From tribal to
contemporary papuan art

The Kaminimbit legend

Most pieces from Kaminimbit village, Middle Sepik, feature a bird perching on a woman's shoulders. Sometimes the whole woman is shown, sometimes just the head and shoulders. Sometimes the hole bird is shown with a saurian tail - an awful lot is left to artistic licence.

The basis of the legend is that an old woman was jealous of her young niece's beauty. She took her out onto a swamp and left her there on partially submerged tree-trunk. After a few days the fish came and asked her, what are you doing here? She told them, and so they said we will call our wise one, and a turtle came and saw her. The turtle said, I will call our leader, and the crocodile surfaced. She married the crocodile, and they had two sons, who were born as eagles with crocodile tails.

Eventually they matured and felt sorry for her and they would carry her back to her people. she agreed and and they lifted her up in their talons and took her back to her village.

She was grateful and offered to turn them into humans to live with her. They refused and said they wanted to stay eagles. As they took off, their crocodile tails dropped away, and to this day the eagles saring over the Sepik River are all descended from this legend.

Trobriand Islands

The Trobriand Islands (Known as the Islands of Love because of their promiscuous reputation) have an extremely interesting and clourful history.

They produce inlaid ebony carvings, and operate the extremly complex Kula Trading Ring.

They are also famous for having cricket introduced by early missionaries, and having adapted into their own erotic interpretation of a bat and ball game.

Lime pots are used by everyone as containers for shells, which are "cooked" on the fire to produce lime, used with pepper sticks to eat betel nut, a major social activity.