Sitting in canoes : knowing places and imagining spaces among the Gogodala of Papua New Guinea

Abstract

This thesis contributes to a growing literature on nation-making in Melanesia through an analysis of Gogodala experiences and perceptions of the landscape. It explores Gogodala connections to the environment through the process of 'sitting in canoes', a local idiom which emphasises embodied links between people and places. In the swampy lowlands of Western Province, Papua New Guinea, canoes are essential everyday vehicles; for the Gogodala, canoes link each person with a clan allocating them land, sago and names. Ancestral stories explain how the first ancestors, who travelled to the area in canoes, created and named the landscape. I focus on the ways in which local understandings of food, bodies, clan designs, development and Christianity are constituted through canoes. By sitting in canoes, Gogodala people engage diverse aspects of their 'way oflife'. It is through these canoes that Gogodala imagine the nation, albeit in fragmentary comments or partial stories intertwined with local interests and concerns. Village people in this area of Papua New Guinea experience the nation-state primarily through state institutions like community schools, radio, newspapers, and Christian organisations and activities. The nation, however, features in narratives and images which emphasise bodies, places, lifestyle, Christianity and food. To encompass some of the ways in which communities in Papua New Guinea imagine and create their nation, then, we must look at local accounts of lifestyles, bodies and places. This thesis argues that Gogodala imaginings of the nation are based on perceptions of their landscape and their relations with it.