WILDLIFE IS OUR GOLD: POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF THE TORASSI RIVER BORDERLAND, SOUTHWEST PAPUA NEW GUINEA

This thesis is a critical ethnographic account of the Wartha people, a small group of hunter-horticulturalists living on the Torassi or Bensbach River, in the southwest corner of the Western Province of Papua New Guinea (PNG). This area is adjacent to the international border between PNG and Indonesias Papua Province (West Papua). Since 1895, the mouth of the Torassi has anchored the southern border between New Guineas colonial territories and their successor states. The Wartha experience of colonial and postcolonial developments has been shaped by their borderland status. Up until the 1960s, the Wartha had sporadic contact with outsiders and virtually no involvement in the cash economy. Subsequent state and capitalist encroachment has often attempted to manage or exploit the areas abundant wildlife, which Wartha have described as our gold. These engagements have led to social disruption, including conflicts over lands and resources, and the erosion of their moral economy. A political ecology perspective is employed to analyse the Wartha relationship with their dynamic, biodiversity-rich savanna environment, and their interaction with wider political and socio-economic systems on a remote, underdeveloped borderland. Past consideration of conservation and development in the area has focused on problems of distance, environment, economic resources, infrastructure and services. I argue that a detailed understanding of core aspects of Wartha societykinship and exchange relations, political leadership, and associated cultural orientations elucidates the nature of articulation with outside others. Contestation over resources, and landscape change, must also be understood with reference to the transboundary region in which these occur, a zone of engagement between two contiguous borderlands, enmeshed within wider polities and biophysical processes. The Wartha live on the periphery of the PNG state, and have limited involvement with wider markets. Nonetheless, articulation with capitalism on an Asia-Pacific borderland has resulted in deleterious social and environmental outcomes; developments that can be explained using a political ecology approach. In so doing, this thesis presents new insights on the Melanesian experience of modernity, and makes an anthropological contribution to the growing literature on border studies

Manuscript XXXII The Final Fate of the La Perouse Expedition? The 1818 Account of Shaik Jumaul, A Lascar Castaway in Torres Strait

The final fate of the La Pérouse expedition is a mystery. In 1788 the frigates L’Astrolabe and La Boussole were wrecked on Vanikoro in the Solomon Islands. According to Vanikoro oral history, the survivors then left, approximately six months later, in a boat which they had built. They were never seen again. This paper reports the rediscovery of an 1818 Indian newspaper article, detailing the rescue in Torres Strait of a lascar named Shaik Jumaul, a castaway for four years on Murray Island (Mer). While on Mer he saw weapons and instruments that seemed not of English manufacture. The Murray Islanders informed him that these came from the crew of a vessel wrecked nearby some three decades earlier. No European ship is known to have been lost in Torres Strait in that period. Shaik Jumaul’s account points to the possibility that the La Pérouse expedition ended finally in northern Australia

Mound-and-ditch taro gardens of the Bensbach or Torassi River area, southwest Papua New Guinea

Mound-and-ditch agricultural systems are a significant component of the archaeological record in central-southern New Guinea and the Torres Strait Islands, but few detailed accounts of them exist. This paper examines the construction, use and abandonment of this garden type in the Bensbach or Torassi River area, in the extreme southwest corner of Papua New Guinea, based largely on ethnohistorical research. It is argued that complex vegetational and hydrological changes were primarily responsible for the decision to abandon this form of agriculture, with demographic and technological shifts likely contributing factors

Two nineteenth century copper ingots from waters off Mabuyag, Torres Strait

In February 2006 two copper ingots were recovered from shallow waters near Mabuyag (Mabuiag Island) in Torres Strait and deposited in the Queensland Museum’s Townsville branch, the Museum of Tropical Queensland. Elemental analysis and archival research strongly suggests that the ingots originate from the jettisoned cargo of the ‘country vessel’ Hercules, which ran aground on or in the vicinity of the Orman Reefs in June 1822 en route to Calcutta from Chile, with a load of copper ingots. Many of the ingots were subsequently recovered by Goemulgal in 1887 and their sale funded the erection of the first modern church building on Mabuyag

Goemulgaw Lagal: Cultural and Natural Histories of the Island of Mabuyag, Torres Strait

Goemulgaw Lagal is an ambitious publishing project that brings together an new range of research and scholarship on the natural and cultural histories of Mabuyag in Torres Strait. For over 130 years, beginning in the 1880s, the Goemulgal (people of Mabuyag) have hosted and collaborated with outside researchers. The two Goemulgaw Lagal volumes shed rare and unprecedented light on historical records and museum collections (objects and images) spanning the past 160 years, and present the results of recent academic and management-focused research on Mabuyag from the past 40 years. The volumes are a major reference on the history and culture of Mabuyag for current and future generations of Goemulgal

Introduction: Goemulgaw lagal

Goemulgaw Lagal is an ambitious publishing project that brings together an new range of research and scholarship on the natural and cultural histories of Mabuyag in Torres Strait. For over 130 years, beginning in the 1880s, the Goemulgal (people of Mabuyag) have hosted and collaborated with outside researchers. The two Goemulgaw Lagal volumes shed rare and unprecedented light on historical records and museum collections (objects and images) spanning the past 160 years, and present the results of recent academic and management-focused research on Mabuyag from the past 40 years. The volumes are a major reference on the history and culture of Mabuyag for current and future generations of Goemulgal

The terrestrial vertebrate fauna of Mabuyag (Mabuiag Island) and adjacent islands, far north Queensland, Australia

Until recently, relatively little was known about the vertebrate fauna of Mabuyag and surrounding islands. This paper presents the results of terrestrial vertebrate surveys undertaken in 2008-2009, and a review of previous literature and museum records, which have added considerably to our knowledge for the area. Ethnotaxonomy, the role of terrestrial vertebrates in the traditional diet, and the importance of birds, mammals and reptiles in Goemulgaw culture are also discussed briefly. The terrestrial vertebrate fauna as presently known comprises 106 species: three frogs; 18 reptiles; 77 birds; and eight mammals