The Wita–Waya Moiety System: Dual Balance Among the Koteka Tribes of the New Guinea Highlands

A contemplation grounded in highland ethnography and interpreted through the lens of the Melanesian Way conservation philosophy

Deep in the New Guinea central highlands — where the Baliem River carves through limestone gorges and mist clings to slopes planted with sweet potato, taro and other endemic plants — a constellation of indigenous peoples have lived for thousands of years in intimate dialogue with their environment. Collectively known as the Koteka Tribes, a self-designation adopted by the Assembly of Koteka Tribes (Dewan Musyawarah Masyarakat Adat Koteka, or DeMMak), they encompass seven major tribal nations: the Lani, Dani, Yali, Amungme, Damal, Moni, and Kamoro, along with numerous sub-tribes including the Nggem, Walak, Nduga, Kupal, Hubla, Kimyal, Momuna, and Ngalik. This “Koteka” is called in Papua New Guinea highlands as “sell kambang” along the Western region of Papua New Guinea. These peoples share not only the iconic penis gourd — the koteka, fashioned from dried Lagenaria siceraria gourds — but also a deep cultural grammar of dualism, a way of seeing the world in complementary pairs that holds society, ecology, and spirit in dynamic equilibrium.

At the heart of this dualism lies a concept that the Melanesian Conservation Elders of the Lani, Hupla, Yali, Nggem, Nduga and Walak tribes articulate as Wita–Waya — a moiety pairing that is at once a social architecture, a cosmological map, and a practical guide for living in balance with the highland ecosystems that have sustained these communities since time immemorial. This article explores the Wita–Waya framework both as it resonates with documented highland social structures and as a living philosophical tradition articulated by contemporary Melanesian elders committed to conserving their ancestral wisdom.

 

The Koteka Tribes: Peoples of the Highlands

The New Guinea Highlands form one of the most culturally dense regions on Earth. The Baliem Valley alone, often called "Shangri-La" since its 1938 discovery by American zoologist Richard Archbold, hosts some 100,000 Dani across lower, middle, and upper valley segments, while approximately 180,000 Lani inhabit the territories westward. To the south and east, the Yali occupy precipitous mountain terrain accessible only by days of trekking through dense forest. The Amungme, Nduga, and Kamoro guard the southern slopes and lowland interfaces around what is now the Mimika regency, while the Moni, Damal, and smaller sub-tribes fill the spaces between.

What unites these diverse peoples — beyond the Koteka (sell kambang) itself, which varies remarkably in size, shape, and orientation from group to group — is a shared patrilineal, clan-based social organisation in which descent, land tenure, marriage, and ritual obligations are governed by principles of complementary opposition. Anthropologists studying the Dani, Lani, and related groups have long noted the presence of dual social divisions — moieties — that split each community into two interdependent halves. A person belongs to the moiety of their father; marriage must occur across moiety lines, not within them. Bridewealth, ceremonial exchange, and the choreography of feasts and rituals flow along these paired channels, creating a web of mutual obligation that holds the community together.

It is within this documented framework of highland dualism that the Wita–Waya concept finds its resonance. Wita-Waya or in Lani and Walak languages called “Wenda-Waya” represent a concept of balance, inter-relationship and inter-dependence in life.

 

Wita: The Laying, the Horizontal, the Flowing, the Incoming

Wita names the principle of lying down, of horizontality, of flowing as water flows. It is the element of water itself — the stream that descends from glacial peaks through moss-forested ridges, the river that threads through garden terraces, the morning dew that beads on sweet-potato leaves. Wita is movement that goes slowly, that seeks the lowest point, that fills before it overflows.

In its essential character, Wita is:

• Refreshing — it cools what is overheated, restores what is depleted, and brings relief to the body and spirit after exertion.
• Caring — like water that nurtures every root it touches, Wita tends to the quiet, sustaining work of maintenance and nourishment. It is the attentiveness of the gardener checking irrigation channels, the patience of the mother warming a child near the hearth.
• Cooling — Wita counteracts excess heat, both literal and metaphorical. Where tempers flare, Wita soothes; where ambition burns too bright, Wita counsels rest.
• Shrinking and icing — in the highlands, where elevation brings frost to garden plots above 2,800 metres, Wita embodies the contracting stillness of cold: the pause, the dormancy, the incubation that precedes new growth.
• Incubating — Wita holds and protects what is not yet ready to emerge. It is the husk around the seed, the earth around the tuber, the silence around an unspoken thought.
• Feeding — because water feeds the garden, and the garden feeds the people, Wita is the principle of steady, unglamorous sustenance. It does not announce itself; it simply ensures that life continues.

Wita, in essence, is the feminine-coded dimension of the dualism — though "feminine" here should not be read through Western gender binaries but rather as a quality of being that can manifest in any person, any clan, any season. It is the horizontal axis: grounded, receptive, preserving.

 

Waya: The Standing, the Vertical, the Ascending, the Expanding Out

If Wita is water lying low, Waya is flame rising up. Waya names the principle of standing, of verticality, of reaching outward and upward like fire and smoke from a highland hearth. It is the element of fire — not the destructive blaze but the generative warmth that transforms raw into cooked, that draws people together in the evening cold, that signals across valleys with columns of smoke.

In its essential character, Waya is:

• Expanding — where Wita contracts and concentrates, Waya spreads. It moves outward, takes up space, makes its presence known. It is the voice that calls across the compound, the dance that opens the festival.
• Creating — Waya breaks new ground. It is the spark of initiative, the decision to clear a new garden, to build a new honai (the distinctive circular thatched hut of the highlands), to negotiate a new alliance.
• Provoking — Waya does not let things remain as they are. It challenges, it stirs, it asks why. In ceremony, it is the energy that pushes the community out of routine and into intensity.
• Giving birth — at its most powerful, Waya is the force that brings something into existence that did not exist before — a child, a song, a treaty between clans, a new generation of pigs for the feast.
• Growing — Waya is growth itself: the shoot pushing through soil, the adolescent stretching taller, the community expanding its networks of trade and marriage across mountain passes.

Waya is the masculine-coded dimension — again, not as a rigid gender assignment but as a quality of active, outward-reaching, generative energy. It is the vertical axis: ascending, assertive, creating.

 

The Pair as Social Architecture

Among the Koteka Tribes, the genius of the Wita–Waya system lies in the recognition that neither principle is sufficient alone. Fire without water consumes everything. Water without fire stagnates. A community organised entirely around Wita would be passive, over-cautious, unable to adapt or innovate. A community organised entirely around Waya would be volatile, fractured by competition, perpetually exhausted.

The moiety system — with its rule of cross-moiety marriage, its alternating ritual responsibilities, its paired obligations of giving and receiving — is the social technology that keeps these two forces in productive tension. One moiety is associated with Wita qualities; the other with Waya. Neither is superior. Each needs the other to function.

In practice, this means:

• When one moiety is responsible for organising a pig feast (the central economic and ritual event of highland life, involving the slaughter and redistribution of dozens or hundreds of pigs), the other moiety receives, distributes, and reciprocates in the next cycle. The expansive, provocative, giving-birth energy of the feast is balanced by the steady, caring, feeding energy of redistribution.
• In land management — a domain of existential importance in the highlands, where garden plots, hunting territories, and sacred sites are precisely demarcated — Wita-associated roles may emphasise conservation, patience, and respect for limits, while Waya-associated roles may emphasise cultivation, expansion, and negotiation of new boundaries. Both are necessary; neither alone produces a healthy landscape.
• In conflict resolution, the Wita–Waya pairing provides a built-in mediation mechanism. Disputes within a moiety are addressed by elders of the opposite moiety, who bring the complementary perspective. A Waya-tempered conflict — heated, expanding, provocative — is met with Wita-tempered wisdom: cooling, contracting, incubating a solution until it is ready to emerge.

 

Resonance with Documented Highland Dualism

Anthropological studies of the Dani, Lani, Walak and Yali confirm the presence of dual social organisation among these peoples, though the specific terminology and symbolic associations vary by group and locality. The principle of complementary opposition — in which two halves of a society are defined not by hierarchy but by mutual dependence — is a well-documented feature of highland Papuan cultures. Marriage is exogamous across moiety lines; ritual roles are distributed between the two halves; ceremonial exchange flows in both directions. All males or females of Waya clans call themselves sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers. The same applies to Wita clan members.

What the Wita–Waya framework, as articulated by the Melanesian Conservation Elders, adds to this ethnographic foundation is a rich symbolic cosmology that explicitly links the social dualism to the elements of water and fire, to the spatial dimensions of horizontal and vertical, and to the ecological processes of cooling/incubating and expanding/growing. This symbolic elaboration may draw from deeper indigenous knowledge traditions that have not been fully captured in the ethnographic record — much highland cosmology is transmitted orally and through practice rather than written documentation — or it may represent a contemporary synthesis in which elders articulate ancestral principles in language that speaks to present concerns, including the urgent need for ecological conservation in the face of mining, deforestation, and cultural erosion.

Either way, the framework is not an invention imposed from outside. It grows from soil that is demonstrably there: the documented dualism of highland Papuan societies, the centrality of water and fire in daily life, the sophisticated ecological knowledge embedded in gardening practices, and the enduring conviction — shared across the Koteka Tribes — that balance is not a state to be achieved once but a relationship to be continuously maintained.

 

Why It Matters Now

The highlands of New Guinea are under unprecedented pressure. The Grasberg mine, one of the world's largest gold and copper operations, sits on Amungme and Kamoro ancestral land that also shared with Mee and Lani tribal lands. Palm oil concessions and logging roads push into previously intact forest. Climate change alters frost lines and rainfall patterns that highland farmers have calibrated their agriculture to for centuries. Cultural assimilation pressures — from transmigration programs, missionary activity, and the sheer gravitational pull of globalisation — erode the transmission of indigenous knowledge from elder to youth.

In this context, the Wita–Waya moiety system is not merely an anthropological curiosity. It is a living framework for resilience. Its insistence on balance, on shared roles, on the necessity of both restraint and initiative, of both preservation and creation, speaks directly to the challenges of navigating change without losing oneself. A conservation philosophy rooted in Wita–Waya does not say "stop all development" — that would be all Wita, no Waya. Nor does it say "grow at all costs" — that would be all Waya, no Wita. It says: let the two move together, as they always have, and let harmony reign.

 

Closing Reflection

The Koteka itself — that simple gourd, shaped by hand, worn with pride, varied in form from tribe to tribe yet instantly recognisable as a marker of shared identity — is perhaps a fitting emblem for the Wita–Waya system. It is at once practical and symbolic, humble and profound. It does not seek attention, yet it communicates volumes. It belongs to a way of life in which the horizontal and the vertical, the cool and the warm, the flowing and the ascending are not opposites to be resolved but partners in an ancient, ongoing dance. When the world sees “koteta”, they will automatically refer to West Papua or New Guinea highlands. It is a icon to New Guinea primitive tribes.

The Melanesian Conservation Elders remind us that this dance is not finished. It is not a relic. It is a living architecture — social, ecological, spiritual — that still has much to teach a world increasingly out of balance. The waters still flow from the high peaks. The fires still burn in the evening hearths. Wita and Waya still meet, still complement, still inter-relate and inter-dependent, still create the conditions in which life, in all its highland richness, can continue.

 

This article draws on documented ethnography of the Dani, Lani, Yali, and related highland Papuan peoples, and on the philosophical articulation of the Wita–Waya framework as presented by the Melanesian Conservation Elders, Inc. Where the specific symbolic associations of Wita (water, horizontality, cooling, incubation) and Waya (fire, verticality, expansion, creation) extend beyond the published ethnographic record, they are presented as part of a living indigenous knowledge tradition that continues to evolve.

Only Fooled Humans think that being rich means having a lot of money!

We Melanesians should feel and be proud that we are rich in all aspects and every area of life. This is why our the only great Melanesian Philosopher so far, Bernard Narokobi says, the Melanesian Way is: 

Welcome Birth, Live Well, Love Well, Have Something Good for Every Person and Die a Happy Death. 

(I added :Welcome Birth" to Norokobi's statement.)

That is wealth! That is prosperity! That is rich!

What comes when we are born and what goes when we pass on are the ones to determine our being into this world.

Being rich means having a lot of money is a concept just started a few hundred years ago, let's say 300 years ago. Thousands, and even hundreds of thousands or million years before, "being rich" never meant to having a lot of money. Or event he word "rich" never existed in the minds and hearts of the peoples.

According to scientists, "Gap between rich and poor began 7,000 years ago, say scientists" It became a reality in life when people started "harvest crops instead of their hands and the class system was born." It triggered humans producing more than they can afford to consume.

Landowners started having more power over ordinary citizens. Class system in communities began to emerge. Those with land became the rulers and those without it became laborers.  

Human relations changed, from reciprocal and egalitarian, into structural (top-down) and peripheral (inner-outer).

"Them" and "Us" based on ownership of land, and later own labour, division of labour, and so on, came into play. "Them" rich and "us" poor, or them poor and us rich came into human awareness and thinking.

We are now thinking this is God-created natural instinct to feel being rich and poor just based on how much money I earn or own or get access to. This is artificial reality, as artificial as the one we see on the Internet. However, we feel that this is real. Only, yes Only the time we die, we do realize that all the rich and material wealth have no meaning at all. Again, we only realize when we are ready to pass on in a few seconds.

Therefore, it is wise men and women only who realize this matter of fact far before their seconds towards death. It is only the wise peoples who will understand the meaning of life as being truthful, realistic, present, simply and accepting whatever comes and goes.

Our Melanesian humans, our forefathers and our own fathers were the human beings on this planet Earth until this century, who have actually lived in what is called "Paradise", that is, living in "this present time only", no past, no future, but just now, just here, and just right.

Steven Winduo, on rivers as metaphors

 “Rivers stand as a text for me, and it is up to me to read what is inscribed on the surface, beneath it, and along it.”

- Steven Winduo, on rivers as metaphors

Papua New Guinean poet, writer, and scholar Steven Edmund Winduo is a professor at the University of Papua New Guinea. An author of multiple poetry and short story collections, Winduo proposed new conceptual frameworks and writing strategies in Pacific literature and expanded representations of Oceanians, especially in Melanesia. This work is so important because, as Dr. Tarcisius Kabutaulaka has written:

“While negative representations of Melanesia linger in the shadows of scholarly and popular discourses, Melanesians are proactively trying to shed the ‘ignoble savage’ image and aspire for ‘a place in the sun.’”

- Dr. Tarcisius Kabutaulaka (2015)

To continue challenging representations of Pacific Islanders in literature and other forms, we invite submissions for proposals for our upcoming CPIS Student Conference on April 11, 2022.

Please submit proposals at: http://go.hawaii.edu/nuV (link is case sensitive) before next week on March 15, 2022 at 10pm HST.

Photo: Steven Winduo in our Teaching Oceania Series Vol. 7, Pacific Studies: A Transformational Movement. (Enomoto et al. 2021, 19).

Teaching Oceania Series Vol. 7, Pacific Studies: A Transformational Movement is available to download on Scholarspace: https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/81452.

Kabutaulaka, T. (2015). Re­Presenting Melanesia: Ignoble Savages and Melanesian Alter­Natives. http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/38767.

There is No "Me" in Melanesian Culture, There is Always "Us": This is Melanesian Socialism

So many times, in so many occasions, so many people asked me this very question, "What do YOU think about....?" I put the word "YOU" in capital in order to emphasize the tone the person asking the question use. The tone goes up then pronouncing "YOU", which means they want "me" to know that they are particularly focusing on the Individual "me", not the "plural" me, that is us.

Well, I never tempted by them. I in fact I never changed my choice of word from "We" to "I". They tried many times, and I normally keep answering with the word "We".

For example. Question: "What do YOU think about the Freeport Mining McMoran Copper & Gold Inc. operations in West Papua since April 1967?" 
Answer: "As I said before, Freeport came to our place as a party that is uninvited and unwanted. Our lives destroyed. Our livelihood turned upside down. We have been suffering since their arrival. No single party in West Papua will declare they are happy with the presence and operations of the giant mining company.

Question: "Do YOU personally as a person agree with the Freeport Mining Operations?"

Answer: We are all unhappy and we all refuse Freeport Operations. No one is happy about it. It brings nightmare to us, not blessing. No one is enjoying anything that Freeport brings.

Question: I repeat again, please I am asking your personal experience, not for the whole group, but you as an educated man, you understand some benefits of the Freeport Mining operations, for example, you have been full sponsored by Freeport Indonesia during your study at the university until your graduation. So you should give your personal opinion on this.

Answer: The word "I" is absent in this life and in this mindset. Therefore, there is no reply for the word "I". The person answering your questions now is not a singular individual, it is a plural one. This person represents the "whole", not the One
This person that you are asking to is not an individual. This is a plural individual talking to you, so there is no choice to reply with “I” and “me”, but the answer will always use “We” and “us”.

Question: You have talked about “democracy” or a system of governance that is appropriate for Melanesian tribes. You call it “Melanesian Socialism”. Democracy advocates the votes of majority individual “I” that determines who rules. What about Democracy in Melanesian Socialism?

Answer: This is a very good question. Do you know in Christianity, as it is in Democracy, you emphasize “individuals” to repent, confess, and be baptized. Every single person should repent and make confessions before being baptized. I am talking about evangelical and Pentecostal concept  of “born again” doctrine. Do you know this? This never happened in the whole New Guinea Highlands. This is recorded in a book called “Torches of Joy” by John Dekker, an American Missionary to West Papua many years ago.

Now, we talk about democracy. Today in West Papua, there is a term in Malay called “Noken System” democracy. Noken is the traditional hand-made “string bag” of New Guinea. What happens is Only the Tribal Elders gather together, in front of their people, bringing the votes of their men, women and children, and put those votes into the “noken”, thus there is no need for individuals to go in and out into the ballot boxes.

This Noken System of democracy is more accepted than the “modern” ballot box system where people go in and out individually.

What is happening here?

Well, this is Melanesia in display. Bernard Narakobi, the only Melanesian philosophy we got so far calls this display as “The Melanesian Way”.

Question: I am taken away by your answer now. What is the connection between what Father Walter Lini, the founder of the Republic of Vanuatu said about “Melansian Socialism” and what you just mentioned about Narakobi’s “The Melanesian Way”.

Answer: The Late Father Walkter Lini is talking about the democracy system that is appropriate for Melanesians, which is one of the topics that Narakobi addresses in his “The Melanesian Way” papers. So, the “The Melanesian Way” contains more than just system of governance. What Narakobi is saying includes what is being said right now, “The concept of individual I is inclusive in the word WE, and therefore, when I use ‘WE’, I am actually talking about all of us, including myself.

Question: Do you understand what we in the West mean by “I” ?

Answer: Yes, we know it very well, indeed. But I hope you also understand what we mean by “us”, not “me”. This is because we are human beings, but at the same time, we are in two different worlds in the way we understand, accept and explain the world we have come to know so far.

Question: Yes, thank you very much. It is my privilege to realize that we are speaking across the world in our mind while we are physically in one this place.

Answer: We are starting this interchange. You will know better when we put this idea into papers or books.

In Memory of Bernard Narakobi

 eJournal of the Australian Association for the Advancement of Pacific Studies

Issues 1.2 and 2.1, April 2010

JEAN ZORN,

PROFESSOR EMERITA, FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF LAW

CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK SCHOOL OF LAW

UNIVERSITY OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA FACULTY OF LAW

THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

Bernard Narokobi, who died in March at the age of 72, after a short illness, was a political and jurisprudential philosopher of great seriousness and stature. That makes my memories of his irrepressible irreverence especially sweet. One such memory: Bernard taking his afternoon nap on the wall to wall carpeting of the Law Reform Commission’s way too elegant offices. The Commission was Bernard’s brainchild, established at independence by Papua New Guinea’s Constitution – a document full of Bernard’s views and ideas – to try to infuse the legal system of the new nation with Melanesian custom. Bernard, fittingly, was the Commission’s first Secretary, and he hired me, amongst more experienced others, like Nick O’Neill and Yash Ghai, to help him do it. The new government was scrambling for offices; Waigani was still less than half built, so we found ourselves in a spanking new building that had been intended to house a bank (of all the non-Melanesian institutions!) with floor-to-ceiling tinted windows, air conditioning that bordered on the frigid, and pile carpet so deep you could, as Bernard contentedly demonstrated every afternoon, sleep on it.

‘The late Bernard Narokobi’s body carried to the Wirui Cathedral in Wewak for the funeral service.’ Source: Liu Zhaoxiang, ‘Bernard Narokobi: A great supporter of the development of renewable energy,’ in Sunday Chronicle, Sunday, April 4, 2010. Photograph by Cyril Gare.

Bernard was born in 1937 in Wautogik Village in the East Sepik. Naming his village – making sure this memorial to him includes the name – would have been important to him. Because Bernard never forgot, never abandoned, never strayed far, from the values and culture and world view of his village. And, yet, he was also among Papua New Guinea’s most modern of men. He was educated – in Catholic mission schools – long before most Papua New Guinean children got any schooling at all, well before, I believe, the Australian colonial power had constructed a single school in the territory. In the 1960s, when few Papua New Guineans had been outside their home villages, let alone outside Papua New Guinea, he was in Australia, doing a law degree at the University of Sydney. Within four or five years after Bernard got his degree, the University of Papua New Guinea would be built, opening higher education to hundreds every year. But, at the moment Bernard did it, there can’t have been more than half a dozen Papua New Guineans who had graduated from university. Mekere Morauta, Charles Lepani, Bernard, a handful of others. They had such different personalities, temperaments, interests, but they shared a vision of an independent Papua New Guinea, and the leadership that each took in that struggle suggested that, in denying education to so many for so long, the colonizers had made a wisely self-interested choice.

I first met Bernard in the early 1970s, just before independence. It was a heady time. Papua New Guinea was charging towards nationhood, and every great future seemed possible. We’d come from all over – from Tanzania, Northern Ireland, England, the U.S., even a few from Oz, and, of course, from PNG itself. Most of us were working at UPNG, but there were also advisors and worker bees from all across the government, not to mention from the various research units and NGOs. There were meetings every moment – it felt as if there was so much work to do – especially, so many conversations to have – about principles and policies and philosophy and goals and history. And then there were those grand day-long parties every Sunday at the Zaharas.

In all the conversations, all the explorations, Bernard’s voice was sure and direct. He knew, from the start, the path that Papua New Guinea should follow. The polity, the economy, the culture, and especially the laws of the new nation should be based, he told us, on custom – but on a peaceful, communitarian, Gandhi-Nyerere-King brand of custom that, he insisted, was the true Sepik Melanesian Way. It made of his life a paradox. He believed that each person should live a simple village life, but, to make that possible for others, for his new nation, he had to spend most of his time living in the city, dealing in complexity. Even in the city, though, he could make the village paramount. Padding happily around his carpeted office in laplap and bare feet was only one of the ways.

Today, people probably think that for him, the decision to live the Melanesian Way was an easy choice. Trust me. It wasn’t. There were enormously strong pulls on him to go in other directions – and I’m not talking about the pulls of money or status or stuff like that – totally uninteresting to Bernard – I’m talking about personal pulls and pressures – glimpses of other, possible, wonderful, fulfilling, rich, happy lives, that he chose not to take, but the renunciation was not without sadness and a sense of loss. I will remember his smile, which was as outwardly mild and as inwardly complicated as he was.

When the Constitution was promulgated, we were able, for a few brief shining moments, to believe that we’d made Bernard’s vision a reality, that we’d won, that Papua New Guinea was firmly set on a path that would give its own custom the central place in the polity. After almost 100 years of colonialism, Papua New Guinea would become not only free, but, once again, itself. And that self would be a shining, beneficent, kindly star to the rest of the world. Bernard had been more than just a member of the Constitutional Planning Committee; his influence can be seen throughout, most dramatically in every word of the Preamble to the Constitution:

united in one nation

pay homage to the memory of our ancestors—the source of our strength and origin of our combined heritage

acknowledge the worthy customs and traditional wisdoms of our people—which have come down to us from generation to generation

pledge ourselves to guard and pass on to those who come after us our noble traditions and the Christian principles that are ours now.

By authority of our inherent right as ancient, free and independent peoples …

The courts set about almost immediately to undermine whatever in the Constitution wasn’t exactly like the laws of Australia, demonstrating in the process that they had a far less sanguine view of custom than Bernard did. For example, Bernard often talked about the ‘worthy custom’ of his people; for him, all the traditions, beliefs, values that made up the Melanesian Way were worthy, and he wanted to emphasise that, to make people see and acknowledge that. The members of the Supreme Court, however, chose to read the phrase differently; they read the Preamble to mean that they needed to acknowledge only those customs that happened, in their estimation, to be worthy, and, believing as they did that most of Papua New Guinean custom was savage, undisciplined, unreasonable, lawless and in need of a good old colonial makeover, they were happy to acknowledge very few of them indeed.

Bernard’s response was to redouble his (which also meant our) efforts at the Law Reform Commission. Under his benign tutelage, we worked hard to change every aspect of the imported colonial legal system so that custom would be the heart and soul of Papua New Guinean law. I’ve always thought his real legacy is all those Law Reform Commission Reports and bits of draft legislation – outlining such a better legal future than PNG got to have. So few of those bills were even enacted, and even fewer have actually been enforced. His crowning achievement – the bill that would have made it clear that judges should turn to custom, before using the common law or any other imported bits of foreign legal systems – languished in Parliament until 2000, when Bernard, as Speaker, finally got it through – only to see the judges all but totally ignore it in the following decade.

Bernard ought to have spent his working life as a judge. It would have given him the opportunity he needed to thoroughly blend custom into the legal system. He got his chance in the early 1980s when he was made an Acting Judge, and he went at it with gusto, writing decisions that were glorious. They were stunning in the depth and breadth of their erudition; he probably knew more about, and better understood the Anglo-Australian jurisprudential tradition than anyone else – with the possible exception of Mari Kapi – on the Papua New Guinea bench at the time (and most of them were Australians). At the same time, his decisions were illuminated by his love for the people whose cases he was deciding: witch or warrior, criminal or victim, his compassion for all of them informed every choice he made, resulting not just in decisions that were extraordinary in their fairness and equity, but also in containing lovely patches of utterly beautiful descriptive prose. Most importantly for his larger aims, though, he modelled in his decisions how a judge can understand Melanesian custom as a living part of the legal system, and how the court can weave it into a new, homegrown Papua New Guinean common law.

I believe that Bernard knew that his decisions were likely to be appealed, and so, in each one, he tried to speak to his fellow judges, to educate them about custom from the inside. He wrote about custom as if it were dream and magic which, as he tried to explain to his fellow judges, it was. He aimed to be helpful, but the other judges reacted as if he’d handed them a cupful of scorpions. Just about every decision he wrote was overturned, and never mildly. In their appellate rejoinders, the other judges didn’t just disagree with him, they mocked his reliance on custom, expressed horror at his introduction of customary concepts, such as compensation, into their legal system, and tried in every way they could to ensure that Bernard’s way, the Melanesian Way, would never find a home in Papua New Guinea’s underlying law, that no other young hopeful Acting Judge would have the temerity to try it. Today, Bernard’s brief tenure as a judge is all but forgotten. I expect, though, that future generations will come upon his decisions, and will be charmed, and emboldened, and educated by them; I hope, fervently, that, as with many great works unsung at the time, they will eventually be widely read, lauded, copied, that what he said about the law, and how he said it, will someday become the cornerstone of a new and glorious era in Papua New Guinean jurisprudence.

It is possible to see Bernard’s life as a failure, because, in what he most wanted to do, which was to make Papua New Guinea truly itself, truly noble, and truly free of outside influences, he was rebuffed at every turn. He tried doing it as a legal reformer, a lawyer and a judge – and that failed. He turned to politics – where he was granted much personal success – he served as a Minister in three different governments, under three different Prime Ministers (one of whom fired him, because he refused to go along with that government’s self-aggrandising policies); when his party was not in the coalition, he was Leader of the Opposition; when, I believe, it again was, he became Speaker of Parliament; at his death, he was serving as High Commissioner to New Zealand. But, still, he failed in his main endeavour, which was to create a polity marked by integrity, honesty and nobility. He believed this would happen if only Papua New Guinea would be true to itself, to its history, to its customs, both old and new; he could not make this happen.

To Bernard, Melanesian custom spoke to the best in his people. All he wanted was to make this the hallmark of the independent state he’d helped to create – such a simple wish, and everything – or, more precisely, everyone in power – the judges, the members of Parliament, the foreign investors and their Papua New Guinean compradors – conspired to make it impossible. A lesser person would have despaired. Or, at least, been angry. As far as I know, Bernard never lost his sense of humour, his impish wit, his willingness to take his afternoon nap on any available carpet, no matter how plush. He never lost his humility, his kindness, his essential optimism. Nor did he ever stop helping others. Even in his later days, despite his august accomplishments, his by then almost legendary status as one of the greatest, and truest, of the founding fathers, he was always available, especially to the young. In an email to me, responding to an earlier, more informal version of this memorial, a younger anthropologist, Ira Bashkow, described this part of Bernard’s life better than I can:

[My wife] Lise’s fieldwork was in his home village, and he was tremendously kind to us. It is completely true of him that he was immensely generous and himself lived humbly. He had a rare kind of integrity, thoughtfulness, and brilliance. I feel like it was one of the privileges of my life to have known him. … Though we came to know him as an old man, and you since his youth, you describe the man we know exactly — humble, wise, principled. His death marks a significant generational transition in the history of Papua New Guinea. As we say of Moses, another leader like him will not again arise.

I have said that, from some narrow perspectives, Bernard’s life could be viewed as a failure. But it will not be – and ought not to be. Because he was not just a lawyer and judge, not just a politician, he was, most deeply and through all of his life, a writer and philosopher. It is through his writings that he will live. His words will, I believe, do more than endure; they will inspire. So it is fitting we end with them. These are from his seminal work, The Melanesian Way:

Our history did not begin with contact with the Western explorers. Our civilisation did not start with the coming of the Christian missionaries. Because we have an ancient civilisation, it is important for us to give proper dignity and place to our history. We can only be ourselves if we accept who we are rather than denying our autonomy. Our history did not have the binding effect of the written word. It did not have the wheel to travel distances, and it did it did not have the naked power of the barrel of the gun. Accordingly, our influence was limited.

Still, it was a lasting human experience. But today, we have the gift of the written word and the privilege of the wheel. We can reflect on our ancient past and the modern life. We can have a responsibility to ourselves and to the world to bring to the world the treasures of our civilization. ….

Cut off from the rest of the world for many centuries, Melanesians nevertheless survived as a people. Now that we are finally connected with the world, we suddenly see ourselves through the world mirror.

Will we see our own true size images, or will we see ourselves in the images and the shadows of others?

Will we see ourselves in the long shadows of the dwindling light and the advanced darkness of the evening dusk, or will we see ourselves in the long and radiant rays of the rising sun? We can choose, if we will.

I see a new vision and a new hope for Melanesians. I see ourselves holding fast to the worthy customs of our people. I see Melanesians accepting principles of Christianity. I see Melanesians as a people who have patience and time for every person. I see Melanesians giving their highest regard to the spirituality of human dignity and a proper but insignificant role to the building up of status through materialism.