Papuan 'Men Of The Past’Resent Youth

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30712, 30 March 1965, Page 17

Papuan 'Men Of The Past’Resent Youth

(By RICHARD BECKETT. A.A.P.-Reuter Correspondent) PORT MORESBY. The advance of Western civilisation in PapuaNew Guinea is bringing a heart-breaking and often bitter legacy to old village and clan leaders who, too old to learn new ways, are losing their traditional powers to educated youths.

The effects of this inevitable social change in a developing country have been described by a research fellow from the University of Adelaide, Mrs Shirley Glasse, in a paper in the Papua-New Guinea Medical Journal.

Mrs Glasse spent some time studying customs of primitive people in the southern area of New Guinea’s eastern highlands, about 250 miles northwest of Port Moresby. She studied the social effects of a disease known as kuru, sometimes called “laughing death,” for which medical science has found no cause and no cure.

Kuru, a wasting disease, believed to be hereditary and which affects mainly women, almost invariably ends in death although local sorcerers have sometimes claimed success where Western medicine has failed.

Mrs Glasse writes that the old tribal leaders who once ruled without question over the people of South Fore, were being completely shorn of all their former powers.

They even spoke of themselves as “men of the past” when talking with her.

lueu maul resell iinem seemed to be directed at the young government - trained Papuan medical assistants who worked in the villages. Language Barrier

These men, to the old leaders, represented an upstart age group, Mrs Glasse said. To add to the troubles of the old men, even though they did not like these youths, they had to talk with them to find out the wishes of the government as they were unable to talk directly to the Australian Government officers. Reliance increased their dislike. The medical orderlies were also the elite of the income groups in the area and were also hated because of this. The bitterness of the old men at the coming of new ways of life and new customs was shown in the attitude of a warrior named Panagabara, Mrs Glasse said. European Blamed

The young government workers had bought themselves a football and played with it in the village. When

one of his pigs died Panagabara went to them and said that the death had been caused by the new European game. On another occasion Panagabara lost several more pigs. This time he said hair oil bought at a trade store by the young, men had caused the deaths. The pigs had smelled this new hair oil and it had killed them, he claimed. “The older generation resents its loss of status and anger falls on the usurpers who associate with Europeans,” Mrs Glasse said. Mrs Glasse follows the decline of the old men from the time the first European entered the Fore area in 1947. Superior Status

Then, Fore society was a warrior society. “The most respected men were the ‘hot’ fighters and physical aggression and violence was the dominant orientation of their culture. Men guarded their superior status in ritual as well as in the domestic division of labour,” she said. The Government and the missions ended the fighting, and kuru wiped out many of the women.

In one tribal group, out of 76 marriages, 40 ended in the death of the wife by kuru. One man named Pago, of the Wanitable clan, had lost three wives and three daughters from kuru. Another named Anagu who was then 46, had lost his mother, four wives, one sister, one daughter and one son through the disease. The Lutheran. Seventh Day Adventist and World Missions which operated in the Fore region also added to ‘.<e old men’s discomfort by refusing to baptise the men who had more than one wife.

The old men often just sat around their houses and talked of the “good old days,” of great feats of bowmanship on a superhuman scale, of the deeds of their fathers and themselves. Mrs Glasse said nearly every man who held power formerly stored his intricately carved fighting arrows with his bow in the roof of his house, and men who were once noted for their physical stature and dashing appearance preserved their severed lengths of greased and curled hair.

Following European custom, most men in the Fore region now wear their hair short.

Many had developed other outlets to demonstrate their superiority. “The fights of the past continue in the courts for native affairs and tultuls (village leaders),” Mrs Glasse said. Because of the woman shortage and because of the mission attitude to polygamy men now carried out such menial tasks as weeding.

Most men also now live with their wives, instead of apart. The old men now say that they still prefer to live apart from their wives because they are afraid of them,” Mrs Glasse said.