Papua New Guinea’s History To Be Featured As A Digital ‘Exhibit’

We often take history books for granted, but in many cultures, the passage of knowledge, history and tradition is often by word of mouth only. An anthropologist at the University of Virginia is helping to bring the vision of a man from Papua New Guinea to life though the digitization of his village’s history and culture.

Back in 2006, Lise Dobrin had received an email from a man she had met in Papua New Guinea several years earlier whilst completing fieldwork for her dissertation. Attached to the email was a word document written by the man which revealed the fascinating history of his village in great detail.

The man was Bernard Narokobi, an important political and cultural figure in his country. He was worried that if he didn’t write it all down, it would be lost forever. As the generations aged and passed away, oral history was dying with them, and he wanted to ensure this vital piece of his culture and his roots were preserved for future generations.

Narokobi initially sent his work to Dobrin because he felt he could not publish it and own it under his name. Dobrin explained that this was because he would have wanted to discuss it with the village elders so they could approve it and add to it, but he said that anyone with such standing had already died.

Sadly, Narokobi died in 2010, after which his family gifted the letter to UVA’s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library. Dobrin remained committed to seeing his wishes come to fruition and is now working on making this resource available online. She hopes this will provide the Arapesh people of Papua New Guinea with access to their cultural history, as many have since moved away and may have lost touch with their roots and historical knowledge. She also hopes it will be a valuable resource for other researchers who are interested in the area and its culture.

The fascinating project has been made possible by a year-long National Endowment for the Humanities-Mellon Fellowship for Digital Publication. A dedicated website is currently being built which will include a range of mediums such as video, audio, and maps, as well as dialog boxes to help explain the history of the village in greater detail. It will be highly interactive which Dobrin felt was vitally important, as this fitted in well with the cultural traditions of discussion and oral history story-telling that are part of village life.

The digital publication will also pay homage to its originator, Narokobi, who Dobrin compared to Thomas Jefferson for his dedication and ability to put forward a vision for a new nation. Narakobi was a well-respected lawyer, author, public intellect, and member of Parliament. He also helped to compose the Constitution of Papua New Guinea after it gained independence from Australia in 1975.

Dobrin believes that Narokobi’s village history has particular political significance because it sheds light on how alliances were formed throughout the ages. It explores inter-village leadership, village relationships, early colonial encounters, and the roles played by villagers during the pre-independence period. In addition, the more social aspects of village life are revealed, including arts, games, and dancing and there are also many examples of villagers who moved away and gained notable success.

Dobrin considers Papua New Guinea to be “one of the most culturally diverse countries on Earth,” as over 800 languages are spoken, little of which were previously written down. Naturally, some of these languages have faded away over the years, including the Arapesh language which is no longer spoken by current generations. Keen to preserve this element of history, Dobrin had already created a digital repository of the Arapesh language from her previous work. She was reminded of this repository when reading Narokobi’s “History of Wautogik Village”, and this work appeared to perfectly complement his, including alternative translations and versions of parts of his story written in English. It was these kinds of connections that Narakobi knew were needed if his document was to ever be published.

After Narakobi’s death, Dobrin continued with her work and knew she needed to help validate this. She travelled to Papua New Guinea to seek out elders who would be willing to help her and was delighted to find five or six who were happy to do so. She read Naroboki’s writings to them and invited them to provide their feedback and additions. Now working on the final edit, Dobrin will return to present to them the final draft, where she will also write an introduction with Narokobi’s son, Vergil, now a member of Papua New Guinea’s Supreme Court.

The final version of “History of Wautogik Village” will be made available in open-access and likely through Facebook, which Dobrin says is the medium they favor, due to greater access to mobile phones than computers. She hopes that her work will mark ‘a new frontier for linguists’ and it has already sparked inspiration for a new course she is teaching on “Curating Culture.”