If you don’t know where you’ve come from….
07 January 2013
PHIL FITZPATRICK
IF YOU DON’T KNOW where you’ve come from, how on earth can you expect to know where you are going?
Late last year I visited a village at the northern end of the Yuat Gorge. While the people are not in Enga Province, they are probably the most far flung Engan outliers in the highlands.
I asked them how they came to be so far away from Wabag and living in East Sepik Province.
None of them really knew. The village and surrounding hamlets had been in their present location for nearly 50 years and, apart from an old man, no one in the settlement was over 45 years old.
I knew how they came to be there because I had read Jon Bartlett’s patrol report. I explained their history to them.
When they lived further upriver in the mountains, their parents and grandparents had run afoul of a megalomaniacal luluai and tultul from a nearby clan group. Don’t know what a luluai or tultul is? Better ask your grandparents.
These venerable gentlemen, who had been appointed by the kiap at Kompiam, thought that their brass badges of office gave them open licence to lock people up for no reason whatsoever and then assault their wives and children.
The kiap at Kompiam was two days hard walking away, so the clan elders decided their best option was the age-old highland underdog strategy of looking for greener and safer pastures. Hence they came to their present location.
Jon Bartlett mentioned in his patrol report that, when he came across them in 1971, the clan elders had their Village Book with them.
In the days of the kiaps every village or settlement had a special navy blue Village Book in which important information and events were recorded.
When I asked them if they still had it they shrugged. The old man, who remembered fleeing downriver with his parents as a child, thought that someone had thrown it in the river after independence.
The reason I thought of this visit I made last year was the recent news that Jack Karukuru had passed away. Jack was one of the first Papua New Guinean kiaps and was a very famous man.
Yet very few people, apart from some other old kiaps, seem to know much about him.
I mentioned this to a friend who is also an ex-kiap and who spends a lot of time in Papua New Guinea. He nodded in agreement.
When he was a kiap he knew the local member of the House of Assembly, who is long deceased, very well. They were good friends. He was a man who never had much money but did much for his country.
When my friend recently went back to the village area where his friend lived and mentioned his name he was met with blank stares. “Wasn’t he once a big man or something?” someone asked.
Colonial history is easy. There are dozens of books on the subject and, if they are inadequate, there is the vast resource of old patrol reports.
History since independence is an entirely different matter. Sometimes it is almost impossible to collect anything at all.
The lack of these records owes something to the parlous state of publishing in Papua New Guinea and, perhaps, also to the scant attention history is paid in the universities. None of them, as far as I am aware, teach oral history skills.
It occurs to me that in future years the historical period between 1975 and the present is going to be a big blank.
Sure, there are government and parliamentary records and a smattering of useful media records, mostly related to national events, but those memories of the nitty-gritty of life in the era are exceedingly thin indeed.
And even those national records are very vulnerable and fragile.
The National Archives needs lots of help and, if any historian wants to scare themselves half to death, they should visit the Post-Courier archives. Talk about a fire trap!
If that old building ever goes up in smoke, which happens a lot in Moresby these days, the one and only complete set of that newspaper, including issue Number 1 from the 1950s, will be gone.
If the government is serious about improving education standards it will not only have to improve literacy and numeracy but will also have to cultivate the study of local history and culture.
Unfortunately, you can’t buy pre-packaged PNG history off the shelf from overseas. People in Papua New Guinea are the only ones who can write it.
One of the interesting things about Sil's book is that he describes a smooth segue from the mythological to the near-present.
I've come across this elsewhere. I'm currently doing some social mapping in the Star Mountains and have been researching the Afek creation myth. Afek was the female ancestor of the Min people.
There is a lot of historical truth tied up in these myths, along with ideology and common wisdom, much like the song lines of the Aborigines.
This is one reason why these old stories and legends are important to record.
You occasionally come across the old census books and other files in the district offices in the provinces but I don't believe there was ever any concerted effort to archive them.
The district collections are usually poorly housed and pretty mouldy.
The National Archives is a bit hit and miss. Sometimes there are staff there who can point you in the right direction but often there are not.
The patrol reports held there are the headquarters copies. For some reason things like the pink census data sheets and area studies etc. are usually missing - presumably they were extracted along the way, maybe at the district level.
The only additional material with these reports are the various headquarters letters generated by the reports.
The other annoying thing is that the reports are invariably the third or fourth carbon copy and are generally getting fuzzier as time goes by. This is particularly noticeable in the microfiche copies.
For this reason it is important that all the old kiaps hang on to their patrol reports. And even better idea is to send them on to Peter Cahill at the Fryer Library at the University of Queensland.
I had an email from Col Young this morning. He's still got the copy of his patrol report where he reported finding traces of copper sulphate near what is now the Ok Tedi mine. Reports like that really need preserving.
Posted by: Phil Fitzpatrick | 08 January 2013 at 09:32 AM
In recent years I have become involved in researching my family history and, because of the recording of a variety of events such as births, deaths, baptisms, marriages, elctoral registrations and so on, I have gone back to the early 1500s.
However, I recall my experiences as a kiap on the annual census patrols examining the ancestory of the present village people. Everyone could remember their parents, (obviously), and most, their grandparents, but that is generally where the story was lost.
Despite their professed christianity, most would revert to their traditional magico-religious practices and relate that their great grand-parent was a mythical being such as a great bird, snake or puk-puk.
This can be overcome by research using the census books from the years since census began and making the links that obviously exist in these records.
The question then arises, where are the records that we created and maintained and is it possible to do this research?
Posted by: Ross Wilkinson | 07 January 2013 at 08:07 PM
Good article Phil. It fits with something an educated PNGian told me a few years ago after he had completed his education and was awarded his degree.
During the whole of his 'modern' education in PNG, nothing was ever mentioned about what happened in his country prior to Independence in 1975.
We sometimes talk about Australians having a cultural cringe but is PNG in danger of doing much the same by omission or commission?
________
Seems time for regular contributor, Jackson PR associate and lecturer in PNG Studies at DWU, Bernard Yegiora, to enter the discussion - KJ
Posted by: Paul Oates | 07 January 2013 at 07:08 PM
There are, of course, a few Papua New Guinean writers recording their local histories.
From the Crocodile Prize and this blog the names of Kela Kapkora Sil Bolkin and Leonard Roka spring to mind.
For a perfect blueprint of how to record your clan history you should look no further than Sil's book "The Flight of Galkope".
And agree with him or not, no one can dispute the immense service that Leonard is doing for Bougainville history.
Before these guys you have to go back to the work of John Waiko before you encounter any local PNG history.
Posted by: Phil Fitzpatrick | 07 January 2013 at 04:04 PM
I enjoyed that read, Phil. Thanks.
And yes, archiving is terribly in need of much improvement.
Posted by: Ganjiki D Wayne | 07 January 2013 at 01:12 PM
Good article Phil, which hits the nail dead centre highlighting the main issue, which is the lack of national pride, which alas seems to be another casualty of postmodern PNG history.
I recall during my earlier years when I spent a short time in the Chimbu patrolling hearing recounts of earlier oral history from those villagers whom I met during my travels.
Unlike their nambis brothers the highlanders loved a good yarn although some of the recounts had been somewhat embellished on retelling.
One of the more beneficial accomplishments of Australia’s bicentennial celebrations was the Government of the times providing funding for the digitalising of most of Australia’s earlier newspapers which are now readily available through the NL’s Trove site.
With a bit of careful filtering to remove extraneous matters not required a different picture emerges of what was really going on in earlier times.
Some fascinating information on earlier times of PNG history can also be found if the search engine is finely tuned.
It seems that unlike today Australians in earlier times were intrigued by events occurring in their nearest northern neighbour's backyard.
When doing some recent research into a family history matter I even found on this site some very interesting articles into what my great grandfather was up to in Goulburn some 170 years previously.
It seems not much went unreported in those days as the issues uncovered were more of a gossipy nature and tracking forward to today realise that not much changes when whilst waiting in the Woolies aisle line waiting to be served and looking down at the news-stand I am confronted with a multitude of gossip magazines available which embrace all things that the publishers believe might attract the prurient interests of potential readers.
Engendering national pride based upon earlier historical events is no easy task especially in PNG where the citizens main pre-occupation is merely surviving from day to day however I feel that the issue of recording PNG’s more recent history could be easily accomplished if the will to do so was to be so ignited.
Perhaps some funding from outside agencies including Oz Aid towards digitising copies of the Country’s newspapers would be the obvious answer to the first step needed.
Posted by: Harry Topham | 07 January 2013 at 11:36 AM
Good post Phil. Personally have always enjoyed finding out the local history from any place where I was temporarily living.
Now alas even here in the UK history appears to be poorly treated - possibly because it wouldn't be fair to the millions of immigrants. Apparently kids think Magna Carta is a new computer game.
I believe one way to get at the missing dormant local history is that in the long holiday at the end of every academic year high school children should be set the holiday task of sitting down with their grandparents to ask about their village roots and turn his oral history into a written report to be submitted when they restart school in February.
These could be part of the year's teaching materials and must be safely filed. Hopefully digitally where possible.
In 1999 I was pleasantly surprised in our local environmental NGO on Lavongai when members were asked to compile a list of as many cultural sites within their ward, hamlet or village.
One did a really excellent report with details not only of the various sites but also of the background even traditional legend story behind each site. Some amazing snippets of taim bipo. Like the footprint in the stone up the Teimot River, which I once saw.
Incidentally we tried to do this project in order to have a detailed cultural study mapped for the remaining pristine forests of central and eastern Lavongai with which Land Owners could have strength in bargaining with the miners or loggers when they eventually came to 'develop' the island.
As you are aware in Oz aboriginal sacred sites are allegedly well protected against depredations by industrial barons.
Had already seen the total disregard for cultural sites in west Lavongai including the destruction of one of the oldest type of living fir tree up beyond Buteilung; the destruction of so called 'upside down tree' near the beach by RH's Dominance Timber Company indirectly supported by ex Premier Anis who had told the company's ships to ignore the cultural 'gorgor' warning LOs had placed on ships hoping to access Noipuos harbour where bulldozers erased the site.
We have all read of the sad demise of Goroka's radio stations files; the damp in the National Library archives; now you pinpoint the risk to the Post Courier's records.
Hope some folks take note of your report Phil.
(Signed) Arthur Williams of the ancient Silures Tribe of Cardiff
Posted by: Arthur Williams | 07 January 2013 at 07:37 AM
A good wake-up call to all the PNGians who have been well-educated and have now reached retirement age. Here is something you can do in retirement.
Start researching and writing up the history of your family, your clan, your tribal group etc.
Someone should suggest to the government that it donate money to the Post Courier so it can get all its old papers scanned and put online for research purposes.
Maybe Somare will be retiring from parliament soon. This is something he should get behind!
Posted by: Mrs Barbara Short | 07 January 2013 at 06:18 AM