Crocodile Men and Animal Totems, Kanganaman Village, Middle Sepik, Papua New Guinea

What is “culture”?

That was the question for our first assigned essay in “Culture Myth and Symbolism”, an upper-level anthropology course I took at university, many, many years ago. Deceptively simple, the “answer” – if there is one – became increasingly layered and complex the more I delved into tomes written by the notable ‘modern’ anthropologists of the 20th century. As the course outline puts it:

“All our social practices have a cultural dimension that is as profound as anything we would usually consider to be an imperative such as earning a livelihood. In the twentieth century anthropologists concerned with the study of culture came to focus on systems of symbols and meaning.”

It is one thing to witness the artefacts of culture; quite another thing to understand them. Another essay I researched at the time was about body art and adornment: because clothing, makeup, tattooing, scarification, and even posture, can tell us something about the culture we embody.

Memories of this course – one of my favourites during my university days – came back to me when I was in Papua New Guinea last year. This was especially true in the Middle Sepik region, where initiated men in the Crocodile Clan embody the crocodile: their totem and symbol of strength and power. They believe that humans are the offspring of migrating ancestral crocodiles; their initiation ceremony (for males only!) takes boys and moves them through androgyny and into manhood – albeit with a crocodile spirit.

Men of the crocodile clan are heavily scarified to look like the reptiles they epitomise. Circles of scar tissue surrounding their nipples mimic crocodile eyes; nostrils are carved near the abdomen. Their backs are scarred in the form of the powerful animal’s rear legs and tail.

American anthropologist Nancy Sullivan, who lived and worked in Papua New Guinea for many years, was present during a crocodile-clan initiation ceremony. The young men were taken, under the protection of their mothers’ brothers, to the haus tambaran (spirit house), where hundreds of cuts were incised: symbolically bleeding out their mothers’ postpartum blood to make them ‘men’ of their father’s lineage. Tigaso tree oil and clay were applied to the open wounds. Then the boys lay down by a smoky fire to infect the wounds so that keloid scar tissue was produced. During the whole process, flutes and hour-glass shaped kundu drums played to ‘confuse the women’.

Other sources talk about the two months that the young men are sequestered in the spirit houses, learning their clan genealogies, the significance of every clan song and ceremony, and the origins and spiritual purpose of every image or object in the haus tambaran. (For a much more detailed – and somewhat graphic – account of the whole process, have a look at the fascinating article by ‘tattoo anthropologist’ Lars Krutak.)

I was in the village of Kanganaman in the Middle Sepik with photographer Karl Grobl from Jim Cline Photo Tours, not for an initiation (which only happens every two or more years) but for the much more enjoyable experience of watching a sing-sing – a festival of culture, dance and music by a gathering of tribes, villages or clans (more about that soon).

Clan culture is strong here: crocodiles (pukpuk) are not the only clan spirits or totems. Eagles (taragau), snakes, cassowary (muruk), pigs, birds of paradise, and other animals, can each represent a spirit clan, and each village usually has several clans and sub-clans. The inter-relationship of these totems is complex, and although one man tried to explain his attachments (separately through his mother and his father) to two spirit symbols, I can’t begin to understand how it all works. It is said, however, that the more diverse clans and spirits a village has, the stronger the village will be – especially in protecting against black magic. Sorcery still looms large in the regional psyche.

The people along the Sepik River had almost no contact with Westerners until the 19th century, and the region is still relatively remote and difficult to access (see: Welcome to the Spirit House!). Life here has changed little here for thousands of years. There is no electricity (except by generator for the few hardy tourists) and no running water. What there is is unremitting heat that envelopes one like a wet blanket, and the constant buzz of insects – including hordes of mosquitos, which may or may not be carrying malaria, dengue fever, or Japanese encephalitis.

No wonder the locals almost all chew the ubiquitous betal (areca) nut!

Still, I would do it again. It was still fascinating to meet the crocodile men, to listen to their stories, and to see some of their extraordinary body markings.

It truly is a different world and a foreign – but fascinating – culture.

Until next time,

Happy Travels!

Photos: 13-14August2017