The Gendered Politics of Witchcraft and Sorcery Accusations among the Maisin of Papua New Guinea

Abstract

This article investigates yafuni (‘witchcraft’ or female sorcery) accusations among the Maisin people living in Collingwood Bay, Oro Province, Papua New Guinea. It takes as its primary case a public meeting at which two women were accused of killing a man. During the meeting, reasons for the victim's unexpected death and why he was subjected to ‘witchcraft’ were questioned and explored. While sorcery and witchcraft accusations might have violent outcomes, I argue that among Maisin they can be understood as performative rituals in which tensions and frustrations are vented in controlled ways, effectively preventing aggression and violence towards those accused. Accusations must be understood in the context of local identity politics that entail the questioning and redefining of relations and boundaries between gender, clans and cultural groups. In the case examined in this paper, the meeting provided a forum for the predominantly male accusers to re-establish gender hierarchies and social boundaries in order to restore social balance, albeit at the cost of victimising two women.

Keywords:

• Witchcraft
• Ritual
• Gender Relations
• Maisin
• Papua New Guinea

Acknowledgements

The research on which this paper is based took place between 2001–2002 and in 2004, and was financed by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. I am also grateful for the support of the Laureate Project Engendering Persons, Transforming Things: Christianities, Commodities and Individualism in Oceania (FL100100196) at the Australian National University. Many thanks are owed to the anonymous reviewers, and to Michael Goddard, Jack Taylor and especially to John Barker for providing useful suggestions and comments. I would also like to express my sincere thanks to the Maisin people who supported my research. For privacy reasons, I have used pseudonyms in this paper.

Notes

[1] John Barker (1983, 1985, 1990) has analysed extensively the relationship and embodiment of Christian (Anglican) worship and religion within local concepts, structures and sorcery beliefs.

[2] The recent increase in witchcraft and sorcery-related killings prompted the PNG Government to revoke its 1971 Sorcery Act and to reintroduce and broaden death penalty laws for sorcery-related murder (Amnesty International 2013; Taylor and Araújo n.d., 26).

[3] However, as Jorgenson (2014) shows, well-respected men can also be victims of witchcraft violence.

[4] The place where Sylvester disappeared, as well as the area in front of his house and near the burial ground, were marked and declared taboo for fishing for approximately seven weeks.

[5] In the 1980s, John Barker was told by his Maisin interlocutors that yafuni come from Wedau, where they are known as parauma. According to Barker (1985, 405, footnote 23), yafuni appears to be cognate with the term, labuni—the word used by the Galaria people living behind Dogura.

[6] It is not known if the practice of marrying women from outside Collingwood Bay is a relatively recent phenomenon. In the past, Maisin used to have extensive exchange networks that connected Collingwood Bay with Milne Bay and beyond, facilitating the acquisition of red spondylus shell necklaces from Milne Bay, which are highly valued among Maisin. It seems likely that in addition to objects, marriage partners were also exchanged.

[7] Maisin refer to the relationship between elder and younger as respectively rora-tere. This ‘opposition’ structures relationships between people and as a consequence their behaviour and expectations. Rora, the male elders, represent the clan and they are allowed to speak first. Tere, the younger brothers, and especially all other people are expected to show respect, learn from the elders and provide services for them. A similar kind of relationship exists between the two types of clans among Maisin, the so-called Kawo (peace-making) and Sabu (warrior) clans. The Kawo clans are concerned with keeping relationships between people and clans in a state of marawa-wawe (balance and harmony). They make decisions which are put into practice by Sabu clans. In this way, the two types of clans complement and depend on each other. During the meeting, these relationships based on seniority and clan identity/responsibility were played out.

[8] The participants at the meeting predominantly spoke in Maisin language, which I mastered at a basic level. The excerpts and interpretations of the meeting are based on the recordings and notes I made. My research assistants helped translate the recordings into English and assisted in interpreting the events.

[9] Maisin perceptions of witchcraft are similar to those in Milne Bay and the Trobriand Islands. Like Maisin, Milne Bay people greatly fear the disembodied female flying witches who violently attack and kill their victims by removing and subsequently eating the ‘insides’ of their victims (Fortune 1963, 150; Malinowski 1987, 76; Tambiah 1983, 171). Dobu people believe, like the Maisin, that sorcery is practised by men to cause sickness and slow death by non-physical means, whereas sudden death is associated with witchcraft (Fortune 1963, 150).

[10] This issue of marrying and bringing in wives from groups that are traditional enemies has also been noted in other studies on sorcery and witchcraft in PNG (for example Reay 1987, 102; Chowning 1987, 152–153).

[11] This also seems to be a common tactic of ‘sorcerers’ in Southeast PNG societies. According to Michael Goddard (personal communication 2013), Irupara people might deny a specific act of sorcery of which they are accused, but like to leave intact the suspicion they are a sorcerer as it is a powerful reputation to have.

[12] During public meetings, men sit high on the shelter and discuss matters, while most women will sit down on the ground surrounding the shelter. This reflects the hierarchical relation between man and woman. As one interlocutor explained: ‘Men are wowo (high position), while we women are kako (low position), we are under them’. To show respect, women will always bend down on their knees when leaving a gathering, so they will not be physically higher than the sitting men.

[13] Maisin women were only recently given the right to speak at public meetings that involve Maisin matters, but their attendance and participation is still limited. The practice of women talking in public is very much related to notions of improper gender-conduct, with mainly elderly women being able and allowed to speak up although this rarely happened in the villages where I did fieldwork (see note 7 above; Hermkens 2013). When the two women accused of witchcraft were ‘forced’ to defend themselves during a public meeting, they not only had to deal with the accusations, but also had to overcome embodied notions of gendered speech.

[14] This relationship between witchcraft accusations and the (re-)establishment of gender hierarchies and inequalities is also highlighted by Taylor and Araújo (n.d., 3), who argue that in Vanuatu, ‘much sorcery-related discourse reifies gender-based inequalities’, which is ‘often aimed at curtailing female agency by normalizing the use of violence against women, including sexual violence, as a form of punitive social justice’.