by Tim Flannery
I remained there, alone in the torchlight, sorting the equipment in my pack. No-one brought food or water, or even offered to light a fire. This extreme break with basic Melanesian etiquette set me on my guard. Never before had I been treated so badly in New Guinea.
That night a large bonfire was lit in the village square. Men began to gather around it and debate vigorously. I strained to hear what they were saying, but mostly they spoke in their own language. As the debate heated, however, a few Pidgin phrases were interspersed with the tok ples.
‘If we kill him, the Government will be on our side...He is a “wildlife”, we should kill him.’
Then another voice: ‘The Bible says it is wrong to kill. We will get plenty of trouble if we kill him.’
The debate went on long into the night. Shocked at the nature of the discussion, I got no sleep until the small hours of the morning, when, during a lull in the proceedings, I dozed briefly.
Before first light I slipped out of the hut and began to walk downriver. No-one was stirring in the village.
On my way upstream I had passed a village about two hours’ walk from 3Fas. By the time I reached it again that morning, people were already going about their early tasks. In the village square there was a fine, half-grown pig. I inquired after its owner and asked if he would sell it to me. We settled on a price of 40 kina and I asked the owner for his assistance in carrying it back to 3Fas.
We arrived mid-morning to a village which still seemed strangely quiet. I ushered the piglet into the village square and there commenced a speech in Pidgin.
I began by saying that I felt that the people of 3Fas were bel i hat (angry) and had a grievance with me. I had no idea what the basis of the grievance was, but I had brought this pig as a ‘talking pig’, so that we could sit down and eat it, then discuss the nature of their problem.
After a few minutes an elderly man approached me, telling me that my gift had been accepted by the village. Slowly a group of men gathered around and sat down to talk as the women and youths prepared a mumu to cook the pig in, along with some sago and greens.
One of the younger men was more eloquent than the others. His name was Simon and as we talked the story of the villagers’ anger began to emerge. It had, at its base, the poor treatment they felt they had received at the hands of previous wildlife researchers.
Simon related that the first ‘wildlife’ to visit their village was an American ornithologist who arrived about 1974. At that time, the villagers had had very little contact with the outside world. The researcher explained that he wished to climb Mt Menawa. The locals were worried by this as Mt Menawa is their sacred place, inhabited by masalai. They agreed to carry his cargo as far as a spur just below the summit, but refused to go any further. The ornithologist went on alone, and when he reached the summit he discharged his shotgun. At this, a couple of the bolder village men followed his track to the top.
The ples masalai had been conquered, but many villagers still felt equivocal about this intrusion into the realm of the spirits.
When the ornithologist left the village, he paid everyone with what they described as ‘sixpences’. The villagers were elated, believing that each had received a veritable fortune because of the large number of small coins they were given. Imagining themselves to be wealthy, they went to the trade store at Utai—only to find that their coins were barely sufficient to purchase a bag of rice or a tin of fish.
A second ‘wildlife’ visited Utai in the 1980s. This one (who was also an American) wanted to carry out a full wildlife survey on the mountain. According to the villagers, he collected literally thousands of birds, mammals, reptiles and insects—enough, they said, to affect their food supply. And, according to those who worked with him, he bullied his employees and paid the people very little for the vast number of animals he took from their land. His attitude was one of arrogance and suspicion. He told the locals that they were lazy and had not collected enough.
This infuriated them.
Finally, the people of 3Fas had had enough. They hatched a plan to murder the visiting American. On his last morning on the mountain, Simon planned to follow him as he moved along his trapline, slowly picking up and storing his traps. When he was deep in the forest, Simon would drive a machete through his skull as he bent, vulnerable, over a trap.
The plan, however, was foiled when the researcher sent someone else out to retrieve his traps, explaining that he was too busy packing to attend to them himself.
After these dismal encounters with those they knew as the ‘wildlife clan’, the people of 3Fas decided to take revenge. They were determined to kill the very next member of the clan to visit them. That person was me.
Although this idea that justice can be served by killing an innocent party might seem foreign to Europeans, it made enormous sense to the people of 3Fas. In Melanesia, the clan is the all-important entity. Retribution for an offence can be ventured upon any member of the offender's clan.
This system, known widely as ‘payback’, works because it keeps equivalence in numbers between competing groups. In this system, if a man dies suddenly of natural causes, a ceremony is held to determine who enacted the sorcery responsible for his death. The offenders are invariably found to be a competing, usually adjacent group. The revenge killing must restore the balance between the groups. What is important in this system is not the doing of justice to the individual, but achieving a balance between competing clans.
Hearing myself classified as a member of the ‘wildlife clan’ on that first night should have alerted me to the fact that I was carrying a communal responsibility. Unfortunately it had not, and it was only after Simon's lengthy explanation that I understood the nature of the problem. I have little doubt that justice would have been visited upon me had I not settled the matter in a more or less Melanesian manner.
Our pig feast ended in a formal, written agreement. I explained precisely what I wanted from my work (basically, knowledge about tree-kangaroos and a sample of each species found in the region) and in turn I wrote down a rate of pay for services, food and specimens which was acceptable to the villagers. This would be used by them in future if members of my clan ever visited again.
Soon afterwards the rest of the crew arrived, and were incredulous when I told them of the events of the past twenty-four hours.
So I spent a couple of weeks at 3Fas. I learned there that a population of tree-kangaroos somewhat similar to, although distinct from Tenkile, existed atop Mt Menawa. Yet that knowledge was among the most hard-earned that I have gleaned in Melanesia. Not only had it almost cost me my life, but I have never eaten so poorly while in the field.
The people of 3Fas are sago-eaters. They plant no gardens, and so even a banana was an unheard-of luxury. Like them, I had to subsist on sago processed into a grey jelly that resembled snot in colour, texture and (I assume) taste. I revolted at it and could barely get a mouthful down. As a result, by the end of my time at 3Fas, I was greatly reduced in bulk and began to worry for my health. The only variety I had after my meagre supplies ran out was the occasional, near-rancid piece of pork. On one occasion, I ate a piece of bright orange cassowary fat which was brought to me as a gift. The fact that it was fly-blown did not add to its charms, yet did not deter me from consuming it.
When I left 3Fas, Simon was among the people who offered to help carry my cargo to Utai. Just before we reached the settlement we stopped to rest in a hut. There were several women in occupation, including a young mother with her beautiful, newborn child. I asked who the baby's father was, and to my enormous surprise learned that it was Simon. Remarkably, Simon studiously avoided the woman and child during the entire time we were there. I asked one of his friends whether Simon had seen his child before. Apparently he had not.
I never got to the bottom of this matter. Perhaps Simon was following a cultural practice which I have not met elsewhere, or perhaps he was displeased with his wife. Whatever the case, it served to reinforce my feeling that the cu
lture of the Utai people is very different from that of other groups I have encountered during my fieldwork.
TWENTY-TWO
Trail of the Tenkile
So—Tenkile were indeed to be found only in the Torricelli Mountains near Wilbeitei, even though a related tree-kangaroo lived atop Mt Menawa.
I therefore had no choice but to concentrate my research and conservation program in the Wilbeitei area. We were to make many visits over the next few years.
As we began, disaster struck. The sacred ples masalai at Sweipini was one of the last strongholds of Tenkile. But in 1990 some villagers asked Father Pat to exorcise the spirit eels which are believed to guard the sacred site. This he did, in a ceremony at Sweipini attended by hundreds. And then, with the powerful spirits effectively banished, hunters were free to enter the place—and they killed many Tenkile in just a few months.
When I visited Sweipini with Kaspar in 1991 we were dismayed to find all almost traces of Tenkile—such as fresh claw marks on trees, scats, tracks and chewed vegetation— gone. Tenkile had lost its last safe haven.
I still struggle to understand what prompted the people of Wilbeitei to request the exorcism from Father Pat. Was it, perhaps, a result of the new and exhilarating Catholicism which had swept through the area? Or were they, in some way, trying to help me by opening access to an area where Tenkile was still abundant? If this was the case, then I had made a truly disastrous blunder in expressing interest in studying Tenkile at all.
The development of conservation programs in countries such as Papua New Guinea is fraught with difficulty. Western notions of conservation often appear to be completely nonsensical to the local people. Many villagers believe that the animals of the forest have always been there and that they will always remain. When faced with clear evidence of a decline in abundance, or even extinction, they will point to a place over the mountains, saying, ‘There's still plenty there.’ Little do they realise there is always a village ‘over there’, inhabited by people who, when asked the same question, point back in their own direction.
The problem goes much deeper than that, for the Melanesian world-view incorporates humans and animals, the seen and unseen, the living and the dead, in a way that is vastly different from the European outlook. What Europeans call ‘supernatural’ factors are for New Guineans simply the non-visible parts of a single continuum of life. Indeed they are eminently ‘natural’. Such considerations often determine the fate of species, a point brought home to me during my time at 2Fas.
The men of 2Fas wear head-ornaments made from the fur of the Black-spotted Cuscus (Spilocuscus rufoniger), the species I had first encountered on that trip to Mt Boobiari many years before. It is an extremely rare cuscus which quickly vanishes under anything but the slightest hunting pressure. By the 1980s it was already extinct throughout most of its distribution in Papua New Guinea, with all recent records coming from extremely remote places such as Mt Boobiari.
When I asked the people of 2Fas about the Black-spotted Cuscus, the answer was invariably, ’Planti i stap’ (There are lots of them here). I began to doubt this statement, however, upon inquiring into the history of individual ornaments made from its fur. Many were very old. Some had been inherited from a grandparent. If the species was so common, I wondered, why were the ornaments virtual heirlooms?
The answer was finally revealed when I spent an afternoon yarning with a group of older men. In response to my many questions, one of them said: We have told you this cuscus is very common, but it is also very difficult to catch. If a man wants to catch one, he must possess very strong magic. To make this magic, he must spend six months in the men's cult house. He must eat only certain foods, and all the time he must abstain from sexual intercourse. Then he must travel to the big bush, two day's walk from here. If he is lucky, he will find a cuscus there.’
When I asked how long it had been since someone had succeeded in the hunt, I was told that no-one had caught one for many years. In the eyes of the elders, the village youth were a degenerate lot who lacked the moral fibre to endure the arduous preparation necessary for a successful hunt.
But this is not the whole story either. In 1987 I visited Woodlark Island off the coast of eastern New Guinea to study the unique spotted Woodlark Cuscus (Phalanger lullulae) which is found only there. This visit coincided with a similar visit by a team of students from Oxford University. Woodlark is a remote island with no regular air service. It gets few European visitors, so the arrival of two large groups, both bent on a study of the same cuscus species, caused quite a stir. We all worked hard during the two or three weeks of our visit. At the end we had collected a few specimens of the cuscus for the museum to confirm our identification and thought no more of it.
Just recently, though, I received a letter from the person who had led the Oxford University expedition. He had heard from a visitor to the island that the cuscus was now much rarer than before and that the local people firmly believed that this was due to the terrible ravages our expeditions had committed upon the population. Woodlark is an enormous island (some 800 square kilometres in extent) and it is inconceivable that our small collection could have had any impact on the cuscus population, for it was an extremely common animal. Yet the arrival of our expeditions clearly had an enormous social impact, which has perhaps coloured people's perceptions of the animal's abundance.
After experiences such as these, as well as watching the attempts of other well-meaning researchers to develop conservation programs in Melanesia, I believe that it is a rare bird indeed who can devise a successful program. This is because, in order to do so, one must have the trust of the local people as well as a genuine depth of understanding about how they view the world. It is my hope that the Papua New Guinea Department of Environment and Conservation will be able to develop local, innovative solutions to this problem, for they have an intimate understanding of Melanesian ways of life and thought, as well as the necessary scientific framework to know where the conservation problems lie.
Our problems in the Torricellis were complicated at times by the presence of the film crew. Gary Steer was interested in making a film of our search for Tenkile. Gary is a wonderful companion in the field, but the vast amount of equipment he needed sometimes transformed our small camp into a bursting metropolis.
And Gary's needs were quite different from our own. We were happy to track our animals from a distance, for it was far worse to be continually disturbing them than never to see them but to know approximately where they were. The film crew, in contrast, needed footage of tree-kangaroos.
We also found that the issue of film-making introduced a new financial concern among the local people. They had been happy to help me learn about Tenkile and to be paid average rates for their work. They perceived the film-making venture differently, for they felt that it would result in a financial windfall to Gary. If that were to happen, then they, as landowners, wanted their fair share. Although I was not directly involved with this issue, the problems it raised (such as distrust of Gary's and at times even my motives, along with ever escalating demands for money) brought about social strains which we would have been much better without.
But relations were good in other ways. From the very first we had been slotted into a series of relationships in the village. Kaspar Seiko and the two best local hunters were our main helpers. It was they, with their dogs, who worked intimately with us locating Tenkile. They also became our closest friends. Each time we set off into the bush with them, our line of carriers erupted into a glorious chorus of whooping cries, ‘Yi, yi, yi’. It went on and on, only the fatigue of carrying the heavy loads finally bringing silence. The sound reminded me of the melodious call of the New Guinea singing dog.
Relationships with other villagers took root and flourished. Anton, a man in his early sixties, became our cook. From the moment of our arrival for each expedition, to the last farewell, Anton was there. His qualification for the position was that he had once cooked for the priests in A
itape. On tasting his first meal I was suitably impressed, for the mixture of tinned fish, fresh greens and rice was at least palatable. Qualms arose when the same dish was served again at breakfast, and these qualms turned into a terrible sense of foreboding at lunch that day when it became apparent that Anton could cook but one meal.
Despite enormous encouragement, including sundry gifts of herbs, spices and other ingredients, Anton never swerved from his speciality. Perhaps the priests had devised culinary monotony into a sort of penance, and Anton had assumed it was a European tradition.
In a desperate attempt to overcome his culinary limitations, I even hired a cheerful assistant for him named Peter, who seemed, alas, to have studied at the same school of cookery. And yet there was no way that I could fire Anton. To the villagers, he was a cook by profession. To fire him and hire someone else would have led to a terrible loss of self-esteem. It was something one just could not do to him, for Anton was a lovely person. I held out in this resolution even when a member of the film crew came to me in horror one day, saying that she had just seen Anton in the cook house, attempting to burst a large and very angry looking boil in his groin, with her fork. My feeble response—that she could wash the implement in some Dettol I had secreted away (the public stocks tend to evaporate quickly treating a village-full of cuts and scratches)—seemed only to add to her outrage.
I engaged Viare Kula, a Papua New Guinean with a degree from the University of Papua New Guinea, to undertake most of the radiotracking. In preparation for this he spent the previous eight months in Australia working with Roger Martin radiotracking Bennett's Tree-kangaroos (Dendrolagus bennet-tianus). Viare was a competent and hard-working researcher. What success we had with the project was largely due to him.