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The Sense of Sago: Motherhood and Migration in Papua New Guinea and Australia

2005; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 26; Issue: 1-2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/07256860500073997

1469-9540

Alison Dundon,

Island Studies and Pacific Affairs

Abstract This paper explores the migratory experiences of Gogodala women from the Western Province of Papua New Guinea (PNG) in their movements between the village and urban PNG and Australia. Born and raised in Gogodala villages in Western Province, these women were integral to my own experiences as a female fieldworker in rural PNG. Immersed in ato ela gi—'women's work' or 'way of life'—as girls and young women, and embodied through the effort of making sago, fishing, bearing and caring for children, through marriage and opportunity they have travelled and lived far away from the places that resonate with their early experiences of womanhood, as well as their names, and kin and clan relationships. Many of the women have lived in urban centres in PNG, raising children away from the sensory experience and stringent reality of the village, constrained by the necessity to remain 'Gogodala' in the face of life elsewhere, while a few others have married and live outside PNG with little access to Gogodala contacts and family. Transformed from women 'living on sago', the local idiom for an emplaced village life, each has experienced the sensory and physical displacement of migration. Yet each has retained strong 'senses' of being a woman in terms, particularly, of women's work and the gift and consumption of sago, in ways reminiscent of the sweat, smells and sounds of Gogodala places and people. Keywords: MigrationMotherhoodSensesPlacePNGAustralia Notes Howe (1991: 8) suggests that as anthropologists we need to conceptualise cultures as 'ways of sensing the world' rather than as texts to be deciphered. In the same volume of papers, Classen (1991 Classen C 'Creation by Sound/Creation by Light: A Sensory Analysis of Two South American Cosmologies.' The Varieties of Sensory Experience: A Sourcebook in the Anthropology of the Senses Ed. D. Howes Toronto University of Toronto 1991 [Google Scholar]: 239, 254) suggests that cosmologies are not detached 'views' of the world: they are 'wet and warm, fragrant and foul, full of sound, colour, and feeling'. See Hirsch and O'Hanlon (1995 Hirsch E O'Hanlon M eds. The Anthropology of Landscape: Perspectives on Place and Space Oxford Clarendon Press 1995 [Google Scholar]), Bender (1993 Bender B 'Introduction: Landscape—Meaning and Action.' Landscape: Politics and Perspectives Ed. B. Bender Oxford Berg 1993 [Google Scholar]) and Feld and Basso (1996 Feld S Basso K 'Introduction.' Senses of Place Eds. S. Feld and K. Basso Santa Fe Mexico School of American Research Press 1996 [Google Scholar]) for a detailed analysis of landscapes and people, their interactions and articulations. Places and people are inseparable, as places only exist in relation to people and the meanings of places are only revealed in the actions and preferences of the people who constitute them (Violich 1985 Violich F 'Towards Revealing the Sense of Place: An Intuitive "Reading" of Four Dalmation Towns.' Dwelling, Place and Environment: Towards a Phenomenology of Person and World Eds. D. Seamon and R. Mugerauer Dordrecht Martinus Nijhoff 1985 [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]: 113). While place is not immanent in our bodies, it arises from the 'felt' phenomena through our body's participation in it (Grange 1985 Grange J 'Place, Body and Situation.' Dwelling, Place and Environment: Towards a Phenomenology of Person and World Eds. D. Seamon and R. Mugerauer Dordrecht Martinus Nijhoff 1985 [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]: 83). A good sau is a highly prized gift between women and will often be passed between mother and daughter or even daughter-in-law. Thomas (1999 Thomas M Dreams in the Shadows: Vietnamese-Australian Lives in Transition Sydney Allen and Unwin 1999 [Google Scholar]) has pointed out the significance of space for the experience of migration. She writes, '[t]he construction of identity after migration has an important spatial dimension, because migrants are always in some sense "out of place", and straddle several worlds at once' (Thomas 1999: xvi). See Ward (1999 Ward MJ 'Keeping ples? Young Highland Men in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.' PhD Thesis Australian National University 1999 [Google Scholar]) for a study of young second- and third-generation men in Port Moresby, originally from the Eastern Highlands of PNG. Jacobsen (1996 Kahn M 'Your Place and Mine: Sharing Emotional Landscapes in Wamira, Papua New Guinea.' Senses of Place Eds. S. Feld and K. Basso Santa Fe Mexico School of American Research Press 1996 [Google Scholar]: 105) writes that migrants from Dom in Simbu Province, can be divided into two distinct groups in terms of their rationale for migration: the first consists of those who migrate to avoid social obligations; the second is characterised by those seeking to enhance their position within the village community by employment and/or education. See also Strathern (1975 Strathern M No Money on our Skins: Hagen Migrants in Port Moresby New Guinea Research Bulletin No. 61 Port Moresby 1975 [Google Scholar]) for an analysis of Hageners in Port Moresby. In a paper called 'Mines and Monsters: A Dialogue on Development in Western Province, Papua New Guinea', I have analysed in some detail the dialogue between Gogodala in villages along the northern Aramia River area, which forms the basis for this paper, and those in Gogodala villages that stretch along the reaches of the Fly River to the south, which is increasingly framed in terms of the move from sago to money as the basis of lifestyle or ela gi (Dundon 2002 Dundon, A. (2002). 'Mines and Monsters: A Dialogue on Development in Western Province, Papua New Guinea.'. The Australian Journal of Anthropology (TAJA), 13.2: 139–54. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). The migration of women has rarely been the focus of analysis of migration in PNG. In one study of migratory patterns and practices in 50 villages in PNG conducted in the 1970s, it emerged that 85% of women left their villages to accompany or visit relatives in urban centres in order to pursue educational or employment opportunities, or simply stay with them. The same study showed that less women than men returned to the village (Clunies Ross 1984 Clunies Ross, A Migrants from Fifty Villages Monograph 21 Boroko Institute of Applied Social and Economic Research 1984 [Google Scholar]: 217). Elder members of clans and families plan such marriages, although there exists an increasingly popular method of running away to the bush with the spouse of choice until parents and clan elders are forced to acknowledge the legitimacy of the union. Whichever way that marriages are brought about, women have a lot of say in their choice of partner, village and situation. Women seldom choose to marry outside of already established relationships, which both ease their transition into the family of their husband, but also ensure a form of protection from abuse and loneliness if the relationship with husband or husband's parents or other relatives sour. Thomas (1999 Thomas M Dreams in the Shadows: Vietnamese-Australian Lives in Transition Sydney Allen and Unwin 1999 [Google Scholar]: 31–32) notes that Vietnamese-Australians who return to Vietnam larger than they left are deemed to have assimilated to 'Western physiques and lifestyles' and thus such bodies are perceived as a sign of 'moral decay'. In early days, before the arrival of missionaries in the area in the 1930s, natali gi or wedding ceremonies were focused on the young bride's ability to produce sago for her husband and his family, and the consumption of this sago at the feast between the newly married couple. Additional informationNotes on contributorsAlison DundonAlison Dundon is an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Faculty of Arts, The Australian National University, Canberra. Her current project explores the interaction between health, maternity and development, particularly in light of the spread of HIV/AIDS into rural communities in Papua New Guinea.