The Fortunes of Foragers in Colonial and Post-colonial New Guinea

Abstract

At contact, New Guinea was home to at least 30 forager groups of one kind or another. As one of the last regions on Earth to fall under colonial control, it therefore provides an unparalleled opportunity to examine how and with what consequences foraging communities engaged with colonial and post-colonial forces. Their experiences were profoundly shaped by a complex conjunction between local subsistence regimes and the logistics of colonial expansion. Groups located on waterways depended on wild sago and aquatic resources and comprised some of the largest villages in all New Guinea. They were also easily accessible to colonial vessels, however, and were therefore some of the earliest and the most profoundly affected by contact. Groups that depended on wild sago and terrestrial fauna, by contrast, formed small, low density, semi-mobile polities, and because they were isolated in the swamplands of the interior, they were among the last and least influenced of New Guinea’s communities. This chapter traces the historical contours of these different conjunctions and follows the chains of transformation they set in motion, from the initial and profound consequences of the suppression of indigenous warfare, through the economic effects of a burgeoning engagement with capitalist economies, to their impact on the political and cosmological realms of forager society.

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