operated throughout human prehistory, until the rise of states with their codified laws, courts, judges, and police beginning 5,400 years ago. The case of Billy and Malo contrasts with a case that I shall relate in the next chapter, a case also resolved by traditional means, but ones opposite to those used in the case of Billy and Malo: by revenge killings and war. Depending on the circumstances and the parties involved, disputes in traditional societies may be resolved either peacefully, or else by war if the peaceful process breaks down or isn’t attempted.
The peaceful process involves what is termed “compensation.” (As we shall see, that usual English translation of a New Guinea term is misleading; it would be impossible to compensate for the death of a child, and that isn’t the goal. The term in the New Guinea lingua franca of Tok Pisin is
A ceremony
Because of the risk that Billy’s clansmen might seek to retaliate against Malo and Gideon and other employees of their company, Gideon told the staff not to come to work on the day after the accident. Gideon himself remained alone in his office, within a gated patrolled compound, only a hundred yards from the house where Gideon and his family lived. He instructed the security guards to remain alert, not to let strangers in, and especially to be on the look-out for any lowlanders and to keep them out. Nevertheless, in the course of the morning Gideon glanced up from his desk and to his horror saw three large men, recognizable as lowlanders from their appearance, standing outside the back window of his office.
Gideon’s first thought was: either I smile at them, or I run. But then he reflected that his wife and his young children were nearby, and that running might save only his own life. He managed a smile, and the three men managed to smile back. Gideon went to the back window of the office and opened it, recognizing that that could immediately prove fatal but that he had no choice because the alternative was worse. One of the three men, who turned out to be Peti, father of the dead boy, asked Gideon, “Can I come into your office and talk with you?” (This and most of the other conversations that I shall relate took place not in the English language but in Tok Pisin. Peti’s actual words to Gideon were “Inap mi kam insait long opis bilong yu na yumi tok-tok?”)
Gideon nodded, went to the front of his office, opened the door, and invited Peti to come in alone and sit down. For a man whose son had just been killed, and who was now confronting the killer’s employer, Peti’s behavior was impressive: clearly still in a state of shock, he was nevertheless calm, respectful, and direct. Peti sat quietly for some time, and finally said to Gideon, “We understand that this was an accident, and that you didn’t do it intentionally. We don’t want to make any problems. We just want your help with the funeral. We ask of you a little money and food, in order to feed our relatives at the ceremony.” Gideon responded by offering his sympathies on behalf of his company and its staff, and by making some vague commitment. Immediately that afternoon, he went to the local supermarket to start buying the standard food items of rice, tinned meat, sugar, and coffee. While in the store, he happened to encounter Peti again, and once again there was no trouble.
Already on that second day, the day after the accident, Gideon talked to the senior member of his staff, an older New Guinean named Yaghean, who was a native of a different district but was experienced in New Guinea compensation negotiations. Yaghean offered to handle the negotiations. On the following day (day 3) Gideon convened a staff meeting of his company to discuss how to proceed. Everybody’s main fear was that the extended family of the dead boy (his more distant relatives and clanspeople) might prove violent, even though the father had given assurance that the immediate family would cause no trouble. Encouraged by Peti’s calm behavior during their two encounters, Gideon’s first inclination was to go straight to the lowlander settlement himself, to seek out Billy’s family, to “say sorry” (formally apologize), and to attempt to defuse the threat from the extended family. But Yaghean insisted that Gideon should not do this: “If you yourself, Gideon, go there too soon, I’m concerned that the extended family and the whole lowlander community may still have hot tempers. We should instead go through the proper compensation process. We’ll send an emissary, and that will be me. I’ll talk to the councilor for the ward that includes the lowlander settlement, and he in turn will talk to the lowlander community. Both he and I know how the compensation process should proceed. Only after the process has been completed can you and your staff have a say-sorry [
Yaghean went to speak to the councilor, who arranged for the next day (day 4) a meeting involving Yaghean, the councilor, Billy’s family, and the extended clan. Gideon has little knowledge of what went on at that meeting, other than Yaghean’s report that they talked at length about how to handle the issue, that the family itself had no intention to resort to violence, but that some men in the settlement felt strongly for Billy and were still stirred up. Yaghean told Gideon that he should buy more food for the compensation ceremony and funeral, and that agreement had been reached on a compensation payment of 1,000 kina (equivalent to about $300) from Gideon’s company to the family. (The kina is the national currency of Papua New Guinea.)
The compensation ceremony itself took place on the following day, day 5, with formal and structured arrangements. It began with Gideon, Yaghean, and the rest of the office staff except for Malo driving in the company car into the lowlander settlement. They parked the car, walked through the settlement, and entered the yard behind Billy’s family’s house. Traditional New Guinea ceremonies of mourning take place under some kind of shelter, to cover the mourners’ heads; in this case the shelter that the family set up was a tarpaulin, under which everyone—the family and the visitors—was to gather. When the visitors came in, one of the dead boy’s uncles pointed out to them their place to sit and motioned the family to other seats.
The ceremony began with an uncle speaking, to thank the visitors for coming, and to say how sad it was that Billy had died. Then Gideon, Yaghean, and other office staff talked. In describing the event to me, Gideon explained, “It felt awful, just awful, to have to give that talk. I was crying. At that time, I, too, had young children. I told the family that I was trying to imagine their level of grief. I said that I was trying to grasp it by supposing the accident to have happened instead to my own son. Their grief must have been unimaginable. I told them that the food and the money that I was giving them were nothing, mere rubbish, compared to the life of their child.”
Gideon went on to tell me, “Next came the talk of Billy’s father, Peti. His words were very simple. He was in tears. He acknowledged that Billy’s death was an accident, and not due to negligence on our part. He thanked us for being there, and said that his people wouldn’t make any problems for us. Then he talked about Billy, held up a photograph of his son, and said, ‘We miss him.’ Billy’s mother sat quietly behind the father as he spoke. A few others of Billy’s uncles stood up and reiterated, ‘You people won’t have any problems with us, we are satisfied with your response and with the compensation.’ Everybody—my colleagues and I, and Billy’s whole family—was crying.”
The transfer of food consisted of Gideon and his colleagues handing the food over in order to “say sorry,” with the words “This food is to help you in this hard time.” After the talks, the family and the visitors ate together a simple meal of sweet potato (the traditional New Guinea staple food) and other vegetables. There was much shaking of hands at the end of the ceremony. I asked Gideon whether there had also been any hugging, and whether for instance he and the father had hugged each other while they were crying. But Gideon’s answer was “No, the ceremony was structured, and it was very formal.” Still, I have difficulty imagining in the U.S. or any other Western society a similar meeting of reconciliation, in which a dead child’s family and the child’s accidental killers, previously strangers to each other, sit down and cry together and share a meal a few days after the death. Instead, the child’s family would be planning a civil lawsuit, and the accidental killer’s family would be consulting lawyers and their insurance broker in order to prepare to defend themselves against the lawsuit plus possible criminal charges.
