Marian Movements and Secessionist Warfare in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea

This article focuses on the enigma of Catholic Marian revolutionary movements during the decade-long conflict on the island of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea at the end of the twentieth century. These religious movements embody the legacy of a colonial history as well as people’s responses to poorly monitored resource extraction, social and economic displacement, regional factionalism, and years of fighting by Bougainvilleans against the Papua New Guinea Defence Force. At the same time, the movements’ popularity throve on leaders’ reputations for their religious knowledge and their mobilization of people based on religious faith. During the conflict Bougainville came to be seen by many residents as holy land (Me’ekamui). According to Francis Ona’s Marian Mercy Mission and Peter Kira’s Our Lady of Mercy movements, the covenant land of Bougainville had to be safeguarded from Satan, represented by Papua New Guinea and an Australian copper mining company, in the freedom struggle conceived as a Marian holy war.

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Middle Kingdom: A Colonial History of the Highlands of Papua New Guinea

Journal of Pacific History ◽

10.1080/00223344.2018.1500854 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 53 (3) ◽

pp. 350-351

Author(s):

Michael Main

Keyword(s):

Papua New Guinea ◽

New Guinea ◽

Colonial History ◽

Middle Kingdom ◽

History Of

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Early Contact as Drama and Manipulation in the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea: Pacification as the Structure of the Conjuncture

Comparative Studies in Society and History ◽

10.1017/s0010417500019812 ◽

1995 ◽

Vol 37 (3) ◽

pp. 555-580 ◽

Cited By ~ 19

Author(s):

Edward L. Schieffelin

Keyword(s):

Papua New Guinea ◽

White Men ◽

New Guinea ◽

Political Control ◽

Colonial History ◽

Australian Government ◽

Australian Colonial ◽

Cultural Forces ◽

First Contact

Accounts of first contact in Papua New Guinea have aroused considerable interest over the years (Hides 1936; Leahy and Crain 1937; Nelson 1982; Connelly and Anderson 1987; Schieffelin and Crittenden 1991). No doubt, this has been in part because these accounts have an intrinsic drama and popular romantic appeal (intrepid explorers enter remote mountain valleys and discover vast populations of previously unknown tribes who had never seen white men before and believed they were supernatural beings). More recently, anthropologists and historians have begun examining these sorts of events to explore how historical and cultural forces unique or intrinsic to quite different societies become transformed when they come into contact with each other, a process, that Sahlins has termed the “structure of the conjuncture” (Sahlins 1980, 1985; Dening 1988). Accounts of the period immediately following first contact in Papua,1 during which Australian government officers extended political control over the newly discovered native Papuan tribesmen, however, are usually narratives of European (Australian) colonial history, with little sense of Papuan experience.

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Conversion to Islam in Papua New Guinea

Nova Religio The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions ◽

10.1525/nr.2015.18.4.55 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 18 (4) ◽

pp. 55-82

Author(s):

Scott Flower

Keyword(s):

Papua New Guinea ◽

Religious Diversity ◽

New Guinea ◽

Religious Movements ◽

New Religious Movements ◽

Conversion To Islam ◽

New Religions ◽

Conversion Rates ◽

New Religion

Papua New Guinea is famous for its religious diversity, innovation, and role as the intellectual home of the “cargo-cult.” Contrary to the dominant contemporary trend toward localized and syncretized forms of Christianity, one of the fastest-growing new religious movements in Papua New Guinea is the not so “new” religion of Islam. From 2000–2012, the Muslim convert population grew more than 1,000 percent, and data from fieldwork between 2007 and 2011 suggests that globalization factors, especially missionaries and media, are contributing to increased conversion rates. Transition from traditional life to modernity is sparking a range of social and personal crises leading people to search for new religions more closely aligned with traditional, local, cultural and material dimensions. This makes future conversion growth in Papua New Guinea likely.

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