Success Elements in Our Schools

First appeared in the column Steven's Window, The National newspaper. 29th January 2010.

This is the time of the year our young people prepare themselves to enter a new grade or educational institution. Many children at the primary and secondary levels have their paths cut out for them. The ones entering the universities are excited with beginning their first years at the highest learning institutions in the country. Most will go through the process with high expectations and dreams of the kind of person they will become after four years of tertiary education. Their fertile minds are ready to tackle the intellectual challenges before them.

Three important elements are at work in the success of students reaching the university level: First, the last school the students attended is the first element. Top ranking schools often have a high number of students entering university. The second element is the advice and direction provided by guidance teachers, parents, guardians. Many depend on their guidance teachers in upper secondary schools. Others with educated parents and guardians follow what they want them to do. The third element is the individual choices that each student made last year as they thought about what they wanted to do.

In thinking about these three elements I recall the journey I took in my own life. The school I went to is a Catholic boarding school only for boys known as St. Xaviers High School. The Marist Brothers ran the school. The school has the motto: duc in altum, meaning reach for the highest, enjoyed the reputation of being one of the best in the country. Every boy who went to that school strived to live up to that motto. Every year the boys left their crying parents and relatives at the old Wewak wharf or at the Wom Beach to travel by boat for two hours to reach Kairiru Island. The boys stayed on the Island for the whole year, except for the one week mid-term break and the Christmas break. The boys were either 13 or 14 years old the first time they leave their families to go away to the island to grow up, get schooled, and disciplined in their attitudes, manners, outlook of life, and the kind of life they want to lead in later years. Prayer, study, and work were the three important elements that the school enforced in its efforts to produce the best students in the country.

The school, however, is no longer a top secondary school in the country. The school standard has dropped over the years. The education authorities have watched the school go from being one of the best schools to being one of the last schools in the country.

I responded, like everyone else, to the school’s motto: duc in altum. We wanted to reach the highest level in our chosen paths, careers, and lives. We wanted to compete with everyone else in Papua New Guinea to get the top spot in the country. We had the privilege of mission education with its pious regime of constant prayer, fellowship, and intellectual commitment to our goals. Good Christian, respectful, and disciplined values kept us at bay. We remained true to these values and expectations that denied us the teenage temptations of spending wasteful time chasing girls or talking to them. We had no problems with alcohol, drugs, guns, and violence, unlike today’s high school students. We were content with our lives in school away from the luxury of our homes and relatives.

To get from grade 8 to grade 9 was the first real challenge. We completed grade 10 before moving into the job markets, national high schools, and the universities. The decisions we made at that time to continue on with our education were done with the best advice from our guidance teachers.

I had the best guidance of both worlds, so to speak. Getting into the national high school in the days when only the top 10 percent were given the opportunity was possible for me with the guidance of the good principal Brother Peter Cassidy. Whereas the advice I received in national high school to enter the University of Papua New Guinea was a cold shower, to say the least. Not because it was to wake me up to the reality, but because it was given with absolute decree that because I have an average grade in English, I would perform poorly in the field I chose to do since I was a kid. Notwithstanding I out performed such poor guidance and expectations without having to ignore the challenges that came with being in such a situation.

Now a days it is the parents who are more likely to influence their children about what they want their children to become. This seems like the normal thing to do, but the reality is that many young people soon find out that what they really want to do is different to what their parents and guardians want them to do. Those entering university studies quickly find out that they are either performing below standard or are disinterested in their studies. Parents and guardians must realize that many young people go with the choices they made because it is what they want to do in their lives, not what their parents or guardians want them to do. Parents and guardians should avoid over-determining a young person’s life.

We see time and again every year many students entering the university without knowing exactly what they want to do or become. “Wild Cards” is the term I use to describe this category of students. No one knows exactly what the young person will become after four years of university studies, especially in the Humanities and Social Sciences programs.

I have one advice to many young people returning to the classrooms or taking up studies at universities across the country: “Set your goals high and believe in yourself that no matter what it takes or how long it takes you will achieve your goals. Have these goals written down. Achieving your goals is a process.”

The Great Wall of PNG

First published in Steven's Window, The National newspaper of Papua New Guinea on Friday January 22nd, 2010.

My ten year old son described the mural wall outside the Chinese Embassy in Port Moresby as the “The Great Wall of PNG”. He posed in front of the wall for me to get a picture of him. This wall appealed to him more than the mural wall paintings at Murray Barracks or elsewhere in the city. I took pictures of the wall that day because I know that sooner or later someone ignorant will deface it with graffiti of no taste.

My interest in the mural has nothing to do with my son’s description. The mural on the “great wall of PNG and China” focused on cultural and educational themes more so than economic or political themes. The artistic representation of the relationship between PNG and China is given prominence on this wall. The artistic framing of the experiences of Papua New Guineans is only read if we care to view it deeper than the surface reality presented to us.

Most of the mural artworks are on the walls of the Port Moresby National High School, the University of Papua New Guinea, the Port Moresby General Hospital, and the Chinese Embassy. These mural arts promote a cultural and social memory among the residents or the visitors to the city of Port Moresby. Whether anyone takes mural art in a serious way or remains uninterested, the visual pleasure such art generates is immeasurable. The mural art developed slowly in the early days when Port Moresby was a less populated city to one that is now overcrowded, congested, and struggling with promoting a balance and unbiased image to counteract the images promoted about it overseas.

Art is a reflection of a living experience that “is more than a statement about the relations of the observer to the observed,” according to Theordore Adorno, the influential Marxist art critic and intellectual. For art to embody the aesthetic experience it must become a living experience animated by the gaze of the viewer. The murals around Port Moresby or elsewhere in PNG serve similar functions.

Art is a tapestry of life. It is contemplative and reproduces meaning in a fundamental way. Art is produced in a way that is capable of speaking to us the moment our gazes land on it. “By speaking,” Ardono argues, “it becomes something that moves in itself.” It is that movement that we grasp when we view art, not its static, unchanging, and immobile elements. We grasp the relations formed by these elements in the work of art.

Art imitates reality. The artists negotiate the past with the present, the modern with the pre-modern, and between those who observe and those who are observed. The sense of hybridity permeates most of these public art forms in a way that many stories are told at once in a single space. Mural arts are always there in front of us. If we take the time to view these mural walls of art we can make sense of the importance these public art work at reproducing the history of our country.

The artists of these mural paintings appropriated postmodern cultural tools, knowledge, and material culture for their own self-representations. In the process of appropriation Papua New Guinean artists simultaneously reproduced a culture that is neither traditional nor modern, but a hybrid of both worlds capable of telling thousands of stories.

Art is a text with its own language system. Art as a text functions to signify meaning that is embedded in the society that produced it. As a system of signs art demands to be read as a text. Art produces and replicates its individuality and associations with itself and others in the same sphere of relationships.

The public murals are works of art that constitute a set of texts about life and conditions of human society in Papua New Guinea. These works of art are more than merely present or as colourful wall decorations—they are produced with the sense of art as a textual embodiment of life.

Reading mural art as text allows us to testify to the great human potential and complexity, its confusions, contradictions, contentions, and meaningful associations. Art as text is a tapestry of human lives always needing to be interpreted, given meaning, and reproduced to suspend closure or ending. Adorno reminds us that all artwork have something to teach us: “All artworks, even the affirmative, are a priori polemical… they are the unconscious schemata of that world’s transformation” (1997). It is this unconscious schemata of our world’s transformation that we experience every time we view the artwork around us.

The mural art alls of Port Moresby represent our world through the brush strokes of our local artists. In the mural arts we become active participants in an unconscious schema of transformation. We are to a larger extend involved in the reproduction of the textual meanings in these works of art. The mural on the “Wall of PNG” gave my son his perception of the wall as it did to me. We inhabit the same world, but see the world in different ways than we know.

Our rich traditional artistic heritage, in the forms of material arts, performance arts, or other artistic constructions, is not our focus here. Most of us are familiar with these and others such as the fine arts, sculptures, and print art forms. The notions of art discussed here, however, remain principles of aesthetics and function as frameworks of reading works of art in general.

The art works that we create in our lifetime capture the lived moments of our lives. In art we express the way we feel, see ourselves, and make sense of the complex world around us. Art gives us the key to self-expression and social-cultural representations. We use art to speak about our way of life and our world. In art we seize the moment to make a point that cuts through the different views we have about issues affecting us every day. Art is a reflection of our world.

Museums and Cultural Institutions

First published in Steven's Window, column of The National newspaper of PNG. Friday 15th, 2010.

A young guard of cultural traditions in front of Ayugham Bana cultural centre, Aiyura valley, EHP, PNG. Photo: Keisiva Darius.

Two places I am fond of visiting every time I travel overseas are the museums and bookshops. In museums I get a rare glimpse of a place, a people, a culture, and lifestyles as preserved by the curators and museum workers. It is also a place that a society makes a point about itself. The way a museum is organised, structured, and arranged is the way in which a particular society sees itself in relation to its objects of cultural value.

There are many stories and narratives written, painted, printed and displayed in the halls of a museum. I sometimes spend hours walking in the carefully structured hallways to view and learn about a society. In his introduction to the book Museum Provision and Professionalism, Gaynor Kavanagh says “museums differ across time and across cultures. Cultural and political differences will also make themselves evident in the form the museum takes and the priorities adopted. We invest our own culture in the institutions we create. A museum in, say, the West Midlands, in the United Kingdom, will have a different range of characteristics to one in central Sweden, northern France, California, the Ukraine or the suburbs of Sydney. Should you visit them, you would spot the differences instantly, although sometimes they are difficult to put into words” (1994: 3).

The museums that I have visited include the Chicago Field Museum in Illinois, Minneapolis Institute of Art in Minnesota, USA, Australian National Museum in Sydney, Te Papa in Wellington, and the Canterbury Museum in New Zealand. In the Minneapolis Institute of Arts I spend a whole semester studying how the Foucauldian notions of power and space are organized in a museum. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts hosts one of the rare collections of Malagan artefacts.

In Te Papa Museum, I learnt that eels are migrational around the South Pacific rather than being static in one place. In the Chicago Field Museum, a Murik Tumbuan guards one corner of the main hall. Canterbury Museum, located in Christchurch, New Zealand hosts its original collection as well as travelling exhibits. One year, a section was devoted to the Antartica Field Research Station. Among its original collections is the exhibition of Polynesian canoes, among which is a canoe from the Solomon Islands.

Just before I left Christchurch in August 2006, the Canterbury Museum staffs, together with the staff of the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies at the University of Canterbury, worked on a small exhibition featuring the collection of Macmillan Brown during his visits to the Pacific Islands in the early 1930s. Among the interesting items collected was a paddle from the Trobriand Islands.

My reflection on the point about museums is that as institutions of cultural preservation and education many lessons are learnt from within its halls of knowledge. Museums serve as a place to preserve our past and a place where we can learn about ourselves.

Our own National Museum and Art Gallery is an important space for public education and information dissemination. Consistent yearly activities should be scheduled and publicized for public visits and viewing. The importance of museums in contemporary Papua New Guineans’ lives must be set in motion. The museum must move away from the traditional role of being a house for preservation and housing old artefacts and rare traditional pieces of art and culture. The museum space must magnetize the public rather than keep them away from visiting it.

It is time also, I suggest, the government build provincial museums and cultural centres to house, exhibit, and educate people about the heritage of a province. Each province can showcase their archaeological heritage, art, material culture, and living traditions in their own museums. The provincial museums can also be centres for art exhibitions and education centres for the people of the province and those who visit the province. It is the pride of each province to tell its own stories in the way they have developed from the prehistoric past to the present.

One of the unique provincial museum is the J.K. McCarthy Museum in Kainantu. It was renamed as the Kainantu Cultural Centre. It has been in operation for 30 years. It attracts hundreds of tourists annually for its pottery, crafts, paintings, and other crafts. Unique to this centre is the pottery made from local clay unique to the area of Obura-Wanenara. The recent support it received from the Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture, Honourable Charles Abel to keep its operations going is moral boosting for its patrons.

“Museums around the world are united in as much they are keeping places for objects open on a restricted basis to members of the public,” says Gaynor Kavanagh. “But, beyond this they vary according to such factors as the political and social attitudes of those involved, funding structures, the legal framework and the ideological baggage of the time…Museums serve a multitude of purposes and in particular, play many roles, some of which are rarely even hinted at in a museum’s mission statement or development plan … They can be shelters from the rain, mortuaries for dead objects, shrines to the memory of wealthy donors (frequently long forgotten), forums for debate, repositories for community archives, centres of scholarship and understanding, instruments of social control, locations for recreation and reflection, sacred spaces where the spirits of the ancestors rest... No two people will find exactly the same thing in a museum, or in a museum visit.”

In his article “A House of Thousand Cultural Societies” Michael Kisombo had written an informative piece on our National Museum and Art Gallery, (The National, September 4th, 2009) which readers can turn to for more information. I am also aware of plans to have a new museum developed in the near future to give it much needed attention in Papua New Guinea.

The personal reflections made here serve to reinforce what was already stated by others for the sake of keeping alive the conversation on the provision of museum services and development of cultural centres in Papua New Guinea.

Modernity's Manifold Chasms

The article appeared in Steven's Window, The National newspaper of PNG on Friday 08th January 2010.

A few days before Christmas I had a brief conversation with a colleague who had just returned from the Southern Highlands Province after the signing of various LNG agreements between the state, the developers, and the land owners of the massive oil and gas field.

I was curious about trauma resulting from the transition from the stone-age to the gas-age for the landowners with so much money in their lives. Resource owners are going on a spending spree, massive consumption of alcohol, and car sales yards in Mendi and Hagen are out of new vehicles to sell to the landowners. The landowners have become wealthy, in monetary terms, beyond their wildest dreams.

Money to spend is no longer an issue to the landowners. I have been thinking about what it all means to be someone who, a few years ago or a decade back, would have been so absorbed in the daily routine of tending to gardens, animal husbandry, customary social obligations, gifts exchange, and involvement in the tribal social, cultural, political, and economic activities in the high valley. With the oil and gas development the same villagers are given millions of Kina as payments for what is extracted from beneath the surface of their land.

These are people who have never thought money would change their lives. These are people content with living the way they were since their ancestors. These are people who never realized that their lives began in a simple way—a life that now has changed dramatically to one that rushes headlong into modernity without any preparedness for its negative consequences.

It is a life that, without much thought to it, takes a flight away from simple and ordinary things in life, or a life without the benefit of large amounts of money to one that is transformed into what is sometimes described as the postmodern anxiety.

The transformation is crafted within the shortest possible time in response to the resources and economic development initiated and sanctioned by the national government of Papua New Guinea. Nothing would have come about without the strong well developed policies and stewardship of the national government to safeguard the economic, natural resources, and political interest of its people.

The issue that interests me is the experience of social stress and disorder in the lives of the people who are now displaced from their social and cultural nests that kept them safe, healthy, and simple. With so much money to deal with many of the benefactors of the oil and gas fields will abandon their traditional and cultural way of life to one driven by the money received for being resource owners. Many people will go through a process of denial of their traditional social and cultural foundations, replacing these with new introduced cultures and social attitudes that are detrimental in the long run. Human history demonstrates that once such a cultural and social revolution is set in motion there is no turning back to the old ways. It is a one way train from depths of the cold mountains to the sea of modernity.

Change happening in the oil and gas rich Southern Highlands is irreversible unless someone cares enough to insists on setting up social and cultural institutions to shoulder the burden of social and cultural house-keeping. The need to respond to the emotional and psychological intensity of the experience is never a shot term solution. It must involve carefully designed institutions, programs, plans, and strategies of responding to the results of this traumatic experience. Otherwise it takes years to repair the cultural and social damage done to these people within a short span of time.

The experiences of Panguna, Misima, OK Tedi, and Pogera must continue to inform our leaders, planners, and resource developers to consider the social and cultural consequences emanating directly from the development of resources in the Southern Highlands Province. Consideration on the ripple effects such as rural urban drift, disillusionment, developmental anxieties, violence, over population in urban areas, and the spread of modern diseases caused by the experiences of displacement, social fragmentation, and cultural sacrifice must take place within a framework that is responsive rather than ignorance.

One is reminded, in saying this, of the difficult transition and suffering made in China after the Cultural Revolution. Arthur Kleinman, a leading authority of anthropology and medicine reminds us that the recovery of the cultural self lost in the transition is never easy and quick. In terms of what this means is that a case of posttraumatic disorder is set in motion. In his book Social Origins of Distress and Disease (1986) Kleinman describes the case histories of individuals whose stress and disease resulted from the excesses of the Chinese Cultural Revolution of 1920s and 1930s. Similarly, we must ask: Are the landowners of the oil and gas fields prepared to deal with the break down of social and cultural order as a direct result of the great leap they are now taking into the realms of modernity without preparedness? Are there institutions and programs to deal with posttraumatic stress disorder once it appears to make its presence difficult to ignore as it gnaws away at the moral and cultural sinews of a society? I pose these questions at this time to flag the imminent future our people in the Southern Highlands will go through in the lifespan of the resource exploitation.

It is not my place to tell the people of Southern Highlands, especially those with direct connection to the massive resource development, what to do. It is not my place also to argue with the government’s decisions and positions in the development of the resources in the Southern Highlands and Gulf provinces. What is important, however, is that, as a Papua New Guinean writer and scholar I stand between the past and future, then and now—and looking and asking questions that might easily be overlooked or answered in haste in our headlong dive into modernity’s manifold chasms.

A Rower's Song: poems by Steven Edmund Winduo

New Book from Manui Publishers (PNG)

Steven Edmund Winduo: A Rower’s Song (2009), published by Manui Publishers. ISBN: 978-9980-9919-2-8. 146 pages. K69.90 (US$25.86)

A Rower’s Song is the first self-published book of poems. This is my third book of poetry. In this book I reflect on the experiences of living in a fast developing city in Oceania, where the social, cultural, and economic landscapes are changing in constant tune to the postmodern pressures. A Rower’s Song describes the changing social urban landscape with all its problems, challenges, and hopes. In this poetry, I am the rower with a song to sing as I cross islands and continents.

Here is a sample:

Borrowed Lives

Our pockets are torn
Living in our pockets
We have fallen so deep down
Walking the dark smelly alleys
Of some cheap Asian backyards
Or standing everyday at the same spot
Seeing the monotony of life
Driving by on the same road
We see the crowd swell like locusts
Beyond limit at the bus stop
Emptiness drops from the sky
And blanketed our vision forward
There’s nowhere out of this, we declare
We have to borrow money
To go on living here
Our pay packet looks fat
Our bank accounts stripped
There is no savings
To help us through hard times
Our hearts cannot bleed
Our hopes remain intact
Our borrowed lives will continue.


The collection includes works published in various journals and anthologies such as Journal of Postcolonial Writing (UK), Savannah Flames: a Papua New Guinean Journal of Literature, Language, and Culture (PNG), and Writing the Pacific (Fiji) edited by Jen Webb and Kavita Nandan. I recited some of these poems in Canada (Alberta), USA (Minnesota and Hawaii), Fiji, and Papua New Guinea.

To order email me on steven.winduo.manui@gmail.com

Large Footprints on Pacific Shores

The article first appeared in my column Steven's Window, in The National newspaper of Papua New Guinea. December 31st 2009. Picture taken by author in 1988 on a cruise in the Sydney Harbour.

A year it was. Some of us will remember 2009 as a great year. Others will remember the year as a year of missed opportunities and tragedy. At this time of the year we also take stock of our lives, acknowledge the successes and losses, and re-cast our nets into the future. We also take a moment to reflect on the journey itself for what it’s worth.

In the journey we met fellow travellers, advisors, mentors, and those who made decisions that changed us or stopped us from realizing our full potentials. The great mentors are hard to replace.

I have known many such people in the journey of my life as a Papua New Guinean writer and scholar. Many such incredible people gave their knowledge, wisdom, time, and references to get me from where I was to where I am now. These people are beacons of inspiration in my life.

In this last column of the year 2009 I wish to remember one person I owe so much gratitude and admiration. This person passed away in the middle of this year, on a bus in Auckland, after visiting Tonga on his way home to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. The person is the late Emeritus Professor, Ron Crocombe, a man of majestic stature, wisdom, character, and scholarship.

Ron has mentored many of the leading Pacific Islands scholars in one way or another throughout his life. He had maintained an abiding interest in the culture, history, politics, economics, land tenure systems, and social change in the Pacific Islands throughout most of life. He had published volumes of books and literature on the subject.

He has undertaken research, consulting, lecturing, and administration in most Pacific Islands nations for more than 50 years of his life. He has worked for the Cook Islands government, the Australian National University (including being director of the New Guinea Research Unit in the 1960s, now known as the National Research Institute), University of California, East-West Center, Smithsonian Institution, University of Kagoshima, and the University of the South Pacific where he was Professor of Pacific Studies from 1969 to 1988, and founding director of the Institute of Pacific Studies. He has undertaken extensive consultancy for Pacific governments, the Pacific Community, Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, University of Papua New Guinea, various UN and Commonwealth agencies, Asian Development Bank and others.

Many of us, doing research on the study of Pacific Islands, cultures, literature, education, knowledge systems, and developmental studies, emulate the good professor’s style of scholarship. Some of us had the good fortune of being acknowledged in his various books.

I first met Ron Crocombe in Sydney in 1988 during a conference on Australia’s relationship with the South Pacific Islands. It was a year after I had graduated with my BA degree from UPNG. As young and inexperienced as I was at that time, the meeting with Ron Crocombe changed my life around. On a boat tour around the Sydney Harbour I asked Ron to help me publish my first book of poetry. He said he would speak to Marjorie, his wife, who at that time was the Director of the South Pacific Creative Arts Society in Fiji.

Nothing happened for the next few years until I met up with Ron and Marjorie again over lunch at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, in 1991. The lunch was hosted by Dr. Malama Meleisa, the first director of the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies at the University of Canterbury. The connection all of us have is the University of Papua New Guinea. Ron taught some courses at UPNG, Marjorie from Cook Islands and Malama from Samoa were graduates of UPNG. At that time of our meeting I was completing my Masters degree under a New Zealand government scholarship.

After that lunch Marjorie saw to it that I had my first book of poetry published while I was still a student in New Zealand. Ron, Marjorie, and Malama took it on themselves to make sure that I found my footing in the area of serious writing and scholarship in the literature, arts, and culture of the Pacific Islands, especially about my own Papua New Guinean society. There was the sense of urgency in their encouragement.

Ron had so much respect for Papua New Guinea. He observed with keen interest the social, political, economic, and cultural change in this country. He also maintained his relationship with key individuals in Papua New Guinea, who would call on him to provide wisdom and direction. Ron was always willing to come to PNG, when invited, any time of the year.

I saw him last when he was here in mid 2008 for the UPNG Waigani seminar and customary land development seminar in Lae, Morobe Province. Ron, as always, was the towering figure, full of wisdom and advice to his young followers. He also had so much respect for what others have to say, and was willing to stand up for the underdogs.

I did not get the time to talk much to him, but exchanged a few words of pleasantries and well wishes. It was to be the last opportunity I had of seeing Ron here at UPNG after my return from the University of Minnesota, USA.

Ron had done a lot for me in terms of encouraging me to continue writing and publishing scholarship on the cultures, literature, and the knowledge systems of my country. Ron went as far as sending me personal copies of his monumental book The South Pacific (2001) and his other two books.

In paying my tribute to the great doyen of Pacific Studies, Ron Crocombe, at this time, I am mindful of the scholarship in Pacific Studies, indigenous cultures, and knowledge systems began under the his leadership and others, which has given many young indigenous scholars, like myself, a stage to launch our career.

Ron’s shoes are too big for us to wear, but we can follow the large footprints left on the shores of the Pacific.

The Language Burden

Cultural Day at
Waigani Primary
School 2090

The article appeared first in Steven's Window, a column in The National newpaper of Papua New Guinea. December 24th 2009.

The choice of language for communication among Papua New Guineans has never been an issue. In urban areas most people speak Tokpisin to get around or communicate with each other. English is chosen in an environment that requires communication in that language. Most people code switch between these languages whenever possible. No one seems to bother which language is used in the everyday communication.

The most trouble people have with language is the moment a language is written. One can speak Tokpisin competently, but transferring it to writing is difficult to many speakers. The same is also true of English though more so with speakers of English as a second, third, or fourth language. Written English demands adherence to rules of composition and stylistics, known also as grammar or rules of language construction. Ignorance of these rules results in poor constructions, punctuation errors, spelling mistakes, and misuse of words and expressions.

The main reason for insisting on school age children beginning with Indigenous languages is that our children can have some form of language competency at the elementary level before transiting into English at the third grade and upwards. Linguists, Anne Cursan and Michael Adams, tell us that in “India, South Africa, Malaysia, Switzerland, and many more, speakers learn multiple languages because they participate in multilingual communities in which different languages are used by various speakers for different purposes. In many countries where English is not the primary language, children start learning English as an additional language fairly early and intensively in their schooling.”

“The desire for a shared language (Sometimes within the country as well as internationally) and the desire for the opportunities available for speakers of English can compete with the desire to maintain more local identities and, therefore, languages. The debate about the use and status of English in Kenya, for example, has been lively and captures many of the concerns shared by other countries in the expanding …circle.”

Ngugi wa Thiongo best known for introducing the term ‘decolonizing the mind’ by replacing the English language with local languages is one of the influential people in the debate on language choice. African writers, according to Ngugi, must do justice to the local languages by writing their own local languages. He writes: “We the African writers are bound by our calling to do for our language what Spencer, Milton and Shakespeare did for English: what Pushkin and Tolstoy did for Russian: indeed what all writers in world history have done for their languages by meeting the challenge of creating a literature in them, which process later opens the languages for philosophy, science, technology and all the other areas of human creative endeavors.”

Ngugi’s position is challenged by the South African writer Harry Mashabela in 1983: “But learning and using English will not only give us the much-needed unifying chord but will also land us into the exciting world of ideas; it will enable us to keep company with kings in the world of ideas and also make it possible for us to share the experiences of our own brothers in the world: men such as black Americans W. E. Burghardt DuBois, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes; Chinua Achebe of Nigeria, Ghana’s Ayi Kwei Armah.”

The Nigerians writer Chinua Achebe expands the argument: “The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message best without altering the language to the extent that its value as a medium of international exchange will be lost. He should aim at fashioning out an English which is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar experience….I feel that the English language will be able to carry the weight of my African experience. But it will have to be a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit its new African surroundings.”

The point about bringing this debate to this column is that many of us choose the language with which to communicate in because of the necessity to do so at a particular time and place. I choose to speak and write in English most times, but allow code switching with Tokpisin in many occasions. Most people speak Tokpisin without a second thought, but writing in Tokpisin is difficult to many Papua New Guineans. In schools the language of instruction is English, but Tokpisin is always on the tip of the tongue, when English becomes difficult to understand and use as with some of my university students.

John Kasaipwalova experimented on this linguistic situation in the story “Bomana Kalabus O” where he experimented with the registers of English and Tokpisin. We know that English alone would not affect change in a multilingual environment such as Papua New Guinea. In literary usage we also know that English is insufficient in capturing all our cultural knowledge without the help of our local languages as is the case with Russell Soaba’s writings captured in the poetry collection Kwamra: A Season of Harvest.

Adult literacy classes in Port Moresby city are conducted in Tokpisin and English. Many of the students are mothers living in the city with no skills of reading or writing in English or even Tokpisin, but converse competently in spoken Tokpisin. The methods, approaches, and resource materials used in literacy programs make the difference in a learner’s ability to read and write within a short period.

Come to think of it, the head rush in the direction of imposing an English only curriculum next year is troubling. The poor performance of students in formal education is not necessarily because of the use of vernacular or the lingua francas in schools. Other factors must be considered such as teachers’ language competency and pedagogic skills, learning resources, and attitudes to learning in different linguistic and cultural locality. Enhancing reading and writing competencies of teachers and students alike might break the hoodoo.

Colours of Christmas

Golden Shower (above)
Royal Poinciana or Flamboyant tree (below)

First published in Steven's Window. The National newspaper. Friday 18th December 2009.

At this time of the year we celebrate Christmas in different ways to mark the important Christian period of the calendar. It is also a time for Christians everywhere to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ in Jerusalem. In the Northern Hemisphere it is winter. White snow, green Christmas trees, and colourful lights characterize this period in most places. During the winter period most trees without leaves and flowers appear lifeless. In North America people go crazy decorating trees outside their houses with high voltage lights to lit up the nights. In the Southern Hemisphere it is summer. Rainy days, Christmas trees, summer activities, and colourful lights are switched on everywhere. This is also the time for personal budget blow-outs.

I appreciate the Christmas period in a special way that I would like share with everyone. In our part of the world many plants bloom at this time. Many people appreciate them, but do not know the names of these beautiful plants that give our Christmas special colours to lighten our spirits. We see them around us and admire them for reminding us of the beautiful things in life and for a great country, rich in biodiversity and exotic tropical plants. We are blessed with these wonderful tropical plants with their natural coloured flowers, showering everyday during the Christmas period.

Yet, if someone visiting our country asks about the names of the plants we would without doubt reply that we have no idea about the names of the plants that grow in out city. Once a visiting American writer and inspiration for the film Dead Poets Society, Sam Pickering, remarked that we have some of the wonderful flowering trees in Port Moresby, but no one seems to know the names of these trees. The remark sank like dry wine into the gullet of my soul. Sam is the author of the book Trespassing and was my guest at that time.

At this time of the year a number of plants show-off their flowers with splendid colours. The Golden showers and the Yellow oleanders display their yellow splendour. The Golden showers are also known as the monkey tree or the Indian Laburnum. Casia fistula is the Latin equivalent. The Laburnum is more than just a flowering tree. It is an important medicinal plant in Ayurvedic medicine of India, featured in the ancient religious rituals of cleansing against unbalanced mind and body.

Most of us have the Yellow oleander growing around our houses. The Latin name for this plant is Casabella thevetia, with yellow trumpet shaped flowers and long narrow simple leaves. In a silly way people name this plant as the yellow bell, though the genus name appears to have come from the Spanish casabella, which means small bell, referring to the shape of the flower. The Yellow oleander is a marvel to see.

Chief among the plants with red flowers in full bloom at this time of the year is the Royal Poinciana or the Flamboyant tree, known in Latin as Delonix regia. The Royal Poinciana is often associated with Christmas period, but never carries the name Christmas tree as most people like to refer to it. This tree is an ornamental growing all over the tropical environments. This plant is originally from Madagascar, but introduced to many parts of the world as an ornamental, together with the Golden trumpet (Allamanda cathartica), Bougainvillea (Bougainvillea spectabilis), Madagascar periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus), Chinese hibiscus (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis), Multicoloured lantana (Lantana camara), and Common Oleander (Nerium Oleander).

The perennials such as the hibiscus, the frangipani, the bougainvillea, the flame-of-the wood (Ixora casei), and the rosewood continue to display their spectacular flowers. The most popular is the frangipani plant, sometimes known as the Mexican plumeria, also known as Plumeria rubra in Latin. The red and yellow Mexican plumeria, bloom in concert with their cousin, the Singapore plumeria or the plumeria obtusa. These frangipanis have soft colours, texture, and nice smooth scent.

Other perennials with spectacular flowers are the Heliconia, also known in Latin as Heliconia psittacorum, the Jasmine, the Morning glory, and the St. Thomas Orchid Tree, also known as Bauhinia monandra in Latin. The red, white, and orange lilies add spectacle to the ground. There are many more plants that bloom at this time of the year in our yards, streets, and suburbs.

Imagine living in the Northern Hemisphere at this time with white snow, cold weather, and leafless trees to stare at and you stare back at them, wishing all the time that you were home to take in the beautiful sights and smells of flowering plants. I have been in this situation before, living through several winters of Midwest America, and know that the tropical flowering and leafy plants make my country a special home.

Many other plants are also in bloom around the country at this time. Whatever we do in the city during the Christmas period, let us pause for a moment to admire the blessings of the Creator. Our country is blessed with natural plants that make our Christmas more colourful than the cheap Christmas trees and lights we rush to buy for our homes every Christmas. We should be thankful to God.

Those of us living in the great city of Port Moresby want to see all our frangipanis, palms, and St. Thomas Orchid Trees remain untouched by careless individuals, drunks, and ignorant people during the Christmas period. Please, for once, leave the beautiful plants planted for our pleasure and peace of mind left alone. There is no peace in running through or onto the plants the Happy Gardener and the NCDC have planted along the roads for our enjoyment. No forgiveness for those who trespass against plants this Christmas.

To all loyal followers of this column I wish you a safe, peaceful, and Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year. Look after our flowering trees for our people, our children, our visitors, our friends, and non-resident Papua New Guineans to come home this Christmas to enjoy.

Tough Journey for PNG Writers

The second missing piece is now also restored on this blog. Tough journey for PNG writers
Source: Steven Window, The National newspaper. Friday 02nd October 2009. Publishing works of fiction, poetry, and drama is still trapped in a time capsule, writes Dr STEVEN WINDUO

The period between 1978 and 1990 creative writers and publishers moved away from each other. Publishers associated with the churches concentrated on religious publications. This period saw the proliferation of religious literature. Private publishers concentrated on non Papua New Guinean authors writing about Papua New Guinea.

The Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies (IPNGS) shouldered some of the burden in the 1980s. The IPNGS published several series on oral history, short stories and poetry. The writers with their works in print during the 1980s were part of the Bikmaus tradition. Special issues of the Bikmaus journal featured Mark Hau’ofa’s The Bride Price of Hura and A Sequel to the Bride Price, William Tagis’s Weekend Melodrama and Michael Tsim, Abrosyius Waiyim’s The Flooded Sipi and John Kilburn’s King of Marbles. Single titles were Toby Kagl Waim’s Kallan, Michael Yake Mell’s Kumdi Bagre and The Call of Land and Joseph Aguang’s The Sorcerer, published either by IPNGS or National Research Institute. Others writers of this tradition include Rex Okona, Gideon Kinkawa, Bernard Kaspou, Adam Vai Delaney, Jack Lahui and myself.

Books published in the 1980s include Paulias Matane (Aimbe series), Russell Soaba’s Wanpis (1978), Ignatius Kilage’s My Mother Calls Me Yaltep (1980) and all of John Kolia’s publication. Kolia used the publishing funds of IPNGS to publish his own books, arguing that all attempts at writing the great PNG novel had failed in his time.

In general writers were left in a limbo, to stand up on their own feet. The Grand Chief Sir Paulias Matane worked closely with UBSPD and CBS, an Indian publishing company, had many of his non-fiction books published with this company. The same company published books written by Arnold Mundua, Francis Nii, Lahui Ako, and several others.

A number of us, including Regis Stella and myself, had our books published outside of PNG. Russell Soaba saw his second novel Maiba (1985), published by Three Continents Press in Washington, USA. Dellasta Pacific in Australia published Yauka Liria’s novel Bougainville Diary. Nora Vagi Brash published, Which Way Big Man-her collection of plays with Oxford University Press.

Oxford University Press published several children’s books for lower primary school children. Several anthologies were also published at this time. Macmillan published Through Melanesian Eyes, compiled by Ganga Powell. Oxford University Press published Moments in Melanesia, a compilation of short stories by Melanesian writers, edited by Regis Stella. Stuart Watson edited an anthology of prose and poems by Goroka University students, entitled Lost in Jungle Ways, published by Dellasta Pacific. Adeola James edited a collection of writings by Papua New Guinean women in PNG Women Writers, published by Longman, Addison, and Wiley. Two anthologies: Lali (1980) and Nuanua (1996) edited by Albert Wendt featured a section on PNG writers.

It seems Papua New Guineans are caught up on a pendulum of publishing supported (or not) by national and international publishing houses. UPNG Press published Tsomi by Matabuna Tahun, A Medal Without Honour by Nash Sorariba, and The Blue Logic by Wiri Yakaipoko. The Blue Logic was later published as The Dark Side of Port Moresby. The literary works published by UPNG Press were either funded by the authors or were funded by cooperate sponsorship.

With the demise of UPNG Press, the Melanesian and Pacific Studies (MAPS) of UPNG began publishing several books and journals, among them Melissa Aigilo’s Falling Foliage, Regis Stella and Linda Maeaniani’s Melanesian Passages, and Zia Writers of Waria.

As recent as 2008 a local printing company, Birdwing Printers began publishing several books targeted for primary school children. Local indigenous authors and foreign writers on Papua New Guinea still compete for the same attention with this publisher.

Oxford and Dellasta Pasific (later Longman, Addison and Wiley) became the major outside publishers. According to Oxford University Press publishing PNG novels, poetry, or plays is a non-profitable venture. Oxford’s strategy is to publish educational resource books promoting the outcome based education, most of these written by non Papua New Guineans. Oxford has no intention of publishing original works of creative fiction by Papua New Guineans. Instead it leeches on works published in journals, anthologies, and other publications.

How can international publishing companies promote a literary culture in Papua New Guinea when they do little to recognize the struggles of writers in this country? It is akin to the experiences of African writers in the 1950s and 1960s when major European publishing houses were more interested in maintaining a hegemonic status quo, visa-vise economic exploitation, rather than bridging the divide between European literary culture and postcolonial creative literary productions.

Papua New Guinean writers need financial support to have their works published. In the last five years I observed that a number of Papua New Guineans have begun self-publishing their own books. Without the help of the government or international publishing houses a number of local writers have gone down this road. At face value, it appears to encourage local authors, but the ambitious journey for a self-published author in PNG is unpredictable and treacherous, if left alone.

Russell Soaba self-published Kwamra: A Season of Harvest under Anuki Country Press; Yauka Liria and Stanley Liria published their books under Crossroads Publications, and Fegsley Risapi under his own company Bradwin. I self-published my third collection of poetry: A Rower’s Song, under my own publishing company known as Manui Publishers. I used my own money to have my books printed with a local printer. I have to make a lot of personal sacrifices to come up with enough money to have one book published. Life down this road is painful, yet fulfilling.

Books and publishing are inseparable in a literary culture. If there are no publishing activities then no writing appears in print. Writers depend on publishing companies to see their writings in print and read by many people. Publishing works of fiction, poetry, and drama is still trapped in a time capsule. From time to time we see bubbles of this great energy escape the bottom to fill up the top of the jar.

Listen My Country

The missing pieces are now found and restored in this blog. The first one is Listen my country
Source: Steven’s Window, The National newspaper. Friday 18th, September 2009. It is time, we, the country, listen to the voices of women, writes Dr STEVEN WINDUO

PAPUA New Guinean women were in parliament since 1961. A simple Papua New Guinean village woman made history that even some of the history books, except for Eric Jones’s book on Dame Alice Wedega have no records of, let alone celebrate the feat accomplished by a pioneer woman in our midst.PNG women have been asking their country to listen to what they have to say about themselves. We have not been listening. We have been assuming their voices all along. In so doing we have denied women to speak for themselves.

In her autobiography, Listen My Country, Dame Alice Wedega answers one of the moral question of our time asked by Gayatri Spivak, an Indian-born post-colonial literary critic based in USA: Can the Subaltern Speak? Can PNG women speak for themselves? In her life and in her book, Dame Alice, pleaded with her country to hear the voices of women. The book was published in 1981, a first by a Papua New Guinean woman.

Dame Alice was born in 1905 to Wedega Gamahari and Ema of Alo Alo village in Milne Bay province. She went to school at Kwato mission school led by Cecil Abel of the London Missionary Society fame.In a book on colonial impact between 1884 and 1984 Dr Anne Dickson Waiko and Prof Tony Deklen made scanty references to Dame Alice’s part in the 1961 Legislative Council.

Dame Alice did so much in her lifetime by speaking for our women in international gatherings in New Zealand, India, Sri Lanka and in Europe. A pioneer member of the Legislative Council between 1961 and 1964, she was one of the nine native representatives during the Australian colonial administration.Dame Alice’s life story is exemplary of a colonised Papua New Guinean woman’s ability to rise above the ordinary to transcend all expectations by participating in a political process dominated by white Australian males. She worked with Sir Cecil to bring Christianity to Abau and parts of Central province in 1935. She founded the Ahioma Training Centre in the early 1960s to train women welfare assistants in Papua New Guinea. In 1952 she represented women’s rights at the Pan Pacific Women’s conference in Christchurch, New Zealand. Later in 1952 she led the Moral Re-armament group to India and Sri Lanka.Her story is brought up again in Deklin’s discussion on the constitutional development, especially for a home-grown constitution, in PNG between 1962 and 1975. Following World War II Papua New Guineans played no part in decision-making in terms of constitutional changes until 1964. During this time the Legislative Council, created by the Papua New Guinea Act 1949, was the body advising the Administrator on the running of the Territory Administration. This Act was the basic colonial Constitution until it was repealed in 1975.
Only three Papua New Guineans were nominated on the Legislative Council of 29 members since 1951. The Legislative Council Ordinance 1951, however, prohibited them from voting or being elected on the grounds that they were “natives.”

This remained until 1960 when nine additional members were added in the new Legislative Council. The significant constitutional change in 1960, according to Deklin, was “the principle of indirect election of native members of the Legislative Council authorised by the Legislative Council Ordinance 1960.”The climate in the early 1960s was such that the Australian government wanted the indigenous representatives to vote with them on any major legislative changes because the administration chose them for such purposes. Of course, we now know, that Dame Alice did vote if she felt it was right. She voted against the administration if her conscience wins, as was the case against the Bill on Liquor Licensing in 1962.

In the Legislative Council of 1961 there was the sense of feeling that Papua New Guineans must take control of the future development of the Constitution. As a member to the Legislative Council, Dame Alice had the opportunity to vote for any legislative changes that would have a dramatic impact in the lives of Papua New Guineans. One such important vote was on the formation of the Select Committee on Political Development on Mar 9, 1962. Of course, later in the political development of PNG, in the 1964 and 1968 House of Assembly new Constitutional Development Committees were formed, headed by Sir John Guise and Paulus Arek, respectively. The last, but most important committee, known as the Constitutional Planning Committee of 1972 was chaired by Michael Somare and later by John Momis.By this time, Dame Alice was out of the political scene. She resigned from the Department of Welfare Services and went back to missionary work in 1972. She was awarded the MBE (Member of the British Empire) that same year. Be it national politics, public service, or missionary work, Dame Alice had been a stout ambassador for women’s voices in PNG for many years.

Her history reminds me of the present political and social climate. The efforts to have three women members nominated to Parliament have come under a lot of scrutiny from the public, politicians, women’s groups, and NGOs. The decision to have women nominated to Parliament or voted in remains a political hopscotch.
At this time of Independence we have to remind ourselves that women, through the likes of Dame Alice Wedega, Dame Josephine Abaijah, Nahau Rooney, Matilda Pilacapio, Annie Moaitz, and Lady Carol Kidu have been wrestling with the bulls of PNG politics since 1961.

I do not profess to know constitutional law or legislative processes, but my conscience tells me that women must speak for themselves with their own voices and conscience in the National Parliament.

Scientific Research and Development

First published in Steven's Window, The National newspaper 11 December 2009.

It is always refreshing to see some of our best minds at work in finding solutions to our problems. I had the rare opportunity of participating in the UPNG 2009 Science conference at the Holiday Inn between the 12th and 13th of November 2009.

The conference began with a little story of how the PNG Medical Society began to the story of how the Sir Buri Kidu Heart Foundation began. Captivating and challenging, when told by one of PNG’s top heart surgeons, Professor Sir Isi Kevau on the first day. The stage was set as scientists and medical health specialists got down to addressing the national and global issues through scientific research and development. The conference is the second organized by UPNG’s School of Natural and Physical Sciences and the School of Medicine and Health Sciences. Throughout the two days scientists presented papers on their researches on natural product research and development, biodiversity conservation and climate change, alternative energy to science education.

Exciting discussions on scientific collaborations, specific research on medicinal and nutrition value of plants, climate change, antibacterial screening of medicinal plants, phytochemical diversity from the rich biological diversity of PNG, to isolation and characterization of chemical constituents in native beans were generated. The dynamism of the first day of presentation was maintained on the second day of the conference. This is the second year of the UPNG Science conference.

Some of our leading scientists like Professor Teatulohi Matainaho, Professor Topul Rali, Dr. Augustine Mungkaje, Professor Chalapan Kaluwin were leading research programs in the sciences, together with students and international colleagues such as Dr. Prem Rai, Professor Bret Neilan, Professor Louis Brown, Professor Hugh Davies, Dr. Basil Marasinghe and Dr. Philip Kigodi. The wonderful thing witnessed in this conference is the involvement of students in the scientific researches done in Papua New Guinea. Their contributions are some of the most rigorous and innovative in their research methodologies. Original researches from students are often invigorating and exciting.

As titillating as Professor Topul Rali’s discussion of downstream processing of plant derived compounds and market opportunities from PNG plants is the student researcher, Clan Alok’s discussion on the measurements of above and below ground bio-mass carbon of a forest reserve area in the Bogia District of the Madang Province. Mr. Asi Anas of the Department of Fisheries in the PNG University of Natural Resources and Environment collaborating with Dr. Augustine Mungkaje of UPNG and others gave his findings on the biology of the fish species Hairback Herring (Nematalosa come) in the Bwemapou Lagoon in the Trobriand Islands. In a research carried out in the East New Britain Province, Peter Mwayawa reports on the pesticidal effect of six Tolai traditional medicinal plant herbs on Head Cabbage (Brassica oleraceae var. capitata) pests and diseases.

Discussions on the 1888 Ritter Island collapse Tsunami based on new data from sediment and oral histories, mapping mangrove cover change of the Bootless Bay in the Central Province between 1974 and 2000 using GIS and remote sensing techniques, and land use change and population growth in the National Capital District between 1990 and 2000 brought home the issue that important researches that can help national planners were possible because of sufficient funding. Without funding for such researches by the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Higher Education, we would not have known the present sea level trends in the Manus area or the cause of infectious disease outbreaks in Papua New Guinea.

The issue that remains central to me when it comes to research at the university level is that collaborative work across various disciplines and schools of thought is the key to conclusive results. Most times we tend to narrow down our researches to the walls of our disciplines. In doing so, we exclude other elements important in our researches such as the cultural factors and the human societies with their forms of knowledge systems. Our scholarships and research works must find currency and relevance in our communities. We must ask: who are the benefactors of our researches and discoveries?

Listening to the research on fish species Hairback Herring in the Trobriand Islands I remembered listening to an ordinary villager profess his knowledge of fish and fish stock in the Waria River of Morobe province. The man knows more about fish than anyone I have known. We have not documented the knowledge of our indigenous fishermen and fisherwomen. There is more we need to do in the area of traditional knowledge systems.

More collaborative researches between scientists, social scientists and humanists are needed. In the session I was in, a young scientist, Gelenta Salopuka gave her paper on the pharmacognostic characteristics of Alstonia scholaris or the Milky Pine plant. Her scientific work on the plant interested me because of my own interest in the plant as an important medicinal plant in my own Nagum Boiken society in the East Sepik Province. I have documented the uses of the Milky Pine as an important medicinal plant used in traditional medicinal practices, but also considered a sacred plant in many societies. Medicinal plants classified as sacred plants have intellectual property rights attached to them. In my society this plant is linked to a mythical storyteller who recited stories about creation, about men and women, and about life and death the whole night until the sun rose. He walked up and down each branch as he recited the stories and genealogies of the tribe. His name is kept in secret by those who tell the story of this man.

As researchers we should be mindful of the possible cultural exploitations we open the gates to. Working together can protect the intellectual property rights of our people and country. The ethnobotanist, Mark J. Plotkin’s says in his book Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice (1993) that the humble pink-flowered rosy periwinkle, native to southeastern Madagascar, fetches annual sales exceeding $100 million, yet not a penny goes back to Madagascar, the country of origin for the rosy periwinkle and one of the poorest country in the world.



Email: steven.winduo.manui@gmail.com

Saving Our Languages

The article was published in Steven's Window, The National newspaper Friday 4th December 2009. Photo of young Gadsup speaker with mother. Photo credit: Keisiva Darius.

The Atlas of World Languages, revised edition, says that the future of the Melanesian languages and their survival is uncertain. The use of English in education and of varieties of Melanesian Pidgin as national languages means that many children are failing to acquire their parents’ traditional tongues. Many of these languages have fewer than 500 speakers. Many of these languages are disappearing everyday. The prognosis of many of the languages with less than 50 speakers is gloomy. The case of Papua New Guinean languages undergoing this linguistic death is more severe than perceived.

In the second week of November 2009 UPNG students of linguistics, professional linguists, and others concerned about the languages of Papua New Guinea gathered in a workshop to discuss language surveys in Papua New Guinea. The workshop is the first of several collaborations between linguists Professor Genevieve Escure of the University of Minnesota and UPNG colleagues Professor Kenneth Sumbuk, Mr. Sakarepe Kamene, Mr. Nick Garnier, Professor Betty Lovai and this writer. The concern with language death, unreliable data, inconsistent reporting, and the status of languages with less than ten speakers brought us together with students to work on a survey of languages in Papua New Guinea.

Languages in Papua New Guinea are under considerable pressure as the nation progresses from the stone-age society to the gas-age culture. “As communication, education, and modernization proceed, there is considerable pressure on many of the smaller languages of Melanesia,” reports The Atlas of World Languages. A small language like Susuami, spoken in the resettlement village of Manki in the Upper Watut Valley of Morobe Province has shrunk from 50 speakers in 1980 to about a dozen in 1990. We have no way of knowing if this language is still spoken today. Many more languages have been pushed off the linguistic map of Papua New Guinea without anyone knowing.

Early in this decade I raised the alarm on some of these languages. From the data made available from the SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics) and other sources like the Ethnologue of world languages we know that at least more than 10 languages are death and another 12 or more were tagged as nearly extinct. The likelihood of this statistics achieving an increase in the number of moribund languages is a reality. Without concentrated efforts to research and map out local language use in Papua New Guinea this country stand to lose a lot of its languages.

We have no accurate data regarding the languages of Papua New Guinea. The data available from the National Population Census and the Election Census is often very inconsistent, insufficient, and inaccurate as a measure of the survival or disappearance of a language in PNG. No government initiative or programs are in place to deal with this linguistic disaster. The government has turned a blind eye on this national tragedy of languages, cultures, and people. The boastful ultra-national sentiments on the linguistic and cultural diversity are only a window dressing of the darker side of national ignorance when it comes to language survival and death.

An immediate intervention is needed to slow down the rate at which our languages are disappearing. A strategic rethinking and re-evaluation of the path we have taken to avoid the issue of language survival has to eventuate soon. Without doing so we stand to lament the disappearance of unique groups of people with their languages in our midst. Our children too would follow us down this road without making sense of heads or tails of their identities. Consider this, with the global change, a small Papuan language like Rotokas of Bougainville Autonomous region is on the way out. Rotokas has achieved fame in The Guinness Book of Record as the language with the world’s smallest number of phonemes. It has 11, compared, for example, with the 44 in English. Do we know for sure if this language has remained unchanged? We talk about big things, but when it comes down to smaller things we turn away from it.

Let me put it another way. Those of us in the forefront of research and teaching of language know that our children are growing up speaking English and Tokpisin. It is easy to argue that educated Papua New Guineans should be the first ones to teach their mother tongue at home with their children. It is, however, difficult to make that work, especially with intermarriage families, and at urban centres where our children interact with other children in Tokpisin and English. A certain social stigma is also at play with language use among children in many parts of urban Papua New Guinea. Children speaking their mother tongue are often excluded from the games initiated and dominated by speakers of Tokpisin and English.

The issue here is that we consider language as a natural human skill and behavior, but we never consider language bias as a factor driving our Papua New Guinean languages to extinction. Why are dominant languages more than likely to force small languages to extinction? During the workshop on language survey in Papua New Guinea one of the students explained that in his native Kainantu area, he observed that some of the smaller languages were forced out of use by the dominant Kafe language. Why? We need to document the reasons for this language pattern and biases that are forcing some of our smaller languages out of existence. Setting up a well funded national language institute or program might be a start for the government if it cares about national languages of Papua New Guinea.

As I write this article I am as more hypocritical as anyone I know who is conscious of the language use at home with our families that our Tokples is left out of the equation of modern urbanites. We must accept the blame as well for not taking action to speak our Tokples to our children. In the ideal world, unlike ours, it would make sense for everyone to keep their languages alive at home.




Email: steven.winduo.manui@gmail.com

Native Films as a National Mirror

The article first appeared in Steven's Window column The National newspaper. Friday 27 November 2009.

After the first audition for Jungle Child, film adaptation of a children’s book based on the personal diary of a German girl, Nadine’s childhood in New Guinea, my children were recalled for the second casting. My daughter aged 13 and son aged 10 had me drive them to Gateway Hotel on two Saturdays in October for the second audition.

Several people in Port Moresby that I know turned up with their children or for themselves as potential actors in the movie. Seeing the interests in acting in feature films I kept thinking about what Houston Wood, an American scholar of Indigenous films said about feature films.

“Traditional oral storytelling is unlike a cinematic narrative, they fear…Similar fears were once voiced about how movies represent Shakespeare, the Bible, and other classic western styled texts. The point here is that it has become a norm now that “it is generally accepted that film adaptation can reinvigorate older European traditions for a new generation. We need to seriously consider how it is that we ignored one of the powerful medium of communication: the film…. there seems no a priori reason why feature films cannot similarly translate Indigenous stories into new forms that help keep traditional Indigenous cultures alive.” How true could this be?

My friend and colleague, Vilsoni Hereniko of Rotuma, now the Director of the Center for Pacific Islands Studies at the University of Hawaii made his first feature film, The Land Has Eyes based on his personal upbringing on Rotuma. His film makes uses of a Rotuman mythology of a warrior woman, Sina, as the cultural framework for the film. The actors were all Rotuman villagers, school kids, and teachers, except for two characters. During the first showing on the island the entire islanders turned up to watch the movie and wanted more.

Then there was Witi Ihimaera, the Maori writer’s film The Whale Rider, based on his novel inspired by the Maori mythology of a clan with a lineage to whales in mythological time and homeland. I first saw the film in Hawaii, during a writers’ festival I was part of in 2004. The Whale Rider remains one of the popular Indigenous films ever made.

Other Indigenous films one can easily find in any video shops are the Samoan Wedding and the Aboriginal film Ten Canoes. Each of these films has a unique and wonderful story to tell to the world. Watching these films with my children had a powerful and transformative effect on us.

What am I getting at here? Feature film making in Papua New Guinea needs to be encouraged. The last international successful major feature film was Albert Toro and Chris Owen’s Tukana: Husait I Asua? I attended the closing of a workshop of TV production in Port Moresby in the last week of October 2009. The workshop was attended by members of National Broadcasting Commission, National Film Institute, Department of Information and Communication and Albert Toro himself. I had the opportunity to meet Albert Toro and Joe Eladona at that time. I shared with the workshop participants a moment of reflection of the issue of feature films and documentary film making in PNG. It was also good to note that Kundu 2 TV would now have radio drama Kunai Street converted into a soap opera for TV.

I mentioned to Albert Toro that I had read his paper on “Film and National Identity in PNG”, presented at the International Film Festival Symposium in Hawaii in November 1983. The observation he made in the 1980s remains evident today. Here are some of the issues Toro raised at that time:

“The mirrors which the nation uses to see its internal and exported image are found generally in the more public media such as radio, film and the recently introduced home video system. Of the three formats, film is by far the most accessible nearly everywhere because of its easy transferability to television which is immediate and seen world-wide. In the case of Papua New Guinea, however, there has not been any meaningful government support of the commercialization of indigenous film products or of the country (90% of the population is in the rural areas). This can be attributed to several factors: film exhibition and distribution, completely in the hands of expatriates; the government does not have any priorities on the cultural or commercial aspects of indigenous film production, exhibition and distribution, foreign film-makers are allowed into the country to interpret the lifestyle (s) of the people with no intimate knowledge of the intricate factors which go into the process of bush life, hence turning out at best sensational film products made for a prurient western-oriented audience; no policy on-hand, to describe the direction which the Papua New Guinea people themselves want to travel in to control their image.”

Such views from our pioneer feature film maker remind us that the Papua New Guinea government need to step up to the challenge to support the development of local feature film and documentary making. I doubt if Albert Toro’s views have changed much with the introduction of the government owned Kundu 2 TV station under the wings of the National Broadcasting Cooperation. The National Film Institute and the Department of Information and Communication may want to listen to this veteran’s views as he has more wisdom to offer at this time.

The challenge for film makers and TV production in Papua New Guinea is to encourage more local film makers and documentary film makers. The change such an approach would make is that Papua New Guineans can identify with the film and the film maker’s points of view. The opportunity to work on a film with local content led by a local film maker begins a process of skills development in the film and TV industry for Papua New Guineans. At the moment it is rare to find local feature film makers and documentary film makers. We need to cultivate our talents in this area of development in Papua New Guinea.

Email: steven.winduo.manui@gmail.com