Fore people

Until the 1950s, the Fore people had minimal direct contact with outsiders who were at the time colonizing Papua New Guinea. A small number of prospectors crossed through their territory in the 1930s and at least one plane crashed there during World War II. New diseases such as influenza reached them before significant contact with colonial people occurred.[4]

In the late 1940s, colonial government patrols reached further and further into Fore territory. The patrol officers, called kiaps by the Fore, tried to conduct a census in each village they passed through and lectured the villagers on the importance of hygiene and road construction. They encouraged the people to give up village warfare, traditional beliefs and cannibalism as well. These officers attempted to recruit local 'big men' to represent the colonial authorities as headmen (luluais) or as deputies (tultuls).[4]

In 1951, a police post was set up at Okapa (then known as Moke) among the North Fore. A patrol officer, John R. McArthur, was stationed there from 1954 when the "rough track" from Kainantu opened to traffic. Transportation in the region improved to such a degree that it was possible to drive a Land Rover or motorbike to Purosa among the South Fore by 1957. At this time, colonial authorities estimated that there were at least 12,000 Fore living in the region.[4]

In addition to government officers, other outsiders began to enter Fore territory. Anthropologists Ronald and Catherine Berndt spent time with the North Fore in 1953, while missionaries and traders penetrated further south. The Fore underwent considerable cultural change as a result of this contact: they traded with the outsiders, began growing coffee, and started to adopt a money-based economy. Gordon T. Linsley, a patrol officer stationed at Okapa, noted the rapid pace of social change among the Fore in a 1951 report. He observed that village warfare had declined considerably, the young Fore men seemingly glad to have an excuse to quit fighting. The region was already under the control of the Australian government and some villages were relocating from the high ridges down to their gardens. Rest houses were present in the larger villages and separate men's houses remained only in the more isolated villages. Many people regularly used the 'rough track' to travel to Kainantu and were able to see the latest fashions and hear Pidgin spoken. Broad paths linked communities together; however, Linsley noted inter-district fighting persisted and accusations of sorcery were still common in Purosa.[4]

A map of Papua New Guinea and the Okapa District. The area highlighted in red consists primarily of the land inhabited by the Fore people.

The Fore people live in the Okapa District: a mountainous region in south-eastern Papua New Guinea. Combined, the 20,000 members of the North and South Fore live on approximately 400 square miles of land, almost all of which is steep mountain. Of these 400 square miles, the majority belongs to the region belonging to the South Fore, who make up the majority of the population.[5] In this mountainous region, there is an average of over 90 inches of rainfall per year, much of which falls in the "rainy season", lasting from December to March.[6]

Much of the landscape the Fore reside on is untouched forest. Areas of grassland or clearings in the forest appear only in locations of present or past agricultural cultivation. The settlements of the Fore people, usually consisting of a cluster of larger buildings, occur near tracts of land cleared for cultivation, and are frequently demolished and rebuild elsewhere as new land is acquired for cultivation.[6] These reside almost exclusively on mountainsides, with the majority of Fore hamlets being established between 4,500 and 7,000 ft above sea level (compared to valleys which descend close to 1,000 ft above sea level). The Lamari and Yani rivers are the two largest in the Fore region. Both are tributaries to the larger Purari river to the south.

The Fore language is spoken in the Okapa District in the Eastern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea.[7] It is part of the East New Guinea Highlands Stock, and the Trans-New Guinea Phylum. It is spoken in three dialects: Northern (which is the prestige dialect), Central, and Southern.[7][6]

The Fore diet consists of pigs, small animals, insects, wild plants, and root vegetables such as taro.[6][8] Root vegetables are cultivated on land cleared by slash-and-burn farming.[6] After the introduction of the sweet potato roughly 150 years ago, food production increased, as the crop could be grown in harsher conditions than existing root vegetables. Around the same time, the Fore began domesticating pigs, replacing the need to hunt wild ones. The sweet potato not only became a staple food, but was used as feed for domesticated pigs.[6]

In their analysis of a 1957 study, Hamilton-Reid and Gajdusek determined that the Fore people have an unusually rich and varied diet especially when compared to other civilizations in the New Guinea highland regions.[9] In addition to growing sweet potato, ebia, sugarcane, and pitpit in their large and productive gardens, the Fore supplement their diet with pigs, rodents, and adult insects. The quality of their diet is so high that, in the 1957 study, no evidence of clinical malnutrition was found in the general population despite lacking access to any modern nutritional or medical services.[9]

There is very little hierarchical structure in Fore society; there are no clear chiefs and no strict hierarchy of power. Women are generally considered inferior to men, but age and gender are not necessarily an aspect of the power structure; the only distinction made is between children and adults.[6]

Fore society is traditionally organized into kinship groups, although these groups are not always strictly familial.[10] A kinship group is made up of a male lineage, but may include other members, such as refugees or distant relatives, that migrated from other Fore kinship groups and became fully integrated into the group, taking on the same privileges and responsibilities as the biologically related members.[10][11] Men from the same patriarchal lineage are not accorded any benefits over other non-related men in the group; in fact, it is considered beneficial and a strength to the village to bring in men from other kinship groups by offering them land to integrate them.[12]

Generally, each kinship group lives in a village with several small offshoots, each consisting of a single house for the men and boys and several small surrounding houses for the women and children. These hamlets are established when gardening land surrounding the current settlement is exhausted and it is necessary to move outwards and clear more areas of woodland for growing crops.[11] Each cluster of villages and hamlets consists of 50–400 people, with an average of 185.[12]

Land is passed down through the male lineage; Fore culture is heavily patrilineal. Boys marry and remain on the land on which their fathers lived. Daughters of one clan typically marry into many different clans, but these marriage alliances often do not last long.[12] Conflict often arises over unused land for expansion of farming and grazing, and villages or kinship groups will often band together to defend territory.[11] Generally, these battles are fought with bows and arrows as the primary weapon. Settlements are temporary; a group will flee when they lose a battle over their land and will take refuge with other groups of friends or relatives.[6]

Males born at the same time or in the same childbirth hut are considered agemates, or Nagaiya. Throughout his lifetime, a man's Nagaiya remains a significant part of his life; for example, agemates will hunt and battle together. The ties among Nagaiya are considered as strong as family ties.[12]

According to traditional Fore beliefs, the land they live in (or bagina) is alive, and it created the world. The bagina also created the ancestor guardians, amani, from which the Fore are descended. The Fore believe a person has five souls: the auma, the ama, the aona, the yesegi, and the kwela.[8] When a person dies, the Fore conduct mortuary rituals to ensure that each soul reaches its proper destination. Upon death, the auma, or good aspects of a person, travels to kwelanandamundi, the land of the dead. To help the auma reach kwelanandamundi, the deceased's family members leave food with the body. Two to three days after death, the body may be buried, entombed, or cooked and consumed. If consumed, the deceased's ama was thought to bless those who ate. The aona, or special abilities of a person, passed on to the deceased's preferred child, while the yesegi, or ancestral power of a person, passed on to all the deceased's children. Purification rituals during and after consumption of the body aim to ensure that the kwela (or the pollution of a dead body) does not taint those who eat it. Through such rituals, the Fore were assured that the deceased's positive aspects remain in the tribe, while the auma, ama, and kwela reach kwelanandamundi.[8]

Nokoti is a forest spirit common in Fore folklore.[16] A nokoti is portrayed as a tall masculine man carrying a small axe or small bag that contains his magical power.[16] A nokoti would live in an isolated mysterious part of the forest, such as an unusual rock formation or misshaped tree.[16] The area in which nokoti live (ples masalai in Melanesian) is considered sacred and should not be disturbed.[16] Any person that intrudes would be afflicted with illnesses caused by the Nokoti kionei (Nikoti's poison).[16] For example, if a family with a child slept overnight in the ples masalai, the nokoti would steal and hide a lock of the child's hair.[16] If the hair wasn't found, then the child would die from illness.[16] Adults would not die, but their genitalia would become inflamed.[16]

Nokoti were not always harmful—they would bless individuals with superior hunting skills or increased fertility.[16] One common tale of this benevolence recounts the life of a hunter who discovers a unique rock formation while hunting.[16] He climbs to the top and finds a nokoti named Walusubo, sitting on sugar cane leaves.[16] The man asks for Walusubo's bag.[16] Walusubo agrees to give him the bag in the future and tells him to eat the sugar leaves in the meantime.[16] He then gives the hunter instructions that vastly improve his hunting abilities.[16] After the hunter dies, his kin return to the rock, but Walusubo has died with the hunter (they were nagaiya).[16] Although the magic bag vanished with the nokoti, the kin gain the strength to vanquish many foes when they eat the sugar leaves on that rock formation.[16] Since then the rock formation is known as Walusubo Yaba, or Walusubo's stone.[16]

The flag of the Eastern Highlands. A nokoti is displayed in the center of the gold star. The nokoti may also be referred to as Nokondi.

When Papua New Guinea was colonized, the nokoti changed to become less of a benefactor and more of a criminal.[16] The appearance of nokoti became lankier, sometimes maimed if the nokoti was injured during his earlier crimes.[16] This change in nokoti folklore reflects the shift from the indigenous hunting culture to the capitalist culture of the colonies.[16] One of these new tales tells of a nokoti entering a village and stealing a woman's skirt and her shells and beads.[16] He then returns to the forest where he dresses a tree with his stolen clothes.[16] A hunter spots him and returns to the village to collect the other men, but when they return to capture the thief, the nokoti isn't there and the stolen traditional valuables cannot be reclaimed.[16] Another tale describes a nokoti who was captured and sent to Australia while robbing a local store.[16] Other tales tell of the nokoti stealing the money that a kiap (a patrol officer) was using to pay his employees or attacking huts and members of the patrol.[16]

In modern days, the nokoti is part of the Fore cultural heritage.[16] The government of the Eastern Highlands declared the nokoti a symbol of unity in 1997 and gave it a prominent position in the center of the Eastern Highlands’ flag.[16] The nokoti is now viewed as a mischievous benefactor.[16]

A Fore girl becomes eligible for marriage when she first menstruates. When she marries, she leaves her home with the women to go live with her husband. If her husband is in a different clan, then she must leave all her family and old friends behind (including any nagaiya). During a marriage ceremony, the husband's family pays the bride's family a marriage fee. This money is thrown on the bride's head as “head pay.” Then, the husband and bride attend separate feasts. The groom is often pierced in the nose as piercings are thought to increase a man's strength.[12]

Prior to contact with colonial forces and patrols, the Fore people often engaged in warfare amongst themselves. This warfare occurred between local Fore tribes, usually started by one tribe as a means of retribution or as a preemptive measure to strategically consolidate power in the region.[17] Oftentimes, tribes created alliances with other tribes and were expected to aid their allies in the war effort with food, prayer, and troops.[17] Warfare amongst the Fore led either directly or indirectly to the mortalities of approximately 0.6% of the population, most of whom were younger males.[18]

Despite being consistently engaged in warfare, the Fore were characterized by their tempered disdain for warfare and preference for peace. The Fore predominantly viewed warfare as an undesirable last resort, so they often resolved conflicts peacefully or ended wars at the earliest feasible opportunity.[19]

Foreign influence brought much change to the culture of the Fore, both directly and indirectly. Throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, foreign presence in the Fore region was common.[19] Along with Australian colonial forces, scientists studying local diseases and Christian missionaries frequented the region.[19]

The native religion of the Fore was slowly replaced with Christianity, due to the establishment of missions and influence of missionaries.[19] This change is partially responsible for the halting of the Fore ritual of consuming deceased relatives, which was a primary agent in the rise of the Kuru disease.[18] Furthermore, the rigidity of clans and clan alliances began to dissolve, due to the halting of warfare and abundance of resources.[17][18] Men and women began to mix more freely, as did people of different clans.[6][22] Trade networks were vastly expanded due to the introduction of roads and more advanced transportation technology. Foreign crops and technology were embraced by Fore society, such as coffee beans and steel tools.[17] Additionally, foreign influence and resources led to the establishment of clinics in the region, which helped decrease Fore mortality rates and bring western health practices to the Fore.[18][19]

Kuru and other diseases such as dysentery and whooping cough had a significant influence on Fore culture.[20] Oftentimes, these diseases represented the physical manifestations of sorcery to the Fore people, which contributed to warfare and the development of religious rituals against sorcery.[14] Furthermore, kuru predominantly affected women, as women more commonly partook in cannibalistic religious rituals. Because of this, there was a significant sex imbalance in Fore society.[14] By some accounts, this gender imbalance reached a 3:1 male to female ratio at its worst.[18] This affected the family structure of the Fore, as it became commonplace for children to be raised and cared for only by their fathers.

Additionally, some accredit the continued foreign interest in the Fore to the scientific phenomenon that was the kuru disease. The consistent presence of scientists and medical professionals to study kuru was one of the reasons foreign infrastructure, technology, and cultural practices was able to disperse through the region as quickly as it did, supercharging the speed of cultural change in the region.[19]

Kuru is a rare, orally transmitted, incurable neurodegenerative disorder that is caused by prions. The disease reached its peak prevalence in the 1950s and 1960s. It is characterized by loss of coordination and control over muscle movement and it ultimately leads to death.

Kuru first attested around the turn of the 20th century in the Uwami village of the Keiagana people, and spread to the Awande in the North Fore.[23] By the 1930s it had spread to the South Fore. It was around this time that Ted Eubank, a European gold prospector, first noticed the neurodegenerative disease, but it was not documented until 1957, by anthropologists Berndt and Berndt, and reported to Western medicine until 1957 by D.C. Gadjusek and Vincent Zigas.[24] According to Gajdusek, who also observed kuru in the 1950s, the hypothesis that the disease was spread via the endocannibalistic rituals of the Fore people was extremely apparent. However, Shirley Lindenbaum and Robert Glasse were the first to formally publish the hypothesis that kuru spread through cannibalism.[25]

Women and children would most often consume the brains of the deceased, which were the most likely body part to contain the infectious prion agent, while the men preferentially consumed muscle tissue. As a result, the vast majority of victims among the South Fore were women. In fact, eight times more women than men contracted the disease. It later affected small children and the elderly at a high rate as well.[26]

The incidence of kuru increased in the 1940s and ‘50s and mortality rate began to approach close to 35/1,000 in a population of 12,000 Fore people. The mortality rate distorted the female:male ratio, which reached 1:2, or even 1:3 among South Fore.[25] The prevalence of the kuru epidemic has been on a steady decline since the 1950s, but has lingered into the 21st century due its incubation period which can last as long as 50 years.[27]

Though the Fore people also dispose of their dead in other ways, the most common method up to the 1960s was transumption, or consumption of their dead. Transumption not only expressed love and grief, but also recycled the deceased's abilities within the family and quarantined the kwela, which was dangerous if not disposed of properly. It was believed that women's wombs were best for containing the kwela.[28]

When an individual died, after grieving for two to three days, the Fore women cut up, divided, shared, and consumed the body. The men rarely partook in the dismemberment and consumption of the corpse. They took great care to consume all parts, even drying and crushing the bones and all used cooking utensils and mixing it in with vegetables so that nothing was missed. A series of purification rituals meant to cleanse the body of kwela then took place over several weeks. Finally, there were feasts and rituals that simultaneously compensated the women for housing the kwela, acted as the final step in cleansing the body of kwela, and sent all remaining parts of the soul to the land of the dead.[28]

This practice of transumption only amplified the spread of kuru within Fore communities. Following the outbreak, the Australian government forbade and rigorously controlled the practice, and transumption ceased almost immediately. It is now widely believed that kuru transmission through transumption had ceased by the 1960s, though it continued longer in the south than in the north.[29]

Fore women consumed the brain more than men and children did. Because of this and their primary role in transumption, they had a much higher mortality rate of kuru than men, which spurred a demographic emergency. Men took on the roles and duties of the mother in addition to that of the father, healers were consulted and pilgrimages organized, bride prices were withheld until the bride produced a child, and many feared extinction. The Fore people believe that ailments and misfortunes stem from sorcery and witchcraft, so naturally they scrambled to find the sorcerers responsible for kuru. Today, they no longer attribute kuru to witchcraft. However, they have not adopted modern Western medicine nor abandoned their belief in sorcery.[30]

• Kuru
• Papua New Guinea
• Cannibalism