1980, the KomKui promised to never fight again.

The KomKui Who Made a Covenant with God was compiled to capture the history of the tribe and the Melpa language group from which they descend.

Through colonial diaries, anthropological evidence and cross-checked accounts, the book systematically examines the history of the tribe: ancient cultural practices, agricultural advancements and tribal splits; the arrival of the white man and the colonial era; Christianity; and tribal warfare.

Then there is the formation of the KomKui, the role religion played in this, some dubious business decisions, finally, the success of the tribe.

When author Brother Pat Howley began to write The KomKui, it soon became apparent that two of the figures central to the formation and continuity of the tribe were Pius Tikili and Andrew Dokta.

Tikili is a highly educated KomKui businessman who brought western capitalism to the tribe. While there were hiccups along the way but much of the stability of the KomKui today can be attributed to sound business investments.

Dokta is a charismatic musician, magistrate and Christian leader who drove the amalgamation of the tribes and the simultaneous commitment to peace.

Dokta can also be credited for addressing many social issues along the way, including sub-standard housing, raskol gangs, tribal grudges and community pride.

The two men present as similar characters in many ways - their incredible drive, self-confidence and belief that the ends justify the means.

But despite these similarities, their ideological differences created a long term rivalry between Tikili and Dokta.

Howley, in an attempt to free The KomKui of personal agendas, gives a balanced account of the achievements and shortcomings of both men.

When the book was made available to him in draft form, this approach satisfied Tikili.

However Dokta was unhappy about the inclusion of Tikili per se and demanded that The KomKui be rewritten entirely about himself.

In fact Dokta was so dissatisfied that he threatened the life of one of Howley’s associates when he was distributing free copies of the book.

This behaviour may seem surprising coming from a man who drove the KomKui to agreeing a Covenant with God to never fight again, however Dokta was no stranger to using his power to get his own way.

In the late 1970s Dokta had ordered his young followers to find older tribespeople still participating in traditional spiritual practices and order them to stop or be fined.

Dokta went further, using his power as a magistrate to threaten conviction to any member of the tribe who was not baptised and committed to a Christian god.

The paradox of the rivalry between Tikili and Dokta is that the KomKui needed the drive of both men to succeed in maintaining peace while the two men at the heart of this ultimately successful transformation couldn’t manage it themselves.

Pat Howley and his team of researchers have done a great service (albeit presently under-appreciated) with the publication of The KomKui by recording the tribe’s 25,000 year history. It was a story that was on the verge of being forgotten forever.

The KomKui has appeal on an historical level in its factual sections on both ancient practices and colonial times.

However readers will also derive a strong emotional draw from anecdotes of squabbles that escalated to tribal wars and the men who did so much to end them.

PNG's social media getting bigger & more complex

MARTYN NAMORONG | Supported by the Chalapi Pomat Writing Fellowship

IT IS GENERALLY OBSERVED that Papua New Guinea’s internet discussion forums - like Sharp Talk on Facebook - are becoming lost in the ‘noise’ generated by their members, such that the outcomes of each discussion thread are difficult to define.

Sharp Talk and similar forums appeal to a certain demographic group - people in their late 20s and a bit onwards.

But what of the younger generation of PNG’s Facebook addicts? Many have turned to the ‘Confessions’ pages of Facebook.

Indeed such pages are the rage at the moment; with so many popping up to easily gather audiences.

One of the most popular in PNG is the NCD School Love Confessions Page where one can get into the minds of Port Moresby’s students as they discuss online their secret lives as well as take their school fights.

The most popular remain the news pages with The PNG news page being perhaps the most popular. News page was the first PNG Facebook group dedicated to providing news and has become one of the most trusted news sources.

Various other media organisations have set up news pages (the newspapers are notably absent). It’s worth noting that within a nation where information travels relatively slowly, old news is still big news.

The mobile phone has changed the news dynamic in PNG. Towards the end of last year, the biggest controversy involving Ok Tedi mine was sparked by a Fly River woman with a mobile phone.

The irony was that mobile phone coverage in Western Province was made possible by Ok Tedi’s major shareholder, the PNG Sustainable Development Program.

This story is similar to the events that led to the downfall of the Somare regime which was also linked to improved communications. It was during the Somare years that Papua New Guineans benefited from cheaper telecommunications due to the entry of Digicel.

But improved telecommunications also meant that rumours and bad news about the regime would spread like wildfire, especially during Somare’s protracted hospitalisation in Singapore.

Blogs continue to play a significant role in PNG, being perhaps the most influential form of media. PNG Exposed, PNG Mine Watch and PNG Blogs have the greatest influence on the national discourse.

Looking into 2013, Papua New Guinea’s tech-savvy urban youth will continue to feel ripped off by Digicel.

Internet is still expensive and many users are starting the switch to Bmobile, which also provides 3G coverage in some urban centres.

However availability of compatible handsets and limited coverage by Bmobile will prevent some from making the switch from Digicel.

2013 may also be a year where PNG based business advertising increases as witnessed by the number of new ads popping up on Facebook.

As more voices are added to an accelerating social network, noise begins to increase. The outcome is likely to be an increase in closed discussion groups where membership is limited to like-minded people.

So 2013 may see a more mature Facebook crowd, with like-minded people creating spaces that may bring change for good or for worse.

Problems are emerging from the abuse of social media. The amount of Papua New Guinean pornographic material featuring online is likely to increase. This raises privacy issues for many naïve individuals getting linked to the web for the first time.

The PNG telecommunications body NICTA (National Information and Communications Technology Authority) has developed policies and legislation to address cyber-crime and the Minister for Internal Security has suggested having all mobile phones properly registered as problems linked to phone use arise.

How the government balances the need to address the social and criminal issues arising from use of information technology whilst maintaining freedom of speech online will be closely watched by all stakeholders.

There is also a need for Freedom of Information legislation and protection of whistle-blowers.

Whilst information can be anonymously leaked online, it would be better for proper channels of communication to be created so that Papua New Guineans can have mature discussions about the issues that face the nation, its people and the environment.

New book: Jared Diamond’s PNG adventures

American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene

PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR and anthropologist Jared Diamond has written a new book on his decades of field work in Papua   New Guinea.

The World Until Yesterday is Diamond’s most personal book to date, where he examines tribal societies’ approaches to universal human issues such as peace and war, child-rearing, treatment of the elderly, language, religion, and health.

Chronicling his 1964 visit to PNG when it was still under Australian administration, Diamond weighs in on the advantages of modern society (clocks, phones, credit cards, computers) and the disadvantages of tribal society (infanticide, periodic risk of starvation, infectious diseases, fear of attack).

He, however, also highlights the strengths of tribal society: should there be a global catastrophe someday it is the hunters and gatherers who will prevail.

In an excerpt of an interview published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, Diamond speaks with his colleague and friend of more than 20 years, Claire Panosian Dunavan MD, a tropical medicine and global health expert.

DUNAVAN: Was this your most personal book?

DIAMOND: Not just my most personal… but most practical book which people can use to modify their lives [in terms of] danger, bringing up children, getting older.

DUNAVAN: I want to hear about your first contact with a traditional society. What was it like?

DIAMOND: Before John (Diamond’s classmate at Harvard) and I went out there [in 1964], I was really naive. I knew New Guineans were primitive people, meaning that they had primitive technology.

I thought there would be something distinctive about their personality and cognition and so on – I fantasized for example, that New Guineans could read minds and that, in a few weeks, I could learn how to read minds. That just shows you how naive I was.

My first night in New Guinea… a [local] physician in the kuru area was eager to get me and John out of his hands as quickly as possible. Instead of easing us in our first night by letting us stay in his house, he told us a bit and drove us to a native village and left us there!

So my first night was spent sleeping in a hut in a village with New Guineans who did not speak English. I did not speak Fore, I did not yet speak Pidgin English (neo-Melanesian). I was tired from the long plane flights from the U.S., so I slept late the next morning.

When I woke up there was the scene that I describe in the book about the little boys playing war. War had ended in this area in 1959. So they were not playing hopscotch, it was serious, it was very realistic.

They were using small bows and arrows, they were darting back and forth, they were doing what the adults do in war. It was clear that this was training. This was my first morning in the New Guinea highlands.

The second night I went down to the village stream to brush my teeth and a New Guinean was there. I had already on that first day started asking the names for things in Fore and I saw a frog and I pointed and the person said dakwo. So I got the word dakwo for frog.

 On the second night I heard a frog croaking, [saw the man at the stream], and thought: ‘Aha! Human bond! I’ve learned a word of his language!’

‘Dakwo!’ I cried. The man shook his head [vigorously] in response. ‘Ibisaraya!’ It was not a dakwo; it was a different frog, an ibisaraya. This was my first exposure to New Guinean knowledge of natural history.

DUNAVAN: Were you ever scared?

Parallel histories – Steamships Trading Co and PNG

PHIL FITZPATRICK

‘Steamships Trading Company 1918-2008: A History’ by James Sinclair, Alan Caudell and Associates, Palm Cove Qld., 2008, 468pp.  Around $300 or K450 if you can find a copy.  I understand Bill Mcgrath at Pacific Bookhouse has one for sale

THIS MASSIVE BOOK is not commercially available and it has taken me a while to lay my hands on a copy.

It weighs 2.8 kilograms and measures 346x250x37 mm.  It is a sort of personal indulgence on the part of past Steamies directors and board chairmen. 

Lugging it from Steamies head office on Champion Parade to the airport in my backpack worked up quite a sweat.

Having read it, I would urge Steamies to consider bringing out an abridged version in a cheaper paperback. 

It is a book well worth reading because the history of the company runs parallel to that of Papua New Guinea.  The numerous crossovers are both fascinating and enlightening.

A paperback would also mitigate the aching arms that you will inevitably experience reading the present version.

Jim Sinclair is no Shakespeare but he is a very deft master wordsmith.  He is also meticulous with a capital ‘M’. 

He has been producing these sorts of commissioned volumes for some time now and they are building up to be a unique reflection on Papua New Guinea’s past.  He is currently working on a commissioned history of Edie Creek.

He told me that when he was posted to Port Moresby just before independence as a district commissioner with a vague portfolio and not a little spare time on his hands, that he noticed the Australian administration diligently junking what they thought were irrelevant records. 

Jim managed to insert himself between the dumpers and the dump and this material now forms an important resource for his writing.

He got a scare in this year’s floods in Queensland but fortunately it all survived.  He plans to leave it all to a selected institution when he finally runs out of steam.

But back to Steamies. The company kicked off around 1918
but a serendipitous event in 1924 was the impetus for its remarkable rise.  The Steamies website tells the story.

“The company's history began in 1919. Retired sea captain Algernon Sydney Fitch was growing apples in Tasmania for a living when he read about a barge named the Southern Cross going aground in the Bass  Strait.

“He decided to salvage it and travelled to Melbourne to raise 5,000 Pounds sterling and find a suitable ship for the salvage operations. He discovered a 90 ton coal burner, built in 1855, called the SS Queenscliffe. A group of businessmen backed Fitch and together formed a company which they appropriately called Steamships Limited.

“Fitch's plan had no connection with Papua and New Guinea. But what happens next was not in the scheme of things. The Southern Cross sank beneath the waves.

“To make matters worse the syndicate ran out of money whilst making the veteran Queenscliffe seaworthy. Fitch proposed that he sail the ship to Port Moresby and earn some money by trading along the Papuan coast. In 1924 the Public Company was formed”.

Steamies had many competitors over the years, including the mighty Burns Philp, but it outlived them all and is still thriving.

There are some good reasons for this, not the least being its long held policy of training and employing Papua New Guinean staff wherever possible. 

Coupled with this were a commitment to Papua New Guinea in general and a refreshing aversion to the profit-at-all-cost mentality.  It supported many charitable and other causes in Papua New Guinea, mostly in the background and without undue fanfare.  It has been a strong supporter of the Crocodile Prize since its inception.

Throughout its history, Steamships scrupulously followed the letter of the law, albeit sometimes reluctantly when it perceived the law as inappropriate.

In other words, while it could be a ruthless and intimidating adversary it was and still is an honest and ethical company.   Its  environmental credentials are a credit to it.  And, no, I haven’t got shares.

When you mention Steamies in Port  Moresby, people in the know will tell you that it has been taken over by Swires, the big British trading company based in Hong  Kong, and is no longer the Steamies of old.

This is technically correct but, as Jim Sinclair explains, Swires has had a very long history in Papua New Guinea and beginning in 1952 has had many active partnerships with Steamies.  That it now holds a majority shareholding is more luck than anything else.

The diversification of Steamies from the original shipping company into a multitude of businesses and then its retreat to its current core businesses of shipping, transport, manufacturing and hotels is an intriguing and mind-boggling journey which must have come close to driving Jim Sinclair nuts when he was writing the book.

Through it all, however and as Chairman Bill Rothery said in 2008, Steamies has been “proudly Papuan New Guinean for 90 years”.  He adds, This is a testimony to the determination and strength of its owners and managers over these years and to the growth and resilience of the country and its people.”

Steamies founder, Captain Algernon Fitch, had an uneasy relationship with Sir Hubert Murray, the famous Papuan Lieutenant-Governor, but they eventually came round to appreciate each other’s point of view. 

Sinclair suggests that it was probably Hubert Murray’s enlightened views eventually rubbing off on Captain Fitch rather than the other way around.

In any event, the good captain steered Steamies out of the total devastation wreaked by World War II and set it on a healthy course of expansion.  He was gone by the time of the equally devastating reign of Prime Minister Bill Skate.

Skate managed to wreck the Papua New Guinean economy in a very short space of time and also came close to wrecking Steamies and many other companies like it. Despite the valiant efforts of his successor, Mekere Morauta, the Skate effects are still felt today. 

Unfortunately Michael Somare in his second incarnation as Prime Minister failed, or wasn’t interested, in keeping up the momentum that Sir Mekere had generated.

It is not until you read the history of Steamies that you realise how bad Skate was and how many of Papua New Guinea’s chronic problems started with him.  If Somare founded Papua New Guinea, Bill Skate came close to sinking it.

A lot of people worked for Steamies over the years.  A lot were dedicated but  unassuming.  Some, like the bean counters, were downright tedious but there were also some delightful mavericks, rogues and eccentrics who gave the company an exciting flavour.

Jim Sinclair had access to most of the surviving managing directors and a lot of the current and retired employees.  He sprinkles their histories and views liberally throughout the text.  Some of the most colourful were the sea captains that Steamies trained and employed and who lent their names to the company ships. 

Sinclair also consulted board minutes, including those from the very first formal meeting in 1924, which not only survived the war but two conflagrations of the company headquarters in the 1970s, annual reports, old newspapers and numerous other sources.  How he is still sane is nothing short of a miracle.

It is a history well worth sharing with a much wider audience.  How about it Steamies?

John Murray’s book on policing in the South Pacific, ‘The Minnows of Triton’, won an ACT Writing and Publishing Award and is revised annually, the latest edition coming out in September. The book is available at the Co-op Bookshop at Sydney University or you can order it directly from John for $22 including postage. Email him here

PNG film festival focused on violence against women

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

THE FILMS ON GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE screened at Papua New Guinea’s 2012 Human Rights Film Festival gave voice to many victims who described beatings they had endured and their inability to escape ill-treatment because of poverty, unemployment and lack of institutional support.

The film festival screened a number of locally made documentaries and films including, Why Me - Survivors Stories from local producer Raka Gamini of Kundu 2TV. Her work brings some of society's most marginalised voices onto the national airwaves in PNG to tell their stories anonymously.

Another documentary on the Safe Cities Project was an initiative of UN Women in PNG. Port Moresby is one of five cities participating in the project, which aims to involve women and young people in local decision-making and to have women take active roles in community responses to sexual violence and crime.

The festival also included the official opening of the photo exhibition, Crying Meri, which exposes the issue of violence against women in PNG. Photographer Vlad Sokhi documents domestic violence, rape, and sorcery-related attacks against women and girls.

Now in its third year, the film festival aims to promote greater awareness and respect for human rights. Each session is backed by forums which debate the issues and aim to build an understanding that personal commitment can help end discrimination.

In addition to violence against women, this year’s film festival also focused on a number of other issues, including: torture; discrimination and sexual health; sorcery-related extra judicial killings; climate change; refugees and migration; housing rights and forced evictions; and business, environment and human rights.

United Nations resident coordinator in PNG, David McLachlan-Karr, said “The festival is an excellent vehicle for human rights education… it encourages people to engage and actively demand and defend human rights for all, especially the most marginalized and discriminated.”

The festival was staged this year in Port Moresby, Buka and Goroka and is now part of the Human Rights Film Network.

A reconciliation with the family of my brother's killers

Lutterworth Mail / UK

My Brother Vivian by Patrick Redlich, $25, www.mybrothervivian.com

THIS NEW BOOK EXPLORES the incredible story of a missionary who was murdered by tribesmen in Papua New Guinea during World War II.

The tale is told by Patrick Redlich, the half-brother of the Rev Vivian Redlich, who was killed in July 1942 by members of the Orokaiva tribe.

Patrick, who lives in Australia, wrote the book to raise money to build a teacher training college in Popondetta, near the site of his half-brother’s death.

The Rev Redlich, son of the then rector of Little Bowden village, Canon Basil Redlich, was volunteering with an Anglican mission in PNG in 1942 when Japanese forces landed.

For 60 years it was believed that he was killed by the invading troops along with 12 other members of the mission – including his fiancée May Hayman.

But the truth emerged in 2003 when an Orokaiva tribesman admitted that members of his family had murdered the missionary.

Patrick has been fundraising for the teacher-training scheme since 2009, when he was invited to a ceremony so tribesmen could seek his forgiveness for the murder.

Patrick said: “The terrible World War II conflict in Papua New Guinea saw Australia saved from invasion by a military force mainly comprised of 18 and 19-year- olds.

“It resulted in the deaths of many combatants and also numbers of Christian missionaries, most of whom were Catholics.

“This book focuses specifically on three Anglican missionaries who gave their lives because they stayed at their posts. One of them was my brother, another was his fiancée, the third was her friend.

“But the culmination of the tale is the reconciliation between our family and the descendants of those who murdered my brother.”

Missionary turns detective in a ‘curiously satisfying’ novel

PHIL FITZPATRICK

‘The Samana Incident: A Crime Novel of Papua New Guinea’ by Keith Dahlberg, iUniverse Inc, New York & Bloomington, 2010. ISBN: 978-1-4502-6311-5. $14.95 from Amazon. Also available as an eBook

SOME YEARS AGO I had the pleasure of working with the late August Paul Harold Freund.  Harold, as he liked to be known, was a pioneering Lutheran missionary who wrote a book called Missionary Turns Spy.

It was about his wartime exploits rescuing survivors from the Rabaul garrison and as a coast watcher in the Vitiaz Strait and on the New Guinea mainland.

My relationship with Harold did a lot to broaden my appreciation of the role and aspirations of the missionaries in Papua New Guinea.

Keith Dahlberg’s novel suggests that these aspirations may be wider and more bizarre than we realise.  The Samana Incident could easily be called ‘Missionary Turns Detective’.

The novel is set in modern day Papua New Guinea and deals with the problems of illicit drugs and gun running.  It is a sequel to an earlier novel based in South East Asia called Flame Tree.

The “Samana” in the book sounds very much like the Summer Institute of Linguistics headquarters at Ukarumpa in the Eastern Highlands.

One of the key characters is a medical doctor sent undercover to help solve a puzzling crime.  One thing leads to another and he becomes caught up investigating a scheme to import ais (ice) or methamphetamine and high powered guns into the country.

I know for sure the guns are going in but I’m not sure about the ice.

The doctor is not strictly speaking an ordinary proselytising missionary but he does his fair share of spreading the word as he works towards assisting honest cop, Lieutenant Jason Kerro, nail an Asian and Australian drug cartel.

Coincidentally the author is a medical doctor with long experience working in Thailand and Burma and has briefly spent time in PNG with the Summer Institute of Linguistics.  He is also an avid reader of mysteries, thrillers and biographies.

His brief sojourn in the Eastern Highlands clearly made a lasting impression.  He is currently writing another novel based on the mining industry in PNG.  Most of his information seems to come from his reading and maybe from the internet.

I’ve come across a couple of other novels by writers who have had limited or no actual experience in Papua New Guinea. 

When I contacted the author of the novel Bird of Paradise, which I reviewed for PNG Attitude, she freely admitted to never having visited the place; it was just exotic enough and conveniently located for her purposes.

It is the small things that give these books away and ultimately spoil the reading experience.  The devil is in the detail, as they say, and even though Keith Dahlberg has been in the country briefly and has ongoing friendships there and an obvious abiding and ongoing interest some of the details let him down.

Trevor Freestone - the magic chalkie of Watabung

PHIL FITZPATRICK

'Teaching in Papua New Guinea' [paperback, 88pp] by Trevor Freestone, Xlibris Corporation 2011, ISBN 10:1456869582, $15.99 from Amazon.com

TREVOR FREESTONE’S MEMOIR of life as a teacher in pre-independence Papua New Guinea is exactly as I expected it to be – modest and a little bit quirky.

He was there from 1963 until 1975; firstly in East and West Sepik and then in the Eastern Highlands. He left when life for many Europeans in outlying areas became more or less untenable because of the rising violence brought about by alcohol abuse.

The account is modest in two senses. Trevor doesn’t make any grandiose claims but he is nevertheless proud of his small achievements. And this is a modestly short book, running to just under 90 pages.

Trevor is quirky because of some of his teaching methods, which included the use of magic.  This developed to such an extent that he was buying magicians supplies while on leave and bringing them back to PNG with him.

He even became a member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians so he could get access to their secrets.

After a while he expanded his repertoire to include pyrotechnics and extended these activities to the extramural.  It was no wonder that other Europeans in the area regarded him as weird.

They also thought he was a bit strange because of his preference for integrating into the local community rather than remaining aloof as expected. 

Trevor seems to have decided on this approach at Ambunti in East Sepik and continued with it when he was transferred to Pagei in West Sepik and then Watabung in the Eastern Highlands.

I must admit that, in these present heightened times, I was getting a bit worried about the closeness that he developed with his students.

But at Pagei he courted a local girl and at Watabung married another local lass; three times – once traditionally, once in church and once in front of the District Commissioner. 

He and Anna were well and truly married.  He doesn’t say, but I’m guessing that he and his wife have led a long and happy life together.

The romance at impoverished and low-populated Pagei ran afoul of the complications of the local custom of sister exchange but at Watabung he had no trouble with bride price.

Under his guidance, Watabung became a model school which became the envy of many others.  One of the reasons for this can be attributed to Trevor’s personal touch and commitment.

He returned for a visit in 2008 and was pleased to see that the school that he had so lovingly nurtured, despite all its problems, not least being on the Okuk (Highlands) Highway, had survived and maintained its reputation.  As an added fillip the locals renamed the school ‘The Trevor Freestone Primary School Watabung’.

Compared to the prolific kiaps, you don’t see a lot of memoirs by chalkies and, even though this one is short, it is expansive beyond teaching and well worth a read by anyone generally interested in the history of Papua New Guinea.

Trevor has an interesting take on the breakdown of law and order for instance.  He dates it to the time when the kiaps lost much of their legal jurisdiction to the police force.

He says that whereas the kiaps were living out in the communities and had tabs on everything going on around them the police were centrally based in the towns and separated from local people. 

Problems which might have been resolved by a quiet word in the right ear suddenly became the subject of the hard boot of the law.

I can remember the frustration of having to report crimes to the police in Mount Hagen and then waiting days, sometimes weeks, before they got round to attending to it.

It was one of the reasons why I fled to the wilds of the Western District where the kiap still held sway.

Trevor also makes some astute comments about other issues, like the inherent racism among the American missionaries and the failure of both the Australian administration and later the government of Papua New Guinea to capitalise on PNG’s unique tourism assets.

Like a lot of us Trevor went to Papua New Guinea to escape mundane employment in Australia.  By all accounts he was successful.

Trevor self-published his book using a company called Xlibris, which is how I came across it. 

It is well-written in an easy and pleasant style.  The cover photographs are a bit fuzzy and there are a few typos in the text that shouldn’t be there.  They are of the type that authors become blinded to but which the publisher should have picked up.

I got my copy through Amazon but it is available through orders@xlibris.com.au.

Huli book of secrets crept too cheaply into the world

HELA WANE*

JUST LIKE OUR GAS AND OIL was sold cheaply to foreigners to exploit and drain, so was the identity and heritage of the Huli culture.

My grandfather and great-grandfather would turn in their graves if they know that I now know what they had done as Chief Priests in the gabe anda (places of worship).

Friday 9 November, 2012, marked a milestone for Hela literacy.

A renowned and well known Hela chief, soldier, theologian and politician, Damien Arabagali LM, launched the book Datagaliwabe was working in Huli.

The book in itself is a significant achievement as Mr Arabagali took the honour of being the first Hela author. In Hela less than 10% of the population is literate.

This quote from Papuan Wonderland by Jack Hides, cited in the foreword to Datagaliwabe was working in Huli, really shook me.

As I gazed on this fertile valley, this wonderland where practically any crop will grow, the question of the future of this people occurred strongly to me and I wondered whether the introduction to civilization would make them any happier then they appeared to be when we first came into contact with them.

Changes came and destroyed the Huli culture and heritage and now LNG is destroying our land, water, family ties, religion and brotherhood.

And so I will answer Jack Hides’ question on behalf of my ancestors. No sir, your introduction of civilization did not make us any happier, it broke our spirit and our land.

The content of Datagaliwabe was working in Huli gives away sacred traditional knowledge and custom, known only to a few chief priests and warriors.

The Hela ‘wigman’ is one of the most famous traditional costumes, and often used to sell PNG tourism. However, not much is known about the deep tradition and culture behind the colourful dress.

As Arabagli states, the knowledge was sacred and not shared, therefore, missionaries often referred to it as paganism and many Christian churches made it their aim to destroy it.

My mother came from the priestly Tagapua clan mentioned in the book and I often used to listen to how she – as a child - used to follow her father to the places of worship (gabe anda) for sacrifices to Datatagaliwabe (God, according to the book).

My mother was not allowed near the sites; therefore she would wait until her father finished the ceremony.

I also grew up with the tales mentioned in the book as bedtime stories, especially the Haroli legend, Ira hari, Bayabaya etc. However the true knowledge was forbidden to us.

Damien Arabagli, in his attempt to prove that God was working in Huli before missionaries came, sold this sacred knowledge to the world rather cheaply.

After half a century, a Kalam language dictionary

BERNARD YEGIORA

THE CODIFICATION OF INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE is a very interesting process. But I was amazed to see how long it took Andrew Pawley, Ralph Bulmer, John Kias, Simon Peter Gi and Ian Saem Majnep to produce the Kalam language dictionary.

The dictionary has just been launched Divine Word University in Madang with Pawley saying he started the project 48 years ago, taking some 10, 000 hours to document the Kalam vocabulary.

The compilers had to first learn the language, understand the context in which it was used and spend a great amount of time with the Simbai people.

On top of that, Pawley had to proofread the final copy of the whole document six times before it was published in Thailand.

Pawley (pictured autographing books) is Emeritus Professor in Linguistics in the School of Culture, History and Language at the Australian National University. He studies Austronesian and Papuan languages and has worked on the Kalam language since 1963, a span of nearly 50 years.

The Kalam language is an Austronesian language spoken by the Simbai who dwell in the border area of the Jiwaka and Madang provinces. Madang Governor Jim Kas, who launched the book, mentioned that half the Kalam speaking people are part of the new Jiwaka province.

The Kalam language, according to Governor Kas, who is an eloquent speaker of the language, is the most commonly spoken in the Madang Province.

The province also has other languages including the Rai Coast, Bogia, Karkar and other groups.

The Kalam speakers who turned up for the book launch were very proud of this masterpiece, which now immortalises their culture.

According to Pawley, the dictionary is ‘a monument that honours their language’. Such words by one referred to as a father figure fascinated the crowd. Pawley’s ability to switch from Pidgin to Kalam to English was a highlight of the evening.

Pawley said the reason why they chose to study Kalam was because he and his colleague, the late professor Ralph Bulmer, found the “language and culture fascinating, extraordinary and beautiful”.

Pawley’s ability to communicate with a diverse range of people was also mirrored by the President of Divine Word University, Father Jan Czuba, whose speech in Pidgin and English made the occasion more entertaining.

Unfortunately, many of the people who contributed immeasurably towards the project have now passed away.

They include the late Ian Saem Majnep (1948-2007) who, as a youth, assisted Bulmer in his field research in the Kaironk Valley and later wrote two books and a number of articles with Bulmer on Kalam knowledge and birds, mammals and plants.

In 1989 Majnep was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Papua New Guinea for his contributions to ethno-biological research.

Pawley described him as someone who was popular around the world because he was featured in Time magazine. He spoke about Majnep’s interesting career from being a Grade 2 drop out to someone awarded an honorary doctorate.

Majnep was represented by his son, who expressed his gratitude to Pawley and others on behalf of his father, saying that today was one of the proudest moments of his life as a Kalam man.

Facebook facilitating pornography amongst PNG youth

ROBIN SUANG

SOCIAL MEDIA have proven to be revolutionary in the way we communicate in Papua New Guinea.

The primary purpose of social media is to engage people of all walks of life and status, and to bring together friends who have not seen each other for years, all to communicate.

It is a fun and interesting way to learn, communicate, share photos and ideas and, in more recent times, campaign for elections, advertise products, debate pressing issues as well as helping each other in tough times.

Social media like Facebook, Twitter, Netlog and other enterprises that seem to increase by the day keep popping up everywhere.

I want to base this discussion on Facebook in Papua New Guinea because it is the one social media entity that has taken PNG by storm.

There are estimated to be over 30,000 Facebook users in PNG but the number might be much higher. Every day new Facebook accounts are created and many Papua New Guineans are able to communicate using this medium.

However, with such a technology, there are also security challenges – and threats also are rife in this social media age.

With the creation of sex content pages, many Papua New Guinean children are exposed to pornographic material.

School children are also exposing their bodies in the social media. For example, a Grade 6 student from a school in Port Moresby posted on her Facebook page nude pictures of herself which are very demeaning.

There are many people now uploading and downloading pornographic material through Facebook.

Many users do not report such sex themed posts, thus Facebook might not have any knowledge about them.

Of course, once such pornographic materials are exposed on Facebook, they can be difficult or impossible to remove, and this could make it very difficult for the person in his or her future endeavours.

Many people think of this sort of thing as fun, a joke or something to comment about, but I see this as a wakeup call for Facebook.

I think Facebook was intended for socializing, to build friendships, to communicate and share photos that are acceptable in society. However, these other uses are ruining its main purpose.

Many Papua New Guinean parents need to check what their children are up to on Facebook. In addition, Facebook needs to create a system to clean out this pornographic material.

There needs to be a review of certain features of Facebook and how it could better improve its service, especially in combatting pornography.

Most Facebook users in Papua New Guinea are teenagers, thus it is important for Facebook to work on its community obligation.

I believe that there is a need for the Censorship Board of PNG to look at this matter and to work with relevant authorities to battle pornography in our country.

This is a social issue, which is affecting a lot of people. Facebook is not at fault, but it is the people who use it who have created this ethical and moral issue.

PNG: As sweet and as untamable as the wild honey

PETER KRANZ

‘Wild Honey - a journey through Papua New Guinea’ by Kevin Glennon, ISBN 0-9757819-0-1, $39.95. Order at www.kevin-glennon.com/shop.html

THIS IS A BEAUTIFUL BOOK - you'd been mistaken to think of it as a coffee table special.

It is, in fact, a scintillating photo-essay. A series of breathtaking images from all corners of PNG, interspersed with poetry and quotations.

I don't know Kevin Glennon, but I thank him for this book which we picked up as a present for relatives at Jackson's Airport a few years ago.

The photographs are amazing - from a mist-covered Wahgi-valley panorama to four young girls fishing in a canoe off Madang.

Sure it has the usual run of PNG people in bilas, presumably shot at a singsing, but there are also some fantastic shots of birds, insects, beaches, volcanoes and Mt Wilhelm.

Kevin writes:

Travel with the author on an exciting journey through one of the world's most picturesque and extraordinary lands, Papua New Guinea, a land of Wild Honey. This book takes readers on a journey the length and breadth of the country.

From the isolated Min tribes that straddle the western border with Indonesia to the islands of the Bismarck Archipelago in the east. From the small coastal communities of Milne Bay Province in the south to the remote communities on the Ninigo Islands in the north.

If you want a book to open the eyes of people who have little understanding of the beauty, landscape and traditions of PNG, this is the one.

And 'wild honey' is such an apt description of PNG – a land that is sweet but untamable. (A bit like a PNG meri).

Kevin is based in Cairns, Far North Queensland, and continues to work and travel in Papua New Guinea.

PNG writers beware: the murky world of self-publishing

PHIL FITZPATRICK

YOU ALWAYS KNEW you had a book in you and now you’ve written it.

You’ve polished it until it shines and you’ve given it to all your friends to read.  “Tell me the truth,” you tell them.  “If it’s no good, please tell me!”

“It’s wonderful,” they all say, “you should get it published.”

A year or so later you look at all the publisher’s polite rejection letters in your desk drawer and wonder whether your friends were having you on.

Then you see an advertisement.  “Looking for a publisher? Send us your manuscript.”  You’ve never heard of the publisher and you don’t recall ever seeing any of their books but you decide to give it a go anyway.

You send off your manuscript and a little while later you receive a glowing report – they want to publish it!

Unbeknown to you you’ve entered the murky world of self-publishing.  The realisation comes when you receive their proposal. 

They will edit your book, design a cover for it and print it.  All for the bargain price of anything between $1,000 and $25,000!

You procrastinate for a while.  You’ve listened to your friends and told them you plan to publish your book.  They are expecting it soon.  Here’s a way to save face.  You decide to cough up the money and get it “published”.

All goes well and you receive the advance copies.  They look great.  You can’t get over seeing your name in print.  You are well and truly hooked.  You order 200 copies at a special one-off price.

Another year goes by.  You’ve personally sold six copies and given a heap of signed copies away to your friends. 

There are still 150 copies in the box in the wardrobe.  Somehow you feel jilted.  You feel like a sucker who has been taken for a ride.  Never again you vow.  You curse your silly and expensive pride.

In this digital age with print-on-demand technology and e-books there are reputable companies who provide a service to would-be-authors that is both upfront and honest.  The above is close to a worst-case scenario.

There are also a lot of sharks whose prime interest is ripping you off.  Reputable or shark they all make their money out of charging you for their services.  They don’t make money out of selling books like a conventional publisher.

Self-publishing has been around for a long time.  It used to be called vanity publishing.  Vanity publishers prey on people’s egos.  They specialise in charging to print poorly written books that no one will ever read.

Most self-publishing companies try to avoid the terminology and all its connotations.

Self-publishing companies invariably point out that many famous authors started out publishing their own books.  This is true but for every successful self-published writer there are millions who never make it past that first book.

Many self-publishing companies advertise generous royalty payments, typically 25% and upwards.  Trouble is, they’ve already made their money out of you and have no interest in selling your books.

One self-publishing company that I contacted while researching this article told me, “Oh yes, we publish many books by Papua New Guineans.” 

That’s strange, I thought, how come I’ve never seen them in the bookshops?

UPNG Press & the virtues of charging for publications

ALEX GOLUB | Savage Minds Blog

I SPEND A LOT OF TIME on Savage Minds extolling the virtues of open access publishing, so I thought I should take a minute to extol the virtues of for-profit publishing and the role they play in the scholarly endeavour.

As scholars, we anthropologists subscribe to the idea that knowledge should be free and spread as widely as possible. Of course, there are important qualifications to this: we understand that anonymity and confidentiality are important when we right and do research, and so forth. But overall, the goal is to make our work universally available.

The problem with contemporary publishing, we claim, is that too many people put profits ahead of accessibility; costs are high because production methods are outdated and publishers can’t or won’t innovate, and the social system of prestige and career advancement tied to publishing disincentives open access.

Publishing, we argue, needs to be done for a wider audience, for the right reasons, and in a way that gets the information out there. The successful open access projects in anthropology today demonstrate that this can be done. But it can’t be done all the time.

I was absolutely delighted to meet the people behind the University of Papua New Guinea Press when I visited Port Moresby recently. The Press has done absolutely fantastic work bringing back into print important work from the independence era of Papua New Guinea, such as the Pocket Poets series.

It is republishing work in the public domain — one small piece I saw was a missionary-produced ethnography. A staff member told me there was four of the original print run left, mostly in libraries.

The university press is not only making the piece available to modern readers, they’re saving it from extinction. They are publishing new books, aggressively seeking subventions to support new authors and scholarship.

Their authors are academics and amateur scholars, priests and activists. I was incredibly impressed by the quality and amount of work they were bringing out.

All of this work is valuable, but none of it is free. The press is very smart about outsourcing publishing to companies in Singapore and India (PNG doesn’t have a publishing industry to print their stuff), balancing their list to include textbooks (which sell) and rarer works (which don’t), making their works available on Amazon.

But there’s no way around that fact that, for them, for-profit is the only way to go. They simply don’t have the resources to go open access.

Sometimes people like to pummel a straw man version of open access which holds that any attempt to ever make money is an evil obsession with filthy lucre. Clearly, few actual people take such an uncompromising stance. There are many situations when the right business model is to charge money to keep your head above water.

Now, perhaps I don’t understand the UPNG Press’s business model and history — I was only there for a weekend. But it seems to me that the example of this successful, small, boot-strapped press should make us think: just how much like the UPNG Press are closed-access publishers?

If a third-world university with few resources can get things off the ground, then what does it say about first-world publishers who claim there is no cheaper way to get their works available than to charge US$100 for a monograph? If Papua New Guineans can do it well and on the cheap, we ought to be able to do so as well.

Alex Golub is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He studies mining and petroleum development in Papua New Guinea, as well as American culture in to the online game World of Warcraft. You can contact him at rex@savageminds.org

On PNG coffee, commodities & community engagement

REBECCA GARVOILLE interviewed Paige West [pictured], Associate Professor of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University in the US, to discuss her new book, From Modern Production to Imagined Primitive: The Social World of Coffee from Papua New Guinea (2012, Duke University Press. Here are some extracts….

RG: What is the theme of your new book?

PW: One theme, and a theme that I have also explored in other work, is the connection between places that are often imagined as far from modernity to places that are imagined as the center of industry and commerce.

Coffee is a commodity that has travelled around the world for literally thousands of years. And it’s a commodity that we tend to associate with a rather urban lifestyle. You know, you go a café in Hamburg, you go to a café in New York City, you go to a café in Sydney, and you have a cup of coffee—it’s something that we associate with a very particular kind of lifestyle.

Coffee and its circulation are one of the things that have for hundreds of years tied Papua New Guinea, a place that is almost always configured as stuck in the past or as the last bastion of a very different kind of lifestyle, to a modern global economic system. So one of the themes of the book is the way in which commodities tie seemingly out-of-the-way places and seemingly less-than-developed people to very urban areas and to the industrialized world.

Another theme of the book is seemingly “ethical” consumption. I ask what it means to try and create a kind of progressive politics around consumption and whether that politics is productive for people who are growing coffee and whether it’s productive for the people who are assuming that they’re enacting ethical, political choices through the act of buying.

With a lot of certified coffee, with a lot of the fair-trade or organic coffee, with a lot of this notion of ethical consumption— the people in the coffee industry who are most often discursively constructed by advertising, marketing, and other forms of representation are growers. And there are a lot of growers in the coffee industry, and they’re a very important part of the industry.

But one of the things I do in the book is expand our notion of who’s bringing coffee from Papua New Guinea to places like Hamburg, Sydney, and New York City. So I look at the lives of growers, of people who process the coffee, of the people who work for shipping companies, of the people who import coffee, of the people who market coffee, and I really try to flesh out the global commodity chain for coffee so that the simple portrayal of poor rural growers and wealthy western consumers gets a little more muddy for people.

True confessions: the ugly side of Australia in PNG

PHIL FITZPATRICK

‘To the Highlands’ by Jon Doust, Freemantle Press, 2012

WHEN I LEFT SCHOOL, I got a job with the National Bank.  As I recall, I loathed every stultifying minute of the 18 months I was there.

When I told the branch manager I’d accepted a job as a cadet patrol officer in Papua New Guinea he frowned and said, “Are you sure you want to do that?  With the bank you could be a branch manager in 20 years.”  I’ve always considered that as the moment I escaped.

I suppose if I hadn’t got the job as a kiap, I might have wound up in Papua New Guinea as a bank johnny.  This book makes me very glad that I didn’t.

Remember the bank johnnies?  If this book is to be believed they came to PNG for two reasons, sex and booze.

Their stints were only short, usually two years, and then they were back home again.  For the young blokes, and some girls too, it was a chance for an unfettered and exotic fling sowing wild oats before settling back into the oblivion of suburbia, marriage, mortgage, kids and all that sort of thing.

This is not a pleasant book - with its graphic grubbiness and language - but it is realistic.  Although it is fiction, it also has an autobiographical feel about it and follows from an earlier book about misspent school days.

I suppose that if one is to expose a dissolute youth, fiction might be an attractive option.  Then again, maybe it’s all made up.

It’s puzzling, however, why the author uses a fictitious setting called “the islands” when it is obviously Port Moresby and Goroka that he describes. 

In fact, I could be tempted to make a stab at the real name of his “Colonial Bank of Australia”.  Even a thinly disguised Meg Taylor has a part.

The Michael Somare character is totally unbelievable.  Maybe the publisher’s lawyers advised caution.

The book is written in the style of a 1970s men’s magazine but without the interspersed coy nude “studies”.  You know - lurid detail and smart arse repartee. There’s also a touch of Wake in Fright in there too.

The author freely admits to having been a bank johnny and says the book was hard to write.  In this sense I guess he deserves some credit.

The casual and venal attitude of many Australian men to local girls and women during colonial times was appalling.  I’m not sure it needs to be exposed now, but here it is.  It certainly knocks the wind out of those who believe Australia did a good job in PNG.

For many men who were in PNG, the book will strike a raw nerve, and rightly so.  For others it will simply induce a shrug and a smirk. 

The author suggests that somehow those who didn’t engage in gin jockeying were racists, which is an interesting take on morality.

Of course many Australian women found Papua New Guinean men attractive too, but that has always been couched in terms of self-righteousness and anti-racism. 

Drusilla Modjeska’s recent book, The Mountain, explores this theme.  And, of course, many Papua New Guinean men still treat their women and girls in the same way.

The title of the book is a play on Randolph Stow’s considerably superior novel of 1958 To the Islands.  What the connotation is, I’m not sure.

As I’ve hinted, I didn’t especially enjoy the book but it is definitely worth reading.

An anthology of literature coloured by national events

PHIL FITZPATRICK

This is the Foreword to the Crocodile Prize Anthology 2012 which will be launched tonight at the ceremony announcing this year’s seven award winners in the Crocodile Prize national literary contest.  Phil Fitzpatrick edited the Anthology

2012 WILL BE REMEMBERED as a tumultuous year in Papua New Guinea.  It was a year of political upheaval and uncertainty where the very fabric of parliament, the courts and even the constitution were tested. 

This was followed by a frustrating election dogged by disorganisation, faulty electoral rolls, corruption and vote buying. 

Many Papua New Guineans were hoping that, at election end, a new batch of younger, better educated and ethically sound politicians would emerge to haul Papua New Guinea out of the political, social and economic morass in which it seems to be mired.  Whether this eventuates has yet to be seen.

The year since the last Anthology was published was also a time characterised by tragic events, both in the airline and shipping industries. 

There was unrest in several towns with riots and demonstrations related to migration and the relentless pressures of development.  There were also individual and horrific tragedies like the beheading of a woman in broad daylight at Koki Market.

If you read this Anthology you will see how many of these events have coloured the stories, poems and articles written in 2012.  What also differentiated many of these events was the growing impact and immediacy of social media.  In many cases news was broadcast on Twitter, Facebook and a plethora of blogs well before it appeared in the traditional media.

Not only that but it was raw news without the spin added by vested interests.  2012 may well be remembered as the year when social media came into its own in Papua New Guinea.  In so doing it has cast a whole new light over politics and life in general.  Where it is going is anyone’s guess.

The Crocodile Prize, now in its second year, has been a beneficiary of this digital revolution.  This is demonstrated both in the fourfold leap in the number of entrants and entries and also in the subject matter.  The competition now seems to be inexplicably linked to digital media in Papua New Guinea.

Keith Jackson and Friends’ PNG Attitude blog is a co-founder of the Crocodile Prize and a significant number of stories and articles published on the blog during 2012 were derived from the contest.

Many new writers, seeing their work published for the first time, were motivated to continue submitting material to the blog to the extent where Keith could happily claim that well over 50% of its content originated in Papua New Guinea - truly reflecting PNG Attitude’s aim of being a forum for the exchange of ideas between Australians and Papua New Guineans.

One of the other spin-offs of the combined success of the competition and the blog has been the exponential growth of readership to include not only the general public but also relevant movers and shakers in both countries.

The Flight of Galkope – stories from the men’s house

PHIL FITZPATRICK

‘The Flight of Galkope’ by Kela Kapkora Sil Bolkin, Crawford House Publishing, Adelaide, 2012.  Contact www.crawfordhouse.com.au to pre-order a copy

THE TRIBES AND CLANS OF THE GALKOPE have occupied the steep mountain slopes and valleys of the southern part of the Simbu Province in Papua New Guinea for countless generations.  But this was not always so.

A son of the Galkope, Kela Kapkora Sil Bolkin, spent several years trekking through his traditional homeland talking to people about their origins.

The primary forums for his enquiries were the traditional men’s huts, where the elders and sages of the Galkope recounted, interpreted and handed down their stories from the past.

Through these old men, it has been possible to delve back several hundred years into the mists of time to the very moments of the inception of the Galkope as a distinct people and nation.

From that time, when Luis Vaez Torres was first touching the southern shores of Papua New Guinea and when mythical beings and legendary warriors touched shoulders in the high mountainous interior, the story is brought slowly and carefully forward to the near present when the Galkope began their flight to the four corners of Papua New Guinea to form a great diaspora.

The journey includes the exploits of the legendary explorer and founder, Alai Bia, and his quest for new lands; the story of Warmil and his spirit-wife and Sipa, the munificent half-man, half-raptor; through to the arrival of the first Christian missionaries and the eventual disintegration of the Galkope under the incessant plague of inter-tribal warfare and the bane of the new politics and economic imperatives of an independent Papua New Guinea.

Today over half the Galkope live outside the Simbu.  The importance of the men’s huts and their sages has diminished.  The magnificent valleys and mountains now sit in the aura of a silent sun and the rivers and streams flow over the pebbles of a lost time. Soon there may be no memories at all.

The Flight of Galkope is an attempt to salvage those memories and render them in a form for the modern age so that those Galkope, no matter where they now live, will be able to understand where they come from and what made them.

It is a well-worn cliché that to understand the present one must understand the past.  For the Galkope this may now be possible through Kela Kapkora Sil Bolkin’s meticulously researched and distinctly Papua New Guinean historical account.  It is something that other people in Papua New Guinea might consider and reflect upon too.

Sil will be familiar to PNG Attitude readers for his thoughtful and sometimes provocative articles.  He has also been a regular contributor to the Crocodile Prize and his work appears in both the 2011 and 2012 Anthologies.  He is also a member of the Papua New Guinea Society of Writers, Editors and Publishers.

He was born in the Galkope of the Simbu Province. He studied to become a Catholic priest but quit soon after completing his philosophical studies and attended the University of Papua New Guinea. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree majoring in Social Development and Anthropology.

Added to his credentials is a certificate of Leadership in Strategic Health Communication from the Johns Hopkins University (USA). He is now the senior policy analyst at the PNG National AIDS Council Secretariat.

This book is a significant contribution to both Papua New Guinean literature and history and should stand as a shining example for Papua New Guinean writers to come.

This afternoon the PNG Society of Writers, Editors and Publishers has its inaugural annual general meeting, adopts a constitution and elects its first office bearers. Sil Bolkin will be there. The announcement of the publication of his significant work is a very proud moment for all PNG writers

Relive the nostalgia & bore the pants off your grandkids

PHIL FITZPATRICK

‘Port Moresby: Taim Bipo’ by Stuart Hawthorne, Boolarong Press, 2011.  310 pages.  Available for $45, postage included, from the author at www.StuartHawthorne.com.

RUMMAGING THROUGH DR PETER CAHILL’S wonderful collection of Papua New Guinea colonial memorabilia in the Fryer Library of the University of Queensland a while ago I came across some old postcards of Port Moresby by ‘Chin H Meen: Photographer, Port Moresby and Rabaul’ – all printed in the USA.

One of the postcards showed a view of Ela Beach circa 1967.  It must have been a weekend or public holiday because the beach was quite crowded.

What struck me as strange about the scene was that there wasn’t one Papua New Guinean in view.  It then occurred to me that even as late as 1967 Port Moresby was very much a European town.  The scene could have been re-enacted anywhere on the Australian coast.

Stuart Hawthorne, in his book, Port Moresby: Taim Bipo confirms this impression.  As a frequent visitor to Port Moresby these days, I had somehow conflated what I see today with what I saw way back then.  Not so, I realised – it’s like two completely different towns.

Towards the end of his book, Stuart has a crack at explaining what went wrong with Papua New Guinea in general and the sleepy old town that many Australians remember in particular. 

While he points out that his analysis is merely a personal opinion, he puts it down to the rapid change of pace after the careful administrator, Donald Cleland, retired in 1966 coupled with pressure from the United Nations on Australia and the culpable stupidity of the mandarins in Canberra who took control.

This part of the book doesn’t come across in a particularly convincing way; the whole subject is problematic and it is doubtful whether there will ever be a definitive answer.  That aside, it is the rest of the book that will interest readers on both sides of Torres Strait.

Stuart arrived in Port Moresby in 1957 when he was eight years old and stayed there for 20 years – arguably during the heyday of the old colonial town.  His father worked for John Stubbs and Sons (Papua) Limited, which was a building and construction company.

It is his reminiscences of ordinary life in Port Moresby and the large and eclectic collection of photographs, advertisements, maps and newspaper clippings that go with them that are the real attraction of the book.

The latter appear to have been culled from his family collection and those of his friends and acquaintances.  They are represented by the occasional stunning shot as well as much that is fuzzy and faded. 

There is a delightful feel of voyeurism flicking through these personal photographs and the exquisite details accompanying them – a bit like sneaking a peek at someone’s old photograph album.  There is also a liberal sprinkling of historical material to fill in the gaps.

The photographs and details certainly have an historical value but I suspect that the major appeal will be the nostalgia generated for the people who knew the town in those halcyon days.  Even those who made a point of avoiding Port Moresby as much as possible will find the old memory stirring.

And I wonder whether those three young constables on patrol at Koki on the cover are still around.  More than likely they are and, if not, their children will certainly recognise them.

If you’ve got a copy of Ian Stuart’s 1970s Port Moresby: Yesterday and Today this new book will complement it beautifully.

Another review that gives less than the full picture

Weheart.co.uk

Occasionally (not often) in PNG Attitude we republish an article that demonstrates great ignorance about Papua New Guinea – although earlier this week we chose not to reproduce a sleazy London tabloid piece ostensibly on cannibalism, which has led to much comment in the PNG blogs. After all, there’s only so much a man can bear. But it does assist to remind us who are perhaps a little more knowledgeable about PNG of what is being said and written elsewhere in the world - KJ

USING VIVID MONOCHROME PHOTOGRAPHY and interviews with raskol gang members, Stephen Dupont paints a terrifying picture of a society in meltdown, of unemployment, poverty, corruption and killing...

This looks like one to cross off the holiday wish list. Papua New Guinea’s capital Port Moresby is universally regarded as one of the worst places on earth.

Lawlessness to shame the Wild West is in full force; gangs of criminals, known in the local dialect as raskols, roam the streets engaged in bloody warfare with each other.

Fair play to Aussie documentarist Stephen Dupont for going anywhere near the place.

Raskols: The Gangs of Papua New Guinea, soon to be published by powerHouse Books, is Dupont’s study of his time there in 2004.

Normally thought of as a place of exceptional beauty, forests and unmodernised tribal living, the capital was at the time of Dupont’s visit the world’s most unliveable city according to the Economist.

The book’s foreword gives a brief history of the circumstances that led to such a state of affairs, and from then on the images do the talking, occasionally etched with quotes from those he photographed. Powerful stuff.

Hard-working, frugal, fruitful – the Chinese in PNG

JIM SINCLAIR | Una Voce

‘Needed but not wanted: Chinese in colonial Rabaul 1884-1960’ by Dr Peter Cahill CopyRight Publishing, Brisbane, 316pp, hard cover, maps & photos included, cost: $35 or $40 includes postage & handling within Australia. Available in October from p.cahill@uqconnect.net

THIS IS AN IN-DEPTH, intensely researched, well-illustrated study of the history of the Chinese in Rabaul, from the first arrivals in 1884 to 1960. It is an ambitious and readable account, which should find a place in the library of anyone interested in PNG affairs.

There has been a Chinese presence in New Guinea from the very earliest days of the colonial era.

The New Guinea Chinese have been mentioned in passing by many writers – including the present reviewer – but there has been only one previous book-length attempt to tell the full story, Dr David Wu’s The Chinese in Papua New Guinea 1889-1980, published in Hong Kong by Chinese University Press in 1982, and not easily obtainable.

It is, moreover, a much more specialized account than Dr Cahill’s book, and it has not been unreservedly accepted by all New Guinea Chinese.

The book covers the story to 1960. Since that date the Chinese presence in PNG has dramatically increased and this is a trend that will undoubtedly continue, given the scope and scale of mining development in the country.

Dr Cahill’s book should assist decision-makers to better understand the mainland Chinese who will be among them in increasing numbers in the years to come.

Dr Cahill lived in Rabaul as a schoolboy, and his sympathy for and understanding of the New Guinea Chinese is apparent. Most New Guinea records were destroyed or lost during the Pacific War, and the researching of this account must have been a herculean task.

The story unfolds in chronological order, from the cruel beginnings in the era of Neu Guinea Kompagnie in 1885 to the movement of most Rabaul Chinese to Port Moresby and Australia in the years before Independence.

The New Guinea Chinese were treated as second-class citizens – both by government and the white majority - for most of their years in New Guinea, and Dr Cahill examines this situation with care and objectivity.

There is no doubt that the Chinese – hard-working, frugal, fruitful, pragmatic – achieved a very significant position in the business world of Rabaul (and later, Port Moresby). Some (and notably the early pioneer, Ah Tam) became very wealthy.

This commercial success is one reason why there is still resentment of Chinese store owners in PNG, as indeed is the case in many other parts of the world where Chinese have settled and thrived, usually at the expense of local merchants seldom prepared to work as hard as the Chinese.

There is also not the slightest doubt that the Australian government treated the Chinese in shameful fashion at the outbreak of the Pacific War. White women and children were evacuated to Australia in the nick of time just before the Japanese invasion, while the Chinese – men, women and children - were mostly left to their own devices.

Despite this, there are many instances of New Guinea Chinese helping Australians during the war, often at the risk of their lives.

This section of the book will be of particular interest to many readers. Another fascinating section deals with the eventually successful struggle by the Chinese to achieve Australian citizenship. I commend this book to all who have lived and worked in PNG.

PNG minister bars foreign media from Manus Island

RNZI

FOREIGN JOURNALISTS HAVE BEEN BANNED from visiting Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island ‘‘until further notice’’.

On 13 August, prime minister Julia Gillard announced Australia would start sending asylum seekers for processing on Christmas Island by the end of September, and Manus Island at a later date.

Two days later, a Fairfax Media journalist and photographer submitted visa applications to visit PNG and Manus Island. Their applications were approved by the PNG prime minister’s office the next day.

But it appears the applications stalled after being sent to the PNG Immigration and Citizenship Service.

A spokeswoman wrote to Fairfax on Friday to advise that ‘‘we are unable to process your applications due to a ban being imposed by the Foreign Minister on issuance of visas to foreign media personnel until further notice’’.

Foreign Minister Rimbink Pato defended the decision to Radio New Zealand International, saying the ban was temporary and would protect the country from misreporting, which could be ‘‘misinterpreted’’ by Papua New Guineans.

“There’s no need for the access,’’ Mr Pato said.

‘‘PNG’s a culture where we discuss, negotiate and compromise. So we don’t want any misreporting, as a consequence of which issues could be misinterpreted by our own people as well as by the outside world.

“And to work out those issues, we’ll do it ourselves first and then — when the time is right — everyone will be invited to come and see what we’ve achieved.”

Fairfax Media has appealed for the matter to be urgently reconsidered.

A spokesman for Foreign Minister Bob Carr’s office said: ‘‘We’re seeking further information — it’s a concern and our high commissioner is looking for more detail.’’

‘Hidden Treasures’ … a gem waiting for your attention

PETER KRANZ

ALFRED CORT HADDON is a little-recognised pioneer amongst those anthropologists and ethnologists who have made a name for themselves by their work in Papua New Guinea, some of them by exploiting the local people.

Not so Haddon. Born in 1855 and living until 1940, he was one of the first to recognise that indigenous cultures were being destroyed by white colonial influence, particularly of the religious kind, and that traditional beliefs, art, history and culture needed to be documented and examples preserved before they disappeared forever.

He also believed firmly in the principle that all cultures are of equal merit and are capable of sublime artistic, religious and symbolic creation.

Haddon pioneered the use of technology, combining some of the earliest use of movie film (at the time ‘silent’) with wax-cylinder recordings, which can be synchronised to produce sound films of performances which can still be viewed after 114 years old.

He worked for some years in both Papua and New Guinea, but is perhaps best known for his Torres Strait Expedition of 1898. He arrived to find an amazingly rich culture of rituals, beliefs, dances, art and music which was at that very time being threatened by the invasion of missionaries.

He was particularly scathing about the over-zealous work of the London Missionary Society, which he found had, on some islands, rounded up all the masks, carvings, costumes and art it could lay its hands on and burned them as 'works of the devil'.

Haddon sought to preserve as much as he could through film, sound recordings and collection of local art works - for which he insisted on paying a fair price agreeable to the owner.

Many of his several thousand items collected can now be seen in the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and the British Museum.  Some of his film and sound recordings can be seen and heard at the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra.

Haddon was recently the subject of a program Hidden Treasures on the ABC. Presenter Griff Rhys Jones walked in Haddon's footsteps through the Torres Strait to rediscover the meaning of a magical and mysterious mask he saw in the Cambridge Museum.

It was a great program, neither patronising nor sensational, deriving much of its appeal from it's simple ploy of letting the local artists and people do the explaining, augmented by Griff's sensitive and amusing commentary.

Watch it on ABC iView while you can (http://www.abc.net.au/iview/#/program/25516).

Some other links to information about Haddon:
http://aso.gov.au/titles/music/1898-torres-strait-recordings/notes/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R7Jo8om5vQ
http://www.janesoceania.com/australia_torresstrait/index1.htm
http://timetoeatthedogs.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/haddon.png
http://www.southbank.qm.qld.gov.au/Events+and+Exhibitions/Events/2011/07/Our+Story+Your+Story+-+Awakenings+Anita+Herle
http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/aoa/m/mask.aspx
http://maa.cam.ac.uk/tikiwiki/tiki-browse_image.php?imageId=113

Stella celebrates beauty of the Melanesian lifestyle

PACIFIC PENCIL

A NEW BI-MONTHLY WOMEN’S MAGAZINE, bringing together words and images from the best creative minds in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific, will launch in Port Moresby on Thursday.

Stella magazine will initially be distributed in Port Moresby and Kimbe, later circulating in other parts of Papua New Guinea.

The magazine was founded to provide a creative outlet for contemporary writers, poets, artists, illustrators, and photographers in the region.

Stella is a celebration of the unique Pacific lifestyle, covering Melanesia, Polynesia and Micronesia.

The publisher, Pacific Pencil, says Stella will offer readers a blend of short and long features that together form a collection of insights of what Pacific women are achieving across the region.

The first issue features candid interviews with political candidate Jennifer Baing and Samoan fiction writer Lani Wendt-Young.

The large-format, full-colour publication will include regular features covering funky fashion and practical products, experimentation with second hand fashion, current law, finance, technology and business trends and travel stories from a Pacific perspective.

Stella will also have an online component, an electronic newsletter and be active in social networking.

The launch event will be held at 10.30 am on Thursday at Star News Link, Vision City in Port Moresby to coincide with the International Day of the World’s Indigenous People.

You can purchase Stella at UPNG Bookshop, Theodist Waigani, Star News Link Vision City, Holiday Inn Waigani, Trophy Haus Boroko, and K-Mart Kimbe West New Britain for K9.95

Can social media transform PNG? Reflections & questions

MICHELLE NAYAHAMUI ROONEY | Development Policy Centre

AS OF JULY 2012 THERE ARE just over 100,000 registered facebook users in Papua New Guinea, most of whom are below the age of 35, and an increasing array of PNG related websites.

The explosion in the use of social media by Papua New Guineans is changing the way that they are engaging in politics, business and social activities on the home front. It is also changing the way that the international community is engaging with PNG.

In an unprecedented style, resonant with tours made by highly public figures and dignitaries, a young PNG man (Martyn Namorong, prolific blogger, self described betel nut seller and grassroots person) undertook a privately sponsored two week visit to the Australian cities of Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra in 2012.

This visit entailed an advance announcement and a highly publicised agenda and program wherein he met with prominent Australian PNG experts, politicians, journalists, ordinary Australian residents and gave seminars to a variety of Australian audiences.

A number of recent articles and radio interviews (Radio Australia, ABC, 4 July 2012;  Radio Australia, ABC, 5th July 2012; Rausim! Social media and political protest in Papua New Guinea; Catherine Graue of Australia Network) with pioneering social media practitioners reveals some important features of the emergence of social media in PNG.

These people include Emmanuel Narakobi (administrator of the Masalai Blog and the facebook forum Sharp talk); Tavurvur who administers the Garamut blog); Martyn Namorong, Alexander Rheeney , (PNG journalist and administrator of PNG Perspective); and Nou Vada (law student, blogger and administrator of The Edebamona Blog).

In recognition of this emerging form of media Malum Nalu (journalist and administrator of the Malum Nalu blogspot) was awarded the UNESCO/Divine Word Institute Award for Communication and Development in 2011.

In her paper, Rausim! Social media and political protest in Papua New Guinea, Sarah Logan talks about the use of social media in the recent political gymnastics in PNG. Inter alia, she highlights two roles of social media.

The first is the role of social media in facilitating political protest and the second is its facilitation of civil society engagement in the practice of politics.

She also highlights that the limitations on the use of social media include the limited numbers of users and the general sense of “political apathy” and “fragmented political identity” associated with PNG politics (Sarah Logan).

Martyn Namorong and Alexander Rheeney highlight (ABC Radio Australia) how PNG society is very community based and many educated and urban based Papua New Guineans remain closely connected with their rural based families.

They point out that this means that the current numbers of facebook users represents a significant mass of PNG society whose engagement through social media has the potential of being translated and amplified through various offline networks. The far wider coverage of basic mobile phone services (phone calls and text messages) adds to this amplification effect.

Marketing Peter O'Neill: social media take a bow

CHRISTOPHER PAPIALI | PNG Blogs

WE ALL UNDERSTAND THE BASICS: the internet is a communication protocol used by people to do business and communicate with other people on a 24/7 schedule.

And right now the mega-benefiters are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Tagged, Google , DevianArt, LiveJournal and many other social networks that continue to revolutionize very effective and fast communication channels.

And when we examine how some of winners in the current Papua New Guinea national election strategized their election campaigns, we see the internet, print and social media networks loom large.

Two individuals, although there may be others, who stand out in this category are Peter O’Neill and Michael Malabag and their People’s National Congress Party.

O’Neill’s method of marketing himself and his party was his excellent graphically designed campaign images with a small growing tree placed in his palms.

His black jacket with a beaming face must have also played a significant role in maneuvering voters. Further, O’Neill had his advertisement run for couple of weeks leading up to voting.

On the other hand, Michael Malabag was conversing with many people through Facebook, much to the joy of his friends and groups. Even during campaigning and after voting he was the active user of Facebook.

The average person in PNG is now using newspapers every day to find out what is going on in this country. The number of readers is increasing and it is certainly impacting like never before.

Young people in particular are curious and excited about trying out new things and Facebook presents the ultimate satisfaction partner. Already, young Papuan Guineans through Digicel mobile phones download, upload and access stories, news, photos and other online services at their fingertips.

I am led to believe that politics in PNG is changing as more and more people are using the internet and social media networks to communicate. It is also fair to state that the two leaders mentioned should continue to inform their supporters and voters of what they are doing.

Their social media friends can become a rock for them to lean on through advice and criticism.

For those who are planning to run in the 2017 elections, kindly jump on to the social media wagon.

It will carry you where you want to go because it is now proving very successful in countries where their governments prioritize ICT education, training and usage.

Media concern over election count bans

PACIFIC FREEDOM FORUM | Rarotonga

AS THE ELECTION RESULTS from Papua New Guinea continue to flow in, the country's national media workers association has joined the Pacific Freedom Forum in its concern over returning officers interfering with media work at two provincial centres.

The PNG Media Workers association and regional media monitoring network say the public right to know polling results came under threat last week. In two separate incidents, journalists at polling centres in the Western Highlands and Morobe provinces were banned from doing their jobs.

Journalists at the centres reported last Monday that the returning officer for the Huon/Gulf electorate in Morobe demanded payments for release of information from Lae-based journalists, and verbally abused an NBC reporter.

Two days later, another returning officer overseeing the counting for the Hagen Open polls in the Western Highlands banned media from reporting the results.

"We are concerned over the incidents affecting the ability of media to get on with the work of reporting the polling results. Keeping journalists away from reporting the results of the counting shuts the door on the people relying on news for updates, and robs the public of their right to know," says PFF chair Titi Gabi, from PNG.

Gabi is also a founding member of the PNG Media Workers Association and is currently leading a media support group at the Elections Media Centre.

The reporting of the incidents to Ms Gabi led to a speedy resolution of the issues. Journalists -- some of whom had wanted to boycott the elections after their harassment, resumed their usual observation and reporting of the results where the incidents took place.

Social transformation & violence in Papua New Guinea

PACIFIC INSTITUTE

Engendering Violence in Papua New Guinea. Edited by Margaret Jolly and Christine Stewart with Carolyn Brewer. Available online or in paperback from ANU E Press

THIS COLLECTION BUILDS on previous works on gender violence in the Pacific, but goes beyond some previous approaches to domestic violence or violence against women in analysing the dynamic processes of engendering violence in PNG.

‘Engendering’ refers not just to the sex of individual actors, but to gender as a crucial relation in collective life and the massive social transformations ongoing in PNG: conversion to Christianity, the development of extractive industries, the implanting of introduced models of justice and the law and the spread of HIV.

Hence the collection examines issues of ‘troubled masculinities’ as much as ‘battered women’ and tries to move beyond the black and white binaries of blaming either tradition or modernity as the primary cause of gender violence.

It relates original scholarly research in the villages and towns of PNG to questions of policy and practice and reveals the complexities and contestations in the local translation of concepts of human rights.

It will interest undergraduate and graduate students in gender studies and Pacific studies and those working on the policy and practice of combating gender violence in PNG and elsewhere.

Assaults on media a trend of growing concern

PACIFIC FREEDOM FOUNDATION

THERE HAS BEEN ANOTHER threat of assault against journalists in Papua New Guinea, the latest in a string of incidents that is causing concern about the freedom of journalists to operate.

Last Sunday, EMTV journalist Mick Kavera and camera operator Gesoko Adrian were on assignment at the Jacksons airport terminal to film the arrival of illegal immigrants being accompanied by members of an investigation task force.

According to Kavera, task force members spotted the media crew filming and approached them, berating them in Pidgin for "misreporting" their activities and telling them to await a formal statement.

Adrian was also told to delete all the footage shot or the camera would be broken and he would be bashed. Some time after he had deleted the footage, the task force members did an about turn, apologised and the EMTV crew was invited to resume filming and complete their assignment.

 "We commend the EMTV media crew for stepping forward and breaking the silence and urge their management to support filing of a police complaint on this and future threats to crew safety on the field," said Pacific Freedom Foundation co-chair Titi Gabi of Papua New Guinea.

She said the apology should not prevent or undermine the rule of law. "An apology is welcome and should help as a mitigating factor in a police investigation, but more than anyone the task force members will understand that this alone should not rule any investigation out."

 "What's important is that the general community and many other media workers get the point that it is criminal and illegal to walk up to journalists and any other law abiding citizen and tell them you will bash them up and break their cameras," she said.

A rivetting documentary about a proud people

BY WAYNE COLES-JANESS

BOUGAINVILLE OUR ISLAND, OUR FIGHT is a powerful film about an indigenous people taking up arms for independence to protect their culture and stop the ecological devastation of their lands.

This multi award winning documentary is about one of the last wars for independence.

It smuggles us across borders into the world of the besieged people of Bougainville.

During the civil war, cut off from all humanitarian aid and invisible to the western media, their only resource was their resolve to fight for independence in an attempt to preserve their culture and environment.

This is the only documentary of the longest war in the South Pacific. A war that resulted in the deaths of 20, 000 people who live just two hours from Australia.

You can find out more here - http://itunes.apple.com/au/movie/bougainville-our-island-our/id397699853

The Mountain: articulating the enigma that is PNG

BY PHIL FITZPATRICK

WHEN I WAS LOOKING FOR a copy of Drusilla Modjeska’s novel, The Mountain, I found it on the “new releases” shelf of our local department store. 

It was surrounded by lots of those glossy novels about feisty (mostly beautiful blonde) ladies tackling the rough and tumble of the outback, showing the blokes a thing or two and ending up finding true love. 

There were also a couple of the latest doomsday titles for the guys and the usual vampire / fantasy for the teens.  All of them heavily discounted because of the buying power of the chain store.

For a literary novel I thought it was an odd place for it to be displayed; normally you have to go to a real bookshop and rummage through the shelves for such things and then pay a premium price to boot.  That, or buy it on the Internet.

It is a sad fact, for men at least, that most general readers in the developed world are women and a lot of the people who write for them are also women. 

So why would a complex novel set in an obscure place like Papua New Guinea be sitting on that shelf?  Did the store buyers see the cover and make an incorrect assumption?

Having read the book it dawned on me that the reason it was there is because it operates at two levels.  On the one hand it can be read as a straight novel about “love, loss, grief and betrayal” as the blurb proclaims, but on another level, especially to those in the know, it is a complex analysis of the grappling relationship between two vastly different cultures brought together in a crucial moment of time in Papua New Guinea.

It is here that the novel excels and demonstrates that fiction leaves anthropology and history well in its wake when it comes to understanding what really happens in people’s lives.

The book is written in two sections, pre and post-independence.  It concerns the people, both black and white, involved in the halcyon and ideologically driven days of the University of Papua New Guinea and then, years later, the spillages involving them and their children.

I think this might be the first time that anyone has written about those sandal-shod, Hawaiian-shirted, mini-skirted, kaftan-clad and bearded and beaded, convention defying black and white denizens of outer-Waigani in anything other than derogatory terms. 

In that sense it is a refreshing change; the novel paints a wonderful picture of those days, especially around Hohola, including all the colour and angst.

At the beginning of the book two of the pivotal characters are standing on a hill overlooking the new university under construction and the student asks the newly arrived wife of one of the lecturers whether what they can see is, in fact, real.

The question of reality seems to be at the heart of the novel.  As the narrative progresses you begin to realise that in such circumstances what might be reality to one person may not necessarily be reality to another. 

When a white academic and a kiap, for instance, look at something they see different things, just as an educated Papua New Guinean and a bush kanaka might have done and, unfortunately, still do.

It is the student who asked the question on the hill that turns out to have the firmest fix on reality.  He becomes a smooth-talking and rich lawyer representing developers, miners and loggers and the reason he’s successful is because he’s worked out what’s going on in Papua New Guinean minds.  Whether he likes it is another matter; he can’t fix it, he’s already tried, and anyway, it butters his bread.

He knows that Papua New Guinea is a mess and was always going to be a mess and there is nothing that can be done about it.  The plunderers will continue to plunder and the locals will continue to be their own worst enemies.

One of the hapkas offspring of those early days comes back to Papua New Guinea from Europe to solve the puzzle of his identity and travels to the isolated mountain village to which the title of the novel refers. 

He is the mystical prodigal son but even those untouched people see him as a bisnis opportunity.  In a vain attempt at integrity he tries to help but as the novel ends the jealousy has begun and the scheme is falling apart even before it really begins.

One of the characters in the novel (with a vague resemblance to someone familiar to PNG Attitude readers) is puzzled by white people always needing a reason for why things happen.

And that, I guess is the enigma of Papua New Guinea.

A pebble in d waves

BY CARL KINGSTON

She told me she needed me
She said my girls needed me
The times were tough on us
I had to work far way

But nothing could move me more
Then the thought of my babies facing d rough without me
So I left my job to work closer to home
It's tough
But the smiles of my girls mean more than the world to me

I keep telling her to see through my eyes but she thinks otherwise
The slightest of waves move her yet again

She wants to take d kids n leave me
I tell her to b strong with me but she would rather find strength in
familiar surroundings of her family
Rather then trusting in me

I know d waves they shape a rock
n with time it becomes smooth
n finds rest in a spot on shore somewhere
and with time the tides change
Or river changes course
So Forever the pebble will remain where it lies

And so I pray that with each wave
She will learn
To hold on to what matters between us
And see d bigger picture
above d struggles of the present
And become stronger like me
Holding on
no matter how rough or strong
the currents of life may be

So that when the waves have moved us
To that one place
And d currents have done all they have been destined to do
They will move us no more
And there we shall be
Infallible
Strong
Together
Unshakable

Carl Kingston (28) says “I write in my free time and often do so as an outlet for situations I face in life”