00:00:00
I think in the 80s we must stop
00:00:03
anthropologists coming into the country
00:00:06
secondly we have our own academics we
00:00:08
have our own Papua New guineans who now
00:00:11
can become anthropologists themselves my
00:00:13
personal opinion is that anthropological
00:00:15
studies in the past has been
00:00:17
part and parcel of the colonial forces
00:00:21
you know sometimes they tell us you go
00:00:23
to the library and you look at this book
00:00:25
and you read this and
00:00:27
sometimes we ask the lecturers can we do
00:00:29
it from our own background knowledge and
00:00:32
they say oh no you have to read the
00:00:33
books in the library and that's why we
00:00:35
get very upset or why should I read a
00:00:37
book that is written by you know
00:00:38
somebody from outside when I can tell it
00:00:41
from my own knowledge
00:00:44
my own Society
00:00:46
traditionally anthropologists studied
00:00:49
non-western societies and the colonized
00:00:51
parts of the globe where people could
00:00:53
not speak English nor read the books
00:00:55
written about them
00:00:57
but recently the people who were the
00:00:59
subjects of these studies and their
00:01:01
children have begun to step out of the
00:01:03
books and speak for themselves
00:01:10
foreign
00:01:15
[Music]
00:01:19
Nova visited four communities in Papua
00:01:22
New Guinea to find out what the people
00:01:24
themselves had to say to learn about
00:01:26
anthropology from their point of view
00:01:31
all together in this country there are
00:01:33
about three million people who speak 750
00:01:36
different languages
00:01:39
the country gained independence in 1975
00:01:41
ending nearly a century of colonial rule
00:01:44
by the Germans the British and the
00:01:46
Australians
00:01:47
located to the north of Australia and
00:01:50
just south of the Equator half of the
00:01:52
main island belongs to Indonesia and
00:01:55
have to Papua New Guinea there are also
00:01:57
three other large islands and hundreds
00:01:59
of smaller ones
00:02:02
anthropology like other social sciences
00:02:04
is the study of people
00:02:07
what makes it unique is that field
00:02:09
workers actually live with the people in
00:02:12
order to record their experiences in
00:02:14
their own environments
00:02:16
the first place is Nova visited were the
00:02:19
Villages of Pere and bunai on Manus
00:02:22
Island about 400 miles from the mainland
00:02:25
of Papua New Guinea
00:02:27
it was here that Margaret Mead wrote two
00:02:30
of her most famous books growing up in
00:02:32
New Guinea and new lives for old Dr Mead
00:02:36
who died in 1978 was one of the most
00:02:38
famous anthropologists of all times
00:02:41
recently however her study of another
00:02:43
South Pacific island Samoa was denounced
00:02:47
by one of her peers Anthropologist Derek
00:02:50
Freeman in Papua New Guinea criticisms
00:02:53
are also emerging about her work not
00:02:55
from anthropologists but from people who
00:02:58
grew up in the Villages she described
00:03:00
like naharuni a member of Papua New
00:03:02
Guinea's Parliament first of all I
00:03:05
didn't know what anthropology is because
00:03:07
when she came to the Village no one knew
00:03:10
anything about anthropology so until
00:03:13
years later when I was at University
00:03:15
studying and that's where we for the
00:03:17
first time we read about growing up in
00:03:20
New Guinea the books that she's written
00:03:22
after she has spent the time in in Perry
00:03:25
and after reading all of that then I
00:03:28
then look back to the time when she
00:03:31
painted Perry and
00:03:33
bunai and some of the things that she
00:03:36
wrote in the book I could understand why
00:03:39
they were either half truth or
00:03:42
unrealistic
00:03:44
Margaret need first visited Manus in
00:03:46
1928 when she and the field of
00:03:49
anthropology itself were young
00:03:51
she returned five times her last visit
00:03:53
being in 1975.
00:03:56
her books made the people of Perry and
00:03:59
bunai known throughout the world
00:04:02
she always stayed in Perry Village a
00:04:04
village of fishermen which he brought
00:04:06
alive for the public in her book growing
00:04:08
up in New Guinea
00:04:10
here are some of the descriptions and
00:04:12
footage that she and her colleagues
00:04:13
filmed on one of their visits
00:04:16
to the manners native the world is a
00:04:19
great platter curving upwards on all
00:04:21
sides
00:04:22
from this flat Lagoon village where the
00:04:25
pile houses stand like long-legged Birds
00:04:28
Placid and unsturred by the changing
00:04:31
tides
00:04:32
it's a world whose currency is shells
00:04:35
and dogs teeth which makes its
00:04:37
investments in marriages instead of
00:04:39
Corporations
00:04:40
and conducts its overseas trade in
00:04:42
Outrigger canoes
00:04:48
this is Perry Village today it's still a
00:04:52
fishing Village but there have been many
00:04:54
changes
00:04:55
Financial transactions now take place
00:04:58
with paper money overseas travel is more
00:05:01
likely to occur in an airplane than on
00:05:03
an Outrigger Canoe
00:05:06
children go to towns and cities and
00:05:08
other parts of Papua New Guinea to study
00:05:11
and work but they send money to their
00:05:13
relatives and they return often to their
00:05:15
home
00:05:17
The Village's livelihood still comes
00:05:20
from fishing and different Clans are
00:05:23
still defined by the kinds of fish they
00:05:24
catch
00:05:28
often called the monos people which
00:05:31
means the people who live off the sea
00:05:34
the man whose own very little land they
00:05:37
are almost entirely dependent on fishing
00:05:39
and they trade with other people on the
00:05:42
island who are gardeners and Hunters
00:05:45
there is now a dirt road called the
00:05:48
highway which connects this area with
00:05:50
the capital of the province the town of
00:05:52
lorongao Francis Tano is from Perry
00:05:56
Village he lives in Lauren GAO where he
00:05:59
is the speaker of the provincial
00:06:00
assembly
00:06:01
he remembers Margaret Mead from his
00:06:03
childhood although he didn't really
00:06:05
understand why she was there
00:06:07
my father told me that
00:06:09
she's studying something about
00:06:12
anthropologies but I can't tell you
00:06:14
about that one because I'm also don't
00:06:17
know what he's studying about
00:06:20
so you just wait when you grown up
00:06:23
bigger do you be a man you will study
00:06:27
some of the things about what Margaret
00:06:29
made did in our village
00:06:31
meets older friends who could not read
00:06:33
were never really sure what an
00:06:36
anthropologist was but they remember her
00:06:39
with great fondness as a part of their
00:06:40
lives
00:06:46
for us
00:06:50
came to Perry all Perry the people the
00:06:54
women and men some of them were young
00:06:58
and they didn't know what people she
00:07:01
came for what she was supposed to do
00:07:03
I said Anthropologist however when they
00:07:07
go fishing or when they go to beat Sago
00:07:10
she went with them when are women or men
00:07:12
or anybody in the village is sick she
00:07:15
goes there and help them with medicine
00:07:17
John killipack JK as Margaret Mead
00:07:20
called him became her Confidant and her
00:07:23
closest friend he visited her in the
00:07:25
United States and he has always had a
00:07:27
great confidence in the importance of
00:07:29
her work at a time of change
00:07:35
writing books
00:07:38
you can lose
00:07:40
you're not going to stop now back with
00:07:43
me right Jimmy story now
00:07:48
he no longer got a place
00:07:50
that's all
00:07:52
[Music]
00:07:56
Margaret Mead made a film about Perry
00:07:59
which all were able to see and judge for
00:08:01
themselves we brought the film and a
00:08:04
generator to Perry so that people would
00:08:06
have a chance to see it again and tell
00:08:07
us what they thought
00:08:09
they were they said very pleased with
00:08:10
the film but they also had objections
00:08:13
September 20th 1967 to among the father
00:08:18
and a new CI mother in Lawrence stop
00:08:24
uh I'm designed
00:08:27
Tesla stop Mr Bean because long
00:08:30
uh
00:08:34
good blood is
00:08:45
foreign
00:08:48
I just want to make a general comment
00:08:52
not on a specific part of the film but
00:08:56
it's just a general comment and it
00:09:00
relates to uh I think for future filming
00:09:04
people or actually their leaders should
00:09:08
be should be consulted on what you wish
00:09:11
to film because there are some things
00:09:14
that are against
00:09:15
our customary practices and I think we
00:09:19
should be consulted prior to filming it
00:09:22
is after all their lives that are being
00:09:24
documented Margaret Mead realize that in
00:09:27
her last book concerning Manus island
00:09:29
called letters from the field she wrote
00:09:31
only during World War II did we begin to
00:09:35
learn that anyone anywhere in the world
00:09:37
might be listening and from that time on
00:09:39
the Anthropologist had to assume a new
00:09:42
responsibility to write about every
00:09:44
people in the world in ways that they
00:09:47
and their descendants would find
00:09:49
bearable and intelligible
00:09:52
however it is in this very book that she
00:09:55
made a series of remarks which some
00:09:57
found insulting
00:09:59
they concern people from Perry's
00:10:01
neighboring Village bunai
00:10:03
nahuruni is from that Village
00:10:06
and she claimed that those of us from
00:10:08
the Inland of Manos are the most
00:10:10
unintelligent people
00:10:13
um usually unattractive and we don't
00:10:15
think abstract about things where else
00:10:18
the Manus people The Saltwater people
00:10:20
are very technical minded they more or
00:10:24
less more intelligent than the Inland
00:10:27
people before independence a group of
00:10:30
Inland people moved to the Coastal
00:10:32
Village of bunai as part of a
00:10:34
nationalist movement to unite the
00:10:36
different groups who lived on manners so
00:10:38
as to be better able to challenge the
00:10:40
Australian colonialists this was the
00:10:43
first time that the Inland people who
00:10:45
are gardeners and hunters and the
00:10:47
saltwater people who are fishermen
00:10:49
decided to live together in one Village
00:10:52
need had written about the movement and
00:10:55
about the village of bunai with great
00:10:57
interest however she also made the
00:10:59
statement which the Inland people found
00:11:01
so insulting
00:11:03
what many of them think is that she
00:11:05
simply didn't learn enough about them to
00:11:07
understand them as she had mainly lived
00:11:09
with a saltwater people of Peru Village
00:11:11
she was more used to their ways
00:11:14
celiao yowat lives in bunai he went to
00:11:17
school and he decided to return to live
00:11:19
in the village and he has read Margaret
00:11:22
Mead's comments
00:11:47
this may seem like a very small matter a
00:11:51
smattering of insults about very few
00:11:53
people but it's all the outside world no
00:11:56
of them and it's sealed in time the
00:11:59
unfortunate thing about documentation is
00:12:02
that it becomes a permanent record and
00:12:05
we held against it sometimes I'm
00:12:07
offended I visiting some foreign
00:12:10
countries and someone will give to me
00:12:13
pick up a quotation from one of
00:12:15
Margaret's meat and because I'm from
00:12:17
Manos I'm supposed to be saying yes
00:12:19
that's true or that's that way we're
00:12:21
still living there today
00:12:23
[Music]
00:12:25
comes to bunai when she can to visit her
00:12:28
family so every time when I'm just tired
00:12:32
of red race of town just come off and
00:12:35
keep away from telephones and
00:12:37
people pestering you just come and relax
00:12:40
go to swim and stay with the relatives
00:12:43
it's almost ready now
00:12:47
I was getting together with some of her
00:12:50
aunts she asks them what they think
00:12:52
about Margaret Mead's books
00:13:04
they remember when Margaret Mead visited
00:13:06
the village and they heard about the
00:13:08
books she wrote
00:13:10
they think her books have a lot to do
00:13:12
with the biases between the two Villages
00:13:14
translates
00:13:17
we have our own biases prejudice against
00:13:20
the saltwater people and that's what the
00:13:23
obviously Margaret Mead wrote what the
00:13:27
better people told her and they said
00:13:28
well probably if she had come and stay
00:13:30
with us uh we would have told her what
00:13:34
we believed of the Perry people and she
00:13:36
may have written a totally completely
00:13:38
different book altogether in our way how
00:13:41
it would have written it in our favor
00:13:43
how we were intelligent we make big
00:13:46
curtains we had lots of pigs trees and
00:13:50
it would have um presented Perry as a
00:13:54
very lendless people Drifters uh lazy
00:13:58
they can't make Gardens and they live
00:14:00
entirely off the land people because all
00:14:04
they had was fish and they exchanged the
00:14:07
fish for the kind of products garden
00:14:10
products that we have Margaret Mead is
00:14:12
certainly not the only Anthropologist to
00:14:15
see things through the eyes of her
00:14:16
selected in form
00:14:18
it's a very human problem all
00:14:20
anthropologists face in an academic
00:14:23
discipline which claims a certain
00:14:24
objectivity however it's not the only
00:14:27
problem faced by anthropologists and
00:14:30
their subjects now that the children of
00:14:33
these Villages have learned to read
00:14:34
English they've been able to read what
00:14:37
Margaret Mead wrote
00:14:38
at a council meeting in bunai people
00:14:41
told us something of what they thought
00:14:42
about being in her books well uh
00:14:48
foreign
00:15:23
nothing
00:15:25
let me kiss him when I'm something true
00:15:27
story
00:15:30
go out
00:15:32
a long time
00:15:39
something big ciao or camera now all the
00:15:43
same too now you must start thinking of
00:15:45
villages the annoying thing is it was
00:15:48
until later that most of us learn about
00:15:52
the book she's written and
00:15:54
learn to believe that it was us who gave
00:15:57
her that Fame and it was our way of life
00:16:00
at the way she lived with us and studied
00:16:01
us that gave her that uh Fame throughout
00:16:04
the world it so happened that the West
00:16:06
had the technology
00:16:09
uh the West had the written documents
00:16:12
or writing so they went out to study the
00:16:16
so-called primitive primitive cultures
00:16:19
and to write about them so in a way it
00:16:23
has not brought about human
00:16:24
understanding but it has made one human
00:16:28
being or groups of human being a subject
00:16:31
of study by another
00:16:33
so that process has dehumanized rather
00:16:36
than humanized relationships
00:16:39
I think that time you know
00:16:41
anthropologists
00:16:44
were looking at
00:16:46
Papua New Guinea societies
00:16:48
they were doing comparative work
00:16:52
they were comparing them with their own
00:16:56
societies Western societies
00:16:59
so
00:17:01
they kind of put them in evolutionary
00:17:04
scale and
00:17:06
a thought that we were still developing
00:17:10
so we were at the bottom of the ladder
00:17:13
anthropology was born during an era of
00:17:16
colonialism and suffered from the
00:17:18
prejudices at that time
00:17:20
anthropology today is coming of age a
00:17:24
new generation of students would like to
00:17:26
see changes in the way the world is
00:17:28
viewed
00:17:30
Nova went to a small village called
00:17:32
uyaku on the Northern shore of Papua New
00:17:35
Guinea's main island to meet a young
00:17:38
Anthropologist and find out how he and
00:17:40
the people he is studying a feeling
00:17:43
about the experience
00:17:45
John Barker is a graduate student from
00:17:49
the University of British Columbia he
00:17:51
has been here a year and a half and is
00:17:53
well aware of the kinds of issues that
00:17:56
have been raised by the subjects of
00:17:58
previous studies
00:18:01
during the 60s a number of Fairly young
00:18:03
anthropologists became aware and
00:18:06
concerned of the connection between
00:18:08
anthropology and colonialism and
00:18:11
multinational corporations and other
00:18:14
forms of modernization and a great
00:18:17
debate started between a more
00:18:19
conservative hostile anthropology and
00:18:22
and the young ones coming up saying that
00:18:23
anthropologists should be now involved
00:18:25
and actually taking action to to help
00:18:28
people or to fight some of these things
00:18:30
that weren't so good
00:18:31
I think my experience was probably
00:18:33
typical other anthropologists my age who
00:18:35
were sort of born and bred on that stuff
00:18:37
and we've tried to incorporate it into
00:18:40
the kind of work we do and I think it's
00:18:42
changed the the shape of both
00:18:44
anthropological research and
00:18:45
anthropological writing
00:18:48
the me
00:18:49
or the first one he what's what's what
00:18:52
would be the name of this first ship
00:18:54
it's a new age for the people of uyaku
00:18:57
too children here now go to a school
00:19:00
which is part of the National Education
00:19:02
System they study English world history
00:19:05
and math
00:19:12
I have Raymond would you come up here
00:19:15
and then pick up in the past the
00:19:18
children would have spent most of their
00:19:19
time learning from the parents how to
00:19:21
build canoes how to make Gardens and how
00:19:24
to hunt in the jungle
00:19:26
and from their grandparents they would
00:19:28
have learned the history and folk tales
00:19:30
of their people
00:19:32
now it is John Barker who is one of the
00:19:36
most Avid students of these Tales
00:19:38
foreign
00:19:45
[Music]
00:20:09
foreign
00:20:39
yeah yeah
00:20:41
manageries
00:20:53
so
00:20:59
um
00:21:10
foreign
00:21:38
[Music]
00:21:40
thank you
00:21:47
so they made a new canal
00:21:50
and then both of them sold out but I can
00:21:53
start pedaling
00:21:57
what was the word for paddling
00:22:00
so she repeated that several times so
00:22:02
they paddling paddling paddling yeah
00:22:04
okay the folk tale that John has just
00:22:07
recorded and is now getting some help
00:22:09
translating it's part of a larger
00:22:11
project which is to take down the clan
00:22:13
histories of this Village
00:22:16
it's a project which has the support of
00:22:19
the villagers who are afraid of losing
00:22:21
some of their history now that the
00:22:23
children go to school the parents spend
00:22:26
less time with them and they don't learn
00:22:28
as much about their own past
00:22:31
the recording of these Unwritten Clan
00:22:33
histories has also created one of John's
00:22:36
major problems
00:22:38
we are used to having one version of
00:22:40
history but here there are 12 different
00:22:43
Clans each with its own history
00:22:46
taking down the clan histories has not
00:22:48
always been easy
00:22:51
you go to one one group and they'll tell
00:22:53
you one story and you go to another
00:22:54
group and they tell you another story
00:22:56
according to the morality of the place
00:22:58
the ethics of the place each Clan is
00:23:00
only supposed to tell its own story but
00:23:02
their story belongs to them they're they
00:23:05
have certain customs and ornaments and
00:23:06
so on that belong only to them they're
00:23:08
not supposed to talk about any other
00:23:10
group but the fact of the matter is that
00:23:12
they almost can't help talking about
00:23:13
other groups because they all migrated
00:23:14
into the area together
00:23:16
so as I've taken down the histories I've
00:23:19
continually tripped up against
00:23:20
contradictions and holes and the
00:23:24
information and so on and I found that
00:23:25
I've had to ask people questions about
00:23:28
not so much about other Clan's histories
00:23:30
but when another client asks says
00:23:31
something about their Clan
00:23:33
then I pass on the question to them and
00:23:35
in some occasions people have gotten
00:23:37
quite upset to find out this is not full
00:23:40
agreement in the village
00:23:42
in the village situation there's never
00:23:44
just one truth that's a myth that's been
00:23:47
partly taught by anthropologists and
00:23:49
used in the popular press and so it's
00:23:51
part of a popular belief
00:23:54
Village Council is where important
00:23:57
matters are discussed and decided the
00:24:00
people of uyaku held a council meeting
00:24:02
while we were there so that we could
00:24:03
hear their opinions about having an
00:24:05
anthropologist and a film crew in their
00:24:07
Village
00:24:09
the taking down of the clan histories
00:24:11
has been a focus for examining both John
00:24:14
and themselves
00:24:21
foreign
00:24:25
foreign
00:24:59
and goodbye foreign
00:25:25
foreign
00:25:36
foreign
00:26:11
they are not a marijuana
00:26:14
Library
00:26:20
film
00:26:23
um
00:26:26
[Music]
00:26:43
development
00:26:51
or
00:26:52
iPhone
00:26:55
yeah civilization
00:27:09
foreign
00:27:14
or among
00:27:17
um
00:27:26
if he studies alive here and he gets all
00:27:29
the things written down in the book and
00:27:31
he puts it up in the book I know I know
00:27:34
some of the young men who would come up
00:27:36
later on in the Years who would go
00:27:38
through high schools universities
00:27:39
colleges go read the book read the books
00:27:42
but about it but the people all the
00:27:45
people in the village would gain that
00:27:47
nothing
00:27:49
it's a fair criticism of anthropology to
00:27:52
to say that they take things away and
00:27:54
they take information away and make a
00:27:55
career out of it and they don't give
00:27:56
anything back it was especially it was
00:27:58
more fair in the past when they actually
00:28:00
did send nothing back but it's still
00:28:02
true it's an it's an uneven relationship
00:28:05
um
00:28:05
I think for most of us coming here the
00:28:07
money that we come on is not our own
00:28:09
it's a university Grant her a government
00:28:11
grant but all the same in Village terms
00:28:13
is an awful lot of money we're awfully
00:28:14
Rich by Village standards and that's
00:28:16
something that that comes between us
00:28:19
um I'm not sure how it's going to be
00:28:21
overcome I I suppose the most important
00:28:23
thing is to get much more National
00:28:25
work being done by by local people by
00:28:29
people trained at the University and so
00:28:31
on
00:28:36
people in oyaku do appreciate two things
00:28:39
that John has done since his arrival
00:28:42
the writing down of the clan histories
00:28:44
and the establishment of a library which
00:28:46
has more than 450 books
00:28:49
the clan histories will be photocopied
00:28:51
and placed in the library
00:28:54
but it's very difficult to be both
00:28:56
Anthropologist and friend to use people
00:28:59
as subjects and hope to be trusted by
00:29:02
them as people
00:29:03
in the past before people here
00:29:05
understood what anthropology was about
00:29:07
such questions did not arise now they
00:29:11
color all their relationships with the
00:29:13
anthropologist
00:29:15
John originally came to uyaku with his
00:29:17
wife Anne but she had to return to
00:29:19
Canada to do our own work
00:29:21
since then Don's been perhaps a bit more
00:29:24
lonely aware of his place Between Two
00:29:27
Worlds
00:29:28
at the end of the day we found him
00:29:30
listening to some Canadian folk music on
00:29:32
his tape machine and preparing supper
00:29:34
for some of his Newfound oyaku friends
00:29:37
I think we started feeling at home
00:29:41
it would be almost for me it was
00:29:43
probably almost a year before I really
00:29:46
felt comfortable and had enough friends
00:29:48
to feel that I could feel comfortable
00:29:50
language is a problem and in a real
00:29:52
barrier
00:29:53
the work is a problem a real barrier
00:29:55
because you're you're studying the
00:29:58
people and so it's hard to establish
00:30:00
intimate relations you know always
00:30:02
knowing that whatever they tell you you
00:30:04
might be going into the notebook and
00:30:06
having to decide this is some things
00:30:08
that are just too personal you don't
00:30:10
want to you don't want to put in
00:30:12
[Music]
00:30:14
[Applause]
00:30:15
foreign
00:30:18
[Music]
00:30:25
[Music]
00:30:34
but John has made some real friends
00:30:37
most evenings are spent with some of
00:30:39
them not working
00:30:40
just settling in he said Grace
00:30:45
foreign
00:31:14
but it's taken a year and a half and
00:31:17
he's here for only a few more months
00:31:20
most anthropologists spend no more than
00:31:22
two or three years with the people about
00:31:24
whom they write
00:31:26
however near the town of Mount Hagen in
00:31:28
the highlands of Papua New Guinea lives
00:31:30
an anthropologist who stayed on for 20
00:31:33
years
00:31:36
this is a far cry from the Ivory Towers
00:31:39
of British Academy
00:31:41
yet for Cambridge graduate Andrew
00:31:43
strathearn it's become home
00:31:47
director of The Institute of Papua New
00:31:49
Guinea studies in Port Moresby he spends
00:31:52
much of his time here in the mountains
00:31:55
with the quelca people whom he met 20
00:31:58
years ago
00:32:01
and especially with Anka a prominent and
00:32:05
respected leader who has had a great
00:32:07
influence on him
00:32:12
this is Uncle who is a leader of the
00:32:16
kalgo people
00:32:18
with whom I've lived for a number of
00:32:20
years during the time of I've worked in
00:32:22
mankhagen he is an outstanding leader
00:32:25
and over the years he's become like a
00:32:28
father to me as a field worker in the
00:32:30
area
00:32:31
I came up I came with my wife Marilyn at
00:32:35
the time we both came up as graduate
00:32:37
students we'd never traveled further
00:32:40
than Europe and so we came here to
00:32:42
Hamburg
00:32:43
and we found a lot of people waiting
00:32:46
there or all of them greeted us with
00:32:48
interest
00:32:49
but it didn't say very much after a
00:32:52
while they melted away and through this
00:32:54
crowd they remerged Anka
00:32:57
who took me over to his ceremonial
00:33:01
ground which is just beyond here
00:33:04
sat down with his little son number and
00:33:08
immediately started to tell me something
00:33:10
about the traditional religion of the
00:33:11
place ghosts ancestors and things of
00:33:13
that kind to which I listened with
00:33:15
obvious interest with what few words of
00:33:17
pidgin English understood at the time
00:33:20
and so in a sense from very early on
00:33:22
longer had made a claim and shown his
00:33:26
interest in the type of thing that we
00:33:28
might want to do but this was all quite
00:33:30
spontaneous on his part it wasn't until
00:33:32
much later that I learned the that most
00:33:36
of the people when we first came thought
00:33:38
that we weren't humans at all not human
00:33:40
with some kind of spirit beings and
00:33:43
uncle was the only one who was brave
00:33:44
enough to take the risk of approaching
00:33:46
this sort of spirit
00:33:48
Andrew and Anka and some of uncle's
00:33:51
family and friends gathered together at
00:33:53
the site of their first meeting and
00:33:55
reminisced about those days when they
00:33:57
weren't at all sure what Andrew really
00:34:00
was rumbaco married to Anka remembers
00:34:03
very clearly
00:34:14
but
00:34:17
um
00:34:24
[Laughter]
00:34:39
um
00:34:56
foreign
00:35:08
[Music]
00:35:21
[Music]
00:35:29
today
00:35:35
[Music]
00:35:40
each
00:35:42
field work experience is very personal
00:35:44
and what you do with it afterwards in
00:35:45
your life I think is fairly personal
00:35:48
at the end of more than a Year's stay we
00:35:51
were due to leave
00:35:53
and we had kept some sort of long
00:35:56
trousers and skirts and things in a
00:35:59
particular bag and so we started putting
00:36:01
them on inside the house we were
00:36:03
presented with some pork which we ate
00:36:05
and we changed into these different
00:36:08
sorts of clothes and as we were doing so
00:36:11
I had Anka saying outside of the house
00:36:13
oh what they're doing in there is
00:36:15
they're changing back into white people
00:36:19
because they're going back to the place
00:36:20
of the white men and they were only here
00:36:23
with us as black people for a certain
00:36:25
period of time now they're changing back
00:36:27
into white people and they're going to
00:36:28
go
00:36:30
I heard this
00:36:32
and uh the thought of it went with me
00:36:35
when we did go back
00:36:37
two years later Andrew returned to stay
00:36:40
and each time you make a decision you
00:36:43
don't think is necessarily irrevocable
00:36:45
but then the pattern tends to emerged
00:36:47
over a period of years
00:36:48
I think there's a a reason why the
00:36:52
pattern did emerge and a reason why it
00:36:53
should emerge and that is that all the
00:36:57
things that people said towards the time
00:36:59
when we were first going to go was what
00:37:02
was the point of your coming here and
00:37:04
joining our kinship groups if after all
00:37:07
you were just going to leave us and go
00:37:09
back to your own place you're playing
00:37:11
some sort of game aren't you it's not
00:37:13
real
00:37:15
so if you take your subject seriously if
00:37:19
anthropology is supposed to be a serious
00:37:21
subject you must also take seriously
00:37:23
remarks of this kind
00:37:25
you can't separate off your life in that
00:37:28
ways and say it's Justified because I'm
00:37:31
an academic and of course I have to take
00:37:32
these results back to my own country and
00:37:34
I have to teach uh University
00:37:36
undergraduates because that's the name
00:37:38
of the business of course it is the name
00:37:40
of the business and one is supposed to
00:37:42
do that but the other side is not just a
00:37:45
game it is
00:37:47
the reality that you've come to fight
00:37:49
and unless you can acknowledge that and
00:37:51
accommodate yourself to it then in a
00:37:53
sense it was only a game that you were
00:37:55
playing and therefore anthropology as a
00:37:57
whole becomes only a game that you're
00:37:59
playing and not something serious
00:38:01
yeah Andrew has written many books and
00:38:04
articles about these years finally Anka
00:38:08
wrote his own book
00:38:09
[Music]
00:38:13
s yeah
00:38:16
[Applause]
00:38:29
that match
00:38:31
right um
00:39:08
foreign
00:39:27
who translates for us what uncle has
00:39:30
just been saying about why it was so
00:39:33
important to have a film crew come to
00:39:35
talk directly to Anka about anthropology
00:39:39
you wanted to see so now you can see
00:39:42
here I am I am the man who was the
00:39:44
professor at mbug who taught Andrew
00:39:46
everything he knows he was nothing
00:39:49
he came here a boy didn't even have a
00:39:52
beard he knew nothing I taught him
00:39:54
everything he took all that away and
00:39:56
that's how he wrote his books so he's a
00:39:58
professor in England but I am the
00:39:59
professor here at bug
00:40:01
GA traveled to the University of Papua
00:40:03
New Guinea in Port Moresby where he
00:40:05
dictated his autobiography for Andrew to
00:40:08
translate then he wrote a song to get
00:40:10
Andrew started
00:40:22
[Music]
00:40:28
[Music]
00:40:32
foreign
00:40:43
[Music]
00:40:47
[Applause]
00:40:52
[Music]
00:41:01
himself
00:41:04
who had felt it was time to tell his own
00:41:07
story to the world he knew that I had
00:41:10
written about the things he told me
00:41:12
about and I had learned and that I'd in
00:41:15
fact done two books about this
00:41:18
but he felt there should be a book which
00:41:20
expressed his total view of the society
00:41:24
or a good deal of it at any rate in just
00:41:26
the same way as I had been trying to
00:41:28
present a general picture he told me
00:41:30
that quite clearly and made it quite
00:41:32
clear that this book was to be his book
00:41:34
and that my task in it was to translate
00:41:36
what he said and put it down and not
00:41:38
leave anything out
00:41:40
anger and Andrew both agree the real
00:41:43
teachers about any society are the
00:41:45
so-called informants not anthropologists
00:41:48
but the people who tell anthropologists
00:41:51
about their world
00:41:53
now usually anthropologists take
00:41:56
information away and write it up the
00:41:58
information is passed on to everyone
00:41:59
else secondhand just like this class in
00:42:02
melanesian anthropology at the
00:42:04
University of Papua New Guinea is a
00:42:07
classic example here's a Belgian
00:42:09
teaching melanesians about their own
00:42:12
culture the Christian of residence
00:42:14
usually we can say that in most
00:42:17
patrilineal societies a woman moves to a
00:42:21
husband's place so we would talk about
00:42:23
very local
00:42:26
uh residents
00:42:28
more to be said than about the case of
00:42:34
paying bright price
00:42:38
is that nowadays in particular we see
00:42:42
that the items of wealth that circulate
00:42:46
in the exchanges
00:42:48
melanesians are the people of this part
00:42:51
of the Pacific Ocean they are learning
00:42:54
about their society from non-melanesians
00:42:57
and they read about their people in
00:42:59
books written by non-melanesians not
00:43:02
surprisingly some of the students find
00:43:04
this bizarre you know I took up
00:43:07
melanesian society as one of the causes
00:43:11
and I found that sitting in and
00:43:13
listening to
00:43:15
somebody from outside was a little bit
00:43:18
awkward
00:43:19
and that's why talking to other friends
00:43:22
around the place we sort of say oh come
00:43:25
on I don't want to be reading you know
00:43:27
when they tell us to get books and do
00:43:29
assignments and one time I actually came
00:43:31
back to a lecturer and I said can I
00:43:34
write about my own people you know from
00:43:36
what I know and the person said no
00:43:39
you've got to write from something that
00:43:40
is published and that was a crazy idea
00:43:43
you know repeating reading about my own
00:43:45
people from a book and giving quotations
00:43:48
from what somebody has said we are part
00:43:51
of the society and he'd be interesting
00:43:53
and we should be the ones who will be
00:43:54
talking and contributing more ideas than
00:43:56
that are Outsider students would be
00:43:58
another interesting thing to talk about
00:44:00
their own societies instead of you know
00:44:01
the lecturers themselves dominating the
00:44:03
whole thing and then has entering
00:44:04
questions and asking questions
00:44:05
pretending that we from an outside world
00:44:08
are looking into the melanesian society
00:44:12
I think there's nothing you can do you
00:44:15
know yes there should be somebody from
00:44:17
here who should uh
00:44:19
you know teach the
00:44:21
uh the subject I think that universities
00:44:23
uh uh say in Papua New Guinea and
00:44:26
universities elsewhere must uh have
00:44:29
dialogue if an anthropology is going to
00:44:32
come Anthropologist is going to come and
00:44:33
study in Papua New Guinea then we should
00:44:36
have a popular Union academic exchange
00:44:39
system between that institution and an
00:44:42
institution in Papua New Guinea so that
00:44:44
we can also study some elements of
00:44:47
social behavior in say United States of
00:44:49
America
00:44:51
that's just what's Happening Here worry
00:44:54
ayama has come to Berkeley California to
00:44:56
study Americans
00:44:58
he's a graduate student in anthropology
00:45:01
at the University of California
00:45:03
in 1928 Margaret Mead was one of the
00:45:06
first anthropologists to study Papua New
00:45:09
guineans in 1983 wari iyamo and one
00:45:14
other graduate student are the first
00:45:16
Papua New guinean Anthropologist to
00:45:18
study Americans
00:45:22
I was expecting you half an hour ago
00:45:29
Lori's thesis advisor is Dr Laura Nader
00:45:36
um now tell me about your Oakland
00:45:39
projections what you think you wanted to
00:45:41
Bear yeah the research is about 26
00:45:46
tenants who were living in a transient
00:45:49
hotel in one part of Auckland East
00:45:52
Oakland
00:45:53
uh they weren't evicted in a proper
00:45:57
manner they were just uh routed out of
00:46:00
the their their homes supposedly by the
00:46:04
police like any Anthropologist worry has
00:46:08
informants in this case one of the
00:46:11
former tenants from the hotel in East
00:46:13
Oakland tell me about the problems you
00:46:16
went through when you were evicted
00:46:20
we discovered that the police had
00:46:23
surrounded the hotel
00:46:25
and that we were locked out
00:46:28
and I had a dearly beloved pet cat in
00:46:33
the apartment and I wanted to get her
00:46:37
out anyway and they wouldn't even let me
00:46:40
do that they had turned loose a pair of
00:46:43
half-trained guard dogs and all the
00:46:47
doors had been kicked in you said you
00:46:50
were the only person in your family
00:46:53
you have cousin brothers or Aunts Uncles
00:46:57
yeah you can ride I have no sisters or
00:47:01
brothers and
00:47:03
I uh all of my living
00:47:09
uh
00:47:10
cousins and uh
00:47:13
aunts and uncles are
00:47:17
quite far separated from me not not just
00:47:20
in space but in age we're in such a
00:47:23
situation what would the neighbors you
00:47:25
know think you know and would they come
00:47:28
out and help straight away
00:47:32
I can't imagine that happening if you're
00:47:36
talking about a neighborhood where there
00:47:38
are single homes and people have for the
00:47:41
most part been living there several
00:47:42
years and you're
00:47:45
yes you could probably get neighborhood
00:47:48
help
00:47:49
I
00:47:50
but
00:47:52
if you're talking about the kind of a
00:47:54
neighborhood I'm talking about in a
00:47:55
living in a cheap hotel or in a low
00:48:00
price apartment no because people just
00:48:03
don't know each other that well
00:48:05
I see
00:48:07
Lori's thesis involves interviewing not
00:48:10
just the former tenants but the lawyers
00:48:13
representing them as well
00:48:15
only recently of anthropologists begun
00:48:17
to study people like lawyers who have
00:48:20
power in society
00:48:22
traditionally they studied people who
00:48:24
didn't have the authority to stop them
00:48:33
and they've been an anthropologist worry
00:48:35
pursues his attempts to unravel American
00:48:38
kinship patterns and finds out that as
00:48:41
in Papua New Guinea there's more than
00:48:43
one answer to any question because I
00:48:46
understand that uh the degree of kinship
00:48:50
to what degree it's practiced here I
00:48:53
don't know but there is some you know
00:48:55
degree of kinship here you know some
00:48:59
degree worry
00:49:01
um I mean to a certain degree there is
00:49:03
kinship no one can deny that there is no
00:49:06
kinship system here okay worry the uh
00:49:09
the idea that kinship is is perhaps not
00:49:12
as strong in in our society
00:49:15
I think is is an erroneous idea it's
00:49:18
different
00:49:20
I.E that is we have a bilateral kinship
00:49:23
system
00:49:24
we have certain descent principles
00:49:27
uh
00:49:28
people come to me all the time want to
00:49:31
make Wills
00:49:32
who do you think they leave it to
00:49:34
strangers
00:49:36
they leave it to their children they
00:49:38
leave it to their grandchildren they
00:49:40
leave it to their kin
00:49:42
people come in this office and argue
00:49:45
over who should get what heirlooms
00:49:50
I promised a certain ring to a certain
00:49:52
grandchild
00:49:55
kinship is very very important
00:49:58
some of the things I have seen haven't
00:50:01
been here for almost three years is the
00:50:05
society seems to be open but uh in the
00:50:09
real sense it's close
00:50:11
it seems like
00:50:13
everything is institutionalized in this
00:50:15
Society instead of producing for
00:50:19
themselves
00:50:20
they've given the power to something
00:50:22
else to produce for them so what I'm
00:50:24
saying is that back home we have Gardens
00:50:27
here you don't have Gardens so that
00:50:30
means you have given your power to
00:50:31
certain institutions to produce for you
00:50:33
another thing which is very obvious
00:50:36
everyone seems to look here and or wants
00:50:38
to look here and I think it must have to
00:50:41
do with the culture itself and so when
00:50:44
you look around your neighborhood there
00:50:46
are some things that are not so visible
00:50:48
so all people are institutionalized
00:50:50
somewhere else the mentally [ __ ]
00:50:54
people are put somewhere else
00:50:56
[Music]
00:50:58
you know what you're doing is really
00:50:59
pioneering worry because although
00:51:02
anthropologists have gone all the way
00:51:04
around the world studying all kinds of
00:51:06
societies very few anthropologists from
00:51:08
other societies have come to study yes
00:51:10
and the U.S is probably the most
00:51:12
understudied culture in the world
00:51:14
and we did have people like the
00:51:16
tocqueville who came and we're still
00:51:17
quoting to TOEFL because he made such a
00:51:19
Frenchman who came to the United States
00:51:21
to study us and observe our customs and
00:51:23
see what made Americans tick after all
00:51:26
we're a very important force in the
00:51:28
world and some we should be understood
00:51:29
and tough for it isn't the Insiders
00:51:32
couldn't have made the same points that
00:51:33
the tocqueville made but they don't
00:51:36
because you have to have you have to
00:51:38
stand slightly outside to be able to see
00:51:41
the things that he saw that were great
00:51:43
and that were problematic and so forth
00:51:45
about our society you come from New
00:51:47
Guinea and you look at something that
00:51:50
that in a way is incredulous to somebody
00:51:53
from your community there are people in
00:51:55
this society that don't have a house to
00:51:57
live in that don't have a home how does
00:52:00
that happen
00:52:01
and are there functional equivalents to
00:52:03
it and how does this Society deal with
00:52:04
the fact that there are homeless people
00:52:06
but then there's still one point been
00:52:09
made with a by Americans
00:52:12
Oh by Papua New guineans you see that
00:52:18
we still
00:52:20
are the ones who know more about our own
00:52:22
cultures
00:52:24
so an American will claim that yes it's
00:52:27
true that an outsider can come and see
00:52:30
my Society objectively
00:52:33
and say more things about it but still
00:52:35
I'm in control in master of it because
00:52:39
I know the nuances of the languages or
00:52:42
the language I know
00:52:45
the culture and I know the facts
00:52:48
I think what we're coming to is a
00:52:50
realization that there are different
00:52:51
ways of knowing and different ways of
00:52:53
understanding and that Outsiders and
00:52:56
insiders looking at a society trying to
00:52:59
understand the complexity of human
00:53:01
culture I mean it's it's nothing so
00:53:03
simple as what the physicists study I
00:53:06
mean we're studying the most complex
00:53:07
thing you could study and we can't
00:53:09
simplify it because if you simplify
00:53:11
studying Human Society you lose it so we
00:53:14
have this complexity and we're doing the
00:53:16
best we can when you have Outsiders and
00:53:18
insiders looking at the same culture and
00:53:20
working together
00:53:21
but how much does the outsider need to
00:53:24
become like The Insider yeah
00:53:27
we chose to go to a university and to
00:53:29
speak to Western anthropologists in
00:53:31
their own terms
00:53:34
uncle's perspective on our world as well
00:53:37
as his own could be equally important
00:53:49
foreign
00:54:13
foreign
00:54:48
foreign
00:55:21
us
00:55:23
ES
