Abstract
The Gawigl in the Papua New Guinea Highlands provide Almut Schneider with a domicile and garden; along with the sites selected by her hosts, a social identity is transferred to her. She is to become a member of a certain ‘Men’s House’ and clan, whose land is to nourish her in both the physical and metaphysical sense. In this chapter Schneider describes how her continued participation in gift exchanges strengthens her inclusion as a ‘red woman—stranger from far away’. By the same token her ‘strange’ provenance remains to be valued, for it is as such that she makes the occasional gift of money and other ‘foreign’ valuables that contribute to the clan’s fame throughout the valley.
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Notes
- 1.
I thank the German Academic Exchange Service for funding my fieldwork of twenty months, the National Research Institute (Papua New Guinea), and the office of the Administrator of the Western Highlands Province, for their support during my stay in the country. I am deeply grateful and indebted to the inhabitants of Marapugul valley for their welcome, their trust and for their ongoing exchange with me. I am thankful to Jos Platenkamp and Marilyn Strathern for their perceptive comments on an earlier version of this text.
- 2.
Houses usually comprise 80 to 200 people, clans can consist of up to 2000 people.
- 3.
- 4.
For a long time, the rumour remained that I was a nurse, not an anthropologist. Not surprisingly, it had been spread by neighbouring clans whose only knowledge about me was that I was white and living in the ‘nurse’s house’.
- 5.
Gawigl women rarely speak publicly and among men it is only a few who master and perform the oratory skills which are crucial for handing over the large ceremonial gifts, for representing the clan and for solving conflicts within the group or with other clans.
- 6.
‘Big men’ (see also ter Keurs, this volume) are political leaders whose authority is solely based on their persuasiveness and their grand performance in ceremonial exchanges. This non-hereditary and fragile position that is often challenged by contenders in the same clan has been described by many anthropologists working in Melanesia (Sahlins 1963; Strathern 1971; Coppet 1995; Schneider 2017b).
- 7.
Nowadays, clans are also relevant political units on local and regional levels.
- 8.
This concept of vitality transcends the life of a particular person in so far as the decaying body is re-inserted into the garden land, enhancing its fertility.
- 9.
Both the Pelmige House and the Kombulge clan benefitted from this association, as I did assist its members by providing basic medical aid, by bringing foodstuffs to distribute whenever I came back from town and by helping them with their administrative dealings with town offices.
- 10.
- 11.
A comparable idea has been noted by Iteanu (2004) for the Orokaiva, living near the northern coast of Papua New Guinea.
- 12.
If the father and the members of his House fail in organising the ritual and the feast, his children will have no proper place in his House and will be sanctioned by the ancestors on the mother’s side: they are unlikely to grow properly and will often fall sick, if not die.
- 13.
Barraud, Monnerie and Platenkamp (this volume) report comparable concerns.
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Schneider, A. (2019). Placing the Newcomer: Staying with the Gawigl of Highland Papua New Guinea. In: Platenkamp, J., Schneider, A. (eds) Integrating Strangers in Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16703-5_11
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