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Christianity and Culture Change Among the Oksapmin of Papua New Guinea

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Christianity and Culture Change Among the Oksapmin of Papua New Guinea Christianity and Culture Change among the Oksapmin of Papua New Guinea Fraser Macdonald A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The Australian National University January 2013 Declaration Except where otherwise indicated, this thesis is the result of original work carried out by the author. Fraser Macdonald Abstract This is an account of the Oksapmin relationship with Christianity. Through telling it I seek to illuminate three main issues, namely, who the Oksapmin were before they were evangelised, how they were introduced to Christianity, and, thirdly, how they have handled the encounter between the indigenous and Christian religions. While all of these topics are important to the thesis, it is the last that I investigate most rigorously. Through a close examination of various spheres of Oksapmin society and culture, I demonstrate how local people have integrated the two religious systems through a process of what I call fusion. In essence, the Christianity introduced by the mission and the parts of the indigenous religion that survived missionisation have been remade in terms of each other, thereby collapsing difference in the construction of a single composite religion. The indigenous is made to look Christian at the same time that the Christian is made to look indigenous. In so doing the Oksapmin construct historical, ontological, and cosmological unity in the midst of social change. While from the etic anthropological perspective this hybrid situation is the result of fusing two initially separate entities, from the local, emic view there has been no mixing; the current synthesis is treated as a single, fundamental truth and worldview that has always been there. The Oksapmin claim that their traditions and history were really always Christian and also that Christianity in no way fundamentally differs from their indigenous religious schemas and technologies. I set this model of fusion against two opposing anthropological accounts of indigenous Christianity that have recently emerged from the area, one arguing for duality and the other for superposition. In the final instance I show that while these two accounts significantly differ from my own, a careful critique and reappraisal suggests that the difference is principally one of interpretation rather than the result of empirical differences among the three field areas. iii Table of Contents Abstract iii Acknowledgements vii Illustrations viii 1. Introduction 1 Syncretism and culture change 4 The Anthropology of Christianity 7 The view from Mountain Ok 10 Structure of the thesis 18 2. The Oksapmin 20 Finding a topic, finding a fieldsite 20 Entering Oksapmin 22 Fieldwork among the Oksapmin 25 Exit, return, and the start of the writing 27 The Oksapmin 30 Social organisation 31 Economy 35 Contact with Europeans 38 3. Traditional Oksapmin Culture and Society 44 Social organisation 44 Economy 46 Politics 48 Religion 51 The male initiation cult 51 The Yuän myth and ritual 63 Singsing 68 iv Magic 70 The afterlife 71 The spirituality of nature 71 Witchcraft and sorcery 72 Taboo 74 Myth 75 4. Oksapmin Conversion to Christianity 77 The evangelisation of the Oksapmin 77 Why did the Oksapmin convert to Christianity? 83 The effects of missionisation upon the Oksapmin social world 98 5. Contemporary Oksapmin Christianity 109 Oksapmin Christianity today 110 Church services 112 Songs 116 Items 124 An Indigenous Easter 125 Sermons 132 Elijah in the men’s house 134 Private worship 138 Retreats 143 Final remarks 146 6. Souls, Spirits, and Witches 148 Oksapmin understandings of life, death, and the afterlife 149 Angels in the bush 153 In Satan’s service 159 7. Stories, People, and Places 174 The myth of Dahaplän 176 Part One: Birth 178 Part Two: Adulthood and Death 179 Discussion 183 v The story of the sun 188 Discussion 194 8. Conclusions 201 Robbins and Brutti on the indigenisation of Christianity 201 Making cosmologies among the Min 213 Possible extensions of the theory of fusion 214 Final remarks 216 Bibliography 218 vi Acknowledgements First and foremost, this thesis would not have been possible without the Oksapmin people who looked after me and supported my research. Two individuals stand out as particularly important, Benny Mahpul and John Manden. Benny’s outstanding friendship and hospitality were instrumental in making my fieldwork an immensely fulfilling experience. John was my trusty assistant, organising and facilitating interviews and travel throughout the Oksapmin area. His professionalism and intelligence greatly benefited my work. I also thank the extended Mahpul family that adopted me, particularly Benny’s wife Joanna, Andrew and Mestina, Jackson and Karina, as well as Mahpul and Hopina. The wider Sambate community amongst whom I lived also made my stay an enjoyable one and I make a special mention of the Wetäp boys for being such a great group of mates. At ANU I would like to thank first Alan Rumsey for being an outstanding supervisor. His patience, encouragement, and insights contributed in no small way to the accomplishment of this thesis. The other members of my panel, namely, Mark Mosko, Don Gardner, and Margaret Jolly, have likewise provided invaluable guidance during this journey. While not on my panel, Chris Ballard and Matt Tomlinson read drafts of various chapters and I thank them for their useful comments. Outside the university I would like to tender my gratitude and thanks to Reverend Keith Bricknell for giving so freely of his time and energy to answer all of my questions regarding the role of the mission within Oksapmin society. His thoughtfulness and generosity were truly exceptional. Lastly, thanks go to all of my friends and family that supported me through the process. vii Illustrations Maps 1. Mountain Ok/Min area within Papua New Guinea 11 2. Oksapmin and neighbouring Min groups 11 Figures 1. The anthropologist’s house, Sambate 25 2. First Oksapmin baptismal service 81 3. Baptist Church, Tekin Station 109 4. Revival Fellowship group, Wauläp 111 5. Landslide Baptist congregation song performance 117 6. Item performance at 2008 Christmas Baptist service, Wauläp 126 7. The Om River Valley 176 viii 1. Introduction This thesis is about the encounter and interaction of two religions. The first was that of a Christian mission, namely, the Australian Baptist Missionary Society (ABMS). The other was that of the Oksapmin, a group of people living in the mountainous highlands of West Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea (PNG). The encounter between the two occurred within the context of missionisation, in which the ABMS tried to negate the indigenous Oksapmin religious system and institute Christianity in its place. The missionaries believed that they had successfully achieved this goal. The old ritual houses collapsed, Christian churches were established in nearly every village, and most Oksapmin people were happily calling themselves Christians. But the Oksapmin already had their own religious beliefs and practices. This is important for two main reasons. One is that the process of missionisation, irrespective of how it was perceived by the ABMS, only partially abolished this existing system. Yes, the cult houses fell into disrepair and eventually vanished but a good deal of Oksapmin religion persisted. The second is that the Oksapmin necessarily understood Christianity in terms of the total suite of beliefs and practices that they already had. Why Christianity was accepted, what parts of it were incorporated, which ideas and actions were valued and which were ignored, and, most importantly, the form of its relationship with those extant dimensions of the indigenous religion, were all decisions negotiated by the Oksapmin with reference to their existing cultural frameworks. These, then, are the main questions to which this research is addressed. How and why did the Oksapmin incorporate Christianity? Further, how did they manage its encounter with their existing cosmology and rituals? These kinds of analytic concerns are, of course, well known to anthropologists of religion, particularly those looking at the localisation of Christianity across the Pacific and in PNG more specifically. Indeed, the negotiation of the tensions and oppositions, as well as the synergies and convergences, between Christian and indigenous models of religious thought and action has emerged as the defining problematic of this area of enquiry. Efforts by anthropologists to understand and appreciate how indigenous people living throughout the Pacific have negotiated this cultural encounter have produced some highly valuable and interesting scholarship. Scott (2005) has recently explored how the Arosi of Solomon Islands have dealt with what he calls a ‘fundamental contradiction’ 1 between Christian and indigenous ontologies (2005:107). Similarly, Taylor (2010) employs the metaphor of religious ‘crossing’ to conceptualise the dynamic relationship between Anglican Christianity and the cosmology of Sia Raga people in Vanuatu. Joel Robbins, too, in his much lauded monograph Becoming Sinners (2004:320) takes as his main object of study the ‘highly fraught moral conflicts between old and new traditions’ among the Urapmin of PNG, something that I will discuss in greater detail below. In essence, these studies and many more that address the topic of indigenous Pacific Christianity all ultimately revolve around the issue of how local people use the cultural resources at their disposal to negotiate the encounter of two different ways of establishing meaning and truth. This thesis adds to those existing studies both by addressing that issue from another ethnographic setting and by trying to develop a new way of thinking about it. It is my contention that the Oksapmin have handled the encounter of the indigenous and Christian worlds through a process of what I call fusion. I take fusion to mean the ongoing process whereby two initially separate entities are brought together and exchange substance in the creation of a new singular entity. In this thesis I show how through various creative procedures the Oksapmin merge Christianity and the surviving aspects of their indigenous religion.
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