When People Thought God Had Come

From which age

Yulius Romeo Mahuze began his account with an objection. Asked about the customary stories that circulate, he asked back, from which age. The age of the parents, the age of the ancestors, or the age now running. The distance between the three, he said, is very long indeed.

What he knew for certain was the history of tribal war.

From Kondo to Digul

Malind civilisation, in his telling, moved from the land of Kondo to the land of Digul, as far as the Digul River and the Digul estuary. From there they went headhunting. That headhunting reached the Mandobo country, the Muyu country, and on into Papua New Guinea, into the country bordering Minuptaran.

"Our history is a history steeped in headhunting," he said.

The movement began at the tip of the bird's tail, and from there they came as far as Kondo. From Kondo they spread out across customary territories, and within that spreading four customary groupings took shape.

At Muting lies the Esam territory. In Merauke town, running from Bat village to Buti beach, lies the Sosom territory. From Bat to Senegi, to Kaliki and Salor and upward, lies the Mayo grouping, which then split into Mayo Daman and Mayo Bodol. In the middle, reaching the Digul River, lies the Imo territory.

The map the journey left behind

These four groupings are not merely a division of land. They are the framework that governs who may cross what. Within each grouping there are seven clans. Yet a person from one village may not cross into the clan territory of another.

"And the same for us," the narrator said. "We cannot cross into Wasur village territory."

The reason he gave connects directly to the headhunting story. Those boundaries were made during the journeys of hunting and of seeking heads. When a party came, rested, and found food in a place, that place was afterwards made a boundary. Trees, swamps, sago groves, and hunting grounds became the markers.

The harshest journey left behind the most durable map.

Not fishers

Asked whether the people of the Sosom territory are close to the sea because they are fishers, he answered honestly that no history says so. They reached the coast not because of the sea but because of the headhunting journey. A party came down, did not find what it sought, and settled there.

"There is no history that we are fishers," he said.

What he stressed instead was respect for food plants. He named wati, banana, and sago as plants greatly honoured, and explained that food plants too have their clans.

The day the Westerners came

The age of headhunting ended when religion arrived. Before religion came, the narrator said, the Malind held very hard to the culture of the headhunt. He named 1902 as the marker, the year now known as the beginning of Merauke town.

When Westerners arrived, the Malind supposed that what had come was God. The reason was the different skin, the white skin, and the tall people. They thought, this is our dema. Dema, in their understanding, is the lord of the land, or a god.

Afterwards Catholic teaching was given, and customary teachings were let go one by one. Things done within rituals and customary feasts were declared to break the ten commandments. Sacred objects were all buried.

What was not buried

One thing was not buried with them, and the narrator pressed this point carefully.

The practice of singing for the dead did not come from religion. When someone died, there was singing from night until morning, customary singing, beside the body laid out.

"That was already a tradition of the Marind," he said

What he regrets

What he regretted was what came after. Once their generation came to know religion and schooling, Yulius Romeo Mahuze said, customary knowledge in his own generation and the one below had already thinned. The dances too are close to extinction.

And for that reason, he said, he is still working to bring them back.