Dangerous Objects: Changing Indigenous Perceptions of Material Culture in a Papua New Guinea Society

Abstract

In this article I examine the ways that the Maisin people of Oro Province in Papua New Guinea have understood and deployed objects of their material culture over the course of a century of interactions with European outsiders. In the early years of the twentieth century, an Anglican missionary noted local attitudes toward certain significant objects. Some of these objects likely became part of a large collection he made for the Australian Museum. I compare his observations with my own, made in the course of ethnographic fieldwork some 70 years later. The comparison shows that Maisin during both periods identified certain objects as emblems of kinship identity and others as dangerous, as materials for sorcery. However, Maisin attitudes toward these and other objects have been strongly influenced over the decades through encounters and dialogues with outsiders, particularly missionaries in the past and, more recently, environmentalists and museum curators.