NAVIGATING THE FUTURE An Ethnography of Change in Papua New Guinea NAVIGATING THE FUTURE An Ethnography of Change in Papua New Guinea MONICA MINNEGAL AND PETER D. DWYER ASIA-PACIFIC ENVIRONMENT MONOGRAPH 11 Published by ANU Press The Australian National University Acton ACT 2601, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at press.anu.edu.au National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Creator: Minnegal, Monica, author. Title: Navigating the future : an ethnography of change in Papua New Guinea / Monica Minnegal ; Peter D. Dwyer. ISBN: 9781760461232 (paperback) 9781760461249 (ebook) Series: Asia-pacific environment monographs ; 11 Subjects: Liquefied natural gas industry--Social aspects--Papua New Guinea. Ethnology--Papua New Guinea. Kubo (Papua New Guinean people)--Economic conditions. Kubo (Papua New Guinean people)--Social conditions. Papuans--Papua New Guinea--Attitudes. Other Creators/Contributors: Dwyer, Peter D., 1937- author. 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 Press. Cover photograph: ‘Entrance to Owabi Corner’ by Peter D. Dwyer, Suabi, 2014. This edition © 2017 ANU Press Contents Acknowledgements ..................................................vii Caveats .............................................................ix Tables ..............................................................xiii Figures .............................................................xv 1. Introduction ....................................................1 2. Gwaimasi: 1986–99 ...........................................19 3. Timelines .....................................................53 4. Suabi: 2011–14 ...............................................89 5. Navigating the Future .........................................141 6. Navigating the Past ...........................................175 7. The Giving Environment .......................................207 8. The Things of the World .......................................241 References ........................................................275 Acknowledgements In the years 1986 to 2014 we lived and worked with many Kubo, Febi, Konai and Bedamuni people. They cared for us and taught us. We slept in their houses in villages and forests, and walked with them through the back swamps, the foothills and the mountains. We laughed with them on many occasions and mourned with them on others. And of course, for this is Papua New Guinea, we ate with them, sharing their food and sharing ours. It has been a privilege and we thank them all. At different times and different places we received assistance and advice from many people. Special thanks to Robin Barclay, Florence Brunois, Tom Covington, Toksie Damaga, Hugh Davies, Henry Daso, Makeya Diwo, Robyn Dwyer, Tom Ernst, Martinus Fiagone, Philip Fitzpatrick, Lucas Foifoin, Anaïs Gėrard, Laurence Goldman, Robin Hide, Garrick Hitchcock, Bob Hoad, Jerry Jacka, Siosi Kobi, Wami Kobi, Raka Kosabo, Sandrine Lefort, Paul Luoma, Evelyn Makeya, Michael Main, Craig McConaghy, Laurie Meintjes, Mike Milne, Kodu Moboi, Francis Oofoi, Willie Samobia, Jim Savage, Kerry Snelgrove, Seda Sosoaho, Romex Sowaimo, Donsi Suwo, Gosia Suwo, Henick Taprin, Jelin Tiwi, Jackson Tosiga, Kosabo Wabi, Jack Wagamoi, Chris Warrillow, Rick Wilkinson, Stanley Umosi, Willie Yofu and Colin Young. Thanks as well to expat and national staff at the Suabi and Juha camps associated with oil and gas exploration ventures during the years 2012 to 2014, the Papua New Guinea National Research Institute for affiliation during our more recent periods of research, Georgia Kaipu for her generous help in facilitating approval of research visas, Colin Filer and two anonymous reviewers vii Navigating the Future for comments on the manuscript, Beth Battrick for copy editing, the University of Melbourne for granting periods of leave, and the Australian Research Council for the award of a Discovery Grant [DP120102162]. June 2017 viii Caveats Some preliminary caveats are needed. These concern spelling, names and pseudonyms, quotations and some simplifying conventions that we have adopted. We have striven for consistency, rather than linguistic accuracy, in spelling Kubo and Febi words. We lack the knowledge to achieve the latter, Kubo and Febi people are themselves inconsistent and conventions for transcribing these languages are still evolving. For example, a 1999 translation of The Gospel of Mark is written in ‘the Koobo (Kubo) language’. Nor have we indicated nasalisation with either an ‘n’ or an ‘m’—Febi, for example, is often written as Fembi—because, again, we lack the language skills to be consistent. And, further, although the area is relatively small and the people number less than 1,500, there are differences in pronunciation between places where population is concentrated. For example, in the west of Kubo territory we heard the local name for Cecilia River as Boiye Hoi but in the east as Baiya Hoi. Most of the people’s names that appear in this book, including those of all exploration company field employees, are pseudonyms. Place names and ‘clan’ names are not pseudonyms. Both, however, need further comment. To comply with government expectations, people have increasingly adopted the practice of carrying a place name with them when they relocate. For example, in 1986–87 we lived at a small hamlet that all residents and immediate neighbours knew as Gwaimasi. It was named for the small waterfall (si) on the stream Gwai. The ‘official’ name—it is recorded on the 1979 topographical map (PNG 1:100,000 Topographic Survey, Sheet 7386 [edition 1] Series T601)—is Komagato. By 1999, most ix Navigating the Future residents of Gwaimasi had relocated to Mome Hafi and, more recently, some have relocated to Dege Hafi—respectively, the junction (hafi) of the stream Mome with the stream Dege and the junction of the latter with the Strickland River—or further afield. However, all residents of these communities are said to be, and to outsiders say they are, residents of Komagato and, in this book, when we have used that name we do so in the same general sense. The name Suabi is itself problematic. Officially, the name is often spelled as Soabi and on documents submitted to government authorities or granting bodies that is the spelling usually adopted by local people. The 1979 topographical map (Sheet 7385) records Soabi 1 and Soabi 2—12 km apart and so named, presumably, because people from Soabi 1 had relocated to a new site at Soabi 2—but the present day Suabi (Soabi) is at a third location. ‘Clan’ names are spelled in multiple ways by Kubo and Febi people. We have standardised spelling of these names but do not claim that our rendering is necessarily more appropriate than some other. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Kubo word oobi—a mound, or gathering, of ‘men’ (here, meaning ‘people’)—connoted one or more patrifilial lineages whose members assumed, though seldom specified, genealogical connection to a common ancestor. In some cases the link to a common ancestor was supported by myth. In our earlier writing, while acknowledging instances where the actual did not match the ideal, we glossed oobi [obi] as ‘clan’ (Minnegal and Dwyer 2011a: 327, n. 1, n. 2). In those years people did not use the word ‘clan’. Now, however, it is the other way round. ‘Clan’ is used routinely with the connotation of a ‘bounded’ assemblage of people and oobi is seldom used. Oobi is more likely to be used in circumstances that are divorced from conforming to the imagined expectations of government or resource extraction companies. In the following chapters we have included many quotations from documents written by government officials and local people. English is not the first language of these people and for some it is their third or fourth language. We have been careful in transcribing the quoted words but have refrained from writing sic (representing sic erat scriptum, ‘thus was it written’) where spelling or grammar do not conform to expectations of writing in English. In one quotation we have deleted some misplaced apostrophes. Chapters, other than 1 and 3, open with a framing vignette x Caveats that concerns a discrete event. These are based on notes written in the field at the times those events occurred, but are not literal transcriptions from field notes. We use ‘West’ and ‘Western’ as glosses for global perspectives that, nowadays, are likely to be grounded in economic rationalism and individualism, and referred to as ‘neoliberalism’. We use ‘modernity’ to refer to processes associated with ‘neoliberalism’, and ‘modern’ to refer to ‘structures’ and ‘material goods’ that are the concomitants of those processes. Finally, Papua New Guinea currency (PGK) is based on kina and toea as analogues of, respectively, dollars and cents. In mid-1986 the exchange rate was approximately PGK1.00 for AUD1.67. Thereafter, it fell progressively to approximately PGK1.00 for AUD0.625 in late 1998 and AUD0.488 in late 2011. While it fluctuated through the next few years it remained close to 2:1 throughout this period. xi Tables Table 4.1: Population census of Suabi (March–April 2014) ........91 Table 4.2: Money entering the Suabi community between 19 December 2013 and 5 May 2014 ....................126 Table 5.1: Proposed distribution of benefits from Juha gas wells