Reverse Anthropology: Indigenous Analysis of Social and Environmental Relations in New Guinea - Softcover

Kirsch, Stuart

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804753423 ISBN 13: 9780804753425

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 2006

Synopsis

While ethnography ordinarily privileges anthropological interpretations, this book attempts the reciprocal process of describing indigenous modes of analysis. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research with the Yonggom people of New Guinea, the author examines how indigenous analysis organizes local knowledge and provides a framework for interpreting events, from first contact and colonial rule to contemporary interactions with a multinational mining company and the Indonesian state.

This book highlights Yonggom participation in two political movements: an international campaign against the Ok Tedi mine, which is responsible for extensive deforestation and environmental problems, and the opposition to Indonesian control over West Papua, including Yonggom experiences as political refugees in Papua New Guinea. The author challenges a prevailing homogenization in current representations of indigenous peoples, showing how Yonggom modes of analysis specifically have shaped these political movements.

About this title

About the Author

Stuart Kirsch is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan.

From the Back Cover

"Reverse Anthropology is an uncommonly sophisticated work of engaged ethnography, and a book that provides an impressive and uncompromising model of equal accountability to scholarly research and indigenous advocacy. With patience, insight, and brilliant attention to Yonggom subjectivity, Stuart Kirsch reveals what it means to turn anthropology inside out. This is a standout book in the new anthropology of modern Melanesia."--Steven Feld, University of New Mexico
"This is an important story that will draw many audiences. It weaves personal experience, politics, and activism in and out of a scholarly analysis made possible by the way Kirsch draws on the analytical skills of his subjects. In this it is nothing short of a brilliant and sympathetic enterprise."--Dame Marilyn Strathern FBA, William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge

From the Inside Flap

While ethnography ordinarily privileges anthropological interpretations, this book attempts the reciprocal process of describing indigenous modes of analysis. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research with the Yonggom people of New Guinea, the author examines how indigenous analysis organizes local knowledge and provides a framework for interpreting events, from first contact and colonial rule to contemporary interactions with a multinational mining company and the Indonesian state.
This book highlights Yonggom participation in two political movements: an international campaign against the Ok Tedi mine, which is responsible for extensive deforestation and environmental problems, and the opposition to Indonesian control over West Papua, including Yonggom experiences as political refugees in Papua New Guinea. The author challenges a prevailing homogenization in current representations of indigenous peoples, showing how Yonggom modes of analysis specifically have shaped these political movements.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Reverse Anthropology

INDIGENOUS ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RELATIONS IN NEW GUINEABy Stuart Kirsch

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2006 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-5342-5

Contents

List of illustrations...............................ixAcknowledgments.....................................xiA note on languages.................................xviiIntroduction........................................11. Historical encounters............................272. The enchantment of place.........................573. Unrequited reciprocity...........................794. Sorcery and the mine.............................1075. Mythical encounters..............................1326. Divining violence................................1587. Loss and the future imagined.....................189Conclusion..........................................216Notes...............................................223References..........................................243Index...............................................263

Chapter One

Historical encounters

Imagine the following objects from New Guinea and the relationships that they imply: an iridescent bird of paradise plume that adorns a woman's hat in New York circa 1915, a human skull taken as a trophy by headhunters and later displayed in a Washington, D.C., museum, and a wooden shield decorated with indigenous designs, but bearing the carved image of the anthropologist who collected it. These artifacts embody exchange relationships that have connected the Yonggom and Euro-Americans at different moments in history. The circulation of these objects and the interests they have elicited yield insight into these historical relationships. Each of these objects also invokes a personal connection to the Yonggom, suggesting an approach to history that emphasizes social relations mediated through exchange rather than assumptions about separation and difference.

Writing a history that is commensurate with Yonggom perspectives and experiences while relying primarily on conventional historical documents, including colonial patrol reports and earlier ethnographic materials, has required me to be self-consciously experimental. Drawing on the insight from gift exchange that objects embody social relations, I use unconventional materials to organize this account, focusing on artifacts that represent condensed histories of social interaction rather than chronology. Where the historical record remains silent about the circulation of these objects, I follow the unorthodox practice of qualified speculation. Yonggom ideas about the agency of the other beings with whom they share the landscape suggest an unusual mode of analysis, leading me to examine how the natural characteristics of particular species may influence historical outcomes.

HISTORY AND THE BIRDS OF PARADISE

During the first two decades of the 20th century, it was the height of fashion for women living in the cosmopolitan centers of Europe and the Americas to wear hats decorated with bird feathers (Clark 1984:49). Feathers imported from the tropics were the most desirable, perhaps none more so than the brilliant plumes of birds of paradise from New Guinea and the Moluccas. From 1905 until 1920, between 30,000 and 80,000 bird of paradise skins were exported annually to the feather auctions of London, Paris, and Amsterdam (Swadling 1996:90–91). The demand for bird of paradise plumes inspired Malay and Australian hunters to seek their fortunes in the rain forests of New Guinea (Swadling 1996:91, 179). One of several important hunting grounds for the birds during the international "plume boom" was the Yonggom area between the Ok Tedi and Muyu Rivers (Swadling 1996:190–98).

In the midst of the plume boom, my paternal grandmother Helen Zigler worked for a milliner in New York City making women's hats. Although my family members no longer remember the kind of hats she made or the company she worked for, she may well have worked with bird feathers from New Guinea. It is even possible that she handled bird of paradise plumes from the forests surrounding the Yonggom village where I later spent two years conducting ethnographic research.

Birds of paradise have been the subject of scientific curiosity and aesthetic desire in Europe since 1522, when the only ship to complete Magellan's circumnavigation of the world returned bearing five skins of the lesser bird of paradise along with its cargo of cloves (Swadling 1996:64). Portuguese sailors later brought bird of paradise skins from the Moluccas back to Europe. Their richly colored plumes captivated European imaginations, as did their unusual anatomy, for the legs of the birds had been removed during their preservation. This gave rise to European speculation that the birds, unable to alight, must remain perpetually in flight, suspended between heaven and earth (Konrad and Somadikarta 1975:14–15). Linnaeus published the first scientific description of the greater bird of paradise in 1758. Referring to the bird's initial reception in Europe, he named the species Paradisea apoda, the "footless" bird of paradise.

Europeans knew little about the behavior and biology of the birds of paradise until 19th-century voyages of exploration made possible firsthand observation in the wild and the scientific collection of specimens. Among the naturalists who studied New Guinea's birds of paradise was Alfred R. Wallace (1857:412–13), who wrote the first scientific description of their mating patterns:

In May and June they have mostly arrived at their full perfection. This is probably the season of pairing. They are in a state of excitement and incessant activity, and the males assemble together to exercise, dress and display their magnificent plumage. For this purpose they prefer certain lofty, large-leaved forest-trees (which at this time have no fruit), and on these, early in the morning, from ten to twenty full-plumaged birds assemble, as the natives express it, "to play and dance." They open their wings, stretch out their necks, shake their bodies, and keep the long golden plumes opened and vibrating—constantly changing their positions, flying across and across each other from branch to branch, and appearing proud of their activity and beauty. The long, downy, golden feathers are, however, displayed in a manner which has, I believe, been hitherto quite unknown, but in which alone the bird can be seen to full advantage, and claim our admiration as the most beautiful of all the beautiful winged forms which adorn the earth. Instead of hanging down on each side of the bird, and being almost confounded with the tail (as I believe always hitherto represented, and as they are, in fact, carried during repose and flight), they are erected vertically over the back from under and behind the wing, and there opened and spread out in a fan-like mass, completely overshadowing the whole bird. The effect of this is inexpressibly beautiful. The large, ungainly legs are no longer a deformity—as the bird crouches upon them, the dark brown body and wings form but a central support to the splendour above, from which more brilliant colours would distract our attention,—while the pale yellow head, swelling throat of rich metallic green, and bright golden eye, give vivacity and life to the whole figure. Above rise the intensely-shining, orange-coloured plumes, richly marked with a stripe of deep red, and opening out with the most perfect regularity into broad, waving feathers of airy down,—every filament which terminates them distinct, yet waving and curving and closing upon each other with the vibratory motion the bird gives them; while the two immensely long filaments of the tail hang in graceful curves below.

Charles Darwin (1871:92, cited in Beehler 1989:117) may well have been thinking of the bird of paradise when writing this description of sexual selection: "When we behold a male bird elaborately displaying his graceful plumes or splendid colours before the female ... it is impossible to doubt that she admires the beauty of her male partner."

Scientific interest in the birds of paradise led to the events of first contact with the Yonggom. During an expedition to the west coast of New Guinea in 1873, the Italian explorer and naturalist Luigi D'Albertis identified a new bird of paradise species with ruddy plumes, which he named Paradisaea raggiana after his friend the Marquis Raggi of Genoa (Goode 1977:55). The interest generated by his discovery enabled D'Albertis to raise funds for two more expeditions, including the longest journey upriver into the island's unexplored southern interior.

In 1876, D'Albertis and his crew followed the Fly River north for five weeks, approximately 990 kilometers upstream, until the river became too shallow for the steamship Neva to continue (Goode 1977:174). On the return journey, D'Albertis ordered the crew to turn the ship back upstream into the Ok Tedi River, a tributary of the Fly. On the evening of 4 July, the Neva anchored beside a small island in the lower Ok Tedi River. The following morning, a group of Yonggom men appeared on the western shore and stared at the ship with curiosity (D'Albertis 1881:123). Exhausted from the journey and ill with fever, D'Albertis sat on board and peered back at his observers through his binoculars. Suddenly one of the Yonggom men turned away from the ship and slapped the back of his thigh. Correctly interpreting the gesture as an insult, the temperamental D'Albertis burst into anger (Goode 1977:175). The men disappeared into the forest, but when they subsequently returned for another look, D'Albertis ordered his reluctant engineer to fire an exploding rocket over their heads (Goode 1977:175–76).

In contrast to more recent first contact encounters in the interior of New Guinea (Connolly and Anderson 1987; Schieffelin and Crittenden 1991), D'Albertis' vain and hostile salvo was soon forgotten. D'Albertis named the Ok Tedi River the Alice after a "fair friend" of the colonial secretary of New South Wales (D'Albertis 1881:117). Nearly 15 years elapsed before Sir William MacGregor, the colonial administrator of British New Guinea, led another major expedition up the Fly River. Honoring his predecessor, MacGregor (1897) bestowed the name D'Albertis Junction on the confluence of the Ok Tedi and Fly rivers. It took almost a century to find the source of the gold and copper panned from the Ok Tedi River by the Neva's engineer Lawrence Hargrave (Goode 1977:176); the ore body at Mount Fubilan was later developed by the Ok Tedi mine.

West of the border, Dutch colonial patrols traveling on the Digul River did not make contact with the people living along its northeastern tributary, the Muyu River, until 1913. A description of this event, which makes reference to the subsequent arrival of the bird of paradise hunters, was recorded several decades later by the Dutch anthropologist J. W. Schoorl (1993:148–49):

Two people dared to take a look, and to make contact with the beings who turned out to be aboard, who offered them tobacco. They accepted, indicating that they would smoke it in their pile-dwellings; actually they threw it away for fear of sorcery. They were amazed at these beings who could slice their skins in two, and peel off the outer layer. Their bodies turned out to be beautifully white. They just had to be spirits. Their vessel turned back, and only after some time did the Chinese bird hunters arrive, and establish more permanent contact. This made the Muyu along the Kao [River] realize that those aboard the first vessel had not been spirits but humans.

In her analysis of the events of first contact in the Western Highlands of New Guinea, Strathern (1992a) noted that the Highlanders did not immediately recognize the members of an Australian patrol, which included the Leahy brothers, who were gold prospectors from Australia, and the colonial officer James Taylor, as fellow human beings. What interested the Highlanders the most was not the guns, the gramophone, or the canned food that the Australians showed them, but rather the familiar gold-lipped shells that they brought with them for trading purposes (Strathern 1992a:250). Taylor surprised his hosts by offering to trade these shells in return for pigs, initiating the kind of exchange relations through which they organize themselves. Although the Highlanders initially thought that the members of the patrol were spirit beings and therefore incapable of exchange, these transactions led them to conclude that Taylor was not a spirit after all, but a "shellman" (Connolly and Anderson 1987, cited in Strathern 1992a:245; see also A. Strathern 1982:12). Strathern (1992a:245) argued that indigenous analysis of the events of first contact led to the conclusion that the visitors were human because of their participation in exchange. Schoorl (1993:150) drew similar conclusions from Muyu interactions with the bird of paradise hunters. Their willingness to exchange persuaded the Muyu that they were persons rather than spirits: "As soon as the Muyu realized that they were dealing not with spirits but with other humans who could provide them with goods, they received the hunters peacefully."

D'Albertis (1881:120) subsequently described his reactions to seeing five birds of paradise crossing a river: "The last rays of sun gilded the long yellow feathers of their sides for an instant. Never until to-day have I been able to contemplate the magnificence of this bird [in flight]." The crew of the Neva returned from a foray into the rain forest the following day with a "magnificent specimen of Paradisaea apoda," the greater bird of paradise (D'Albertis 1881:121). Although D'Albertis' expedition up the Fly River was justified in terms of scientific discovery, it paved the way for commerce when, several decades later, the first plume hunters followed his path to the area between the Ok Tedi and Muyu Rivers.

The Yonggom called the bird of paradise hunters ono dapit, from ono, their name for the greater bird of paradise, and dapit, which referred to the light skin color of the hunters. The name ono dapit was still occasionally used to refer to Euro-Americans during the 1980s. The Yonggom describe their interactions with the bird of paradise traders in positive terms. The hunters established their camps near Yonggom hamlets and hired local guides to take them hunting. They provided axes and knives in exchange for the birds that they killed. As the first steel tools to reach the area, they were highly valued, for they reduced the labor involved in clearing the forest for gardens, felling sago palms, and building houses. The hunters also traded tobacco and porcelain beads for food.

The primary bird species hunted in this region was the greater bird of paradise, which has neon yellow and orange feathers. The hunting season ran from April until September, during the bird's mating season, when the males were in full plumage (Swadling 1996:183). At this time of year, a group of mature males will congregate regularly in an established canopy tree, participating in a communal display of courtship that attracts potential mating partners (Beehler 1989). The only efficient strategy for hunting these birds in large numbers is to locate their display trees and wait for the birds to assemble. As Darwin (1871:396, paraphrasing Wallace 1857:415) observed, when the birds dance, "they become so absorbed that a skilful archer may shoot nearly the whole party." The success of the foreign hunters was therefore contingent on the cooperation of local residents who could lead them to the display trees located on their land. The mating patterns of the birds of paradise thus influenced the relationships between the two parties, making the foreign hunters dependent on indigenous knowledge.

A Dutch government station was established at Assike in 1919 to monitor and tax the trade in bird of paradise skins (Penders 2002:110). The only other Dutch outpost for southern New Guinea was founded in Merauke in 1902 after the headhunting raids of the Marind peoples into British New Guinea threatened to incite an international diplomatic incident (Veur 1966:72). However, the lucrative trade in bird of paradise plumes resulted in a truce among the Marind peoples living in the Middle Fly region, which enabled them to intensify their raids on the Yonggom to their north (Busse 1987:142). Despite the 1909 ban on commercial bird hunting in British New Guinea, foreign hunters continued to reach the Ok Tedi River by foot from the Dutch side of the border. When two Australian hunters were killed in the Middle Fly in 1921, the Australian colonial administration temporarily established a police station on a small island in the lower Ok Tedi River, opposite the Yonggom hamlet of Wukbit (Investigation into the Deaths of Bell and Dreschler, 1920–21, 1921; Austen 1922c:2). The Australian patrol officer Leo Austen (1922d:1) attributed the "friendly disposition" of the people living at Wukbit toward the police officers on Waldron Island to their familiarity and good relations with the bird of paradise hunters. Bird hunting was finally banned in Netherlands New Guinea in 1928, in response to complaints by the Australian administration about the continued incursion of bird hunters from Dutch territory and the collapse of international markets after Great Britain and the United States banned the import of bird feathers, as I discuss below (Schoorl 1993:149; Swadling 1996:99). But in the 50 years between D'Albertis' expedition along the Fly River and the end of the plume boom, birds of paradise stimulated the imagination and desires of Euro-Americans in the metropolitan centers of the world and mediated the interactions between the Yonggom, foreign hunters, and colonial powers.

A common effect of colonialism is to obscure prior connections between places, and the history of the bird of paradise trade is no exception. Amitav Ghosh (1994) has described how 16th- and 17th-century European expansion into the Indian Ocean erased memories of the movement in people and goods between northeast Africa and the Malabar coast of India that had flourished since the Middle Ages. Melanesian history has similarly been compromised by colonial intervention, limiting what is known about the trade routes that previously linked New Guinea and insular Southeast Asia (Hughes 1977; Swadling 1996; Ellen 2003). Precolonial trade routes between southern New Guinea and the Cape York peninsula in northern Australia were also disrupted by colonialism and remain largely undocumented (Hughes 1977; Swadling 1996).

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0804753423
• ISBN 13: 9780804753425
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 296