How Tribal Customs Confront Globalization Chaos

In the early 1930’s, three Australian brothers, Mick, James, and Danny Leahy, walked into the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea and became the first white people ever to meet the one million inhabitants of those fertile valleys and mountains. They were looking for gold and carrying rifles, which they used to shoot pigs in demonstrations of power (see video above), and they started the process of imposing their laws upon the highlanders.

A Hobbesian critic of social change might theorize that the monopolization of force that goes along with the building up of Western European social institutions has led to a steady decrease in violence. But recent anthropological research funded by The University of Utah and the Enga Provincial Government does not bear out such a broad theory of pacification. In fact, between 1990 and 2005, the Enga tribe saw a dramatic increase in violence, as clan warriors started taking up guns to fight out their wars.

The influence of western power was corrupting longstanding customs of age-based hierarchy and order as angry youths with M16’s and homemade shotguns took control. While global corporations brought with their mining trucks the full force of the international laws that underpin the greatest monopolization of power in history, the tribes saw no civilizing pacification. Instead, they saw their ancient customs eroded as guns, drugs and alcohol — along with the nagging insight that cash is king — undercut their traditional authority figures.

Between 1991 and 2005, the Enga fought 250 tribal wars. Starting in 2004, the Enga drew on their customary cultural techniques for conflict resolution manned by elders, solving problems through mediation and restorative justice rather than by armed conflict engaging machine gun toting mercenaries, or "rambos." As the population tired of war and turned to customary authority, the violence eased off. Between 1991 and 1995, the average Enga tribal war led to 19 deaths. Between 2006 and 2010, as the influence of customary tribal authority reasserted itself, wars ended with only 5 deaths on average. By 2010-2011, few wars were fought in Enga.

It turns out those early prospectors wandering into the mountains of central Papua New Guinea weren’t far from the mark. The Porgera gold and silver mine, managed responsibly by Barrick Gold, is regarded as one of the top ten largest gold mines in the world. The world’s largest gold mine, the Grasberg mine, is only a few hundred miles away in the Indonesian-occupied portion of the island.

The saga of global mining interests mixing with the tribal communities of the Western Highlands continues today. Exxon Mobil announced in July that it is undertaking a 15.7 billion dollar natural gas drilling venture in Southern Highlands Province, just south of Enga. Such a massive operation will change the lives of hundreds of thousands of locals, and it’s not so clear that any rose colored scheme of pacification will play out. The influx of capital could lead to further destabilization of traditional authority.

The 1983 documentary above about the Leahy brothers and their expedition shows in a visceral, human way the impacts of globalized industrialization on the Papuan tribes.