The Selling of the Last Savage
by Alex
It’s happened once again — another ‘first contact’ story from New Guinea. This time it’s an “article by Michael Behar”:http://outside.away.com/outside/destinations/200502/fist-contact_1.html in Outsider Magazine that’s recently been “featured on NPR”:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4493348 . Sometimes anthropology’s knee-jerk, politically correct reactions drive me nuts, but in this case the article is so over the top that it’s difficult to take it — or Kelly Woolford, the tour operator it portrays — seriously at all. Lines about ‘stone age cannibals’ litter the pages.
This is particularly bothersome to me, since first contact in New Guinea is one of my academic specialities. I first got interested in the topic in 1995, when I wrote a “BA thesis”:http://library-catalog.reed.edu/search/aGolub&/agolub/1%2C33%2C46%2CB/frameset&FF=agolub+alex&1%2C1%2C comparing first-contact patrols in Papua New Guinea that occurred between 1926 and 1939. There is by now a burgeoning literature on the subject. Some of the books, such as “Like People You See In A Dream”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0804718997/qid=1108059528/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-7758230-2549624?v=glance&s=books and “The Sky Travellers”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0522848273/qid=1108059664/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/002-7758230-2549624?v=glance&s=books are among the best books ever written about New Guinea. Others, like “First Contact”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0670801674/qid=1108059741/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_4/002-7758230-2549624?v=glance&s=books are great yarns. Still others, like “The Lost Tribe”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0805053182/qid=1108059788/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-7758230-2549624?v=glance&s=books are wretched accounts of ignorant and unethical white guys dressing up their own bunglings as ‘adventure’. My own research on first contact in Porgera occupies a major part of my first book, “Gold Positive.”:http://uhmanoa.lib.hawaii.edu/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v1=3&ti=1,3&SAB1=golub&BOOL1=all+of+these&FLD1=Keyword+Anywhere+%28GKEY%29+%28GKEY%29&GRP1=AND+with+next+set&SAB2=&BOOL2=all+of+these&FLD2=Keyword+Anywhere+%28GKEY%29+%28GKEY%29&GRP2=AND+with+next+set&SAB3=&BOOL3=all+of+these&FLD3=Keyword+Anywhere+%28GKEY%29+%28GKEY%29&PID=3966&CNT=25&SEQ=20050210082552&SID=1 I’ve even taught “a course”:http://library.kcc.hawaii.edu/external/psiweb/melanesia/First_Contact_Syllabus.htm on this topic at the University of Chicago (which is no small shakes). And this is not to mention the many classic travelogues that emerged from New Guinea that are still available to be read today: _Across New Guinea from the Fly to the Sepik_, _Papuan Wonderland_, _The Land That Time Forgot_, and so on.
In short, there is so much that we know and understand about first contanct in New Guinea — don’t even get me started on other parts of the world — that the appearence of this article and the universal condemnation of the tour operator described in it should be a relatively simple affair. But this is one dream that people are simply not willing to give up on, and so when what anthropologists say about this doesn’t match what they want to hear, they simply ignore it.
There’s so much wrong with this tour operator I really don’t know where to begin. But in case you were wondering: however cynical Behar is about this encounter, you should be even twice as cynical.
Dear Alex,
I have gotten your book & found your syllabus on-line. Like you, I am intrigued by stories of “first contact” and their persistance, and I heard the NPR story on Woolford’s expedition and tracked down Behar’s story.
I am wondering if you know “Cannibals and Crampons,” a documentary of an adventure sport expedition to climb the face of Gulung Mandala in Irian Jaya that’s replete with expectations of encountering uncontacted stone age tribes/cannibals that gets — appears to get — fulfilled. One of the 2 Brits on the expedition also wrote a book about it called, of course, First Contact (publ. 2004 by Eye Books). Mark Anstice wrote the book; his teammate was Bruce Parry. The dvd of the film is included in the book.
If so — any thoughts? If not, more grist for your mill.
Best, Susan Harding
I haven’t seen it, although I should check it out. There was one a few years back which has a fundamentalist Christian angle — discovering Jesus and the jungle at once, etc. which at least sounded unusual. The problem with this sort of thing is that in fact these narratives are so common that the get boring after a while. Mountain climbing, hiking, kayaking — scores of people have written on their adventure trips. People have been turning out things in the genre steadily ever since Stanley, and it’s hard to keep up. I think one of the reasons that people are still so gullible when it comes to these claims is that they simply don’t know the sheer volume of them. Mostly, talk about ‘primitives’ is about the explorer, not the explored — you can’t convince your self you’ve done something truly extraordinary unless you can convince yourself that your third world interlocutor is _really_ primitive.
Dear Outside Magazine,
As a member of the second “First Contact Expedetion†I would like to add a few remarks to Michael Behar’s report on this expedition:
1. the second “First Contact Expedition†was offered to me by Kelly Woolford as follows: in an e-mail he told me that two journalists from your magazine would be part of the First Contact Expedition 2004 and that they wanted me on the trip because of my experience from a First Contact expedition in 2003. In 2004 the expedition was to go to the North of West Papua where he supposedly found a new tribe. After the meeting in Biak Kelly told me that the trip will be going to the same area that I visited with Herbert Schroff in 2003 (contradicting his earlier statement) which meant that I paid a reduced price for an expedition I did not intend to make and which was not offered this way. Here is the original offer:
2. “Hello Robert. Sorry about the long delay in my reply. I’ve been busy putting together a last minute trip for some clients. We leave on this Friday for 30 days. We will be in the Korowai and Kombai areas. My bank account number is the same as before. So, you can send the money to that bank account number. There has been a lot of interest in this trip, since we went last year. And there are 3 other people interested in going on this trip. Already two people have signed up and I need two more people for this expedition. We have reliable information about some movements of a new tribe along the north coast. And, that is where we will go on this next expedition. The two people that already signed on are writers from the largest American magazine. They are sending a writer and photographer and they requested that I have two more people go. I know that they would be very interested if you went, because you have already gone on such and expedition before.†Kelly Woolford.(e mail address…)
3. Contrary to the announced 30 days the expedition lasted only a total of 4 days: a 10 hour boat ride, 2 nights in the rain forest, and a 10 hour boat ride back to Nabire. Kelly Woolford had not prepared an alternate tour, since organizing the 2003 and 2004 tours had been too big of a challenge for him. The 2003 tour was decent despite the lack of professional organization.
4. Upon our return to Nabire we were told by the local military commander that we were not to leave our quarters from Saturday to Wednesday for the following reasons:
a) the presidential elections posed a security risk,
b) we didn’t properly pass through a checkpoint as required in our, “surat-jalanâ€.
c) We went through this checkpoint on our last trip in 2003 and he refused my request to pass through the checkpoint on this trip. He wouldn’t have been able to produce the required license anyway. A further consequence of his unprofessional conduct was that the motor of the boat which we chartered was seized by the military. Because of this seizure, the fishermen were unable to practice their profession.
5. Kelly said that one could only tell whether or not this tribe was genuine on the spot. I can assure the Ethnologist in good conscience, that this is a hoax. I showed my pictures and drawings to an Ethnologist in Austria , who lived for many years in West Papua and he confirmed my suspicions. Whoever believes that one can take a ten hour boat ride and a two hour jungle trek and discover a previously unknown tribe must be very naive indeed.
6. Kelly Woolford is not familiar with Ethnology, but is more familiar with Tennis and Karaoke. He
Obviously draws his knowledge from missionary reports. I “almost†believe that he was not the producer of this theater. But that he was the only one that didn’t see through this charade doesn’t speak well for him.
7. This supposed newly discovered tribe seems to be as “real “as his studies of the missionaries and his
capabilities as an organizer of adventure tours.
9. . An extraordinary mistake he made on the first trip was taking a flash picture of a tribesman, flashing directly in his eyes, who had supposedly never had contact with the outside world. This is an unprofessional way to make first contact and build trust.
Kelly Woolford is a nice guy who earns his living offering trips to people, like me, from Europe who
can’t organize a trip themselves so fall prey to such tour operators.
Best wishes Dr.Robert Ferdiny 25.03.2005
I found your comments very intyeresting. My good friend Steve Dupont was the photographer on the ‘expedition’ you write about. I went to the korowai area ten years ago and was hoping to return in the next few months to see if my friends from then were still there. Kelly has a tour to the korowai, but after what Steve experienced ands what you write I think it would be foolish for me to go with him.
I wonder if you know of anyone trustworthy for me to contact in view of going to the korowai later in the year. Also, have you been to Papua recently. I’ve enough experience to figure that I cojuld hnire the boats, etc, to go from the Asmat area to Basman, but I’m not so sure about the surat jalan, how long that takes. Maybe I’ll try to get a travel agent in Jayapura to arrange it for me.
Sorry to bother you,
best regards, Paul Raffaele
Paul found your comments so interesting that he ignored them. You can watch the video of his ‘expedition’ here: Video
Or read the transcript
Just another footnote in the Korowai Kannibal Kapers.
Sorry those links don’t seem to have worked, try this:
http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/sixtyminutes/stories/2006_05_21/story_1653.asp
Hi,
I visited some tambus of my partner in Kundiawa, Simbu (PNG Highlands) last year and met a great old bubu (grandfather) in his 90′s. He was one of the first Simbu people to meet Jim Taylor in the 1930′s (the first european patrol officer to enter the area). He has many fascinating memories and stories about Taylor and the early administration which show a completely different picture to the usually benign one portrayed in official accounts. For example the kiaps forced the local people to build the Kundiawa airstrip as “slave” labourers paying them only one meal a day and beating them if they didn’t turn up for work. Some died from malnutrition as gardens couldn’t be maintained while people were working. Other’s died from ill treatment. My bubu was hired as an interpreter as he was one of the first Simbus to learn pidgin, so his accounts I think are fairly accurate. I will try and visit him again and tape record his stories as it would be a great pity if his memories are lost. Any comments or advice?
PS I am not an anthropologist, but am in love with PNG and its people. I am however an ex-student of Peter Winch if this is any recommendation?