Melpa

ETHNONYMS: Hageners, Mbowamb, Medlpa

Orientation

Identification. The Melpa people live in the Western Highlands Province of the independent state of Papua New Guinea. They are a homogeneous ethnolinguistic group, bounded on the west by the Enga and on the east by the Wahgi peoples.

Location. The Melpa live in a location which is approximately between 144° to 145° E and 5° to 6° S. Geographically, their area consists of montane valleys and mountain slopes, varying between 400 and 2,100 meters above sea level. The bulk of the population lives at altitudes between 1,500 and 1,800 meters above sea level. The climate is marked by a relatively wet period from October to March and dry from April to September. Temperatures vary from seasonal lows of 4° C or less to highs of 27° C or more. Annual rainfall is in excess of 250 centimeters. In the dry season there may be periods of drought and nocturnal frost. Otherwise, the climate is benign and the planting of crops continues year-round.

Demography. The 60,000 or more Melpa speakers occupy the areas south and north of the modern township of Mount Hagen. Population density varies with ecology, but exceeds 134 persons per square kilometer in parts of the Wahgi Valley and Ogelbeng Plain just outside of the town, tapering to fewer than 19 persons per square kilometer in the northern parts known indigenously as "Kopon" (Dei Council). Annual growth of the population since colonial times is calculated at slightly over 2 percent per annum.

Linguistic Affiliation. The Melpa language is spoken by more than 60,000 persons. It belongs to the East New Guinea Highlands Stock of Non-Austronesian languages and to the Central Family within that stock. The nearest related languages are spoken in the Nebilyer Valley, Tambul, and Ialibu south of the Melpa area. To the east the Wahgi and Chimbu languages and to the north the Maring, Narak, and Kandawo languages also belong to the same family.

History and Cultural Relations

Intensive horticulture has been practiced in the area for some 9,000 years, starting in fertile drained swamps and moving later to hillsides when sweet potatoes became available to replace taro as the staple crop, an event estimated to have occurred within the last few hundred years. Trading networks brought shell valuables, plumes for decoration, salt, and stone axe blades from distant parts. Europeans discovered the area in 1933 as part of an exploratory drive in search of gold in the highlands creeks. The brothers Michael, James, and Danny Leahy and the Australian Patrol Officer James L. Taylor were prominent in the process of discovery and initial pacification. Mount Hagen was established as a center for mission activities, trade, and administration. Until the 1950s, major contact with the outside world was by air. Nowadays the Highlands Highway to the coastal port of Lae on the north coast of Papua New Guinea is the chief channel for goods to enter and leave. Until 1975, Papua New Guinea was under Australian colonial control, and Western Highlands was a district. At independence, the districts became Provinces and from the late 1970s these gained their own provin cial assemblies and governments in addition to the National Parliament.

Settlements

The indigenous form of settlement is the hamlet or extended family homestead situated close to gardening areas within a clan territory. Pathways lead from one settlement to another. Some settlements have a ceremonial ground associated with them. This is particularly likely to be so if one of the residents is a political leader (a big-man). There are two kinds of houses: men's houses, usually round and occupied by men and boys from the time they are 8 or 9 years old; and women's houses, long and sometimes with a special compartment for pig stalls, in which the women and their unmarried daughters live. Houses are made from posts, bark, woven cane, and thatching grass. Missions introduced "line villages" with Family houses instead of separate men's and women's houses. These innovations have had variable success. Houses Nowadays tend to be built near roads, introduced since colonial times.

Economy

Subsistence and Commercial Activities. Traditional Subsistence rests on the cultivation of sweet potatoes, in mounds or squares surrounded by drainage trenches. In fallow areas among trees the people also make vegetable gardens for cucumbers, beans, maize (introduced), sugarcane, and bananas (both for cooking and for eating ripe). These gardens are nowadays supplemented or even replaced by areas planted with coffee from which cash is earned. Vegetables are also taken for sale in Mount Hagen market. Trade stores dot the countryside, in which introduced clothing, foodstuffs, and household utensils can be bought.

Industrial Arts. In precolonial times, a number of stone-axe quarries were operated, and the rough-cut or polished stones were exported as well as being used locally. Europeans brought steel tools that replaced those of stone. Prehistoric mortars and pestles are found archaeologically, but these items were used by the Melpa as cult objects rather than tools.

Trade. Over time, exchange networks extended beyond the Melpa area in all directions, but particularly westward with Enga speakers, with whom stone axe blades were Exchanged for salt packs. Major religious cults also diffused into the area from the south and southwest via Tambul. The lowlying northern areas were sources of fruit, pandanus, and bird plumes. The Melpa moka ceremonial exchange chains linked together many groups in the area itself in a complex set of obligations to make prestations of pigs and shells between Exchange partners from different groups. Trade nowadays is in coffee, exported to the world market.

Division of Labor. The indigenous division of labor is by sex. Men create garden areas, fence them, and plant luxury crops. Women plant greens, the staple sweet potatoes, and taro. They harvest gardens and keep them free of weeds, and they are also largely responsible for feeding the pig herds that are essential to the prestige economy.

Land Tenure. Land is generally inherited by sons from their fathers as they grow up and marry. Daughters can be allocated portions to use even after marriage, but marriage is usually virilocal and a wife expects to garden mostly on her husband's land within his clan area.

Kinship

Kin Groups and Descent. Descent groups are normatively patrilineal, but there is a counterbalancing stress on matrilateral relationships and on affinal alliances expressed through exchange and in shifts of residence to the maternal group in case of in-group conflict or economic advantage. Exogamous clans are clustered into tribes and divided into subclans and smaller units that act as groups in exchange activities.

Kinship Terminology. Kinship terminology follows the Iroquois system with bifurcate-merging terms for collaterale. Most kin terms are self-reciprocals in address but not in reference.

Marriage and Family

Marriage. Marriage takes place through an exchange of payments of a bride-wealth type. Payments are high and require the cooperation of kin groups. The items are pigs, shells (traditionally), and cash (nowadays). Reverse prestations are made from the bride's side, including an endowment of breeding pigs over which she has significant control. Residence is normatively patrivirilocal. Divorce does occur and is marked by the return of a part of the bride-wealth, especially if the woman is judged at fault or has produced no children for the husband's clan.

Domestic Unit. A newly married couple may either build a fresh women's house for the bride or may use space in an existing women's house. Over time they will build houses for themselves, close to the man's settlement.

Inheritance. Land rights are the most important for inheritance, and land is parceled out according to the needs of children at their marriages. Most land goes to sons. Married daughters may be given cultivation rights at their natal place also.

Socialization. A postpartum taboo is observed for two to three years, after which children are weaned. Training is not severe, and children are treated with tolerance. There is no formal group-based initiation ritual for either boys or girls, but boys shift to the men's house well before puberty. Puberty for boys is marked by the donning of a wig made from human hair. Traditionally, both sexes learn by the "look and learn" method. Nowadays, most children go at least to primary school.

Sociopolitical Organization

Social Organization. Clans are primarily linked by Marriages and the exchange ties that flow from them. Clans of a tribe generally had obligations to give support in serious warfare, but internally they might also fight each other. Tribal warfare has returned in the 1970s and 1980s with the partial breakdown of government control.

Political Organization. The indigenous leader is the bigman (wö nuim ) who does not formally succeed to an office but with the aid of his kin establishes a dominant place in the networks of moka exchange. In precolonial times, big-men held a greater monopoly over shell wealth, which disappeared after Europeans brought in thousands of these previously scarce items. Big-men must also be good speakers and negotiators. Nowadays, the big-man system operates along with the introduced roles of councillors, provincial members, and members of the National Parliament, all of whom are elected every four or five years.

Social Control. Force played a major role in relations Between groups in the past, modified by the negotiating skills of big-men. Internally, conflicts were settled by moots. Nowadays, these are replaced by official Village Courts and by a range of other introduced courts.

Conflict. Conflict is endemic in Melpa society, counter-balanced by strong norms of friendship between kin and Exchange partners. The resurgence of political conflict between groups is a serious contemporary problem. It is fueled both by economic change and by continuity of a revenge mentality.

Religion and Expressive Culture

Religious Beliefs. Everyday religion in the past was centered on the family, lineage, and clan ghosts, to whom pork sacrifices were made in cases of sickness and at times of Political danger (e.g., prior to warfare). In addition, circulating cults moved through the area, exported from group to group. Nowadays, many Melpa are members of various Christian churches in the area.

Religious Practitioners. Religious experts (mön wö ) were significant in both local and circulating cults. They were both curers and intercessors between people and spirits. Some learned from their fathers, others by apprenticeship to existing experts. Women could become mediums possessed by spirits and able to reveal secrets.

Ceremonies. The climactic ceremonies of the circulating cults were impressive public affairs, in which the male participants danced out from the cult enclosure and distributed pork to hundreds of guests.

Arts. Self-decoration was, and is, an art and a major preOccupation of the people at festival times, both for cults and for moka exchanges. Other arts include the composition and performance of courting songs, laments, and songs for Ceremonies, the playing of flutes and Jew's harps, and the chanting of epics.

Medicine. The mön wö knew ranges of spells to cure Sickness. Adults in general were acquainted with a small number of herbal remedies. Often sickness was attributed to moral causes. Wrongdoing within the group was thought to bring an unfavorable reaction both from ghosts and from the group "mi," a sacred object or creature associated with the group's origins. For these spirits indigenous sacrifices had to be made. Nowadays, people make prayers in the Christian churches (Catholic, Lutheran, Pentecostal, Seventh-Day Adventist) for sickness, and they visit hospitals and aid posts for pragmatic treatment. Mön wö still practice their art, however.

Death and Afterlife. Death is marked by elaborate mourning and later by a funeral feast with special emphasis on gifts to maternal kin. Formerly, the corpse was exposed and after a while its bones were removed for use in shrines; nowadays, bodies are buried. Traditionally the dead are thought to travel down watercourses to a place in the lowlying northern Jimi Valley called "Mötamb Lip Pana." Spirits of the dead are believed to come back in dreams, however, and to continually influence the living with their benevolent or malevolent presence. Small skull houses were constructed in the past for personal sacrifices. Nowadays, many people are baptized and few maintain skull houses, but belief in the activities of spirits continues to influence people's interpretations of events, and indigenous notions underlie many Christian practices.

See alsoChimbu, Mae Enga, Maring

Bibliography

Brandewie, Ernest (1891). Contrast and Context in New Guinea Culture. St. Augustin, Germany: Anthropos Institute.

Strathern, A. J. (1971). The Rope of Moka: Big-Men and Ceremonial Exchange in Mount Hagen, New Guinea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Strathern, A. J. (1972). One Father, One Blood: Descent and Group Structure among the Melpa People. Canberra: Australian National University Press.

Strathern, A. M. (1972). Women in Between: Female Roles in a Male World. London: Seminar Press.

Strauss, H., and H. Tischner (1962). Die Mi-Kultur der Hagenberg-Stämme. Hamburg: Cram, de Gruyter & CO.

Vicedom, G. F., and H. Tischner (1943-1948). Die Mbowamb. 3 vols. Hamburg: Friederichsen, de Gruyter & Co.

ANDREW STRATHERN

Melpa

PRONUNCIATION: MEL-pah
ALTERNATE NAMES: Medlpa; Hageners
LOCATION: Papua New Guinea
POPULATION: 130,000
LANGUAGE: Melpa; Tok Pisin
RELIGION: Christianity; native Melpa religion

INTRODUCTION

The Melpa (also spelled Medlpa) are some of the first Papuans that tourists and visitors to the island of New Guinea see when they step off the plane in Mount Hagen. "Hageners," as the Melpa are often called, frequent the airport at Mount Hagen offering modern "stone axes," colorful string bags, and other artifacts for sale. Some of them also provide taxi and bus service to the local hotels and guesthouses. Historically, the Melpa were the first highlands group to be encountered by Europeans in 1933. Up until this time, the highlands of New Guinea had been unknown to the outside world, and, conversely, the highlanders had never before seen people who lived beyond their mountain valleys and plains. The first contact between these two groups was recorded on film and provides an invaluable and extremely interesting record of this monumental time of discovery for both groups.

LOCATION AND HOMELAND

The Melpa live in the Western Highlands Province of the independent Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea. They are highlands-dwelling people with most of the area they inhabit ranging between 1,200 and 2,000 m (4,000-6,500 ft) above sea level. The Melpa occupy the areas north and south of the important town of Mount Hagen. There are about 130,000 Melpa, with the greatest area of population density just outside Mount Hagen in the Wahgi Valley and nearby Ogelbeng Plain. The climate in the area is relatively mild, especially by tropical standards. The temperature rarely exceeds 30°c (86°f) in the summer months and rarely falls below freezing in winter. Rainfall is heaviest between October and March, with a dry period from April until September. Mosquitoes are nonexistent here and malaria is, therefore, not a problem.

LANGUAGE

The Melpa speak a Papuan language belonging to the East New Guinea Highlands stock. Melpa is closely related to the well-known Chimbu language spoken by the people of the same name located to the east of the Melpa region. Melpa has over 130,000 speakers and a portion of that population speaks Tok Pisin as a second language. Tok Pisin is one of the official languages of Papua New Guinea. Melpa is not under threat from Tok Pisin, as some other languages in the country are. It is still the case that most Melpa children grow up speaking Melpa as their first language.

FOLKLORE

Myths relating the origins of the clans were and still are told within Melpa society. Sacred objects or living beings associated with these myths and clans are called mi. Extended oratory and epic stories are performed to recount the deeds of clan heroes and ancestors. "Female Spirit"-called Amb Kor in Melpa-stories are important and widespread in Melpa oral literature.

RELIGION

Ghosts are the focal point of non-Christian religious practice among the Melpa. Pork sacrifices are made to placate the ghosts of dead family, lineage, and clan members on the occur-rence of illness within the village or prior to the undertaking of any dangerous event. The Melpa have religious experts who are responsible for curing the sick and act as intermediaries between the human world and the spirit world. Women are not allowed to be curers but can be possessed by spirits and can also foretell the future. Christianity has existed in the Melpa region ever since the founding of Mount Hagen as an administrative, trade, and missionary center after the first Leahy expedition in 1933. A number of the Melpa are now practicing Christians and attend the local churches on a regular basis.

MAJOR HOLIDAYS

The Mount Hagen Show is an important local holiday for Hageners. At the show groups from all over the highlands region attend to perform traditional songs, music, and dance adorned in ceremonial attire. Body decoration reaches it pinnacle for this event. The Mount Hagen Show takes place every two years. National holidays such as Independence Day are recognized by the Melpa who live and work in Mount Hagen. More rural Melpa do not recognize these events since they do not directly affect their daily lives.

The most important and well known ceremonial event in traditional Melpa society was the moka . The moka was an exchange process in which an individual male gave an initiatory gift to another male, who in turn gave a gift back to that individual plus something more. Exchange partnerships developed in this way continued through the adult lives of men. Before the introduction of European goods into the highlands, the major items of exchange in the moka were pigs, both living and cooked, and pearl shell necklaces. In the post-colonial period, cash, machetes, and even four-wheel drive vehicles were exchanged in increasingly competitive moka ceremonies. The goal of the exchange was to gain status and prestige in the eyes of the larger society by giving more than one received. Men who are accomplished at achieving this goal are known as "bigmen" in the community and viewed as leaders, and although the traditional moka has all but disappeared from Melpa society, "big-manship" is still important Within the moka system, true "big-men" were able to arrange large-scale, multiple moka exchanges involving many pairs of exchange partners. Anthropologists refer to this type of exchange as "redistribution." In redistributive exchange, the goal is not to accumulate goods or wealth for personal use, but instead to accumulate items to redistribute them within the community. Modern-day taxation is also classified as a type of redistribution.

RITES OF PASSAGE

In most societies in the world, a female's passage into adulthood is marked by the onset of menstruation. This event is usually recognized by the community through ceremony, seclusion, or a set of initiation/maturation rites. The Melpa people are different in that they did not socially recognize or celebrate a girl's first menstruation. Most other highland groups from Papua New Guinea have rites centered on a girl's first menstruation. The Melpa are like other groups in the area that do focus on the necessary segregation of males and females due to the fear of pollution of males by females, especially through menstrual blood.

In the past, the Melpa did have elaborate initiation rites for males, although through contact with the outside world these have been greatly modified and have all but disappeared.

INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS

In some parts of the highlands, hamlets are separated by valleys and mountain ridges. Especially in the more rural Melpa region, hamlets may be widely separated from each other. In these areas greetings are accomplished long distance via yodeling. Requests, directions, commands, and challenges are often yodeled back and forth by men across a ravine or a ridge, completely out of visual range of each other.

Inheritance is based on patrilineal principles: sons inherit from their fathers. The most important item for inheritance is land. A father's land is parceled out to his sons at the time of their marriage. His daughters may receive cultivation rights to a parcel of land after they are married.

LIVING CONDITIONS

There are two main types of traditional Melpa houses: men's and women's houses. Men's houses are round with conical roofs. This is where men and pre-teenage boys live once they have been separated from their mothers around the age of eight years old. Women and their unmarried daughters live in the rectangular-shaped women's house. There are pig stalls built inside the women's house to keep the pigs from wandering off at night or being stolen. A hamlet consists of at least a men's house and a women's house. Members of a clan resided in the same territory, which was near gardening areas and linked together by paths. Missionaries advocated the building of family homes among the Melpa where a husband, a wife, and their children would sleep together. Some Melpa have adopted this new form of residence while others have chosen not to. Roads often link hamlets together and further link these to the Highlands Highway, which bisects the Highlands Range.

FAMILY LIFE

Marriage involves the exchange of valuables by both families. The majority of the goods are given by the groom's family to the bride's family and constitute what anthropologists refer to as "bride wealth" or "bride price." Traditionally, the groom's family and kinfolk would provide a number of pigs and shells to the father of the bride in compensation for the loss of his daughter. Nowadays, cash payments are included in the calculation. The bride's family provides a number of breeding pigs that their daughter will have control over in her new family. The negotiation of a "bride price" is a significant part of the marriage transaction and can derail a potential marriage.

The Melpa trace their genealogies through the male line. Clans are created through common descent from a shared male ancestor. Individuals choose their spouses from clans outside their own. After marriage, the couple moves into the groom's father's hamlet. Later, they will build a new women's house for the bride near the groom's men's house. Divorce consists of repayment of part of the bride price, especially if the woman is seen to have been at fault.

CLOTHING

The Melpa that live or work in Mount Hagen wear Western-style clothing. Men usually wear shorts, a T-shirt, shoes if they own them, and a knitted cap, and carry a string bag. Women wear A-line dresses often made of a floral print fabric. They also carry string bags, but much larger than those of the men. Women also wear shoes if they own them, but one is much more likely to see a man with shoes than a woman. Concepts of owning a wardrobe of clothing do not exist for the vast majority of Melpa. In fact, most people own only one change of clothing. It is still possible to see Melpa dressed in traditional attire, including the traditional wig made from human hair that adult Melpa men wear on important occasions. In some cases, Melpa from rural hamlets will take a plane to another highland community traditionally dressed and carrying implements of traditional life, such as stone axes and digging sticks. The airport at Mount Hagen is truly a meeting place of the jet age and the Stone Age.

FOOD

Like other Highland cultures in Papua New Guinea, the Melpa traditional subsistence was based primarily on sweet potatoes and pork. Sweet potatoes are still an important staple, although Western-style foodstuffs have gained in importance due to their ready availability in trade stores and the central marketplace in Mt. Hagen. There is also a prestige associated with their consumption.

EDUCATION

Traditional education consisted of socializing young boys and girls to become competent members of adult Melpa society. Although this is still true today, public and parochial educational venues are also open to Hageners. In the highlands region, Western-style education has been integrated with traditional ways of life to create individuals who seem to exist in two very different worlds.

CULTURAL HERITAGE

Vocal music is especially important in Melpa society. Courtship songs are prevalent in many highland cultures in New Guinea. Men woo their mates by composing and performing songs that have double entendre lyrics. When men go to sing to women in other villages they paint and decorate themselves very elaborately.

Mt. Hagen hosts the annual Mt. Hagen Cultural Show, which has been in existence since 1961. The Mt. Hagen Cultural Show is a form of friendly competition in which performance groups from dozens and dozens of tribes from across the country perform traditional songs.

WORK

The traditional division of labor was between the sexes. Men are responsible for creating gardens and fencing them. The fences serve to keep out the pigs that graze and root in the area. Women tend the pigs, plant the staple crop of sweet potatoes and other foodstuffs such as greens and taro, and weed and harvest the garden plot. Beyond small-scale subsistence farming, coffee is the primary cash crop for Hageners.

The modern Melpa work in a variety of jobs in the town. Driving taxis and buses, porting baggage at the airport, and working in shops are only a few of the types of employment that the Hageners pursue.

Tourism is one of several areas of economic growth and development that the regional governments within the Melpa traditional homeland targeted after the 2000 national census.

SPORTS

As in other parts of Papua New Guinea, rugby is an important sport in the area around Mount Hagen. Mount Hagen is the venue for many rugby games involving Hageners and other Papuans from throughout the island.

ENTERTAINMENT AND RECREATION

Town-dwelling Melpa have access to electricity and many of them enjoy watching television. There are very few locally-produced television shows in the country and only one local television broadcast station, EMTV. Satellite television broadcasts a wide range of Australian, British, and American programs.

FOLK ART, CRAFTS, AND HOBBIES

Body decoration is the major art form in the Hagen region. The body is painted with paints produced from local dyes mixed with pig fat. Traditional materials such as feathers and shells are used to decorate elaborate headdresses. Relics of the modern world have become part of the traditional headdresses, including the labels of various products and the tops of cans. The American product Liquid Paper has also become a favorite substitute for pigmented white paint; the intensity of whiteness is cited as the reason for the switch. In the past, moka exchanges were important times for elaborate decoration to take place.

SOCIAL PROBLEMS

Revenge was the basis for many violent actions taken by the Melpa in the time before pacification. Revenge murders often pitted the male members of one clan against those of another. This mentality has not completely faded from Melpa culture. Hundreds of men dressed in full war regalia can occasionally be seen running along the Highlands Highway toward a neighboring village to exact revenge for a death or wrongdoing that took place in the past. Events like these alarm tourists and government officials and warnings are sometimes issued regarding travel in the region as a result.

Mortality rates are very high among the Melpa. The infant mortality rate is 57 deaths per 1,000; the child mortality rate is 15 deaths per 1,000; and the maternal mortality rate is 80 deaths per 1,000. The main causes of death among the Melpa are pneumonia, malaria, and typhoid. Life expectancy for the Melpa as derived from the 2000 national census are 53 years for women and 54 years for men.

GENDER ISSUES

Like many of the groups in Papua New Guinea, Hageners exhibit sexual opposition and separation. Differences between males and females are often exaggerated to the point of ambivalence, antagonism, mistrust, and even fear. Nevertheless, Melpa girls have considerable autonomy in choosing a spouse. Although a girl's family might want her to marry into a particular family, they know that forcing their daughter will only result in unhappiness for everyone. Women control the production in Melpa society, including the cultivation of gardens and the all-important pig husbandry that is the center of the Melpa exchange universe. Men must rely on their wives as producers and as such, women wield considerable political power in Melpa society.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Robbins, Joel and Wardlow, Holly, eds. The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia. Burlington: Ashgate, 2005.

Sillitoe, Paul. An Introduction to the Anthropology of Melanesia: Culture and Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Stewart, Pamela J. and Strathern, Andrew. Gender, Song, and Sensibility: Folktales and Folksongs in the Highlands of New Guinea. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2002.

Strathern, Andrew. The Rope of Moka. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971.

—by J. Williams

Melpa

PRONUNCIATION: MEL-pah

ALTERNATE NAMES: Medlpa; Hageners

LOCATION: Papua New Guinea

POPULATION: 60,000

LANGUAGE: Melpa; Tok Pisin

RELIGION: Christianity; native Melpa religion

1 • INTRODUCTION

The Melpa (also spelled Medlpa) are some of the first Papuans that tourists and visitors to the island of New Guinea see when they step off planes arriving in Mount Hagen. (The Melpa are often called "Hageners.") The Melpa frequent the airport, offering modern "stone axes," colorful string bags, and other artifacts for sale. Some of them also provide taxi and bus service to the local hotels and guest houses.

The Melpa are a highland group. Until 1933 (when Europeans arrived in the highlands) New Guinea had been unknown to the outside world. Conversely, the highlanders had never before seen people who lived beyond their mountain valleys and plains. The first contact between these two groups was recorded on film. It provides a fascinating record of this monumental time of discovery for both groups.

2 • LOCATION

The Melpa live in the Western Highlands Province of the independent Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea. They are highlands-dwelling people who occupy the areas north and south of the town of Mount Hagen. There are about 60,000 Melpa in total. The climate in the area is relatively mild, especially by tropical standards. The temperature rarely exceeds 86°f (36°c) in the summer months and rarely falls below freezing in winter. Rainfall is heaviest between October and March, with a dry period from April until September. Mosquitoes are nonexistent in this region of Papua New Guinea and therefore, malaria is not a problem.

3 • LANGUAGE

The Melpa speak a Papuan language belonging to the East New Guinea Highlands stock. Melpa has over 60,000 speakers, and a portion of that population speaks Tok Pisin (an English-based pidgin language) as a second language. Tok Pisin is one of the official languages of Papua New Guinea. Melpa is not under threat from Tok Pisin, as are some other languages in the country. Most Melpa children still grow up speaking Melpa as their first language.

4 • FOLKLORE

Myths relating the origins of the clans (group of people with common descent) were and still are told within Melpa society. Sacred objects or living beings associated with these myths and clans are called mi. Extended speeches and epic stories are performed to tell the deeds of clan heroes and ancestors.

5 • RELIGION

Ghosts of dead family and clan members are the focal point of non-Christian religious practice among the Melpa. Pig sacrifices are made to keep these ghosts happy. These sacrifices are made when illness occurs within the village or before any dangerous task begins. The Melpa have religious experts who are responsible for curing the sick and act as intermediaries (go-betweens) between the human world and the spirit world. Women are not allowed to be curers but can be possessed by spirits and can also foretell the future.

Christianity has existed in the Melpa region ever since the founding of Mount Hagen as an administrative, trade, and missionary center in the 1930s. A number of the Melpa are now practicing Christians and attend the local churches on a regular basis.

6 • MAJOR HOLIDAYS

The Mount Hagen Show is an important local holiday for Hageners. Groups from all over the highlands region attend to perform traditional songs, music, and dance wearing ceremonial clothing. Body decoration reaches it height for this event. National holidays such as Independence Day (September 16) are recognized by the Melpa who live and work in Mount Hagen, but not by rural Melpa.

The most important and well known ceremonial event in traditional Melpa society was an exchange process known as the moka. An individual male gave an gift to another male, who then gave a gift, plus something more, to that individual. Exchange partnerships would continue through the adult lives of men. Before the introduction of European goods into the highlands, the major items of exchange in the moka were pigs, both living and cooked, and pearlshell necklaces. Nowadays, cash, machetes (large knives), and even four-wheel-drive vehicles are exchanged in moka ceremonies. The goal of the exchange is to gain status and prestige in the eyes of the larger society by giving more than one received. Men who are accomplished at achieving this goal are known as "big-men" in the community and are viewed as leaders. True big-men are able to arrange large-scale, multiple moka exchanges involving many pairs of exchange partners. Anthropologists refer to this type of exchange as "redistribution." The goal is not to gather goods or wealth for personal use, but instead to redistribute (share) items among the community.

7 • RITES OF PASSAGE

The Melpa people do not socially recognize or celebrate a girl's first menstruation, as most other highland groups from Papua New Guinea do. However, like other groups in the area, the Melpa do segregate males and females due to the fear of pollution of males by females, especially through menstrual blood.

In the past, the Melpa had elaborate initiation rites for males. Through contact with the outside world, these have been greatly reduced.

8 • RELATIONSHIPS

In some parts of the highlands, villages are separated by valleys and mountain ridges. Especially in the more rural Melpa region, villages may be widely separated from each other. In these areas, greetings are accomplished long distance via yodeling. Requests, directions, commands, and challenges are often yodeled back and forth by men across a ravine or a ridge, completely out of visual range of each other.

Inheritance is based on patrilineal principles: sons inherit from their fathers. The most important item for inheritance is land. Parcels of a father's land are given to his sons at the time that the sons are married. When daughters are married, their fathers may grant them gardening rights to parcels of land.

9 • LIVING CONDITIONS

There are two types of traditional Melpa houses: men's and women's. Men's houses are round with cone-shaped roofs. This is where men live and where preteenage boys live once they have been separated from their mothers (around the age of eight). Women and their unmarried daughters live in the rectangular-shaped women's house. The women's house also contains pig stalls to keep the pigs from wandering off at night or being stolen. A village consists of at least one men's house and one women's house. Members of a clan traditionally resided in the same area, which was linked by paths to nearby gardening areas. Missionaries encouraged the building of family homes where a husband, a wife, and their children would sleep together. Some Melpa have adopted this new form of residence while others have chosen not to.

10 • FAMILY LIFE

Marriage involves the exchange of valuables by both families. The majority of the goods are given by the groom's family to the bride's family. They constitute what anthropologists refer to as "bride wealth" or "bride price." Traditionally, the groom's family and kinfolk would provide a number of pigs and shells to the father of the bride in compensation for the loss of his daughter. Nowadays, cash payments are included in the transaction. The bride's family provides the new couple with a number of breeding pigs. The negotiation of a bride price is a significant part of the marriage transaction and can cause a potential marriage to be canceled.

The Melpa trace their genealogies through the male line. Clans are created through common descent from a shared male ancestor. Individuals choose their spouses from clans outside their own. After marriage, the couple moves into the groom's father's village. Later, they will build a new women's house for the bride near the groom's men's house. Divorce consists of repayment of part of the bride price, especially if the woman is seen to have been at fault.

11 • CLOTHING

The Melpa who live or work in Mount Hagen wear Western-style clothing. Men usually wear shorts, T-shirts, shoes if they own them, and a knitted cap, and they carry a string bag. Women wear A-line dresses often made of a floral print fabric. They also carry string bags, but much larger than those of the men. Women also wear shoes if they own them; however, men are more likely than women to own shoes. The concept of owning a wardrobe of clothing does not exist for the majority of Melpa. Most people own only one change of clothing. It is still possible to see Melpa dressed in traditional clothing, including the wig made from human hair that adult Melpa men wear on important occasions. In some cases, Melpa from rural villages will travel by plane to visit other highland communities. During these travels, the rural Melpa may dress in their traditional clothing and carry the tools of traditional life, such as stone axes and digging sticks. The airport at Mount Hagen is truly a meeting place of the jet age and the stone age.

12 • FOOD

Like other Highland cultures in Papua New Guinea, the Melpa's traditional staple foods were sweet potatoes and pork. Sweet potatoes are still an important staple. Western-style foodstuffs have gained in importance now that they are available in trade stores and since eating this type of food increases a person's status in the eyes of the community.

13 • EDUCATION

Traditional education consisted of socializing young boys and girls to become competent members of adult Melpa society. Although this is still true today, public and parochial schools (church-run, private schools) are also open to Hageners. In the highlands region, Western-style education has been integrated with traditional ways of life to produce individuals who seem to exist in two very different worlds at the same time.

14 • CULTURAL HERITAGE

Vocal music is especially important in Melpa society. Courtship songs are common in many highland cultures in New Guinea. Men woo their mates by composing and performing songs that have double-entendre lyrics (words with two sets of meanings, one often sexual in nature). When men go to sing to women in other villages, they paint and decorate themselves very elaborately.

15 • EMPLOYMENT

The traditional division of labor was between the sexes. Men were responsible for creating gardens and building fences to keep out the pigs. Women tended the pigs, planted the staple crop of sweet potatoes and other foodstuffs such as greens and taro (a starch), and weeded and harvested the garden plot.

Modern Melpa work in a variety of jobs in the town of Mount Hagen. Driving taxis and buses, porting baggage at the airport, and working in shops are among the types of employment that the Hageners pursue.

16 • SPORTS

As in other parts of Papua New Guinea, rugby is an important sport in the area around Mount Hagen. Mount Hagen is the venue (location) for many rugby games involving Hageners and other Papuans from throughout the island.

17 • RECREATION

Town-dwelling Melpa have access to electricity and many of them enjoy watching television. There are very few locally produced television shows in the country. Most programs are bought from Australian broadcasting, which in turn purchases shows from the United States. Therefore, Hageners are exposed to American society in the form of situation comedies.

18 • CRAFTS AND HOBBIES

Body decoration is the major art form in the Hagen region. Moka (exchanges) and ceremonial events have historically been important times for elaborate decoration to take place. Body paint is produced from local dyes mixed with pig fat. Traditional materials such as feathers and shells are used to decorate elaborate headdresses. Today, traditional headdresses are decorated with modern items, such as labels of various products and the tops of tin cans. The American product Liquid Paper (white correction fluid) has also become a favorite substitute for traditional white paint. The intensity of whiteness is cited as the reason for the switch.

19 • SOCIAL PROBLEMS

Revenge was the basis for many violent actions taken by the Melpa in the time before pacification (when they were forced by European missionaries to become more peaceful). Revenge murders often pitted the male members of one clan against those of another. This mentality has not completely disappeared from the Melpa. Hundreds of men wearing full war dress can occasionally be seen running along the Highlands Highway toward a neighboring village. Their intent is to exact revenge for a death or wrongdoing that took place in the past. Events like these alarm tourists and government officials. As a result, warnings are sometimes issued regarding travel in the region.

20 • BIBLIOGRAPHY

Strathern, Andrew. The Rope of Moka: Big-Men and Ceremonial Exchange in Mount Hagen, New Guinea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971.

WEBSITES

Interknowledge Corp. [Online] Available http://www.interknowledge.com/papua-newguinea/, 1998.

World Travel Guide. Papua New Guinea. [Online] Available http://www.wtgonline.com/country/pg/gen.html, 1998.