Research Paper on "Enga People"

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"Pigs are our hearts": Symbolic commodity exchanges amongst the Enga

Introductory Paragraph:

The Enga are an indigenous people of Papua New Guinea. The Enga speak only one native language, but tribal conflicts are rife within the region. As a tribe, they have many distinctive features, particularly the significance they give to pigs as modes of exchange within their culture. Due to certain destabilizing factors, such as the region's harsh climate and tribal warfare, the Enga use symbolic systems of regulation and exchange to exert a sense of control over their unpredictable external environment.

These control systems include a highly rigid social classification system of gender roles and commodity exchange systems involving pigs and other material objects. Their exchange systems reflect the Enga's need to impose meaning upon the external world and create a system of control over their interpersonal relationships and the external environment.

Primary mode of subsistence

The Enga are agrarian-state, subsistence farmers. Papua New Guinea agriculture consists of one large district, which is maintained to generate areal nourishment, along with another budgetary district of a much smaller size, which monitors all exported goods. The Engans produce yams, and taro, mainly, but also generate other staple vegetables which are native to that region in Papua New Guinea. Coping with the challenges of the climate, particularly frequent frosts, is a constant challenge for the Enga (Waddell 1975).

Possibly this accounts for some of the reason that the agriculture trade has not for the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), their share of the Gross National Product (GNP), on a bit of a slippery slope within these previous three decades. What did provide over two-thirds of their GDP is now well under that two-third mark. What makes this decline to be perceived as such a drastic decline is due to the fact that more than four-fifths of their GDP depends upon the agriculture trade, subsistence agriculture; this noticeable decline in the GDP has given rise to several stimulant government-financed development programs to supplement the income for the majority of subsistence farmers outside of the urban regions.

Economic organization

Pigs are extremely important in Enga culture and are used in social and economic transactions between people (known as 'te' exchanges) (Feil 1978). While pigs act as placeholders of value (money), the exchange of pigs and other symbolically significant commodities such as pigs, pork, shells, axes, and bird feathers is also used to cement social bonds. Men and women both play respectful roles in the workforce within the Engan society.

From Mae Enga - Economy of the Countries and Cultures webpage (from Mervyn Meggitt):

Division of labor by sex is marked among Mae. Men undertake the initial concentrated and heavy work of clearing, fencing, ditching, and deep tilling of gardens and coffee plots, after which their wives and daughters sustain the constant round of planting, weeding, repairing fences, and daily harvesting of food plants, plus picking and processing coffee in season.

Women also tend family pigs, care for infants, prepare and cook food, and carry firewood and water. Men build all houses, while women gather grass for thatch and provide food for the workers. In short, women's work provisions Mae domestic economy and supports male and political and ceremonial activities.

From this we are able to conclude that this society moves along quite productively. Within it's own society, of course, since wars and mayhem is so abundant; in a way, that pushes across an ethic of dependency upon one another quite apparent: "Since this is all I will ever know of life, as this is all I have ever known of life, and all I will ever comprehend of life, then I had better appreciate it!" Engans, we can conclude, must live in a state of day-to-day apprehension that everything available is only here for today.

Social organization and traditional Engan rituals

Despite the reliance upon farming, and the presumed need for social kinship in a harsh climate, war has been frequent amongst the Enga (Waddell, 1975). In a sense, these Papua New Guinea Natives traditionally "held down the fort" similar to Native American Indians. One commonality between Enga tribes and Native American tribes is the Freedom vs. Confinement sense expressed by means of the ceremony. Despite that Engans followed commonly known religions, such as Catholicism, Christianity, Seventh-day Adventist Church, the Lutheran Church, the Gutnius Lutheran Church, Baptism, and Methodism, amongst others, they also uphold Ceremonies within their collective tribes.

Such as the rituals and ceremonies practiced by the Native American, the Enga havce theirs, too. For instance, like the Arapaho, Arikara, Asbinboine, Cheyenne, Crow, Gros, Ventre, Hidutsa, Sioux, Plains Cree, Plains Ojibway, Sarasi, Omaha, Ponca, Ute, Shoshone, Kiowa, and Blackfoot tribes, the Enga hekd similar ceremonies. Like the Sun Dance, the Spirit Dance, the Rain Dance, the Stomp Dance, or the Summer Solstice Ceremony upheld by several (various) Native American tribes, the Enga ritually perform Pig slaughter rituals.

Of course, since the Enga regard the pig as such a sanctified mamal, every part of that pig is either eaten or used as tool (a device held in and manipulated by the hand and used by a mechanic, plumber, carpenter, or other laborer to work, shape, move, or transform material), or an implement (tool or mechanical device used for a particular purpose), or an apparatus (collection of distinct instruments, tools, or other devices that are used in connection or combination with one another for a certain purpose), or a utensil ( a hand-held implement for domestic use), or for its nostalgic or keep-sake value.

From Countries and Their Cultures (Mervyn Meggitt, 1996):

Ceremonies. Although lethal sorcery is uncommon, many men privately use magic to enhance their personal well-being, to acquire valuables and pigs, and to ensure military success. Clan bachelors regularly seclude themselves in groups to remove by magic and by washing the dangerous effects of even inadvertent contacts with women, after which the whole clan feasts its neighbors to celebrate the young men's return to secular life. Women employ magic to cleanse themselves after menstruation and parturition and occasionally to protect their garden crops. Following a Family illness or death, a female medium conducts a seance or a male diviner bespells and cooks pork to identify the aggrieved ghost. The family head then kills pigs and ritually offers cooked pork to placate that ghost. Occurrences of clanwide disasters such as military defeats, crop failures, epidemic illnesses, or deaths of people or pigs stimulate clan leaders to arrange large-scale offerings of pork and game while hired ritual experts decorate the fertility stones to mollify the punitive clan ancestors (Meggitt, 1996).

With this, it becomes evident that the ultimate worth of these aforementioned 'Sacred Pigs' is about on level as family life within the United States would regard children or grandparents. That is quite esteemed.

Gender relations

The Enga strictly segregate the sexes, and role division is extremely gendered. Polygamy is frequently practiced amongst Engan men, though not all -- or even the majority, for that matter. Ironically, women are considered 'polluting to males.' Intersex relations are described as fraught with anxiety and conflict (Feil, 1978).

The 'inferior' role of women has been reconsidered by some anthropologists, given their role in 'te' (pig) exchanges within the context of the society (Feil 1978). This also signifies how the consensus of those Enga males who have more than one wife are amongst the wealthy, or what Engans would perceive as the wealthy. As a base analogy to illustrate this, we can imagine a farmer at the local market place bringing four healthy pigs in exchange for an additional wife. In a rough sense, that speaks of the ethics of these Engans.

More on Polygamy:

Much like Mormons and Mormonism, many Enga men practice pluralism, or polygamy; this is the practice of these Papua New Guinea men to obtain and nourish more than one wife successively. Polygamy, then, always amounts to a common theme between brothers, sisters, half-brothers, half-sisters, but very importantly extreme communal respect between the wives, alongside a common theme of respect between these siblings. Moreover, complete bipartisanship must be displayed between all members equally. With the trepidation built due to the abundance and frequency of wars, however, this sense of tight kinship is not too completely difficult to discern.

From this batch of sources, collectively, we can gather that these rugged mountain people, the Engans, have quite rigid restrictions. Alcohol and firearms are banned. Upon entering this province, everyone -- locals just as well as visitors -- are thoroughly checked for both. From the Corporate Responsibility webpage, Police Deployment, Enga Province, Papua New Guinea (PNG):

The Papua New Guinea census of 2000 lists the population… READ MORE

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