Hinterland History: The Ok Tedi Mine and Its Cultural Consequences in Telefolmin

Abstract

Papua New Guinea's position on a global resource frontier has been one of the country's defining features since independence in 1975. Mining, logging, and the petroleum industry account for most of the country's income, with mining providing the lion's share. State finances depend on revenues generated by resource projects, and policy governing such matters has become a key focus of national political debate. The fact that national planning relies on resource projects has lent a particular urgency to the state's relation to rural people in resource-rich regions, and the status of "landowner" signals a position of power from which citizens can confront a state and developers anxious to bring projects into production (Filer 1997a, 162-165).The history of the state's relation to landowners in the vicinity of mining projects has been fraught with contention. The nation's single most traumatic political crisis burst on the scene at the close of the 1980s, when landowners on Bougainville transformed a dispute about their relation to the Panguna mine into a full-scale secessionist rebellion. The fighting lasted longer than the Second World War, and the details of peace arrangements and restoration of services are still being worked out to this day.When landowners began dynamiting mine facilities on Bougainville, national revenues suffered a severe shock (see Filer 1990Filer , 1998May and Spriggs 1990). Yet despite this catastrophic loss, the PNG economy rebounded quickly as other projects came on stream, and by the early 1990s the country was in the middle of a resource boom. The gross 233

Understanding ‘resource’ conflicts in Papua New Guinea

“…At the Ok Tedi mine, the marginalised and heavily impacted Yonggom people led a lawsuit in Australia against Broken Hill Proprietary Ltd (BHP), then the operator of the mine (Banks and Ballard, 1997). As Dan Jorgensen (2006) and others (myself included, see Banks, 2002) have pointed out, the equally impacted but less marginalised Awin people had little involvement or apparent interest in the lawsuit. The lawsuit, incidentally, has been promoted as an alternative means of resolving resource disputes to the route taken on Bougainville, but even a cursory examination of the two situations reveals marked differences, and the success of the action by the landowners is tempered by the fact that significant elements of the lawsuit are still being contested in the courts more than 10 years after it was first lodged (Kirsch, 2007).…”

Altered growth patterns of a mountain Ok population of Papua New Guinea over 25 years of change

“…In later adolescence, the BMI continued to increase, suggesting that during this period of decreased growth velocity, weight gain was not contributing to height. Since maintenance of body weight is dependent upon a balance between caloric intake and expenditure, the increased weight and BMI may be a reflection of altered lifestyle and increased access to a diet containing commercial rather than traditional foods (Jorgensen, 2006).…”

“…For Telefomin, establishment of the Ok Tedi gold and copper mine in a nearby area in the early 1980s (Jackson, 1982) introduced cash economy and elements of modern lifestyle to this society, which until then was based primarily on traditional subsistence horticulture and hunting (Jorgensen, 2006). To assess whether growth patterns in children and adults in this population have changed after 25 years, anthropometric parameters of the Telefolmin people were measured in 2008 and compared with the measurements obtained in 1983.…”

Steep Slopes: Music and change in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea

“…The Kaluli people sing of the landscape and their relationship to it, particularly in the genre of gisaro (Schieffelin 1976;Feld 1982Feld , 1988Feld , 1996. A number of publications address the effect of mining on Papua New Guinean peoples living in the Highlands region, taking into account the close relationships between people and the land in these areas Weiner 2001, 2004;Strathern 2002b, 2004;Halvaksz 2003;Jorgensen 2004). Many other works could be recalled that examine these relationships, and in this chapter I will add to these explorations through my examination of Duna land in song.…”