The aim of this cultural story is to explore the effects of global economic development on the local indigenous culture of the Ninggirum people of Papua New Guinea whose border lands encompass the Ok Tedi Mine. Since 1991 I have lived in the Ninggirum community, working in their language development programme as a linguist/translator, and a significant part of the study has been the examination of my own entanglements in the constitution of the postcolonial subject and its communities and places. Research methods include recording traditional oral stories and contemporary life stories in Ninggirum language, Tok Pisin and English, and recording the process in extensive field notes and personal journals. Language texts were analysed linguistically and structurally for grammatical and cultural meaning. Conversation texts were transcribed and assembled as storylines. Traditional oral stories were analysed using principles of mythopoesis and the trickster literary device. All texts were analysed performatively for what they said about Ninggirum reality, perceptions of development and impacts of global change processes on environment and community. All materials were interpreted through a representation of Ninggirum ontological and aesthetic understandings of orature. The findings show that even with the effects of environmental degradation, social fragmentation and loss of cultural practices, local peoples would still prefer the actual benefits of development. This implies a need to strengthen cultural identity through recreating the ceremonial space where ideas are thought together and communal identity is reconstituted. It also implies the creation of an in-between space of cultural contact as a choreography of difference where, becoming other to self, participation may be respectful, mutual, and caring, considering the priority needs of the least advantaged. The study extends Melanesianist literature, making an original contribution to the ethnography of post-colonial PNG. It contributes to the general understanding of contemporary globalisation and development theory through an examination of globallocal relations. It adds indigenous voice to scholarly discussions of culture theory, indigenous identity, language as local practice, the globalisation of time, space and gender through language, Southern theory, and ethnoepistemology.
Date of Award | 2012 |
---|
Original language | English |
---|
- Ninggirum people (Papua New Guinea)
- Indigenous peoples
- Papua New Guinea
- Tok Pisin language
- Ok Tedi Mine
- globalization
- culture
- identity (psychology)
What price paradise : a study of the effects of the Ok Tedi Mine on Ninggirum people of Papua New Guinea
Oates, C. A. (Author). 2012
Western Sydney University thesis: Doctoral thesis