Yangoru Boiken - Religion and Expressive Culture

Religious Beliefs. The constituents of the Yangoru Boiken universe are viewed either as "given" or as the creations of the culture heroes; they are believed to be influenced by ancestral spirits and wala spirits but most of all by magical forces. The principal supernaturals are human fiends that stalk lone villagers at certain seasons, the spirits of the ancestors, and the wala spirits. The last include the great culture heroes of time past, some of them nowadays incarnated as local mountains; the others are male and female spirits of the bush and stream. All wala are believed to be formed by the mystical union of ancestral shades, and each hring is associated with a male wala of the stream, where the ancestral shades of its male members are believed to congregate and unite as the wala. There is some difference of opinion over whether a woman's spirit goes to her husband's or her brother's wala.

Religious Practitioners. Knowledge of many magical and ritual practices is diffused widely through the community so that a hring usually can call on a member or close relative for most services. Nowadays, the main practitioners hired from beyond this circle are sorcerers, including earth and rain magicians, and those whose magic combats these powers. In traditional times, the hring also would have to cast beyond close relatives for specialists in carving and various ritual services associated with male initiation.

Ceremonies. The main ceremonies are associated with the life cycle, spirit houses, the wala, and the pig exchange. Birth, initiation, marriage, and death are, or were, observed for both sexes, with women also observing a few simple menstrual taboos to avoid polluting men. Traditionally, initiations were the most elaborate ceremonies, celebrated around puberty, again in the late twenties, and finally in the early to midforties; nowadays, however, only the first stage of female initiation endures. In western Yangoru, initiations were conducted in and around elaborately decorated spirit houses ( ka nimbia ); in north-central Yangoru, however, ka nimbia were divorced from initiation and constructed instead as a statement of political strength. In bygone days, if the wife of an important man insulted the sexuality of her husband, she would be disciplined by "the wala," a group of men swinging a bullroarer who would destroy her and her husband's belongings. Nowadays, the most elaborate ceremonies are the pig exchange festivals in which one moiety en masse confers pigs on exchange partners in the opposite moiety. (In western Yangoru, some villages recently have adopted the long-yam cult of the Abelam and the Kaboibus or "Plains" Arapesh.) Since contact, the Yangoru Boiken have earned considerable notoriety for their millenarian movements.

Arts. Traditional graphic and plastic art included wooden initiation statues; the painted facades, carved crosspieces, and other ornaments of spirit houses; shell-wealth basketry masks; plaited armlets; ornamented spinning tops; and dogs'-teeth and shell necklaces and headpieces. Items such as bullroarers, weaponry, and cooking and dining utensils were sometimes incised with abstract designs, often said to be the "face of the wala." Some productions, such as spirit dance masks, were only temporary, constructed for a specific ceremony and then dismantled. The main musical instruments were hand drums and monotone flutes. Nowadays, hardly any of this art is still produced. Songs and oratory were and still are the major ephemeral productions.

Medicine. Illness is attributed to ancestral spirits, wala spirits, human fiends, pollution by females or younger adults, infractions of ritual and taboo, protective magic on property, and in particular sorcery. Some epidemic diseases supposedly were decreed by the culture heroes.

Death and Afterlife. The deaths of all but the very old are attributed to sorcery. There is considerable doubt about the afterlife, but normatively the spirit of the deceased spends the first days of its existence around its hamlet before departing to its hring's wala pool. Spirits from throughout Yangoru are also said to go to Mount Hurun, the peak overlooking Yangoru, where they become Walarurun, the great culture hero associated with the mountain. Nowadays, countries such as Australia, America, and England are also variously identified as the place of the dead. At death, relatives are summoned on the slit gong, and the deceased is mourned with funeral dirges for a day or two. In the past, the corpses of eminent men were sliced and placed in trees to decay; others were buried in or under houses. The bones, especially the jawbones, later were retrieved for use in garden magic and occasionally sorcery. Nowadays, the deceased are buried in graveyards adjacent to the main ceremonial hamlets, and their bones are no longer retrieved—though graves are still opened after about six months to diagnose the perpetrators of the death.