Tales from Melanesia - Papua New Guinea and Fiji

There are twenty provinces in Papua New Guinea which have interesting histories and cultures; A paradise for the cultural anthropologist. Their traditional cultural dances, though colorful, lively, and interesting do not present stories or legends as do the mele hula of Polynesia.

In the Gulf Provinces the people create lovely basketry using bark cloth and decorating with painted features of bush and sea spirits.

The people of Gogodala are very artistic and paint abstract designs of their clan symbols on canoes, dance masks, drums, totems, spirit statues. They also do human tatooing.

In the Mountain Provinces fire dances are a traditional way of life. The natives make huge masks and decorate them with big-eyed insects, birds and crocodiles. Following a frenzied dance, after consuming an hallucinogenic beverage, they walk on glowing embers!

Hidden deep in this lovely and primitive art work surely resides a body of legend. They do have myths that explain where man has come from, but they stop short of giving any explanation of where they consider that man may go after his life ceases, except for some nebulous allusion to a transmigration of their ancestors into reptiles. Their belief seems to indicate that man was begat out of a tree. What kind of tree? Many questions need an answer.

Kambel is the Melanesian sky-being but WHAT did he do? Just who was this Kambel? Did he have a genesis? Did he have a mate? What was his function? Was he evil or benevolent? Did he possess human or animal characteristics?

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