Indigenous Peoples and Conservation Organizations

98 The Foi in Papua New Guinea
bush fowl eggs, edible wild plants, and small animals
that can be caught by hand.
Even in the garden, where women do most of the
planting, weeding, and harvesting, men have a
controlling role. They clear the space and control
the planting and cooking of certain crops,
such as banana, breadfruit, ginger, and sugarcane.
Crops controlled by women include the sago
palm, greens, and vegetables.
The Subsistence Fish Catch Monitoring Program
of Lake Kutubu identified that women did most
of the fishing, but men dominated the use of
spearing, spear-diving, and mixed gill nets. The
prevailing pattern of gender relations and the
exclusion of women from decision-making
processes would limit partnership in the fishery
project with WWF.
3.5 The Changing Culture of Resource
Management
The Foi, like other indigenous peoples in PNG,
are tied on many levels to the land and its plants
and animals. Local people value Lake Kutubu not
only as a provider of sustenance, but also as a
fount for their social identity and cultural survival.
Foi subsistence activities include slash-and-burn
gardening, tree-crop cultivation, fishing, hunting,
foraging, and pig husbandry. The sago palm is a
multipurpose resource. Sago is the staple food,
and women spend considerable time processing
the starchy pulp year-round. The palm also provides
building material for houses and fodder for
pigs, and is a source for protein-rich grubs.
Forests provide materials used for rituals, sorcery,
and body decorations. For generations they also
have provided items that the Foi could trade to
acquire what was scarce or otherwise unavailable.
Traditionally, economic productivity did not result
in the accumulation of wealth, but provided the
means for ceremonial feasting, exchanges, and
presentations that nurtured social and political
harmony and stability within the community and
between the community and its allies, rivals,
affines, and trading partners. Exchange and reciprocity
are foundational not only among the Foi
but are underlying principles of Melanesian social
and cultural organization generally.
Foi culture is closely attuned to the natural world
through changes in resource availability during
the five recognized seasons. These changes affect
the diet, the distribution of labor among men and
women, the pattern of resource use, residential
patterns, and other activities, and reinforce the
apparent seamlessness of nature and culture.
Foi clans are totemic, and the Foi believe the
spirit that animates the body and leaves it in
death also inhabits certain plant and animal
species. For instance, a man who is murdered or
killed during battle becomes far more dangerous
and takes the form of a cockatoo. Some departed
spirits inhabit tabia trees, whose bark is used to
cure genaro sickness. In addition to ghosts of
dead people, the forest is alive with other dangerous
spirits that take revenge and cause illness
when certain conditions are not met or transgressions
occur. Feelings of reverence and fear,
embodied in myths and beliefs, shape how and
when resources are used and who may use them.
Because the social and cultural fabric is so tightly
interwoven with the biodiversity that provides
material sustenance, the Foi perception of
“ecosystem” is markedly different from the
Western scientific concept. The natural world
includes human beings and their spiritual, cultural,
and economic activities from resource-use patterns
to gardening cycles to modes of territorial ownership.
The Foi do not see themselves operating on
the ecosystem but participating within it. This
cosmic unity becomes a celebration of “a community
of life” in which there is interdependency and
harmony among humans and nonhumans. To the
Foi, biodiversity is the “capital inheritance” that
has sustained them for millennia and provided the
affluent foundation for their culture.
The cultural value of individual flora and fauna,
however, may transcend their biological importance
in the ecosystem. So the indigenous peoples
of PNG are not passive parts of the
ecosystem. They have had impact on the environment.
Vast anthropogenic grasslands in the
highlands testify to how traditional societies
since antiquity have modified the natural environment
in meeting their subsistence needs.
It can be argued that whatever conservation has
occurred was a product of circumstance rather
than intention, and transpired because population
densities were low and technologies simple
(Bulmer 1982). Though drawing generalizations
in PNG may not be appropriate due to its cultural