326 Inge Riebe

12. See Stephen (1987:250ff) and Mair (1969:199ff).13. I use this term rather than mystical or non-empirical, but place it in quotes because I do not want to imply a

view that these things can never be understood or encompassed within our view of the universe.14. See Needham (1978:33ff).15. Bulmer: 1982:5.

REFERENCES

BLOCH, Maurice, and Jonathan PARRY (eds), 1982. Death and the Regeneration of Life. Cambridge University Press.BORY, Jean-Louis, and Guy HOCQUENGHEM 1976. Comment nous appelez-vous deja? Ces hommes que I’on dit

honosexuels. Paris, Calmann-Levy.BULMER, R.N.H., 1982. Trying Not to Believe in Witchcraft in the Kaironk Valley. Paper given at a Conference at

La Trobe University, May 1982, on “Sorcery, Healing and Magic in Melanesia”.DINNERSTEEN, Dorothy, 1976. The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise. New

York: Harper & Row.GOLSON, Jack, 1982. The Ipomoean Revolution Revisited: Society and the Sweet Potato in the Upper Wahgi Valley,,

in A.J. Strathem (ed.), Inequality in the New Guinea Highlands. Cambridge University Press, pp. 109-36.MAIR, Lucy, 1969. Witchcraft. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.MAJNEP, Ian Saem, and Ralph BULMER, 1977. Birds of My Kalam Country. Auckland, Auckland University Press.NEEDHAM, Rodney, 1978. Primordial Characters. Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia.REAY, Marie, 1987. The Magico-Religious Foundations of New Guinea Highlands Warfare, in Stephen (ed.), pp.83-

120.RIEBE, Inge, 1974. “And Then We Killed.”: a History of Fighting. MA thesis, University of Sydney.----------- , 1990. “. . . Now They Have Put out the Fire”: Witchcraft and Social Change in the Kaironk Valley 1960-

1980. PhD diss., (in progress).STEPHEN, Michelle, 1987. Sorcerer and Witch in Melanesia. Melbourne University Press.

BUKA MARRIAGE RITUAL AND THE POWER OF TSUNONO

Eleanor Rimoldi and Max Rimoldi University of Auckland

This essay is a discussion of two wedding rituals on Buka Island (North Solomons Province, Papua New Guinea), two ceremonies where people perceived many errors in the performance. The first ceremony shows the necessarily ambiguous outcome of attempts to achieve “perfect performance”, even when the ceremony is designed to exemplify the selection of the correct traditions in the transmission of power and when those who hold such power are demonstrably reverent towards the revival of a rarely enacted ritual.

The second wedding also follows the contours of established ceremonial practice on Buka and reflects in a less guarded way conflicts that always beset the negotiation of marriage alliances. The problems, openly addressed on this occasion, include the inflation of brideprice in cash payments and the novel pressure on standard formulae for adjusting the claims of descent and alliance. The issues surrounding this wedding involve the immediate history of the attempts by the Hahalis Welfare Society to adjust and reconcile customary marriage practices.

Our discussion then proceeds with an examination of power and alliance in village Buka as issues raised in each of the ceremonies and we attempt to take up the changes emerging and the differing perspectives on change for those with power and those without.

A Buka scholar, Alexis Sareri (1974) has written an analysis of the effects of Christian missionary teachings on traditional marriage among the Solos people of Buka, whereas our research focuses on the Halia- Haku language groups. The action discussed here ranged over the villages of Lontis, Lemanmanu and Hanahan on the north and east coasts of Buka although most of our research was carried out at Hahalis village, the headquarters of an organisation which reached into the other villages. The Hahalis Welfare Society was a populist movement which set itself up as an autonomous, independent economic and political unit generally opposed to and suspicious of domination by Australian political and economic institutions.

In the late 1950’s a group of headmen (tsunono) from the two matrilineal moieties - Naboen and Nakaripa- chose John Teosin to serve as a new kind of leader - one who would help them to cope with the demands

Buka Marriage Ritual and the Power ofTsunono 327

and changes brought by colonial rule. Provincial Government status was gained by the area provisionally in 1975 and finally in 1976. Selective in its response to colonial rule, Hahalis was equally independent and mindful of its own agenda as it both supported and was critical of the newly independent central government of Papua New Guinea and the emergent North Solomons Government.

The Hahalis Welfare Society reforms that had to do with women were meant to create political and social equality, freedom of choice in marriage and relief from the tense and restrictive nature of male-female relationships which they say led to jealousy, mistrust and violence. It is in this area of male-female relationships and the abolition of brideprice and arranged marriage that the Hahalis Welfare Society itself sees the fundamental dynamics of its efforts to both revitalise and alter custom.

We became aware that these changes in marriage customs were not complete but did not fully understand the deeper implications of brideprice and arranged marriage for the whole system of matrilineal succession and inter-group cooperation on Buka. Hahalis Welfare Society certainly made these changes at least in part to promote individual happiness - so that young men and women would freely choose a compatible mate. Yet some people seemed more free than others in this respect. Groups of women of high status (teitahol) were kept apart and protected and brideprice payments still persisted.

On Buka in 1978 we witnessed two marriage ceremonies which seemed unusual and especially interesting. The first was an event called popolasa, bringing the girl to her new husband’s home. Brideprice would have been paid earlier - that event is called sahana. Because in this case it was the marriage of a teitahol, it was a very elaborate and costly event carried out in a traditional manner. Such elaborate marriage ceremonies are now very rare, so much so that the younger high-ranking women of Hahalis had never witnessed one themselves.

The second marriage ceremony was sahana, when the boy’s family brings the brideprice to the girl’s family. On this occasion the sahana was immediately followed by popolasa that same evening but we did not witness this. This was not as elaborate as the marriage of the teitahol.

Both of these events were followed in short order by complaints from the observers and participants that mistakes had been made. In the first ceremony nearly everything seemed to go wrong.

THE POPOLASAOne Saturday, Teosin’s sister Tehoei went to visit Teresa, her brother Matthew’s wife. It was a casual

saunter around to make small talk and say “good morning” to some of the women living up by the road, about a half-hour’s walk from our bush settlement. An old woman was making a tohu, a hood made from pandanus leaves. It had red stripes on it, which suggested it was being made with more care than a plain hood for protection from the rain. The Welfare Society had for many years tried to discourage the custom of wearing the hood to hide the husband’s or wife’s parents - a part of the affinal avoidance which the Welfare leaders saw as an unnecessary restraint on social relations. This avoidance was connected with brideprice payments which they had also tried to discourage. Affinal avoidance traditionally ended only when the son-in-law paid a sum of money to his wife’s relatives; this can be soon after marriage, or years later, depending on how quickly he can raise the amount required. Buka villagers outside the Welfare Society had expressed increasing concern too about the new dominance, in their own ritual practice, of the financial phase of “removing the hoods”. More and more distant kin were recognising the profitability of the affinal relationship.

Asked why she was making the hood, the woman told us it was for a marriage taking place at Lontis, a Haku village up the North Coast of Buka. Tehoei spoke with the woman and established that there was to be a big feast and celebration because it was the wedding of a teitahol. We said we would like to go . . . Tehoei and Teresa said they would too, as they had never seen such a ceremony themselves. “We have heard stories” they said, “but never seen it.” Tehoei is a teitahol of great status, yet she had not been married with such a traditional ceremony and had never seen it.

Experiencing the ceremony with her brought home the need to resist any assumption that traditional forms on Buka are done away with in any final sense. Just as men’s houses can be “closed” or “asleep” for a time, they are always essentially there, inherent in the on-going relationships between headmen, lineages, and moieties. How these relationships are expressed, for example when the men’s house is sleeping and the cycle of feasts in its honour is at rest, is still in terms of the essential nature of those relationships and these other expressions of men’s-house alliances are analogous to the ceremonies themselves. Such customs assume a vitality that is possible to the extent that the people of Buka continually renew their assertion of control of their social forms - it is they who claim the right to bury them and they who resurrect them. The forms discussed here remain integral to the substance of social and political practice - they are not merely symbolic of a lost culture. In what way these customs are shown to be relevant depends upon the particular constellation of personal, political and economic relationships in which they emerge.

A few days before the ceremony one of the old headmen came up to chat and filled in some details as to who was involved in the marriage. The girl’s parents were among the original leaders of Hahalis Welfare

328 Eleanor Rimoldi and Max Rimoldi

Society; although her father is now dead. Her mother is living in a Welfare Society “marriage” at Hahalis. This was referred to as a hatoatong relationship which connotes the absence of formal marriage ceremony. The headman speculated as to why this teitahol was having a traditional ceremony since the Welfare Society decided to do away with brideprice and elaborate ceremonies entailing large food exchanges. “Tehoei never had such a ceremony”, he pointed out. Both before and after the ceremony we frequently heard comments in our village that it was far too much work and expense to have such an elaborate celebration. The approaching ceremony elicited much thought and appraisal of custom on the part of the Buka, just as it did for us.

On the day of the ceremony we set out on the Hahalis truck, along with Tehoei and other Hahalis Welfare Society people. Along the road we passed a settlement which we were told was the bride’s “father’s people”. There we saw an oversized work basket put together by the bride’s father’s kinsmen. It would later be taken to the groom’s mother’s settlement where the ceremony would be held. The work basket contained cups, plates, towels, and other household goods in the centre, surrounded by sweet potato and taro. The taro had the stems attached and could be planted again by the groom’s family and when harvested used for a feast for the married couple. When the work basket was later taken to the groom’s family by tractor it had two uncooked pigs sent with it.

When we arrived at the bride’s mother’s settlement, we saw an even larger work basket. We were told it was larger because women like all kinds of things for the home and this was the basket put together by the bride’s matrikin. There was a long slender stick-like carving at the top to signify that this was a teitahol's work basket. There were also several large woven fans to fan the fire. A tsunono's limepot hung from the top right-hand edge, a decorated traditional cup made from a coconut shell and several fishing baskets were also hung along the top sides. The outer layer of contents was taro and sweet potatoes.

At the entrance to the settlement, two men were beating the slit drums, calling people, telling them it was time to assemble. Upon our arrival we went over to pay our respects to the headmen and they gave us some pig and sweet potato to eat. One told us that it was food from the previous night when the tsunono ate together and placed baskets of pig meat on their heads before eating to signify their “promise” together to give power to the teitahol - meaning the mother of the young woman to be married - her tsunono and her daughter. It was not clear precisely which headmen were meant but in every other case seen or described to us, this would mean at least the prominent tsunono from both the bride’s and groom’s lineages. The interested parties could well extend beyond those two groups.

This “promise” was something between “all” the tsunono and traditionally the food left over would have been thrown away or given to the dogs. But these days it is all right to give some of it out to ordinary people when there are leftovers. We were told that if any of the tsunono present only pretended to be behind this promise but really did not mean it, they would be killed. The headmen expressed this lack of support as “jealousy”. “A tsunono may,” he said, “think to himself, ‘why should I support this teitahol when I have one of my own to support? Why should I lend my support in giving power to this teitahol instead of my own - it may make my teitahol seem less important’.”

A group of women, the bride’s matrikin, gathered in front of the house and began to sing and dance. In the past they would have danced naked as a mark of abasement before the power of the tsunono, but now some women just took off their laplaps and danced in shorts. Later Tehoei said that two women mimed intercourse during this dance.

Suddenly, a man confronted the dancers and the assembled crowd with a bow and arrow and lunged at them, pretending to shoot, threatening anyone who may wish ill on the teitahol. The women cried and wailed while singing. We were told that the words of the songs were full of sadness and fear for the bride’s safety because as teitahol she would be exposed to much jealousy. These songs were called hahuri, songs of lament.

The singing and wailing grew in intensity as the hoods were carried from the house on sticks so they could be seen and passed out for various people to carry. Some were in the Naboen pattern, some Nakaripa. A red belt, made of pandanus, was also carried with the hoods. The women sang: “Here is your belt to carry your baby but we don’t know if you will live long enough to bear a child.”

The bride was placed on a platform - she sat between two children. The child in front of her was her peits (protector, food taster, messenger) and behind her sat the child next in line for inheritance of the status of teitahol. The procession then set off down the road, the bride and two children being carried on the platform by a group of her male matrikin.

Further down the road the bride’s father’s relatives waited for her to arrive and a group of her female paternal kin began to sing and wail and move out into the road so that the singing of the two groups eventually merged. The bride was pulled from the platform by her paternal kin and they held her and wailed over her. Then they took over from the bride’s matrikin in carrying the platform. The two children on the platform had been taken off by the bride’s patrikin.

Buka Marriage Ritual and the Power of Tsunono 329

The procession moved off again down the road and past the Catholic church at Lemanmanu. When they arrived at a settlement of the bride’s mother’s kinsmen, in apparent grief the bride’s mother attempted to hold back the procession but she was gently taken aside.

We left the procession at this point and hurried along the road to the groom’s mother’s house, which was their destination. There we saw an enormous display of food ready for distribution and talcum powder was being dispensed (used instead of lime) to decorate faces and hair as a sign of happiness. Ceremonial currency was being stmng on a pole ready to offer to the bride’s kinsmen, along with a bundle of cash, also attached to a hook at the end of the pole.

When they heard the singing procession approach, a group of the groom’s male kin proceeded down the road to meet the bride’s kin - her matrikin were again carrying the platform. One of the groom’s kinsmen carried the fishing pole stmng with a length of ceremonial shell currency (beroana, the lesser currency, second to paiou , compound strings of teeth of either the dolphin or the flying-fox) and he made casting gestures towards the bride’s kin. Another man carried betel nut to share with the tsunono of the bride’s family when they met on the road. The bride’s side had a line of tsunono in front ready to meet the groom’s side - they brandished spears, axes, bows and arrows all covered with leaves so that at first it seemed they were only carrying tree branches. They made menacing gestures towards the groom’s group. The two groups met and shared the betel nut and the groom’s kinsmen handed over the shell money. If the groom’s kinsmen had not offered this payment the bride’s family would have held her back and the whole transaction could have fallen through. The bride was then brought into the groom’s mother’s settlement and placed on a platform in front of her mother-in-law’s house. The women in the crowd sang and wailed. The groom came out of his mother’s house and sat beside the bride - the crowd surged forward and wept over the young couple. The demeanour of the groom was very humble, his eyes never raised from the ground.

Two baskets of food were placed beside the couple. An old man, of the groom’s father’s side, took a piece of taro from the bride’s basket and pretended to feed it to each of them in turn passing the food under the arms of the bride, circling it around her back and stomach, then holding it to her mouth. He repeated the process with the groom.

The bride’s kin then put the pandanus hoods on their heads. The same man from the groom’s kin group carried the fishing pole with the money, then called out the names of the couple’s first son or first daughter. The names were from the bride’s mother’s family. They could have been from the groom’s matriline, in which case the child would in a sense “belong” to the groom’s lineage and his mother would have rights and responsibilities marked in regard to that child. The decision as to who names the child is negotiated by the kin of both sides. Immediately after the ceremony the groom’s family distributed money to the bride’s kin so that they would take off the hoods.

Soon after this we headed back to the tmck, ready to leave. We sat on the back of the truck and compared the marriages of our friends. Tehoei is a teitahol and had a mission wedding. Her daughter Grace is a “new shoot” (gohus), or young teitahol - we wondered what form her marriage would take. There was also Celia, who had a mission wedding too, as did Teosin and his wife Elizabeth. And Teresa’s marriage to Teosin’s younger brother Matthew was said to be the first Hahalis Welfare Society marriage. On the advice of Teosin, Teresa had ignored her betrothal arranged by her matrikin to another man and her marriage to Matthew involved no brideprice.

We were interested in the reaction of the Hahalis people to the lavish ceremony because they had a policy of doing away with brideprice and elaborate marriage ritual. Tehoei said: “It is too much hard work, and too much money. After all, the woman will have a child and the child will belong to the mother’s people anyhow, no matter that the man’s family paid all that money.” Talk in the village took another turn. We began to hear of deaths on the North Coast, all were members of the bride’s family. The first to die was a man working in Arawa, the Provincial centre, and it was said he died from sorcery - people were jealous because he had just been promoted to a high position at the copper mine. But within a day or two the story was that he died from sorcery because of jealousy stirred by the lavish public ceremony for the teitahol. Tehoei said, “Now you know why all the women were crying at the ceremony for the teitahol - it was because they feared jealousy and illness or death would befall the girl or her family”. The next day another of her relatives died - a man also working in Arawa. We were still trying to get more information on the details of the ceremony. But the talk was that there were many mistakes made in the ceremony and this was possibly connected with the deaths. At that point it seemed there was a causal connection between mistakes and deaths. So we asked what were the errors. Some of the things mentioned were: the bride’s matrikin did not show all the sinsu (the elaborate pandanus hoods which signify a teitahol). The two small children, the peits and the gohus, were taken from the platform by the bride’s patrikin before they reached the groom’s house. They sang the wrong songs, they sang Nakaripa songs and should have sung Naboen. The bride should not have been carried on the platform, it wasn’t traditionally done in that matriline. “Ah”, said Tehoei, “you and I watched everything and thought all

3 30 Eleanor Rimoldi and Max Rimoldi

that they did was correct, but it was not.” Then the father of the first man to die became very ill himself and talk was that he too would soon die. A letter from Arawa was full of the same stories circulating there.

The air of foreboding and the series of deaths made increasingly tentative inquiries about the details of the ceremony seem an inquest. For a while we all stopped talking about it. Then Teosin’s wife returned from Arawa, soon after the photos of the wedding arrived for us; they had been processed at Auckland University. We showed them to her, because she had missed the wedding while staying at Arawa hospital to tend to Teosin during an illness. When she saw the pictures of the women weeping, she said, “The reason they are all crying is because someone will die, someone must die when we make someone tsunono or teitahol”. She said it in such a way that death seemed certain, inevitable. It was so final a statement that it seemed no perfection in the ceremony would have been enough to ward it off - indeed, the ceremonial almost seemed a fetish in the face of the daring public exposure of power - the power of tsunono. “. . . someone must die” - we thought back to stories of “promises” made amongst the headmen sealed with a human sacrifice, especially when they chose to make a new tsunono in the case of a matrilineage nearing extinction. There is political and territorial cleavage associated with the moiety division into Naboen and Nakaripa, but all the tsunono, at least in convention, were bound to present a united front in questions of power. We began to see the danger in the marriage ceremony as analogous to other situations of succession and alliance which perpetuated and evoked the tsunono's power.

The words of the headman when we arrived at the bride’s mother’s home took on a deeper, more serious significance as did the threatening bows and arrows, the confrontation on the road between groom’s kin and bride’s kin - the grief and the wailing grew louder in our memory. And one face in particular in the crowd captured on film took on a fundamental significance - the face of grief.

* * *

The enactment of this ceremony stimulated a great deal of discussion at Hahalis. Talk focussed on how marriage practices on Buka were, ultimately, ways of coping with power. The following historical analysis generated by a Hahalis tsunono reflects changing attempts to deal with the need for continuity in relationships of power.

One morning two headmen and a woman of high status met with us to discuss marriage practices. They began reconstructing the details of marriage customs - from the first arrangements of child betrothal to the final ceremony. Much of this information came from the oldest headman, although the younger headman kept interrupting him impatiently. Then the younger headman spoke very sharply to the old man, quite unlike the usual respect shown to old and important tsunono. In so many words he told him to be quiet. He said that the old tsunono had told the stories to the younger headmen such as himself and now he said - “You are as a child again - you have told us - now it is our turn.” The old man said nothing, he did not protest. The young tsunono said: “O.K., now we will turn on the tape recorder.” What he recorded was once again the linear history of marriage we had often heard before in the context of discussions on the changes which Hahalis Welfare Society had effected with regard to arranged marriage and brideprice. This account of marriage custom was presented as a sequence. The original state of affairs on Buka was described as the most peaceful and benign.

In this ancient past there was no marriage as we know it today. People chose their own mates, children of unions would be brought up by matrikin - it really did not matter who the father of the children was and there was no jealousy. The power of the tsunono was directly passed on to his heir in the custom of gum. When a tsunono died, his teitahol lived in a house with any or all of the members of that matriline. Under these conditions the teitahol would eventually bear a child, who would be considered the “new shoot”, heir to the tsunono's power and status. This sytem depended on the absence of jealousy, and is expressed by the Welfare Society as being like their own ideal - “The ground was one, the fruit of the ground was one, the women were one, the fruit of the women were one.” But one day a young man who had not entered into the gum, saw his woman there and he became jealous and with some other young men became angry. They broke down the house and killed the occupants. From then on jealousy began and with it came brideprice. If anyone committed adultery they would be killed because the woman belonged to her husband, the tellers stress. At this point there was still no suggestion that men found their wives anywhere but within the same matriline or linked matrilineages.

There was still warfare - or sometimes people say that is when warfare began - and cannibalism. The only way women could be obtained other than within your own group was by capture, for which no payment was made. It seems that it was at the time of contact, when the prospect of an end to fighting and cannibalism appeared, that all the headmen met, and a big feast took place, pigs were killed and spears, bows and arrows were broken over the heads of the tsunono - a promise was made to end the fighting. Then it became permissible to marry “outside” and brideprice must be paid.

Buka Marriage Ritual and the Power of Tsunono 331

The young tsunono's account of the changes in marriage custom emphasised the advantage of the tendency in the past to marry within your own local cluster of linked matrilineages, referred to collectively as hunhaposa, because the father could then make his own son tsunono. He could pass on his status to increase the status his son inherited from the child’s mother without being put in the position of losing this paternal status to an outside, unrelated lineage. The most direct way in which the power of the tsunono could be channeled to his heir is through ghost paternity. The tsunono dies - but then produces his own heir through his sister in the gum. In this form - the line is assured, but only through death. As the young tsunono put it, marriage between what were considered unrelated, distant matrilineages, would mean that “Het bilong mi tu i ken go long husat” (the father’s status will be lost to some other group). He said: “If I am headman for my family, if I give my status to my son and he is of an unrelated matriline, then my position, or power, goes to strengthen this other lineage.”

His account of changes in marriage custom conveyed an abiding feeling of danger and tension surrounding these alliances with outside groups. With increasingly distant marriage choices, the tension and the cooperation became more intense and dangerous. The change enabled larger groups to enter into mutually supportive and regenerative relationships but these new formulations still contain within them the contradictions inherent in the conflict relationships between groups which have been potential antagonists in warfare and the capture of women, and sealed their pacts in human sacrifice. Each time the linear history was told it was emphasised that all these processes were set into motion through the dynamics of human emotion - in particular jealousy. Jealousy in all forms is always associated with power and status on Buka. As a human emotion, it is of course a universal capacity but the reflective discourse of the Buka continually addresses a critical commentary on its excessive and destructive forms - and this is as true for Hahalis Welfare Society revisions as it is for the conventions on which they are based. It is also as relevant to the wedding we are about to discuss as it is to the popolasa already described.

As expressed in the linear history, the original impulse to jealousy which then led to brideprice manifested the need for transforming death and capture into a new set of cooperative mergers and it is brideprice which disguises and inhibits the violence. We remembered again the phrase - “someone must die” and that grieved face at the wedding and realised that brideprice is a transformation of human sacrifice. This does not mean that brideprice replaces human sacrifice or that in a sequential sense in Buka history brideprice is a later development that made human sacrifice unnecessary. In the same way, in the linear history, the gum seems to precede brideprice but we know that it did not forever give way to brideprice.

THE SAHANAThe current debate within Welfare Society as to the form that marriage ritual and exchanges should take

reflects their awareness of the growing contradiction between alliance and succession. This is, in part, brought on by inflation in the brideprice but also by changes in economic and political structure since contact. These issues were caught up in the other marriage ritual witnessed in 1978.

The sahana is the ceremony which took place when the groom’s kinsmen brought the brideprice to the bride’s family. This ceremony was not characterised by the fear and grief associated with the te itahol's popolasa. The songs sung were happy and joyous. As they rode on the back of the truck on their way to the bride’s house, the women sang happily - “We are bringingpaiou to buy a girl”.

Tehoei went to the groom’s mother’s village because she was bringing a contribution of cash and food to help them with the brideprice. We watched the men recording donations of money from each member of the extended group of local matrikin. They said they kept a record in case something went wrong and the money had to be returned. Asked who decided on the brideprice, they said, “we decided - the groom’s side.” Other information on brideprice suggested otherwise, that it was the bride’s kin who stated the amount and that it was not negotiable, either. However, the women there went on to say that this was an arranged marriage - the boy’s parents were unhappy because he had a woman and a child in Arawa and they wanted him to marry a local girl instead. Asked if he and the local girl were happy with the arrangements, they answered - “Well, we will just have to wait and see how it works out”.

It took several truck-loads to bring the people from the groom’s village to the bride’s. Once all the trucks arrived, the groom’s headmen led the singing crowd into the settlement. They gathered around a canopy- covered area and hammered a nail up on a post, ready for the paiou. However, there was a long wait, the groom’s mother’s brother was talking quietly to some of the men from the girl’s group while a headman from the boy’s matrikin stood on the platform ready to hang the paiou. There was much earnest discussion between representatives of both sides. The atmosphere grew tense, and people from the boy’s village grumbled and said - well what is wrong, should we go back? Finally the paiou was hung, then snatched down at once by two of the girl’s kinsmen. The boy’s kinsmen nodded approval, “that is right,” they said, “take it down quickly, don’t count it first.” Cash was handed over as well. The boy’s mother’s brother had said - “the money you ask for is too much” - K600 for sahana, and K350 to remove the hoods later the same day at the

332 Eleanor Rimoldi and Max Rimoldi

boy’s mother’s brother’s village. The traditional money amounted to two strings o fpaiou and two strings of beroana.

The boy’s mother’s brother said that the village government put a ceiling of K400 and one string of paiou and one of beroana for brideprice and if the tsunono are angry about this high brideprice there could be trouble over it. The girl’s mother’s brother said later that the boy’s mother’s brother told him he would tell the tsunono that his matrikin offered the money, had wanted to give it, in order to protect the girl’s family, who in fact had demanded it. This may be why he told us the same thing when asked who set the brideprice. He also said it was a woman from the girl’s matrilineal group behind all the large demands from her father’s side. She had further caused trouble by ignoring a promise to the bride’s mother’s kin that brideprice for this second daughter would go entirely to them, because the pay for the first daughter had gone entirely to her father’s side. This custom of giving the brideprice received for one daughter to her paternal kin is one of the ways in which the father’s cooperative alliance with his wife’s lineage is acknowledged. A good father is appreciated. The wife’s lineage expresses this gratitude in a custom called hahispeipei which is considered part of the marriage ceremony and whereby a man’s wife’s kin bring a feast of pig and other delicacies to thank him for being a good father to their children. However, in this case, the bride’s paternal kin were apparently over­stepping; going back on an earlier agreement. Besides asking too much in payment, they wanted it for themselves.

The ceremony was originally meant to take place at the first settlement we had stopped at and was changed at the last minute to take place at the second settlement which then had to rush and prepare food. That is why the food was, people said, “not very good or very plentiful”. Further, the women there - as well as some from our party - were drunk and throwing food about and tearing possums limb from limb. Some of the brideprice went missing up at the boy’s mother’s brother’s village because the women spent it on drink. This is extraordinary - it is rare for a woman, even more a group of women, to drink in public, let alone get drunk and especially on an occasion such as this.

The girl’s maternal uncle, one of the Welfare’s most loyal younger tsunono, was so angry with all these wrongs that he was ready to make a scene then and there and was inhibited only by the presence of an extremely important headman and it was this headman’s rebuke at the delay in hanging up the ceremonial currency that precipitated the action. And - when someone suggested earlier that they should leave out the ceremonial money because they were getting enough cash, the other headman, who was waiting to hang it up, forbade it. The girl’s maternal uncle said that if the boy’s mother’s brother had not made soothing noises and said he would take the burden of blame on himself with regard to the overly high brideprice, he would have taken it all back to him. He said he had already heard rumours that the headmen were grumbling about the high pay and that in custom it is expected that the first daughter’s brideprice would go to her father’s side, and the second to her mother’s side, and after that they could divide it equally. Another man from the girl’s kin group repeated this and said that then, the girl’s father could use the payment to get women for his sister’s sons, and the girl’s mother could use it to get wives for her own sons. The girl’s maternal uncle became so angry while trying to mediate between the two groups that in the end he stayed overnight in the bush until his anger cooled.

The groom was the maternal nephew of a former Hahalis Welfare Society leader who had left some years before and had become very negative about its policies; he had often complained about its changed marriage laws including doing away with brideprice. He was also a village government magistrate and in a strange position of complicity in this inflation of brideprice, which he agreed to pay and then publicly disapproved of in his role as village magistrate.

The issues that caused conflict in this ceremony were set within a wider complex of debate and change on Buka. Within the Welfare Society itself the issue of brideprice was being “tested”. There is a form of Welfare Society marriage which is not supposed to involve any payment, just a small family party although sometimes a “small” gift of money, in one case K100, was given by the boy’s family to each of the girl’s parents. This is called a “little party” or a “cup of tea”.

Apparently contrary to this movement a recent marriage was arranged by Welfare Society leaders between the children of two of their headmen - the girl was given a choice between two boys and her family received K500 and two strings of paiou. This seemed to be part of a deliberate “testing” of members’ reactions to the amount of brideprice. Hahalis Welfare Society leaders were aware that many people were going back to brideprice, despite Welfare Society law, and realised in the future there could be trouble - people would ask: “Ah, did you ‘marry nothing’, or did you get brideprice?” So if people were going to ask for brideprice, they felt it should be regulated as people were asking too much. They considered over K I,000 to be an inflated amount. It was described as a situation where there were two roads in Hahalis Welfare Society now - Hahalis Welfare Society marriage, and brideprice. The decision as to what kind of marriage it would be must be made when the two families “meet and share betel-nut 0korakora)” over the marriage arrangements. Teosin said he

Buka Marriage Ritual and the Power of Tsunono 333

put a general question to Hahalis, and in fact he meant it for all of Buka and Bougainville - this question, he explained, is really a whole range of issues to do with marriage and brideprice.

One of these issues open to debate is the suggestion that if a man pays for a woman, then the woman should come to live with him on his own ground and the children should belong to him and inherit from him. It is recognised that one of the problems with this is whether or not this should be a continuing line then - in effect, patrilineal - or would the children become a part of their father’s matrilineage? Or would the inheritance finish with his own children? Teosin said this was an important issue because since the introduction of money, cash crops and salaried employment away from Buka, the nuclear family works hard to achieve financial security, the children and the wife work with the father and the husband, a father pays to educate his children, etc., then if the father dies, his wife and children can be sent away from his ground.

Teosin said that, even today, it is strongly expected that women leave their own father’s ground - except women of high status when the husband is expected to live on the wife’s mother’s or father’s ground - and go to stay at their husband’s father’s ground, from where they can be sent away when the husband dies or when his father dies. Teosin sees the contradiction in the residence rules. However, he said if no brideprice is paid, then the children belong to their mother’s matrilineage as usual but the new husband and wife should go and live and work on the wife’s true matrilineal ground, so that his hard work will be shared with his children and they and his wife can not be evicted if he dies. In the past, Teosin said, there was no real problem because there was no money or cash crops. The children’s maternal uncle always lived fairly close and could take over the care of them and his sister if the father of the children died. Today, people go away to work - a child’s maternal uncle could be some distance away, involved, what’s more, in his own nuclear family finances.

This whole issue, originally thought of in general terms at the start of the Welfare Society, was being discussed by the headmen in 1978 in a socio-political context quite different from that of the colonial era. The provincial government and local community government were now interested in incorporating custom in new laws (e.g. amount of brideprice) and the Catholic Church also took more of an interest in custom. In some ways this created even more confusion. In April, 1978 Radio Bougainville reported a Catholic Bishop’s Conference which took place on Buka. One of the matters they discussed was traditional marriage practices. They passed a resolution to encourage a return to the traditional concept of brideprice in order to strengthen marriages. They felt that a maximum should be made law to prevent excess because brideprice was becoming so inflated (K5,000 or more in some parts of Papua New Guinea). They felt a ceiling of K I,000 would be adequate. It seems however, that merely tinkering with the amount of brideprice to be paid comes nowhere near an understanding of the issues that are so deeply woven into the social fabric of Buka life and into the dynamics of power.

* * *

Adjusting aspects of ceremony - either by economic guidelines or by exacting attention to “authentic” detail- are illusory means toward a desired effect. Effectiveness does not depend on perfecting the ritual. The reason why these ritual events can never be perfect performances is simply because they are not merely performances at all. What is taking place is the unfolding of negotiated social relations - the ongoing life of Buka society. Because this life - economic, political, and spiritual - is lived within a matrix of kinship the significance of such ceremonies as we have discussed here is only fully grasped with reference to the wider issues of succession and alliance.

The first wedding we discussed was primarily concerned with succession because it involved a woman of high status, whereas the second ceremony focused on alliance in its dispute over brideprice which affects ordinary Buka as well. Hence we are led to consider the different negotiation of changing structures of social relations by those with power and those without.

The understanding that “brideprice is a transformation of human sacrifice” is one way of approaching the significance of the debate for the Buka themselves. In making such a statement we refer firstly to the tight emotional circle of hostility, tension, grief and mistrust which was so much a part of the teitahol's marriage ritual. Within this context we can gain insight into the historical sequence of marriage custom given by Welfare Society members and the concepts of succession and alliance. Human sacrifice is one way in which the tsunono have sealed promises of alliance. These alliances ensured the continued strength of not only their individual lines of inherited power but also their combined expression of this power-of-tsunono. The least complex form of retaining and passing on power-of-tsunono would be matrilineal succession and no more ideal form of this was possible than for a teitahol to bear her own brother’s child. Stories of the origin of the first men and women and the offspring of the first brother and sister pairs which established the separate moieties reflect the primacy of this relationship. However this has not become a social practice on Buka but the idea of ghost paternity in the gum comes close to it. The physical father has in this case absolutely no right to claim parenthood in any way, if indeed he could be known. The child of the teitahol is the dead tsunono's

334 Eleanor Rimoldi and Max Rimoldi

true son and heir. The dead tsunono is both father and mother’s brother to the child. The parental and maternal power-of-tsunono are identical in the child.

In a larger sense, when people said, as they often did at Hahalis, that they “kept their children on their ground” or that “the fathers did not lose their power-of-tsunono to another line” they were talking about marrying into the same matriline or local group of linked matrilineages which shared the same tsunono. It is also often said that distant matrilineal parallel cousin marriage is that most preferred and this is clearly consistent with the notion of the purest form of succession whereby the child’s matrikin are also his patrikin. Even as groups increase and tsunono of different degrees of status emerge in an ever extended group of local matrikin, this tendency to marry within the group creates a less dangerous situation for strengthening the group and establishing cooperative alliances within the group. In moiety terms, this would mean Nakaripa married Nakaripa and Naboen married Naboen although the moieties were not directly mentioned in the “history” of marriage referred to earlier. Such a convergence of interests on the part of the husband and wife makes marriage less of an occasion for jealousy and the potential threat of divided loyalties amongst the tsunono as expressed by the headmen at the teitahol's marriage ceremony.

An example of the way the matriline protects and nurtures the power-of-tsunono from within is the institution of oha, a prohibition put on a woman which forbids her to bear a child, and in some cases, to marry, which seems so contradictory because it can mean that the eldest daughter of a teitahol - who would be the next teitahol - is forbidden to marry, or bear a child. In effect, by doing this, the eldest daughter would still remain teitahol, she carries the burdens and dangers of power and hides one of her other sisters who will take up the status and hand it down to her daughter. Part of the reason for this is to protect the younger sister so her children can thrive without the danger of sorcery and jealousy that go along with power and high status. This danger was expressed by the words of the women’s song at the teitahol's ceremony when the belt was shown: “. . . we don’t know if you will live long enough to bear children.”

The sister to take up the status will be the one who has the best balance of male and female children. This gradual shift of status among sisters can also occur without marking one as oha. In any case, this flexibility in shifting the emphasis of status in such a way as to ensure the continued strength of the matriline was described as a decision which had to be made by the tsunono of that matriline, in agreement with “all the other tsunono”. If a matriline is unable to survive despite this flexibility and the tsunono has no heir, it is said that in tradition a new tsunono must be made; the new man is chosen by agreement amongst all the tsunono. To do this, in former times, a girl, or less often a boy, must be sacrificed to make the new tsunono a big man. The survival of the matriline is a life and death matter for it is particularly in situations where the breach between succession and alliance is most severe - or where the system fails - that a life was sacrificed to give birth to a new heir. People say, tsunono are bom, not made, but it is sometimes as if the new life is like the phoenix rising from the ashes.

In biological terms, the most direct form of succession then is for the teitahol to bear her brother’s child - as expressed in the custom of gum. In biological terms also, the most direct form of alliance would seem to be in the cross-cousin relationship. While distant parallel-cousin marriage is expressed as a preferred choice, cross-cousin marriage is forbidden. The children of cross-cousins are under some circumstances referred to as “brothers and sisters” but in this relationship there is respect, shame and avoidance. True uterine brothers and sisters are by contrast very close, affectionate, and sexual shame and avoidance are not marked in the relationship. One circumstance where the tendency to refer to the children of cross-cousins as brother and sister is very strong is in the case of a teitahol and tsunono: if a woman is a teitahol, her children’s children and her brother’s children’s children are considered classificatory brother and sister. These children are in a special relationship for which there is a special name. They are said to make each other tsunono. In effect it is once again a case of the brother and sister relationship transmitting the power of tsunono to the new heir, but there is no suggestion of marriage in any form - in fact it is expressly forbidden and instead takes on the appearance of succession because it is expressed in brother-sister terms, yet remains alliance because it involves children of different matrilineages.

It is common for whole groups to stand in cooperative and protective relationships with one another. For example, a Naboen matrilineage can protect, hide and nourish a Nakaripa matrilineage and this relationship can sometimes be expressed in particular (but not necessarily recurring) marriages arranged between the two groups. It is also possible for a matrilineal group of one settlement to be in the relationship of children of cross-cousins to a matrilineal group in another settlement.

Moving somewhat away from biological concepts of alliance, there is the custom of sungut, where migrants, said to be unrelated in any way to the people of a certain area, come to settle with them. If they are cooperative and support the resident tsunono and his men’s house, they will in time be made part of the group of linked matrilines in the area. This kind of relationship often resulted from warfare in the past.

There are straightforward and common cases of using matrilineal kinship to incorporate strangers as supporters of the tsunono's position. A more startling example shows the tension between succession and

Buka Marriage Ritual and the Power of Tsunono 335

alliance being manipulated by the Buka in distinctive style. Instead of merely being incorporated into the tsunono's group, an alien group of migrants may in fact be pushed forward to take over the tsunono's power in their host community. If the migrant group are successful as fathers to the host group and assist in guaranteeing their hosts’ line of succession in future generations they may in return hold the hosts’ power-of- tsunono for a period during which their “children” grow strong enough to succeed. The migrants may even pool the power of two or more resident tsunono, not necessarily of the same moiety, but both beneficiaries of successful marriage alliances with the immigrants which have allowed their numbers to increase.

There are also examples of quicker forms of alliance with a migrant group which produced a new tsunono on the new ground. In one well-attested case human sacrifice loomed large: Ielelina was occupied by two main groups, Naboen and Nakaripa. The first chief or munihil, Saka, was said to have migrated with a group of matrikin from North East Bougainville. Travelling from Banis on the West Coast of Buka to join their Nakaripa clansmen at Ielelina they were seized by the Naboen tsunono. Saka was singled out to occupy a position as intermediary between the antagonistic Naboen and Nakaripa factions in the district. To ensure his impartiality his close kin were killed with the exception of his sister who was declared teitahol, i.e. mother of heirs to his office. In return, the teitahol of the Naboen Ielelina was sacrificed as an act of expiation on behalf of all Naboen.

Some of the contradictions between alliance and succession were expressed in Teosin’s proposal, mentioned earlier, that if you paid brideprice, the children belonged to the father, and the growing importance of the nuclear family. In traditional times, people say, brideprice was in the form of paiou or beroana - it circulated amongst people and was reciprocal in such a way that no one person or group ever came out very far ahead in any given marriage. Cash is a different proposition, and money becomes a form of wealth which has less and less to do with the power of tsunono. Then social relationships gradually become disassociated from the socio-economic base that represented the philosophy of balance and restraint in that traditional sense.

For such reasons, it seems to be invalid for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference to interpret brideprice as consistent with cooperation between groups. Hahalis Welfare Society saw it was no longer so way back in the 1960’s and integrated the early mission attitude of hostility to brideprice with their own realisation that it had become inflationary and anti-cooperative. The contradiction between succession and alliance, which brideprice should help to resolve, is manageable if there are common goals and a consistent basis of power. For example, alliances with outsiders - migrants - are acceptable and not a contradiction if there is a commonality in aspirations and goals and if all work together to support the tsunono.

In the contemporary situation the new Catholic attitude, which is to support brideprice, reinforces the growing trend to patriliny and individuality, whereas before - according to our understanding of Buka accounts - brideprice supported the cooperative-alliance method of strengthening matrilineal succession.

Teosin speculated that perhaps there is yet another way of reinforcing the cooperative potential of brideprice and wider out-marriage - now no longer just a question of marrying beyond the local lineages - but also outside one’s ethnic group. People might accept goals and forms of distribution of resources that are still for the common good at all levels and a common political and economic program. Indeed, this in a way was the very set of ideals that inspired the formulation of the Welfare Society in the first place. Even a strengthened patrilineal emphasis need not be a contradiction in this matrilineal society if the nature of power-of-tsunono is commonly shared. As we have already shown the patrilineal bond is not in practice or in belief an ineffective aspect of traditional Buka society. The Welfare Society’s struggle with earning and distribution of money in order to contain it somehow within an order of things which still recognises the power of the tsunono and all that implies, is related to the broader struggle to retain their whole social system built upon a matrilineal base.

For these reasons it is understandable that, although Hahalis Welfare policy was in favour of the abolition of arranged marriages, the tsunono still held back “new shoots”, young women of high rank, and that their marriages are still often arranged; they are still needed to perpetuate the power of tsunono and indirectly the matrilineal principle of succession. Teosin sees this as the level at which the traditional values and practices can be perpetuated with economic and political unity - succession if you like, and then free marriage choice in the wider population will provide a further cooperation at another level - alliance in a sense - although of a nature less easily controlled than in the past.

The difficulty of course is in that Welfare Society reformulations of social relationships struggle against almost insurmountable inflation in terms of money and goods individually earned and owned, and the encroachment of provincial and national power upon the local domain of the tsunono.

REFERENCE

SAREI, A.H., 1974. Traditional Marriage and the Impact of Christianity on the Solos of Buka Island. New Guinea Research Bulletin No.57. Port Moresby and Canberra, New Guinea Research Unit, Australian National University.