The Nagovisi of
Bougainville Island
In ‘Shibai’, I wrote: "... If you’re going to write about Jane and Becky and Sgt. Sennott and the others, you’ll need to bring Nagovisi into it as much as Hilo, Palo Alto, Stanford, Cambridge, and Harvard, and what you saw and learned in those places. And you’ve been writing fiction in which both Jane and her killer and your fictional anthropologist and the sorcerer-killer, Mesiamo, appear. And they belong even in non-fiction.
They are a part of you.
Anthropologists are aware that their presence in a community causes ripples in social space-time, and try to minimize these ripples. But you don’t know of any apart from yourself who talks — writes — openly about how they and their culture affected you. The Nagovisi taught you ways of being in the world — being with other people — that changed you and have stayed with you all these years.
It’s not as though they turned you into one of them. But you know a lot about how they see things, how they think people ought to treat one another, and these ideas have become a part of you. There’s no mystery. It’s called paying attention. It’s called internalizing."
Here's information about the Nagovisi and how they fit into my life.
The Nagovisi people live in the West-Central region of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, previously a province of Papua New Guinea. I worked among the Nagovisi briefly in 1968, then 1969-1970 and 1972-1974, finally briefly in 2001. During the two 1970s periods, I was accompanied by my then-wife Jill Nash. I lived in Pomalate Village which, when I was there, had only ten households. It is much larger now.
My research involved general ethnography, including learning about "counting classes," as described in the book, but was focused on changes in subsistence and cash crop agriculture, which required highly quantitative work on garden outputs and land area. Among other things, I mastered land surveying.
The 1972 surveying crew: Don, Pasikoro, Tevu, and Postuge.
Notes about “counting classes”.
Biroi Lands (Click to enlarge).
In 1976, I published an anthropological monograph based on my research.
The younger generation of villagers make notes on my monograph.
A violent war of secession overtook Bougainville in the late 1980s, and an uneasy peace did not arrive until around 2000. During what's called the "Crisis," many Bougainvilleans died from violence, famine, and disease. As described in ‘Shibai’, I returned after the fighting had died down, and spent time with Nebula (on whom the "Siuwako" character in A Red Woman Was Crying was based). She and I have sometimes communicated via Facebook -- which to me is extraordinary considering that, during my fieldwork and for years after, an exchange of letters might take six weeks.
Nebula and Nuai, 1972.
Nuai, 1972.
Nebula and Don, 2001.
Nebula, 2001.
Nebula, 2021.
Lalaga and Meto, 1970.
Here I am with Lalaga, one of the finest intellects I've ever known. Conversations with Lalaga are in ‘Shibai’, and also in A Red Woman Was Crying. He died in 2010.
Lalaga, 2001.
Meto, Don, and Lalaga, 2001.
Mesiamo, 1970.
Mesiamo, 1945.
Mesiamo, 1972.
The great leader (fighter, killer, alleged sorcerer, and superb intellect) Mesiamo appears in the book several times, as well as in A Red Woman Was Crying. He was an effective guerilla fighter during WWII, and was decorated by the Australians (who later jailed him when he became too powerful). A classic Bougainville "Big Man," he died in 1976. As was the case with Lalaga, much of what Mesiamo taught me appears in my academic work, and also in my literary work. In ‘Shibai’, the chapter, "He Felt Heavy So I Knew He Was Dead", is based on the handwritten notes shown below.
Mesiamo with pig, 1970.
Notes - Mesiamo kills Lon-isi.
Simon and Don at the old Hilo Memorial Hospital, 2017.
Mesiamo's grandson Simon Kenema (mentioned in the book) was the first Nagovisi to earn a post-graduate degree — a Ph.D. in Anthropology from St. Andrews University in Scotland. Here he is in Hilo, Hawai’i. We're standing in front of the hospital where I was born, which seemed appropriate to me considering that I had been many times at the bush hospital where he was born, as mentioned in ‘Shibai’.
In 2013, I published the story collection, A Red Woman Was Crying, in which, among others, Mesiamo, Lalaga, and Nebula (who appears as Siuwako) have their own stories to tell. Just as I had gotten copies of my monograph to the villagers, I also got them copies of this book. A Red Woman Was Crying is a work of fiction about an anthropologist living among the Nagovisi. It includes eight stories. Seven are told by Nagovisi narrators and one, set three decades later, by the anthropologist.
Please see this page for more information about the Nagovisi.
Nebula's son Jonathan, reading A Red Woman Was Crying.