The Lihir Destiny Cultural Responses to Mining in Melanesia Asia-Pacific Environment Monograph 5 The Lihir Destiny Cultural Responses to Mining in Melanesia Nicholas A. Bainton THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY E P R E S S E P R E S S Published by ANU E Press The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at: http://epress.anu.edu.au/lihir_destiny_citation.html National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Author: Bainton, Nicholas A. Title: The Lihir destiny [electronic resource] : cultural responses to mining in Melanesia / Nicholas A. Bainton. ISBN: 9781921666841 (pbk.) 9781921666858 (eBook) Series: Asia-pacific environment monographs ; 5. Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Subjects: Lihirians--Social life and customs. Mineral industries--Papua New Guinea--Lihir Island--Social aspects. Lihir Island (Papua New Guinea)--Social life and customs. Dewey Number: 995.805 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover design and layout by ANU E Press Cover image: Francis Dalawit addressing the crowd during the Roriahat feast in Kunaie village, 2009. Photograph courtesy of David Haigh. Printed by Griffin Press This edition © 2010 ANU E Press Contents Foreword ix Acknowledgements xiii Selected Tok Pisin glossary xvii Selected Lir glossary xix Abbreviations xxiii 1. Introduction: New Lives for Old 1 2. The Presence of the Mine 13 3. Las Kantri: Lihir Before the Mining Era 41 4. Lihir Custom as an Ethnographic Subject 73 5. When Cargo Arrives 109 6. Personal Viability and the Lihir Destiny Plan 141 7. Custom Reconfigured 175 8. Conclusion: Society Reformed 203 References 209 v List of Plates Plate 1-1: Lihirian children on the shores of change. Ladolam, looking north towards the Ailaya in Luise Harbour, circa 1983. 3 Plate 2-1: Putput and Ladolam, circa 1985. 20 Plate 2-2: Newly constructed relocation house in Putput, 1995. 31 Plate 2-3: The Ailaya, circa 1985. 33 Plate 2-4: Drill rig and helicopter on the sacred Ailaya rock in Luise Harbour, circa 1983. 34 Plate 2-5: The Ailaya in the middle of the mining pit, 2008. 36 Plate 3-1: Lihir luluai in front of a tlaliem canoe, circa 1932. 47 Plate 3-2: Former Tuk Kuvul Aisok meeting area in Matakues now used by church groups for prayer meetings. 64 Plate 4-1: Clan leaders at Lambanam hamlet, Lesel village, 2009. Left to right: Benjamin Rukam, Herman Luak and Joseph Kondiak. 87 Plate 4-2: Thomas Kut was widely regarded as one of the last great leaders on Mahur Island. When he passed away in August 2009 he was estimated to be at least 100 years old. 90 Plate 4-3: Lemdaplo men’s house on Mahur Island, 2004. 92 Plate 4-4: Distributing the feast food in the men’s house, Kunaie village, 2004. 93 Plate 4-5: John Yaspot’s two storey men’s house, Laksunkuen, Malie Island, 2004. 93 Plate 4-6: Shell money belonging to the Ilam sub-clan on display in the men’s house during the final tutunkanut feast, Matakues village, 2008. Decorative adornments (leku) are attached to the strands of shell money. 95 Plate 4-7: Gastropod shells (Patella sp.) used to make shell money. In Lihir these are known as gam le. 96 Plate 4-8: Mathew Bektau of Masahet Island producing shell money, 2007. 97 Plate 4-9: Ambrose Silul and kinsmen performing on the balo, Matakues village, 2008. 105 vi Plate 4-10: Rongan standing on the balo announcing his contribution to the feast, Matakues village, 2008. 106 Plate 4-11: Women from the Dalawit clan from Mahur Island performing at Kunaie village, 2009. 107 Plate 5-1: Putput village and the processing plant, 2008. 115 Plate 5-2: Relocation housing in Putput village, 2009. 118 Plate 5-3: Comparatively luxurious expatriate company housing, 2009. 119 Plate 6-1: Personal Viability graduation, Lihir, 2007. 154 Plate 6-2: Mark Soipang signing the Revised Integrated Benefits Package (the Lihir Sustainable Development Plan), Potzlaka, 2007. 167 Plate 6-3: Signboard outside the Personal Viability Training Centre where Sam Tam resides in Marahun townsite, 2010. 172 Plate 7-1: Peter Toelinkanut and John Zipzip arranging the pigs in front of the men’s house, Kinami village, 2004. 184 Plate 7-2: Customary sham fight to greet guests, Putput village, 2006. 188 Plate 7-3: Paul Awam exchanging shell money, Putput village, 2006. 189 Plate 7-4: Guests blowing the conch shell to signal their arrival with pigs for presentation, Putput village, 2006. Note the dollar sign on the conch shell, another instance of the incorporation of cash in ceremonial life. 190 Plate 7-5: Dance troupe, Putput village, 2006. 191 vii List of Tables Table 5-1: Land-related payments (in PNG kina) by Local Government Ward, 1995–2008. 120 List of Figures Map 2-1: New Ireland Province and Papua New Guinea. 18 Map 2-2: The Lihir group of islands. 19 Figure 5-1: Lihirian Lihir Gold Ltd employees, 1999 and 2007. 123 Figure 6-1: Indigenous model of Lihirian society. 144 viii Foreword Mining communities are the subject of a rich tradition of ethnographic study. As the major industry and employer in any region where they are located, mining operations provide a physical, social and economic focal point for the anthropologist. Approaches to the subject have varied greatly. From June Nash’s (1993) study of a Bolivian mining community, We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us, to Michael Taussig’s polemical and literary reflections on capitalism, greed and exploitation in The Devil and Commodity Fetishism (1980) and My Cocaine Museum (2004), there has been close scrutiny of the complex inter-relationships between mines, their owners (whether individuals or corporations), and the people who live around them or work in them. The search for mineral wealth has long been associated with colonisation, economic exploitation and economic transformation. In contemporary Papua New Guinea, large-scale mining has become the most significant export industry, generating income for government and for the people whose lands are affected. Extractive industry is now viewed as the main means of economic development. Controversies over the environmental degradation and social disruptions generated by mining operations have hardly dampened the enthusiasm for mining. International companies continue to explore and take out leases, the government continues to facilitate their activities, and in most places local people welcome the associated prospect of ‘development’. Lihir has been no exception. My own association with Lihirians and the Lihir gold mine began just before the construction phase, in 1995. At that time the excitement was almost palpable, as people contemplated the wealth that they were sure would be generated by the project. Over the following nine years I worked as a consultant, monitoring the social changes that occurred and recording the local responses to environmental change and degradation. As I observed many of the dramatic confrontations and the innovative strategies that Lihirians adopted in their dealings with the mining company, I often wished that I could find a graduate student who would be able to engage with these changes in the sort of concerted, day-to- day, ethnographic research that is characteristic of our discipline. Nick Bainton became that ethnographer. Participant observation has had a bad press over the last two decades – decried as oxymoronic, partial and ideologically suspect – but it has survived this intellectual buffeting. This book is testament to its continued strength as a methodology, and to the ways that direct observation of events, conversations ix The Lihir Destiny with a variety of people, and reflection upon change over time enriches interpretative endeavours. The author’s participation — in the training for ‘Personal Viability’, in feast preparations, and in the everyday lives of the villagers with whom he lived — generates insights and descriptions that are unavailable to a casual observer. The book is a revised version of a doctoral thesis. It incorporates archival and historical research, and engages with debates about the ways that contemporary Melanesians construct models of their identity and culture as they embrace modernity. It tells a story of the complicated making of the ‘roads’ that Lihirians have taken as they strive to reach their ‘destiny’. It also reveals the tensions generated, within the local community and between Lihirians and others, as they struggle to gain control over the processes of change and the wealth generated by the mine. The social and economic changes ushered in by the mining project on Lihir have been profound. They are readily observable. When I first arrived, I was struck by the relative poverty of people there. Many children still went naked, women’s clothing was usually a drab length of cloth, houses were invariably made of bush materials, and there was a meagre strip of dirt road linking a few villages. The airstrip was tiny and involved the rather tricky piloting manoeuvre of landing a small plane on an uphill slope. Now there is an airport that regularly ferries hundreds of workers to and from the island; children wear shorts and sneakers, or frilly dresses from the large Filipino-owned supermarket. Where there was an overgrown and abandoned plantation there is now a township. A well-equipped modern hospital serves the local community as well as the mining company’s employees. But as Nick Bainton demonstrates in this study, the material changes have brought with them new distinctions, new inequalities, and conflicts that were previously absent. The abundance of introduced goods, the enthusiastic embrace of modernity, and associated power struggles do not mean that customs have been abandoned or that Lihirians have ‘lost’ their cultural traditions, their sense of their uniqueness, or their dreams of the future.