Multiple Voices, Multiple Truths:

Abstract

Western history is typically written from a Western perspective. In particular, the public histories created by colonial governments characteristically ignore or downplay indigenous perspectives. This paper examines labour recruitment among the Abelam people of the Sepik Foothills of New Guinea during German colonial times and explicitly considers events from an Abelam point of view. It argues that, by considering local narratives and including local voices, more complete and nuanced historical constructions of colonial enterprises can be achieved.

Acknowledgements

Parts of this paper were written while the author was a visiting colleague at the Center for Pacific Islands Studies of the School of Hawaiian, Asian and Pacific Studies at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. Special thanks are due to Dr David Hanlon, Director of the Center, for arranging affiliation on very short notice. Gratitude is due to Yalinyinge, Jimmy and Kori for help in interpreting Mambil's narrative, and special thanks to Mambil himself for relating his side of the recruitment story. I am indebted to Dr María Auxiliadora Cordero for her assistance in preparing the figures.

Notes

¹ Richard Thurnwald, ‘Vom mittleren Sepik zur Nordwestküste von Kaiser-Wilhelmsland’, Mitteilungen aus den Deutschen Schutzgebieten, 27 (1914), 81–4. This and other excerpts from Thurnwald's account are adapted from a translation generously provided by David Lea.

² Peter Sack and Dymphna Clark (eds), German New Guinea: the draft annual report for 1913–14 (Canberra 1980), 15–16.

³ Lucy P. Mair, Australia in New Guinea (London 1948), 95.

⁴ See Bryant J. Allen, ‘The place of agricultural intensification in Sepik Foothills history’ in Andrew Pawley, Robert Attenborough, Jack Golson and Robin Hide (eds), Papuan Pasts: cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples (Canberra 2005), 585–623 for a detailed discussion of Abelam prehistoric movements.

⁵ See David A.M. Lea, ‘The Abelam: a study in local differentiation’, Pacific Viewpoint, 6:2 (1965), 191–214; Noel D. McGuigan, ‘The social context of Abelam art: a comparison of art, religion and leadership in two Abelam communities’, PhD thesis, University of Ulster (Ulster 1992).

⁶ Lea, ‘The Abelam’, 63 reports that ‘in places population densities approach 200/km²’.

⁷ Richard Scaglion, ‘Yam cycles and timeless time in Melanesia’, Ethnology, 38 (1999), 214–16, 218–21.

⁸ Thurnwald, ‘Vom mittleren Sepik’, 81.

⁹ Thurnwald, ‘Vom mittleren Sepik’, 82.

¹⁰ Ibid.

¹¹ Thurnwald, ‘Vom mittleren Sepik’, 82–3. Richard Thurnwald, ‘Some traits of society in Melanesia’, in Proceedings of the Fifth Pacific Science Congress, Victoria and Vancouver, B.C., Canada, 1933 (Toronto 1934), 2808–9 contains a similar description of these ‘festival halls’ in English.

¹² Cited in Stewart Firth, New Guinea Under the Germans (Port Moresby 1986), 96.

¹³ Thurnwald, ‘Vom mittleren Sepik’, 81–4.

¹⁴ Commonwealth of Australia, Report to the League of Nations on the Administration of the Territory of New Guinea, 1 July 1921to 30 June 1922, (Melbourne 1923), 52.

¹⁵ Peter Sack and Dymphna Clark (eds), German New Guinea: the annual reports (Canberra 1979), 19.

¹⁶ Charles D. Rowley, The Australians in German New Guinea 1914–1921 (Melbourne 1958), 115–16.

¹⁷ Rowley, The Australians, 116–17.

¹⁸ Hermann Joseph Hiery, The Neglected War: the German South Pacific and the influence of World War I (Honolulu 1995), 54–5.

¹⁹ Rowley, The Australians, 201–2; Bryant J. Allen, ‘Information flow and innovation diffusion in the East Sepik District, Papua New Guinea’, PhD thesis, The Australian National University (Canberra 1976), 63.

²⁰ Richard Scaglion, ‘Abelam’, in Carol R. and Melvin Ember (eds), Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender: men and women in the world’s cultures (New York 2004), 258.

²¹ Thurnwald, ‘Vom mittleren Sepik’, 83.

²² As far as I can determine, first contact would have occurred around 1920, during what I have called the third period of German New Guinea. Most of the eyewitness accounts I have were collected in 1975, some 55 years after the event. Informants who were in their teens and twenties at the time were in their 70s and 80s when their stories were recorded.

²³ Since this paper is historical, I have used actual names throughout, except in the cases of ‘Kiyandu’ and ‘Seberamu’ because of the sensitive nature of the incidents described.

²⁴ Probably Tumleo Island.

²⁵ Under the Australian administration, labourers who intended to sign new contracts were required to be returned to their place of recruitment for at least one month's leave for each year of service (Commonwealth of Australia, Report … on the Territory of New Guinea, 58).

²⁶ The term ‘English’ here refers to the Australians. That Mambil called Australian administrators ‘English’ is not really surprising. Kenneth E. Read, ‘Effects of the Pacific War in the Markham Valley’, Oceania, 18 (1947), 106–7 describes how German-speaking missionaries referred to Australian and other English-speaking Europeans as ‘English’, which may have led indigenous people to adopt the usage. Mambil's early contacts with Europeans were with German-speakers, and this fact, coupled with the close identification of Australia with the British Empire at the time, probably led to the confusion.

²⁷ At this point in the narrative there was a lengthy delay while Mambil attempted to remember and calculate how much money he actually got. To his best recollection, his rate of pay was two shillings per month, but he seemed to be very unsure of this figure.

²⁸ See Scaglion, ‘Yam cycles and timeless time in Melanesia’, 211–25.

²⁹ Mary Taylor Huber, The Bishops’ Progress: a historical ethnography of Catholic Missionary experience on the Sepik frontier (Washington 1988), 168.

³⁰ Rowley, The Australians, 205.

³¹ George W.L. Townsend, District Officer: from untamed New Guinea to Lake Success, 1921–46 (Sydney 1968), 87–8.

³² Klaus Neumann, Not the Way it Really Was: constructing the Tolai past (Honolulu 1992), 249.