The River Whose Name Is Blood

A name between two countries

There is a place name between Malind country and Kanum country. People call it Ndalir.

In the Malind language the name sounds ordinary. In the Kanum language it means blood, blood flowing along the river.

No accident

According to Marthen Ndiken, the name is no accident. Ndalir was the war frontier between the Malind and the Kanum. There the two peoples used to fight, and there the reach of power stopped. The Malind were not to cross Ndalir.

The Kanum territory being too large, the narrator says, was one reason the Malind went to war with the Kanum.

He also indicated the lie of that country. From Ndalir, he said, it goes down toward Urumb and rises on as far as Onggari. From that point inward is already Malind country.

An enmity that was not total

What must be recorded is that the enmity was not total.

With the Yei, the narrator says, the Kanum are family. With the Kima'am also family. "The enemy was between us and the Marin," he said.

Four brothers who came out of one nibung trunk does not mean four brothers always at peace. The origin story and the war story, in this telling, are one story carried through to its end.

How the fighting stopped

The war lasted a long time. The narrator says that in the nineteen thirties (1930) people were still fighting, and that the last war took place around nineteen fifty six or nineteen fifty seven (1956 - 1957).

What ended it, in his account, was the presence of government and the arrival of the Gospel in the land of Papua at the same time. Administration and evangelisation moved together, and both worked to make peace between the warring peoples.

What remained afterwards

After the fighting stopped, the acknowledgement of kinship continued.

To this day, Marthen Ndiken says, the four peoples still honour that they are part of orang Matahari Naik, that is, the Kanum.