Gebusi - Economy

Subsistence and Commercial Activities. Gebusi Subsistence combines rudimentary gardening, sago-palm processing, foraging, and fishing. Hunting is sporadically practiced and husbandry of semidomesticated pigs is rudimentary. Bananas are the primary starch staple, constituting perhaps 65-70 percent of the starch diet. Sago supplies roughly 25-30 percent and root crops about 5-10 percent of starch intake. Most Gardens are unfenced, quickly cleared, and filled primarily with banana plots. Gebusi get their protein mostly from casual foraging activities that yield grubs, bird eggs, nuts, and riverine fauna. Despite this, many children appear malnourished, with large, symmetrically distended abdomens and underdeveloped musculature.

Industrial Arts. Gebusi industrial arts include the making by men of bows and arrows, drums, tobacco pipes, palmspathe bowls, ritual decorations, and—since the introduction of steel axes and adzes—canoes; women weave fine net bags, sago pouches, ritual chest bands, and string skirts, and they also make bark tapa. In 1980-1982, cash cropping, wage labor, and outmigration were negligible, and there were no trade stores among Gebusi or at the Nomad station.

Trade. Indigenous trade was conducted opportunistically with no standard rates of exchange. Trade items produced by Gebusi included tobacco and dogs'-teeth necklaces. These were traded with adjacent groups for red ocher, cuscus-bone arrow tips, pearl-shell slivers, and, precolonially, ax heads made from stone found near the Strickland River.

Division of Labor. Men hunt, fish, cut down trees (including sago palms), build houses, and make weapons and most ritual decorations; women process sago, carry most garden produce and firewood, do most weeding and harvesting, and make string bags, skirts, sago baskets, and bark cloth.

Land Tenure. Land rights are patrilineal, but residence confers extensive usufructuary land rights and privileges. Most Gebusi do not live on or cultivate their fathers' land, though they may visit such land to exploit sago palms, nut trees, or special foraging resources. In principle, entire Patricians have rights to bounded areas of land, but clan members tend to be residentially dispersed outside of these areas. Conversely, intrusive or refugee clans, which may have no clan land in Gebusi territory, can be numerically and politically prominent within their communities. Land is not a significant matter of dispute and there is no discernible land shortage.