John Tyman's Cultures in Context Series Torembi and the Sepik A Study of Village Life in New Guinea |
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Topic No. 12: Tribal Relationships ~ Photos 209 - 220 |
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John Tyman's Cultures in Context Series Torembi and the Sepik A Study of Village Life in New Guinea |
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Topic No. 12: Tribal Relationships ~ Photos 209 - 220 |
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| 209. The population of Papua New Guinea, which now numbers over six million, is divided among many tribes, each with their own territory and language. When people communicate between tribes they use 'pidgin', a language derived in part from English and used widely in the Western Pacific. This sign at the airport in Port Moresby says: 'It is forbidden to chew betel inside the terminal'. |
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| 210. The people who live in Torembi belong to the Sawos tribe, whose lands cover a large part of the Sepik lowland. The Sawos, are Melanesians – the term used to refer to the darker brown-skinned, fuzzy-haired peoples of the western Pacific. The Polynesian peoples further east – in Hawaii, Samoa and New Zealand are lighter in colour. (After church on Sunday at the Torembi Mission.) |
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| 211. Simply because they have so many languages in New Guinea – hundreds of them – those who speak the same one obviously enjoy a special relationship. This is emphasized by the term ‘wantok’ meaning ‘one talk’, that is, those who speak the same language. (In Port Moresby.) |
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| 212. People here refer to their wantoks the way people in other countries talk about their relatives or their in-laws. Everything must be shared with wantoks; you can’t ignore them and concentrate on your immediate family. (Sharing the spoils of a hunting expedition in Torembi.) |
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| 213. Being a member of a tribe here, gives a person an identity and a sense of belonging. Each tribe is in fact divided into a number of family groups or clans. A clan joins together a number of households whose male members have a common male ancestor. There are 13 of these in Torembi, and when (like this girl) you marry, it must be to someone from another clan. |
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| 214. These clans, in turn, are assigned to one or other of two larger groups known as moieties, or men’s house communities – though one clan in Torembi somehow belongs to both of them. A moiety is a cross-section of clans within a tribe, grouped together largely for religious purposes, and sharing a common spiritual heritage. One moiety is connected to the spirits of the earth; the other with the sky: and their animal totems differ … in this case the taragow, or sea eagle, above the Spirit House in Torembi Two. |
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| 215. In some parts of the village, houses are arranged in groups according to clans and moieties – but elsewhere this is not obvious. |
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| 216. What this means in practice, is that if you were born into a village on the Sepik, you would grow up knowing the love and support not just of your mother and your father, but of a large, extended family. |
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| 217. Your parents would not own the land on which your home was built or those sections of the forest and swamp from which they obtained their sago and their vegetables. Both would belong to the clan. |
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| 218. And when you grew up, you too (if you were a boy) would have the right to build a house, cultivate a garden and gather food from the forest in areas controlled by your clan. |
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| 219. If you were a widow, you would acquire that right through marriage. And if your husband died, you would (like this woman) still be able to scrape sago and grow vegetables on clan lands. |
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| 220. If, later, you moved into Wewak, you could always stay with wantoks; and once you had a house of your own in town you’d find relatives from Torembi using your home as if it were theirs. (Street in Wewak.) |
Text, photos and recordings
by John Tyman
Intended for Educational Use
Only.
Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum,
Oxford University, 2010.
Contact Dr.
John Tyman for more information regarding licensing.
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