The Huli are an indigenous people that live in the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands...

. Latest estimates put their numbers at around 150,000, while they have been living in the area where they now reside for about 1000 years. They speak Huli

Huli language

Huli is a Trans–New Guinea language spoken by the Huli people of the Southern Highlands province of Papua New Guinea. It features a quindecimal numeral system.-External links:***, Brian Cheetam. Papua New Guinea Journal of Education...

, Tok Pisin

Tok Pisin

Tok Pisin is a creole spoken throughout Papua New Guinea. It is an official language of Papua New Guinea and the most widely used language in that country...

, and many will speak some of the surrounding languages, while some also speak English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

.

History

The Huli have lived in their region for some time (see above) and have long oral histories relating to individuals and their clans. They were extensive travellers (for trade predominantly) in both the highlands and lowlands surrounding their homeland, particularly to the south. The Huli were not known to Europeans until 1936, and the colonial government did not have contact with them until 1951.

Hereditary social structures

The Huli are grouped in clan

Clan

A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, clan members may be organized around a founding member or apical ancestor. The kinship-based bonds may be symbolical, whereby the clan shares a "stipulated" common ancestor that is a...

s (hamigini) and subclans (hamigini emene). Clans have residential rights within a specific territory and membership is based on hereditary descent.

Subclans are smaller groups within the larger clan and are the basic units of Huli society. Subclans operate autonomously, and may make war or peace, or pay indemnities, without consulting the larger clan. Membership of a subclan is usually restricted to those who are directly related to the subclan founder or to another member of the subclan. Huli may belong to several subclans at a time, depending on their kinship and ancestry.

The Huli regard families as being extensive. People that white cultures consider half-brothers, half-sisters, and cousins, may all be reckoned as brothers and sisters by the Huli. Also, individuals that other cultures might label their 'aunts' and 'uncles', are seen by the Huli as their 'mothers' and 'fathers'.

The Huli live by hunting, gathering plants and growing crops. They are exceptional farmers, and have accepted many introduced crops, initially sweet potatoes, but more recently corn, potatoes, cabbage, etc. The Huli are also very interested in private business, and have established businesses throughout Papua New Guinea. Men and women still live separately. Unmarried men historically lived in large group houses, although this is exceptionally rare nowadays. When wearing traditional dress, the men decorate their bodies with colored clay and wear elaborate headdresses for ceremonies.

Marriage

Huli society is, polygynist

Polygyny

Polygyny is a form of marriage in which a man has two or more wives at the same time. In countries where the practice is illegal, the man is referred to as a bigamist or a polygamist...

. Men may take multiple wives but women may only have one husband at a time. Exogamy

Exogamy

Exogamy is a social arrangement where marriage is allowed only outside of a social group. The social groups define the scope and extent of exogamy, and the rules and enforcement mechanisms that ensure its continuity. In social studies, exogamy is viewed as a combination of two related aspects:...

 is the norm and marriage between close relatives is forbidden.

Marriages may be arranged

Arranged marriage

An arranged marriage is a practice in which someone other than the couple getting married makes the selection of the persons to be wed, meanwhile curtailing or avoiding the process of courtship. Such marriages had deep roots in royal and aristocratic families around the world...

, but couples may also choose to marry each other. The bride's family receives a dowry

Dowry

A dowry is the money, goods, or estate that a woman brings forth to the marriage. It contrasts with bride price, which is paid to the bride's parents, and dower, which is property settled on the bride herself by the groom at the time of marriage. The same culture may simultaneously practice both...

, usually paid in pig

Pig

A pig is any of the animals in the genus Sus, within the Suidae family of even-toed ungulates. Pigs include the domestic pig, its ancestor the wild boar, and several other wild relatives...

s or other native livestock. The groom is responsible for building a house for his bride. After marriage, the wife's role is to raise children and care for them, tend her garden, and raise her pigs. Boys will usually leave their mother's house around age 10 to live with their father.

Divorce

Divorce

Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties...

 is not uncommon, the most frequent cause of which is the wife's failure to bear children. Upon divorce, the husband will attempt to regain the pigs paid to the wife's family at the time of marriage.

The Haroli or Bachelor Groups

Young Huli men spend time in segregation from the wider society, and in particular women, in the Haroli or Bachelor Groups. Most young men leave this group, and re-enter the wider society. However some men choose to stay as part of the Haroli, increasing their potency (because of 'non-pollution' by women) in spiritual and physical (hunting, etc.) ways. Huli view the realms of spirituality, physical ability, story-telling, etc. as part of a whole, not as separate spheres. The Haroli sing various prayers to the gods to ensure their good appearance as well as hymns in praise of nature throughout the night until the sun rises as they burn special woods. These are sung in a secret language called Tua ili which is only spoken on Haroli cult grounds and is taught by the daroli to the initiates. The prayers and hymns include:

1) Leg band chant

2) Face chant

3) Water chant

4) Waist band chant (so the hago belt will fit securely around the waist)

5) Apron chant (so the pubic apron will lay flat)

6) Tangent chant (so the leaves will cover one’s backside)

7) Four prayers to ensure a strong, healthy and full wig. These four prayers are chanted as the bachelors sprinkle water, which was previously be-spelled by the water chant, over their hair.

The novices remain in the cult forest (ibagiyanda) for four months at the beginning of their training in order to avoid the sun, care for their hair, and grow the manda hare or red wig. They ritually fast from sweet potatoes and drink large amounts of water to develop a tight skin and muscular definition. Once a month they perform an eye-washing rite under a waterfall to remove the stigma of female images from their eyes. This purification rite, which is also performed by the neighboring Enga bachelors, is continued each month for the duration of the novitiate.

After the four months of initial separation, the novices are given a bog iris plant (padume) and are shown the magical bamboo tubes (tugu nagira). The Ipa Kiya myth states that the padume plant grew out of the menstrual blood-saturated ground and decomposed body of an ancestral woman, Pepeko Wane Padume, who was murdered by a Huli man. Its magical properties include curative powers; a sensitivity to the presence of spirits, poisons and female blood; and the power to ensure male health and fertility. Each novice cultivates a padume plant to ensure their individual health and the group’s health. If a novice breaks the taboos about association with women, the plant will wither and die causing him or another novice to fall ill and suffer misfortune. The strongest taboos warn against the help of women in gardens; talk of female genitalia or coitus; mere female association; and any breach of chastity. The penalty for offensive talk about coitus or female organs is one or two pigs. A member who breaks the rule of chastity is usually expelled and fined four to five pigs payable to the group.

The bamboo tubes are related to the bog iris plant as they contain a portion of the female blood shed long ago that generated the plant. The tubes protect men from the evil emanations of menstruating women. The neighboring Enga people have strikingly similar beliefs about the bog iris plant and bamboo tubes which they use in their Sangai fertility and initiation rites. However, their myth states that the murdering boy was turned into the bog iris plant while the female victim was transformed the bamboo tube. The bog iris plant has the same properties for both the Enga and Huli. The Enga tubes are believed to bring about dreams for the bachelors as well as indicate the ritual and sexual purity of the bachelor leader. The bachelor leader is accused of breaking the separation taboos if water is not found in the tubes upon their ritual exhumation from their permanent burial site. The exact ritual usage of the Huli bamboo tubes is not known. However, they are an essential element of the bachelor cult ritual.

After the novices receive their bog iris plants they are free to return to their individual men’s houses. They must observe the female separation taboos and return to the cult forest once a month for a few days of instruction and ritual observances.

On the last day of the two or three year novitiate, the novices are admitted to the central bachelor’s house which is surrounded by a great fence. There they are tricked and bullied by elder bachelors and shown once again the magical bog iris plants and bamboo tubes. They sing bachelor spells and songs throughout the night until dawn breaks when they are ordered out of the house and subjected to a painful ritual. The novices are forced to jump into a pool of water that is full of nettles, briars, and leaves of the nigi plant, which inflames their skin and causes them to swell and appear as “big-men.” They are beaten with birch switches by senior bachelors who stand on the edge of the pool to ensure that no one attempts to escape this painful bath. The novices then leave the water to dress and pain themselves for a Mali or festive line dance, although they use a specific paint reserved for bachelors. They are permitted to wear the puluyaba or bachelor’s braid in their string bags, as well as the red, crescent-shaped wig (manda hare), both of which symbolize manhood and correspondent sexual taboos. The newly created bachelors then parade in single file throughout their own and adjacent clan territories carrying a strung bow in hand and an arrow in the other. The new bachelors appear very fierce and do not show any signs of emotion nor do they talk with themselves or others. Men who observe the parade praise them in exalted tones, while women remain far from sight so that the bachelors do not run away in fear of menstrual contamination.

Within forty years after the discovery of the Huli by Western explorers, the Haroli bachelor cult, which was the main educational structure of Huli male society, had virtually disappeared. The cult faced stiff competition from employment and Western educational opportunities as well as disapproval by Christian missionaries. The black-and-white photos are rare pictures of a Tegeanda ritual house which were taken by a Catholic missionary outside of Tari in 1955.

Further reading

• Huli Wigmen of Tari. Papua New Guinea Scuba Diving Adventure.