Culture
The Koiari
There are not many places left on earth where you can visit populations living as they have for thousands of years. Australians are lucky enough to have Papua New Guinea, which still has many areas where the indigenous population practice many of their traditional ways.
The Kokoda Trail runs between the two provinces and the indigenous carriers you walk with on the Trail today are very much similar to their grandfathers.
During the war, the Papua New Guinea carriers were drawn mostly from the Koiari people, of the Central Province and the Orokaiva people, of the Oro Province, in the old territory of Papua, which had been under Australian administration since 1902.
The Australian Government anthropologist F.E.Williams described the ways of the bush Koirari people in a survey he published in 1930. For those who walk the Trail, his descriptions of village life are very familiar, though some of his judgements at the time grate on today’s international tourists.
“(The Koiari) population is scanty – a mere fraction of what the land might support – and the standard of culture is comparatively low and poor. The small villages are situated on minor hill tops or spurs.
“Seven or eight houses (sometimes fewer), built on the edge of the slope so that their back piles must be much longer than their front ones, face inward and surround a clean patch of red clay.
“The centre may be occupied by a varo, or what remains of it, ie a degenerate form of the coastal dobu. Further in the mountains this gives place to a naga, the high platform on which food has been stacked and pigs slaughtered for a bygone feast. On the hill sides, sometimes at a surprisingly great distance, may be seen the gardens, principally of yams, which form the staple diet.
“Game is plentiful enough, especially in the grasslands but the Koiari are very definitely gardeners and quite dependent on the soil.
“Being a scanty population in a comparatively fertile forest country, the continually clear and burn off fresh patches of bush and abandon them after cultivation.
Williams discovered the Papuans to be hardworkers who rose with the sun and had a scanty breakfast of sago or taro leftover from the night before, or missed the first meal completely.
The men and some of the women and children spend the morning tending the gardens before the strong heat of the day. Other women stay home to make baskets and other household items.
It is nearly impossible to walk the Kokoda Trail today without seeing the following scene, described by Williams nearly 80 years ago.
“The housewife has probably pulled some taro and gathered some edible leaves with which it is to be seasoned and now when the morning’s work is over she will stow these in her string bag, which has incredible powers of distension, squat beside it to arrange upon the brown of her head the band which serves as a handle and so rise to her feet to plot contentedly home. The baby hangs, still sound asleep, in a second bag upon the woman’s stooping back, and her husband, shouldering the spear and the digging-stick, leads the way. ”
Though the Seventh Day Adventist missionaries established the religion along the Trail as early as 1908, Christianity has been incorporated into traditional Papuan practices and beliefs.
For example, Papuan diet was mostly vegetarian, occasionally supplemented by a wild pig, cuscus or wallaby. Today most carriers will say they are vegetarian in line with Adventist practice, but still supplement their diet with a little meat.
There are not many places left on earth where you can visit populations living as they have for thousands of years. Australians are lucky enough to have Papua New Guinea, which still has many areas where the indigenous population practice many of their traditional ways.
The Kokoda Trail runs between the two provinces and the indigenous carriers you walk with on the Trail today are very much similar to their grandfathers.
During the war, the Papua New Guinea carriers were drawn mostly from the Koiari people, of the Central Province and the Orokaiva people, of the Oro Province, in the old territory of Papua, which had been under Australian administration since 1902.
The Australian Government anthropologist F.E.Williams described the ways of the bush Koirari people in a survey he published in 1930. For those who walk the Trail, his descriptions of village life are very familiar, though some of his judgements at the time grate on today’s international tourists.
“(The Koiari) population is scanty – a mere fraction of what the land might support – and the standard of culture is comparatively low and poor. The small villages are situated on minor hill tops or spurs.
“Seven or eight houses (sometimes fewer), built on the edge of the slope so that their back piles must be much longer than their front ones, face inward and surround a clean patch of red clay.
“The centre may be occupied by a varo, or what remains of it, ie a degenerate form of the coastal dobu. Further in the mountains this gives place to a naga, the high platform on which food has been stacked and pigs slaughtered for a bygone feast. On the hill sides, sometimes at a surprisingly great distance, may be seen the gardens, principally of yams, which form the staple diet.
“Game is plentiful enough, especially in the grasslands but the Koiari are very definitely gardeners and quite dependent on the soil.
“Being a scanty population in a comparatively fertile forest country, the continually clear and burn off fresh patches of bush and abandon them after cultivation.
Williams discovered the Papuans to be hardworkers who rose with the sun and had a scanty breakfast of sago or taro leftover from the night before, or missed the first meal completely.
The men and some of the women and children spend the morning tending the gardens before the strong heat of the day. Other women stay home to make baskets and other household items.
It is nearly impossible to walk the Kokoda Trail today without seeing the following scene, described by Williams nearly 80 years ago.
“The housewife has probably pulled some taro and gathered some edible leaves with which it is to be seasoned and now when the morning’s work is over she will stow these in her string bag, which has incredible powers of distension, squat beside it to arrange upon the brown of her head the band which serves as a handle and so rise to her feet to plot contentedly home. The baby hangs, still sound asleep, in a second bag upon the woman’s stooping back, and her husband, shouldering the spear and the digging-stick, leads the way. ”
Though the Seventh Day Adventist missionaries established the religion along the Trail as early as 1908, Christianity has been incorporated into traditional Papuan practices and beliefs.
For example, Papuan diet was mostly vegetarian, occasionally supplemented by a wild pig, cuscus or wallaby. Today most carriers will say they are vegetarian in line with Adventist practice, but still supplement their diet with a little meat.