From Blood to Oil: Mining, Cosmology, and Human Sacrifice in Central New Guinea

Abstract

This article explores the intersection between cosmological history and mining geography among the Oksapmin of West Sepik Province. I show that the recent intrusion of mining activity into the local area has catalysed a revival of indigenous religious traditions to explain the occurrence and ownership of the precious materials believed to exist within the ground. Through an analysis of these parts of local cosmological history used to explain contemporary mining, I also seek to ethnographically and historically position the Oksapmin as a hybrid culture mutually influenced by the intersection of two overlapping regional cultural spheres: the Min cultural region, based on the ancestress Afek to the west, and a western highlands model based on sacrificial ritual to restore the vitality of the biocosmos, to the east. This builds upon earlier research done by anthropologists in the area that, on the one hand, portrays the Oksapmin as an anomalous ethnic group in the Min culture area and, on the other hand, that has stressed links between groups lying on either side of the upper Strickland Gorge. I also argue that the Oksapmin, Duna, and Bimin groups all shared a unique trans‐Strickland cosmological identity characterised by the pursuit of world renewal by means of human sacrifice.

How to make fire: Resonant rupture within Melanesian charismatic revivalism

“…A second example from the 1978 Engan revival concerns the establishment of specially demarcated ‘prayer places’ (Cramb and Kolo, 1983, p. 103). The traditional sacred landscape of the Engans, like many other Papua New Guinea highlands societies, was an interconnected web of ritual sites associated with ancestral lineage origins, where clans would perform pig sacrifices in order to regenerate the biocosmos (Biersack, 1995; Brutti, 1997; Macdonald, 2016). Missionisation effectively dismantled this indigenous ritual and cosmological complex, leaving the sacred sites in a dilapidated state, idle and overgrown.…”

Cosmology and Crisis in Oksapmin, Papua New Guinea

“…). Normally thought of as belonging to the broader Mountain Ok or Min cultural area (see Jorgensen ), there is also literature that points toward important cosmological, religious, and social connections with ethnic groups east across the Strickland (Macdonald ; Modjeska ; Strathern ). Their livelihood is built principally on a base of subsistence gardening, the main staple being sweet potato ( tuan ), which is grown in mounded gardens along the valley floor.…”

“…Religiously, almost all Oksapmin strongly identify as Christian and attend church on a regular basis, though their cosmology is a diverse mix of synthesized elements from both the pre‐Christian and Christian worlds. Before the arrival of Christianity, local religion was centred on a graded men's initiation system, a form the Oksapmin shared with their Min neighbours (Barth ), as well as a periodic human sacrifice associated with a regional ancestress the Oksapmin knew as Yuan, a custom that linked them closely to the Bimin‐Kuskusmin and Duna groups on both sides of the Strickland Gorge (Brutti ; Macdonald ). In addition to this core ritual complex, Oksapmin religion and cosmology was made up of many other components that, while not the subject of collective ritual, were nonetheless crucially important forces shaping everyday life.…”