The Python and its Oil in Highlands Papua New Guinea
Although Papua New Guinea (PNG) is a country rich in natural resources, it has found itself in a state of increasing financial instability as services such as health care, education, and infrastructure suffer because of a lack of effective economic management and also probably the misappropriation of funds. More and more local people are turning to companies (e.g. gold mining or logging), which come into their areas to work, in order to negotiate or demand service that the PNG government previously provided and should still be providing.
By PAMELA J. STEWART & ANDREW STRATHERN
Conducting negotiations with companies for services has provided unique opportunities for local Papua New Guineans to utilize various aspects of their traditional knowledge. For example, amongst the Duna people of the Southern Highlands Province of PNG it has proved useful for the younger generation as well as the older people to know their 'traditional' origin stories (malu) when negotiating issues of land use payments. Malu record the sacred places of clans that are found throughout the landscape.Recently, the malu of several Duna clans were used to determine the distribution of payments to landowners by the Porgera Joint Venture Gold Mining Company for the use of the Strickland River which received tailings from the mining works. The mining company hired workers to try to determine the accurate malu information for these water use payments. Malu were also used to determine the distribution of payments to landowners by an oil company that had been drilling in the area along the Strickland river gorge. Even though the oil rig and associated company buildings were placed on the side of the river across from the Duna people, several clans trace their malu stories along pathways that travel under the river itself. Thus they were able to claim rights to part of the land use payments. The oil company did not discover the oil for which it was searching and subsequently removed its rig and left. Interestingly, a new myth was created during the time that the oil company was drilling in the region which explained in Duna terms why the company failed:
'A young Duna boy was stung by a bee at a site close to the oil rig. A spirit female (Payame Ima) led the boy down into the core of the earth where he saw a city in which everything was constructed out of money. A giant man with gaping holes in various parts of his body was seated there. This giant was called tindi auwene ('ground-owning spirit'). The boy took an iron pipe given to him by the giant man and began hitting the drill bit of the oil rig which was approaching the heart of tindi auwene. The drill bit broke after repeatedly being hit and the boy was rewarded with material gifts which he took away with him. When he returned to his village he told the story of what had happened to him and what he had seen and the gifts that he had been given were 'proof' that the event had occurred.'
The holes in tindi auwene's body were said to have been caused by the mining and drilling ventures througout PNG which had previously removed parts of his enormous body, extending outwards under the ground into all parts of PNG. The explanation for the oil company's failure to find oil was that they had positioned their drill over tindi auwene's heart and might have killed him and by extension destroyed the vitality, fertility, and wealth of the land of PNG.
In addition to the story of tindi auwene we were told that a giant snake (Puyara) lives under the ground in PNG and rests on top of gold and oil reserves which are its eggs. This snake which also reaches up to the highest mountain ridges and thus in a sense joins sky and earth is said to be disturbed and angered by mining activities.
As more oil, gas, and mining companies enter into PNG they serve as a source of revenue to the government, while at the same time becoming embedded into local mythology in creative ways. Regulations and environmental safe guards on development projects within PNG should be a major concern for the country as it struggles to improve its financial situation and the quality of life for its people. *
Dr Pamela J. Stewart(Strathern) and Prof. Andrew Strathern were Senior Visiting Fellows at the International Institute for Asian Studies during 1998. Their most recent co-authored books are 'Curing and Healing: Medical anthropology in global perspective' (Carolina Academic Press, 1999) and 'The Python's Back: Pathways of comparison between Indonesia and Melanesia' (Greenwood Publishing Group, forthcoming).
E-mails: pamjan+@pitt.edu and strather+@pitt.edu