Tom Deko in his studio at the University of Goroka. (Photo: Dan Lepsoe)

Essay by Michael A. Mel
University of Goroka

Tom Deko was born in Makia village in the Bena area of the Eastern Highlands Province in Papua New Guinea (PNG). As a youngster, Tom grew up learning the language, lore, and laws of his local community. As young women were taught and trained by their mothers and aunts, young men lived in the men’s house and were taught the important knowledge and skills in order to become strong and meaningful members of their community. Daytimes would be spent watching the grown-ups undertake a variety of tasks like building houses, making gardens, collecting materials for a feast, and taking part in celebrations. In the evenings, with bellies full of roasted sweet potato, the youngsters would sit around the warmth of a good log fire and were advised of the values and ethics of being men of their community. Stories were also recounted to them of past warriors and heroes and their deeds. Among the values inculcated in them were bravery and courage to protect their mothers and children, land and community.

In the early 1960s, the Eastern Highlands saw the influx of missionaries, gold fossickers, planters of coffee, and Europeans who worked for the colonial government. They moved into the Bena area, established churches, schools, and other government outposts, and encouraged families to send their children to school to be educated. Tom’s parents and relatives heeded this call and decided to send him to the nearby primary school. Learning to read and write in English and solve problems with numbers soon became a part of what Tom and other young men and women of his community were expected to do in schools. Boys and girls from all over the Bena area were rounded up and brought to the school and made to play and study together. In school, they were made to discard their village bark cloths and given small lengths of cotton fabric to be worn around their waists. They were taught new ways of health and hygiene and stories of heroes from other places.

The above is a glimpse of the kaleidoscope of terrain and tensions that have shaped Tom as a person growing up and have provided impetus to his work as an artist. Caught between the stories and experiences of childhood in a small village community and the shared exchanges encountered during the years in public school, Tom negotiates for himself a position and perspective of what comprises home- indeed, what makes a sense of place- as a Bena and a Papua New Guinean. There is integration of history and heritage, and of opportunities available in living and working in urban locations like Goroka and Port Moresby. Tom’s on an eclectic journey: in his work, the mysteries of the ancient and the mythical compete and combine with the commonplace material of urban waste to produce eccentric, and at the same time vibrant, art forms that celebrate and thrive on a Papua New Guinean view of the world.

In Hailans to Ailans, Tom explores these tensions with Meri wantaim Bilum (Motherhood). Stereotyping and mythologizing of the male as the dominant figure in the life of Highland (Hailans) and Island (Ailans) communities in PNG has been persistent, especially by those who have taken for granted positions of expertise in these communities. Tom counterpoints that view by making the point that women were also significant players in the lives of communities. He does that quite simply by cutting, scraping, and carving the female figure from refuse, then showing her carrying the most ubiquitous object identified with femininity– the bilum. As a practical object, the bilum served a range of purposes: a carry-bag for firewood, food, knick-knacks, and personal items, as well as a hung or carried hammock for babies to sleep in. The bilum was significant in the social and symbolic landscapes of PNG communities: the land, a bilum always fully laden, has always carried human beings. That is the belief underlying the idea of the female in the communities in both the Hailans and the Ailans. Because of that fact, people in the communities had a strong relationship with their maternal side. This was built on mutuality. One received from her in order to survive; one gave back with care and homage – but never with the intention to plunder and destroy. Meri wantaim Bilum (Motherhood) is about the ‘bilum’ of life: a metaphor for understanding and appreciating birth, motherhood, and maintenance of maternal relationships. The exchanges of food and valuables at death, based on maternal ties, are significant ceremonies because we owe everything to Mother. The depletion of resources, climate change, and rising sea levels are among a plethora of problems facing countries including PNG. The female figure with the bilum is constructed out of material taken from the Earth to serve human purposes, then used and discarded without care for the environmental consequences. Tom has galvanized in its form a message not only for locals, but also for the rest of the world. The other images by Tom of famili (Family I, Family II), Mama wantaim Pikinini (Mother with Children), and Pikinini wantaim Bubu (Child with Grandfather) further enunciate the above.

Another stereotypical image that has been mythologized as being a part of the Hailans and Ailans communities is that of tribal fighting and killing. Tribal communities have been made out to have lives dominated by tribal war, with cultures promoting war-mongering and a constant preparedness to pillage and plunder neighbouring communities. In complete contrast to that view, Tom and others were trained to live in peace and protect their community. Extended family was the basis for communities in the Hailans and the Ailans. Individual interests were the focus, but always in relation to community interests: young men and women lived and worked as much for their communities as they did for themselves. Now and again, community squabbles arose over land ownership, theft of food crops or pigs, or revenge over deaths deemed suspicious or through magic and poison. Initially, clan leaders would attempt to settle the dispute with negotiations. If matters remained unresolved, they sometimes escalated into full-fledged wars. Some conflicts would last for several years before negotiations for peace would be initiated. Tom’s depictions of warriors (eg. Defending Fallen Comrade I, Man Bilong Pait II) are in recognition of communities that cultivated men who fought long and hard to protect their families and lands. Qualities of endurance, comradeship, and living a life committed to peace and protecting the community above oneself were key to survival.

In today’s context, there is eminent breakdown of social order in local communities. This is largely due to changing value systems and the migration of youth from rural to urban areas in pursuit of opportunities. The lack of these opportunities, and the youths’ resort to petty theft and crime to survive, are growing issues in PNG. Championed by individual rights and freedom under the banner of democracy and its spouse, capitalism, a different kind of warrior mentality, sustained now on individual pursuits and mob rule with little or no room for community, has begun to emerge in the growing towns encircled by even faster-growing shantytowns. Against this current climate, Tom’s warriors stand as sombre reminders of the values that were embedded in our communities for eons. Papua New Guineans carry that legacy, whether we realize or not. What urgently needs to happen is to bring these qualities, which made our Hailans and Ailans communities truly live, into the present. The words of Bernard Narakobi succinctly underline this need:

“We cannot build a nation simply from technology; we cannot build a nation purely on the basis of the wheel and on the basis of the steam engine. We must build this country; we must build our civilization on values, which have been passed on to us from generation to generation. And I say this: that if we do not agree on common values- if they are not now the basis and the stem upon which we nurture and grow our children, then I say there will be no future for this country.”¹

Stories, legends, and myths were elemental components of folklore and mythology in PNG communities. They served as windows into the deep and powerful storehouses of history and knowledge. All kinds of knowledge and stories lay submerged. Reviving stories of our past is a journey of discovery. This process of discovery will be a way to see, understand, and appreciate the wisdom of our people. Tom has realized two stories from his area (in Creation, Initiation) and used this form to both record and share the stories. Here’s the story for Creation:

In the Bena Valley, two brothers lived and moved around. One day, the younger brother is killed and his body consumed by some cannibals. The brother finds his remains, brings home the bones, and puts one of the bones into a bowl of water. While mourning his brother, he waters the bone day and night, vowing to avenge his death by killing all the perpetrators of this heinous crime. After some time, a maggot emerges from the bone. As he continues to watch and water, the maggot becomes a pupa. The pupa grows and changes colour, then one day it moves. As the elder brother watches eagerly, the pupa continues to move in the bowl. Suddenly, it breaks open. Nestled inside the pupa is the younger brother. The older brother brushes away his tears of sorrow as happiness and joy return, and he helps the young brother emerge from the pupa shell. Happy that they are together once again, they muster all their strength and begin to make harpoon-like spears, bundles of jagged and razor-sharp arrows, and very strong and pliable bows of black palm. Finally, armed with their weapons, the brothers roam the Bena Valley to avenge the younger brother’s death. Together, they kill all the cannibals, bringing peace to the valley.

As Papua New Guineans gaze at television screens with value-laden stories and images from across the world, our own stories appear to compete with the world of science when they seem unscientific. However, these stories represent the deeper recesses of spiritual reality that formed the basis for some very challenging livelihoods. Tom’s Creation sculpture gives an important window on the mythical foundation of Bena communities.

Papua New Guineans carry traumatic experiences of colonization: of oppression and cultural annihilation. People were forced to learn, understand, and live based on the dominant culture’s ways of knowing. Confusion, alienation, and isolation have been part of the Hailans and Ailans communities’ experiences. PNG, its environment, its people, and their rich and varied cultures, have been mapped and represented for the dominant culture’s eyes. Some of these constructions have persisted- sometimes to the point of being kitschy and clichéd.

Tom shares the concern of the other artists in this show that the influences of outside images may mean that the only reality their communities may one day know is the one that has been framed by dominant regimes. Like Tom, Papua New Guineans have been trained in the ways of another culture. Tom asks Papua New Guineans these key questions: What kind of PNG communities do we remember? What kind of PNG communities do we find ourselves in today? What is the PNG we see for the future? The artist’s contributions to Hailans to Ailans should help to respond to these.

Artists like Tom propose that Papua New Guineans reassert themselves and place Papua New Guinean art, education, and other processes alongside those from the other dominant contexts. Dominant practices need to be compared with our own ways of doing things and experiencing art. Challenging and contrasting differences may provide emancipatory experiences for our people.

“Emancipation here refers to freedom from previous injustices inherent in earlier … programs that featured the subjugation of indigenous … ideas to western ones. Such emancipation would culminate in freedom from ignorance of our own indigenous… ideas and reclamation of an important part of our cultural heritage … [It must] liberate us from the mental confines of exogenous philosophies and practices – a kind of colonization of the mind.”²

It’s not an easy journey for Tom to articulate new visions for Papua New Guineans. His art is really about the tensions and ambiguities inherent in the everyday choices of Papua New Guineans today. It’s an integral part of an exhibition examining the nature of diversity and the idea of Papua New Guinea.
 

1. Narokobi, Bernard. “Education and Development”. In Avalos, B. and Neuendorf, L. (eds) Teaching in Papua New Guinea: A perspective for the nineties. Port Moresby: UPNG Press, 1991: 19–28. [↩]
2. Teaero, Teweiariki. “Re-placing Oceania Roots in our Teacher Education Programmes: a critical appraisal of the roles of indigenous educational ideas”. In Directions, 21(2), 1999: 25 – 45. [↩]