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State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Project
Australian National University
"Helping people repair houses": Reflecting on processes in the "Partnerships for Peacemaking" project among the Enga of PNG
by
Associate Professor Roderic
Lacey
(For the Enga mana epe
kutingi Group)
Paper read at the SSGM Seminar
Australian National University,
Canberra
Tuesday 6 October, 1998.
Anda komba pingi akali ongome nisala epelya ongo mona taiyu lapae maingi
" A man who is trying to repair his house
is always grateful for any help he receives".
Pyaine of Tetemanda .
PROLOGUE
Pyaine, an elder of Kii clan from Tetemanda
village, close to Wabag in Enga Province, spoke these words by way of thanks
at the conclusion of the first "Partnerships for Peacemaking" Workshop,
held at Holi Spirit Senta, Par in July 1997. Pyaine was one of eight elders
(six men and two women) who worked with eight researchers (also six men
and two women), seeking to develop skills among the researchers in the
collection and recording of oral testimonies about life histories and peacemaking.
(It is apparent that the gender balance of participants - 6 males to 2
females - does not reflect that of the total Enga society. This imbalance
does however reflect the paucity of women in that society currently available
for participating in research teams).
In many senses this Workshop, held between
7 and 11 July, was a multiplicity of partnerships. Partnership between
the two facilitators: Rev Dr Douglas Young SVD, and I. Douglas Young was
then the Co-ordinator for Pastoral Planning for the Catholic Diocese of
Wabag, who had guided the growth of the community/parish based Gutpela
Sindaun (living together in harmony and peace) movement which seeks
peaceful alternatives to increasing levels of violence abroad in Enga Province
in recent decades; he completed a doctoral thesis in the Centre for Conflict
Resolution at Macquarie University in 1995. I am an oral historian, who
began an investigation into Enga oral traditions as historical sources
in the early 1970s and had been a Project Officer in the federally funded
"Educating for Peace" programme in the Archdiocese of Melbourne in the
mid 1980s. There were also partnerships between the two facilitators, with
our differing, yet overlapping experiences and skills and the eight Enga
researchers: Akii Tumu, the Director of the Enga Cultural Centre; Nitze
Pupu, a graduate in law from the University of Papua New Guinea; Alome
Kyakas, Curator of the Enga Provincial Museum; two community pre-school
teachers, Regina Tanda and Pius Kersly, both of whom are field researchers
in Enga cultural projects; Andy Utuwai, Provincial Tourism Officer, and
previously a Diocesan Research Officer; Joseph Lakane, a Diocesan Cultural
Research Officer; and Elias Aiyako, a catechist/community educator from
Porgera. Each researcher was in partnership with his/her chosen elder/informant.
The whole research team was also in partnership with the wider community,
including members of the Gutpela Sindaun Team who were participants
in the Workshop.
There were other perspectives on partnership
also evident. Both Akii Tumu, who worked with Pyaine of Tetemanda and Alome
Kyakas, who worked with Kambilyome, a member her mother’s clan, had been
involved in research and publication partnerships with the American anthropologist
Polly Wiessner. Alome Kyakas and Polly Wiessner had published in 1992 From
inside the Women’s House: Enga Women’s Lives and Traditions. (Brisbane:
Robert Brown & Associates), a collection of oral testimonies from Enga
women. In August 1998, Polly Wiessner and Akii Tumu launched Historical
Vines: Enga Networks of Exchange, Ritual and Warfare in Papua New Guinea
. (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press), the fruit of ten years joint
research into traditions and testimonies on the precolonial history of
Enga. The authors also acknowledge the work of Nitze Pupu in translating
testimonies, especially in Chapter 12 "Competition and co-operation: A
family history of leadership and tee" which focuses on the family
of Lambu of Lenge, who was Nitze Pupu’s maternal grandfather. Nitze had
lost his sight in an automobile accident in 1980. His informant in the
Workshop was Kandenge, a leader from Wakumale. I had first knew Nitze Pupu
in the 1970s, when he was a high school student, and later a student at
the University.
Pyaine’s metaphorical reflection on gratitude
towards people who assist in with house-building, was a very apt imaging
of partnerships evidenced in this project.
CONTEXTS
The area of the Papua New Guinea Highlands
within which the Enga Province is located, has been inhabited for at least
12,000 years, as suggested by archaeological research in Yuku Rock shelter
on the Enga-Western Highlands provincial border, Kutepa rock shelter in
Porgera District and the Sirunki area of Enga Province (see map in Appendix).
According to the 1990 Census the total
population of Enga Province was numbered at 235,561. This represented an
increase of 71,027 or 43.2% over the 1980 Census figure of 164,534. For
Enga Province the annual growth rate in the decade 1980 to 1990 was 3.59%,
the third highest after the National Capital District (4.69%) and West
New Britain (3.90%)
Douglas Young, who recorded these figures,
has cautioned that they need to be qualified as to accuracy and reliability
(1995:5). He has also noted the rising levels of violent conflict, in recent
years, and some of its costs among the Enga.
The State, at both the national and
the provincial levels, has responded to the rising wave of violence in
a range of ways. These measures have included the granting to police of
special powers of arrest, together with the establishing of village courts
which promote intervention and resolution using traditional means. But
the State also employs coercive means that include the threat or use of
violence, including the possible reintroduction of the death penalty, as
well as the use of the colonial mechanism of punitive raids.
The Provincial Government has established
the programme "Operation Mekim Save" (meaning "teach them a lesson")
which combines both judicial and coercive means and has punitive overtones.
The positive aspect of this programme is that it has built on the village
court system which sets up special courts to mediate and arbitrate intergroup
disputes. This programme also sponsors elaborate peace ceremonies.
Finally the State intervenes in administrative
ways through programmes of population control and land management. The
Provincial Government has also had a liquor ban in place since 1991 on
the assumption that alcohol and violence are directly related.
Of these state sponsored schemes, Douglas
Young concludes:
A major non-government means of conflict
resolution has been the development of conflict resolving teams in local
communities "in the hope that this process might contribute to the discovery
and implementation of alternatives to tribal fighting"
In the initial stage, workshops were
conducted over a four year period. Through these workshops the tasks facing
trainers were clarified and the components of a training package were tested.
Through these experiences, participants
were able to identify five stages in the evolution of a tribal fight:
The role of GSK mediators is different
in each of these situations. "Different resources are required, different
risks involved, and different outcomes desired" (1997: loc. cit.).
While involved in the facilitation and
growth of this grassroots movement, Douglas Young was also engaged in formal
research for his PhD in Conflict Resolution at Macquarie University. At
one stage, in 1993-1994, he visited me in Ballarat, having searched out
my writings on Enga oral history. As we spoke, we discovered that we share
many common interests. As he left my office to return to Macquarie University,
I wished him well, expressed an interest in reading his thesis, as it evolved
and posed for us both the question of how an oral historian might fruitfully
participate in the GS process. I read his thesis before it was lodged for
examination in 1994 and, during 1995, we planned for my application for
an ARC Small Grant for a "partnerships for peacemaking" project. For me,
illness intervened during 1996, but Doug worked with the group of Enga
researchers and supervised their gathering of fifty testimonies on peacemaking
and war between October 1996 and May 1997. These testimonies were sent
to me for my response. Our first Workshop followed in July 1997, when I
returned to Enga more than twenty-five years after the beginning of my
doctoral fieldwork in the early 1970s.
EXPERIENCES WITH ENGA ORAL HISTORY 1971-1997
In August 1969 I left the Australian School
of Pacific Administration (ASOPA), where I had lectured in PNG History,
Development Studies and Aboriginal Studies since the beginning of 1965,
to travel with my family to the University of Wisconsin, Madison and join
the Comparative World History Program for Graduate Studies. There, among
my professors, I fortunately encountered Jan Vansina, and, together, we
planned that I would carry out my oral history fieldwork among the Enga
in the Western Highlands. Between July 1971 and January 1973, when I moved
to join Donald Denoon at the History Department at the University of Papua
New Guinea, I interviewed over one hundred elders scattered throughout
the region, and with them, explored four strands of oral traditions which
we believed were essential elements in the shaping of the lives of Enga
men in precolonial times. (It should be noted that, quite explicitly, I
speak of men, and that my teachers were exclusively male. I sensed,
soon after beginning my fieldwork, that in a highly patriarchal society,
it was impossible for me, as a white male, to interview Enga women face
to face. That gender flaw was noted by one of my dissertation examiners).
These strands were:
In exploring these traditions with
elders, in order to evaluate them as historical sources, I was beginning
to tap into expressions and sources of Enga moral thinking (masapae
epe) and wisdom (take).
In July 1972, through my research assistant,
Philip Pato, I met his adoptive father Pangia, who strongly resisted my
questioning him about the origins and settlement history of his Mulapini
people and sent me away, seeing me as a poorly disguised kiap who
was attempting to discover his clan boundaries in order to fix them permanently.
A month later, Philip returned alone to Pangia, armed with a tape recorder
and asked his father’s permission to teach him Mulapini origin traditions
in the men’s house (akalyanda) and to record that teaching on tape
for me.
As he began to teach his son, and through
Philip, to teach me, Pangia questioned my role as interrogator. This teaching
has stayed with me , as a symbol, an emblem, since August 1972, when Philip
first translated with me what Pangia had taught us both on tape.
His words:
This teaching has guided me ever since,
in my reflections on my role as a researcher/historian of Enga oral traditions.
(See, for instance 1974, 1981, 1997, 1998).
At the conclusion of my thesis, I only
offered some proposals about possible stages in Enga precolonial history
which grew out of the teachings I had received. These three stages I characterised
as: the age of the sky people and the immigrants from the south; the age
of the founders and pioneers; and the age of the tee kamongo and
sangai
warriors (1975: 263-277). I also posed five methodological questions regarding
the practice of oral history in cross-cultural contexts.
These methodological questions were:
My thesis and the body of taped traditions
from the 1970s were to become a springboard for the ten-year project carried
out by Polly Wiessner and Akii Tumu, culminating in the publication of
Historical
Vines in 1998. This evidence was for them both a starting point and
a point of departure, though they chose to move from that to conduct their
own detailed interviews throughout the Province (1998: 41,42).
Their stance confirms the insights which
I had gained from my encounters and which led me to pose those five methodological
questions. Later, they affirmed the insights I had gained in the 1970s:
INTERFACES BETWEEN ORAL HISTORY AND
CONFLICT RESOLUTION: THE WORKSHOPS.
WORKSHOP I: 7-11 JULY 1997
This Workshop embodied PAR principles
of negotiation and participation by all members. All but two of the participants
had been involved in the collection and translation/transcription
of the fifty testimonies on warfare and peacemaking across the Province
between October 1996 and May 1997. Doug Young had facilitated and supervised
this process and they had, together, held a number of short workshops.
Eight researchers participated, Akii Tumu,
Alome Kyakas, Nitze Pupu, Andy Utuwai, Pius Kersly, Regina Tanda and Elias
Aiyako, together with their chosen elders, , along with the two facilitators.
There were also three members of GSK who took part.
After introductions and explanations,
all participants began the first day’s proceedings negotiating a set of
aims to guide us.
These were:
Among the body of testimonies which
I had been sent as preparation for the Workshop, were two collections of
metaphors and proverbs gathered by Nitze Pupu and by Joseph Lakane. Their
collections and translations were undertaken as part of an Enga Cultural
Project. From these proverbs I chose two which I believed gave our Workshop
a particular focus.
These were:
(You should say things or make plans in
the interests of children and not just for immediate gain)
* Lyaa buingi ongo buyo pao yumi lyuu pingi
(When you say or do something it must have
an end or a conclusion to it)
In terms of skills consolidated, refined
and achieved over these five days together, the researchers developed skills
for collecting life histories and testimonies to peacemaking. In this way,
true to PAR principles, the Workshop focused the original set of aims quite
specifically.
To begin the process of developing skills
for the collection of life histories, I reflected on the experiences I
had when guiding students at UPNG in the 1970s in the recording of histories
of people in their villages (Lacey, 1984). I also explored my work with
Australians who told life narratives, which I began in the early 1980s,
after my return to Australia ( for instance, Lacey, 1984(a); 1990; 1994).
I modelled the process by a brief telling of my own life story.
From these experiences, it seems to me
that life histories could have a number of different shapes - as narratives
( autobiographical chronicles); as reflections on life experience; and
as personal myths (see, for instance: Samuel & Thompson (1990); Passerini
(1990) and Peneff (1990). We discussed together possible forms for life
histories in Enga culture and even played with some possible Enga names
for "life history". We moved then to practice.
Their first task was for the researchers
to sit in pairs and to explore each others’ life history in turn, discussing
what they had discovered about method in this process.
Next day, for the morning, researcher sat
with their informants and recorded life histoies on tape. In the afternoon
the researchers gathered together for some time, without the two facilitators,
to reflect in vernacular on their experience of recording and listening..
The result of this conversation was the following set of guidelines:
Guidelines for collecting life histories
I found it fascinating and affirming
that, through practice, conversation and reflection, this group of researchers
arrived at a set of guiding principles which expressed oral history practice.
By the third day, Wednesday 9 July, we
were ready to consider testimonies about peacemaking.
Since this was a process of exchange of
knowledge and experience, I began by exploring the issues discussed above:
what strands of tradition did men of wisdom (masapae akali ) teach
me, and what questions did I believe should be addressed to oral sources,
as a result of my field experience? Those five questions had come to the
fore when I had read through the first batch of testimonies sent to me
late in 1996. Once I had communicated these questions to them, Doug and
the researchers had discussed my suggestions. The result was their design
of a "cover sheet" for each testimony. (see Appendix).
Before they moved on to recording testimonies
on peacemaking with their informants, I also reflected on issues and themes
that grew from my consideration of the groups of testimonies which they
had already collected.
These are:
Following on that experience, the researchers
were once more invited to converse together in vernacular, without the
facilitators, in order, through reflection, to develop some guidelines.
Guidelines for collecting peacemaking
testimonies
Throughout the first four days of the
Workshop, at those times when the researchers were working together or
with the facilitators, members of the GSK team and the elders gathered
together to explore issues to do with the gutpela sindaun movement.
At the close of the fourth day, Thursday 10 July, members of the GSK team
reported on their interactions with the elders and of their mutual discoveries
about peacemaking. Elders also, as they were thanked and farewelled, reflected
on the gains they had made from the Workshop. It was in this context that
Pyaine of Tetemanda spoke in terms of the proverb about help gained in
building a house.
On our final day together, 11 July, we
refined further the coversheet, as a way of clarifying and validating testimonies,
and discussed a "back sheet" to record issues about interview context and
elements in peacemaking. (see Appendix).
As to the future, participants were invited
to engage in applied research projects in which they would record, transcribe
and translate peacemaking testimonies and begin the process of reflecting
on what they had discovered. These projects would be carried out under
the guidance of Doug Young, but both he and I would read and assess the
reports, to be submitted by December 1997. Those completed reports would
then form the basis for a second Workshop in 1998. Six researchers chose
to complete reports, which were of a very good standard, though varying
in style and scope. Some chose to work with the testimonies gathered in
July 1997; others worked with new informants.
The Workshop closed with each researcher
being presented with a certificate to verify that they had achieved skills
in the collection of life histories and testimonies to peacemaking.
WORKSHOP II: 9-11 JUNE 1998
Prior to this Workshop, I spent a week
at Divine Word University in Madang, to which Doug Young had recently moved
to become Director of Studies, and where I facilitated a series of Seminars
on the History of Papua New Guinea in the Pacific with first and second
year students in the PNG Studies Program.
On our drive from Mt Hagen to Par, on the
day before the Workshop began, Doug Young and I spoke at a GS skul
held at Poketamanda Lutheran Church in the Saka Valley. The participants
in this skul came from the Tombeakini and Pii clans which had recently
taken part in a peacemaking ceremony, after an extended period of conflict,
and were now interested in exploring GS principles and ideas together.
They were gathered for a week-long skul and had invited us to tell
them about our project and work as a prelude to their discussions.
At the Workshop, six researchers had completed
their project reports. One of these, Elias Aiyako, had gone to the Philippines
for formation studies with the Society of the Divine Word (SVD); another,
Joseph Lakane, had moved to DWU, Madang, to enter the PNG Studies Program.
One of those who had chosen not to complete the project, did attend the
Workshop briefly. We were also joined by the Chairman of GS, Jacob Pos,
and by Hans Reithoffer SVD, from Austria, who was to move shortly to an
outstation in the southwest of the Province as priest/anthropologist.
At the start, we agreed to a set of negotiated
aims for the Workshop. These were:
As we worked through the three days,
some of these aims were modified.
On the first day, we heard reports from
the two women researchers, Alome Kyakas and Regina Tanda. In both cases,
these researchers chose to work with informants other than those with whom
they had worked in July.
Alome Kyakas spoke about the report she
had written on the testimony of Kambilyome, a strong and independent woman,
who had lived through a number of marriages. From our discussion, we agreed
on the following insights which we had drawn from an exploration of Kambilyome’s
testimony.
A strong and independent woman can participate
in and contribute to peacemaking processes as much as a man; she may even
breed her own pigs for this purpose. However, it seems that her effectiveness
still depends on her husband, the extent to which he is willing to accept
her in this kind of role. Women are more direct in their participation
and do not rely on oratory and kongali (metaphorical speech) as
much as men. They can save lives by giving warnings to their relatives.
This is in spite of the proverb; yana kuli nakadenge ( "the bones
of dogs are not seen"), which emphasises that a bride is expected to remain
loyal to her husband’s clan. Women remain sisters and daughters as well
as wives.
Regina Tanda chose to work with a male
relative, James, rather than continue working with a female informant.
Our discoveries from this testimony were
quite concrete:
At the end of this first day’s work,
we again left the participants to discuss issues together in Enga.
The results of their discussions, and our negotiations with the researchers focused on three specific areas:
Skills in oral history:
We resolved that I would begin the
second day by focusing on the two issues of seeking accuracy and facing
ethical questions of relationships with informants.
I began with three testimonies and raised
some issues about each in turn.
From the testimony by Kandenge which Nitze
Pupu had recorded, I raised questions about how we could assess what age
he might be. He had opened his narrative by saying that he thought that
he was a boy of 13 (the age of Nitze Pupu’s eldest son), when two Europeans
and police came into their area. On the assumption that he was recalling
the arrival of Jim Taylor and John Black and their patrol in 1938, then
he would now be a man in his early 70s ( See Gammage, 1998:157-170).
By way of making another check on Kandenge’s
possible age, we assessed his claim that he was a boy when ‘Tukiap received
dowry payments at the marriage of his elder daughter Kolaowan’. Suilya
was referring to Nitze’s grandfather Tukiap and his aunt Kolaowan. In our
discussion, by assessing Nitze’s own possible birth date and that of his
late father, Pupu, we were able to propose that, since this marriage took
place around 1939, we had another way of assessing Kandenge’s age.
Nitze and I also explored togetherKandenge’s
repeated reference to the claim that he remained an unmarried bachelor
for a comparatively long time. Nitze explained in response to my questioning
on these repetitions, that Kandenge was inferring that he remained long
in the akalyanda (men’s house) and so he was long exposed to the
teachings of his elders which embodied moral thinking (masapae epe)
and wisdom (take).
In my conversation with Alome Kyakas concerning
opening remarks made by Kambilyome, we dealt with her claims about her
first marriage.
Kambilyome spoke of how she was promised
in marriage before her menstrual cycles had begun. That issue was discussed
among participants, and whilst there was one claim from a man that this
would not happen, both Alome Kyakas and Regina Tanda, as women, stressed
that in cases of necessity and strategy, this could take place, provided
the new husband did not touch his young wife until her periods had begun.
We also explored Napiyame’s claim that her new husband had subjected her
to physical torture, because she resisted cohabiting with him. It seemed
that her bitter experience with this first marriage helped deepen her spirit
of independence and rebellion, which became central to her later emergence
as an independent peacemaker.
James began his testimony by telling of
a marriage breakdown which sparked a revenge killing, which then began
a chain of disputes between two clans. Here we explored his relationship
with these events and his use of metaphors which taught wisdom.
We agreed that the following questions
needed to asked of James in seeking out accuracy:
Our exploration of ethical issues began
by my raising questions which the researchers needed to think through more
fully. I was particularly stimulated by the partnership between Kambilyome
and Alome, women who were in a close kin relationship. It seemed to me
that Kambilyome spoke openly and revealed realities about her life, which
she would not readily speak of to others. I wondered, therefore, what protection
she might have from those about whom she had spoken so frankly, were Alome
to make this evidence public. I suggested that the masking of names and
local details would be one precaution possible.
Since knowledge is power, this raises important
questions which the researchers needed to face:
In the afternoon of the second day,
the researchers discussed together what was to be learnt from the testimonies
of Kandenge, gathered by Nitze Pupu, and from William recorded by Pius
Kersly. Together they raised the following issues about peacemaking.
Who is or can be a peacemaker?
Someone with
The third and final day of this Workshop
began with my giving some ideas on the process of reflection. What we were
seeking to achieve was a way in which the researchers might move from the
details of their reports to reflecting on the meaning of the teachings
embedded within the testimonies, and how they might communicate those meanings
to others. In these ways peace might be built in and through the community.
I proposed a model of moving to reflection
by exploring first the context within which Pangia of Mulapini taught me
, in August 1972, about our differing worlds of knowledge. I then explored
some of the ways in which, in my writings since 1972, had reflected on
the meanings of Pangia’s teaching for me. (I have explored some of these
reflections in my paper "A curious European asking many questions..." which
I read at the Pacific History Conference in June 1998).
Secondly, I turned to the reflections of
John Waiko on his roles in relation to Binandere history, particularly
the ways in which, by becoming a scholar of the Binandere, he became a
"curious Binandere", and how by writing and publishing on Binandere traditions
in a rapidly changing modern context of change, he is being transformed
into "a custodian of Binandere traditions"(Waiko, 1986:21,22). Certainly,
by becoming "curious Enga", through the process of reflecting on what they
were taught, the researchers could help the building of living links between
Enga wisdom and the issues confronting their people in a context of rapid
change.
I turned then to the instance of my being
taught a powerful sangai nemongo titi pingi earlier in 1972 by Busa
of Kombane, who then commanded me to take this tape of the chant and play
it for other men, challenging them to remember their own clans’ sangai
nemongo.
These sacred and secret sangai chants
were hedged around with taboo. Busa created a new situation in which he
broke the bonds of secrecy in order that this wisdom would be heard, transmitted
and preserved in new and changing circumstances. As one who participated
as a youth in a traditional, ethical universe, he had reflected on the
break in the transmission of wisdom created by the coming of the colonial
age and he deliberately chose to move beyond those strictures to ensure
that sacred wisdom could be heard and recorded in a new form, by a new
medium, which might ensure that transmission continued. What Busa had done
in 1972 was most important, in terms of reflection and ethics.
There was another edge to his story. In
the tense and pressured circumstances of his chanting of the sangai
nemongo in his son’s house in February 1972, Busa was struggling to
recall the tradition. Two months later, he walked a very long way to visit
me in my house, and, seated by my hearth, he chanted a longer, much more
elaborate version. He added decorations in which he praised his own achievements
in exchange and dispute, won as a result of the power and authority which
he had received from the sacred plant (lepe wai) which his grandfathers
had carried back through their epic journey, praised and commemorated in
the sangai nemongo titi pingi. This second, more elaborate chant
became a vehicle for Busa’s reflection.
In my musings on the Busa story, I sought
to reinforce what I had recounted in my earlier reflections on Pangia’s
teaching and John Waiko’s multiple roles as historian and conserver of
his people’s traditions.
Doug Young closed this session with an
exploration of the "cycle of cognition" which emphasises the intimate relationships
between theory and action, thinking and doing which are expressed through
the PAR research methodology - a cycle in which participants move from
reflecting on experience through judgment, insight and inquiry to new action
(Young, 1995:66-68).
We spent the final session of the Workshop
negotiating possible next steps in the development of the Project.
The researchers chose a group name by which
they wished to be identified in future: mane epe kutingi (seeking
good teaching/behaviour). They envisaged their role as bringing to people’s
awareness the values in customary moral teaching.
The vision which members negotiated and
which was expressed in the name, they characterised in the following terms:
Group members chose Nitze Pupu as their
representative for any work with local authorities and proposed the following
future directions:
1. Make ourselves and our task more widely known by:
b) Otherwise informing relevant people
of the existence of these trained researchers
b) Summarise the moral teachings on peacebuilding which have emerged from our oral history collection and
c) publish this as a book
b) elementary and community schools
c) high schools
d) public awareness programs
e)church training programs
On Saturday 13 June, all participants gathered
together at the Orchid Lodge at Kaiap, on a high ridge, west of Wabag,
for a final celebratory eating together, to hear a response to the Workshop
from Jacob Pos, Chairman of Gutpela Sindaun, who had participated
in the Workshop and reflected on its meaning for the GS process. Certificates
were also presented to those who had successfully completed their project
reports and had participated in the Workshop.
This was an important bonding and concluding
celebration, in which we shared good food, company and conversation together,
listened to ways in which Jacob Pos perceived convergences between GS and
the work of the mana epe kutingi group and recognised the achievement
of new applied research skills by the participants. One other guest at
this meal was Aloysius Aisi SVD, the editor/publisher of the Diocesan newspaper,
who prepared the participants’ certificates, and whose skills in desktop
publishing will be called on in the proposed 1999 Workshops .
As we drove down the ridge from Orchid
Lodge, we paused at Tole, and Doug Young took a photograph of me and Edwin,
Nitze Pupu’s son, at the place where the Leahy brothers had shot an Enga
warrior in 1934, when he challenged their entry into his people’s clan
territory. That incident was recalled in the film First Contact,
though the writers confused Tole with Tari, in the Southern Highlands.
So the questioning and remembrance of past conflict is kept alive, commemorated
and debated.
REFLECTING ON THE PROCESS
On Sunday, 14 June, Doug Young drove me
back to Mt Hagen, for me to fly on to Port Moresby to facilitate another
series of Seminars on the history of PNG in the Pacific, this time for
final year students at Holy Spirit Seminary at Bomana, near Port Moresby.
As we drove down the Lai valley and over
the Mt Hagen passes on into the Waghi valley, from time to time we conversed
and reflected on the meaning of this PAR process for the participants and
a wider world.
In a paper entitled Seeds of non-violence
in a culture of violence: Non-violent research method and traditional peacemaking
skills among the Enga of Papua New Guinea , which he read at the International
Peace Research Association Conference, held at University of Durban-Westville,
South Africa, from 23-26 June, Doug Young focused on the stages in a long-term
dispute between two clans, evidence of which was drawn from testimonies
which some of the researchers had gathered. He closed his paper with these
reflections which were the fruit of our conversation on the road from the
Lai valley to the Waghi valley just over a week earlier.
Interviewing elderly storytellers puts
researchers in touch with the historical roots of moral thinking (masapae
epe). The researchers themselves find that the process changes them.
They become much more appreciative of traditional wisdom. This moral thinking
must be the basis of any sustainable peace and reconciliation in Enga since
it is rooted in the culture itself. This kind of knowledge is not the product
of the United Nations, a foreign scholar, or the example of other countries,
but of the unique genius of a people. These external influences can stimulate
reflection and comparisons can help gain a perspective, but this link with
forces deep within the culture is essential. Telling the story is healing
for the storyteller, for the researcher, and for those who may eventually
be influenced by the researcher’s communication of the wisdom. We plan
to develop educational materials for schools and for adult awareness programs
(1998:8).
I found Lederach’s chapter 3 "Reconciliation:
the Building of Relationship" most enlivening. In it he focuses on peacebuilding
rather than peacemaking - in the sense of building sustainable relationships
between groups caught in the snare of conflict. In developing a ‘conceptual
framework for reconciliation’, he seeks to ‘articulate three working assumptions
that I would propose undergird a conceptualization of reconciliation’.
These three assumptions are:
* "Second, engagement of the conflicting
groups assumes an encounter , not only of people but also of several
different and highly interdependent streams of activity. Reconciliation
must find ways to address the past without getting locked into a vicious
cycle of mutual exclusiveness inherent in the past. People need opportunity
and space to express to and with one another the trauma of loss and their
grief at that loss, and the anger that accompanies the pain and the memory
of injustices experienced... Acknowledgment through hearing one another’s
stories validates experience and feelings and represents the first step
toward restoration of the person and the relationship...
Reconciliation, in essence represents a
place, the point of encounter where concerns about both the past and the
future can meet. Reconciliation-as-encounter suggests that space for the
acknowledging of the past and envisioning of the future is the necessary
ingredient for reframing the present...
* The third of our working assumptions
is that reconciliation requires that we look outside the mainstream of
international political traditions, discourse, and operational modalities
if we are to find innovation (1997: 26,27).
He argues that:
These four values are in tension, create
both paradoxes and possibilities for conflict transformation and peacebuilding.
He concludes:
One dream that I have, arising from
my experiences with Enga in the 1970s and the 1990s, is that we continue
together the process of recovering and rethinking begun in these Workshops,
and brought to a focus in the next ones, so that the mana epe kutingi
group, in partnership with the gutpela sindaun movement, create
in Enga innovative reconciliation spaces in which contemporary Enga meanings
of "truth, justice, mercy and peace" can be brought to birth. The shaping
of that social space is in Enga hands. How the gutpela sindaun movement
and the mana epe kutingi group, in partnership, may together become
mediators for peacebuilding is unknown, but this partnership has marvelous
possibilities.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
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Dekley, Harry. (1997), "Enga Province, 1978-1991: The transformation of the tee ". In Political Decentralisation in a New State: The Experience of Provincial Government in Papua New Guinea, eds. R.J. May & A.J. Regan with Allison Lee: 130-151. Bathurst: Crawford House Publishing.
Gammage, Bill. (1998), The Sky Travellers: Journeys in New Guinea 1938-1939.Carlton South: Melbourne University Press.
Kyakas, Alome & Wiessner, Polly. (1992), From Inside the Women’s House: Enga Women’s Lives and Traditions. Brisbane: Robert Brown.
Lacey, Roderic. (1974),"A question of origins: An exploration of some oral traditions of the Enga of New Guinea", The Journal of Pacific History. 9: 39-54.
____________ (1975),"Oral traditions as History: An exploration of oral sources among the Enga of the New Guinea Highlands". Unpublished PH. D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin.
____________ (1981), "Traditions of origin and migration: Some Enga evidence". In Oral Traditions in Melanesia, eds. D.Denoon & R. Lacey :45-56. Waigani:University of Papua New Guinea.
____________ (1984), "‘... No Other Voice Can Tell’: Life Histories in Melanesia", International Journal of Oral History. 5/1:5-35.
____________ (1984 (a)), "Life Histories and Religious Experience: Preliminary Notes on Method", Journal of the Institute of Catholic Education.5:55-67.
____________ (1990), "‘... the text and whorl of curve and stain...’: Exploring meaning through life narrative - a review", Journal of the Institute of Catholic Education. 10: 195-206.
____________ (1994), "Encountering and telling of the ‘Other’: Catherine", Compass: A Review of Topical Theology.28/3 (Spring):4-12.
____________ (1997), "Whose Voices are Heard? Oral History and the Decolonisation of History: Pacific Voices", The Oral History Association of Australia Journal (Crossing Borders). Number 19:31-37.
_____________ (1998) "" A curious European asking many questions": Issues of ownership and authority in Enga history", Paper read at 12th Pacific History Association, SICHE Panatina Campus, Honiara, Solomon Islands, 22-26 June.
Lederach, John Paul. (1997), Building peace: Sustainable reconciliation in divided societies. Washington (D.C.): United States Institute of Peace.
Mai, Paul. (1981), "The "time of Darkness", or yuu kuia". In Oral Traditions in Melanesia, eds. D.Denoon & R. Lacey: 125-140. Waigani: University of Papua New Guinea.
Montville, J.V. (1987), "The arrow and the olive branch: a case for Track Two Diplomacy". In D.B. Bendahmane & J.W. McDonald Jnr,, eds.,Conflict Resolution: Track Two Diplomacy. Washington (D.C.):Foreign Service Institute, US Secretary of State. Passerini, Luisa, (1990), "Mythbiography in oral history". In Raphael Samuel, & Paul Thompson, (eds.), Myths We Live By: 49-60. London: Routledge.
Peneff, Jean, (1990), "Myths in life stories". In Raphael Samuel, & Paul Thompson. (eds.), Myths We Live By: 36-48. London: Routledge.
Samuel, Raphael & Thompson, Paul.(eds.), (1990), "Introduction". In Myths We Live By: 1-22. London: Routledge.
Trompf, Gary W. (1994), Payback: The logic of retribution in Melanesian religions. Oakleigh (Vic.): Cambridge University Press.
Waiko, John D. (1986), "Oral traditions among the Binandere: Problems of method in a Melanesian society", The Journal of Pacific History, 21/1:21-38.
Wiessner, Polly & Tumu, Akii. (1998), Historical Vines: Enga Networks of Exchange, Ritual, and Warfare in Papua New Guinea. Washington (D.C.): Smithsonian Institution Press.
Young, Douglas, W. (1995), "Resolving conflict for gutpela sindaun: An analysis and evaluation of traditional and modern methods of achieving peaceful intergroup relations among the Enga of Papua New Guinea". Unpublished Ph. D. thesis, Centre for Conflict Resolution, Macquarie University.
_________________ (1997), "Nonviolent alternatives among the Enga of the Papua New Guinea Highlands" Social Alternatives, 16/2: 42-45.
_________________ (1998) "Seeds of non-violence in a culture of violence: Non-violent research method and traditional peacemaking skills among the Enga of Papua New Guinea". A paper read at the International Peace Research Association Conference, University of Durban-Westville, South Africa, 23-26 June.
Copyright 1998 Roderic Lacey.
All comments should be directed
to Monica Wehner