Such a place is not fiction, says Faraclas:
When the first colonisers came to the island of New Guinea, they did not find one society that exactly fit the above description. Instead, they found over one thousand distinct language groups and many more distinct societies, the majority of which approximated closely the above description, but each in its own particular way. These were not perfect societies. They had many problems. But after some one hundred years of “northern development”. . nearly all of the real developmental gains achieved over the past 40,000 years by the indigenous peoples of the island have been seriously eroded, while almost all of the original problems have gotten worse and have been added to a rapidly growing list of new imported problems. (“Critical literacy and control in the new world order,” in Constructing Critical Literacies, edited by Sandy Muspratt, Allan Luke and Peter Freebody)
Nick Fogg had arranged for me to be flown to remote areas in the mountains and on the coast to meet people who were living traditionally but were under threat from illegal logging of their land. After staying overnight in Port Moresby, I was flown up into the mountains to Kokoda, where we landed on a grassy field. When the plane taxied to a stop, we were surrounded by a group of men wearing full body paint and spectacular regalia festooned with feathers, shells, and pigs' tusks. I was taller than all of them, but two of the men grabbed my legs and lifted me up on their shoulders. I was taken totally by surprise, and as I tried to twist upright, I threw my back out. I had a camera hanging around my neck and tried to get it into position as I struggled to stay upright without making my back hurt worse.
These two fellows were unbelievably strong and ran — not walked fast, ran — sweating and grunting as the others running along with us drummed and sang. I was bouncing up and down, feeling very, very uncomfortable, suffering jolts of pain up my spine while also trying to take pictures of this unique experience. The men ran all the way to a village about half a mile away, never once indicating I was too heavy or stopping for a rest. It was a wonderful relief to be put down.
In the village was a large outdoor stage where people gathered for meetings and entertainment. An elaborate dance with drumming and singing was performed for me, and then speeches were given in pidgin, which Nick translated for me. The people understood what the logging of the forest meant, a loss of their identity and traditions, but they also needed money for medicine and clothing like T-shirts and shorts. I gave a speech about what was happening around the world and how precious the forest was to this community. I emphasized that the people must retain control over their land and develop a community economic strategy that would allow them to generate an income without destroying their surroundings. I gave the speech in sentences that Nick translated into pidgin. The speech seemed to go over well, and I stayed overnight in a structure that was built above the ground on posts. Even there, what was impressive was the commonality of our humanity — these were people with whom I could laugh, eat, and communicate — yet I couldn't imagine the way they looked out at the world; culturally, it was as if we came from different parts of the universe.
Nick had arranged for a visit to a series of remote villages, which we reached by boat, plane, or jeep. Each village I visited entertained me with performances and plays the people had made. One play portrayed the arrival of Europeans, and the caricatures of the aliens were sidesplittingly funny. The performers were dressed in homemade costumes, and the white man was depicted as a clown, ordering the locals around and not having a clue about the tricks being played on him. I found it hilarious that the pompous visitor was so full of his own self-importance while the Papua New Guineans simply humored him, knowing he was a fool.
In one village, the inhabitants lined up to greet me after I had passed through a gate made of branches and leaves, signifying I had been welcomed onto their land. I shook hands along the line until I reached a young man who was covered from head to foot with what looked to me like a white fungal growth. I took a deep breath and shook his hand, assuming that whatever it was on his body must not be readily transmissible or he wouldn't have been there. Fortunately, my hand didn't develop any tropical rot and fall off.
In each village, I was treated generously, feted, and fed traditional foods. In one community, chicken, yams, and other root vegetables had been covered with leaves in a hole and a fire lit on top. Hours later, the meal was excavated and served — delicious.
Everywhere I went, people were spitting. This is disconcerting, because the spit is red from the eating of betel nuts, which also stain and etch cavities in the teeth. Nick told me the nuts — the seeds of betel palm — induce a pleasant buzz, but I was leery and never tried it. I wish I had, but I didn't want to stain my teeth. I was even more worried that to activate the drug in the plant, it has to be combined with a strong alkali that can burn the mouth. I didn't want to do that to my tongue or cheeks.
What you do is chew the nut to make a fibrous paste and then flatten it onto your tongue. The alkali formed by crushed, burned clam-shells is placed onto the bed of betel nut on your tongue. You fold the flattened betel nut around the clamshells, using your tongue and the roof of your mouth so the alkali doesn't burn anything, and then the whole mass is chewed and mixed. The mixture turns red and the active ingredient is created. The big question is, how did people ever figure out such an elaborate process?
Like the Kaiapo in the Amazon, the people in these remote villages were almost completely self-sufficient. The Nature of Things with David Suzuki broadcast a two-part series based on a remarkable exchange between a tribe in Papua New Guinea and a Salish First Nation community in British Columbia. First the Canadian group went to Papua New Guinea for several weeks, and the following year the Papua New Guinea group visited B.C. One of the Papua New Guineans commented that everything they had received while they stayed in B.C. — food, clothing, gifts — had to be bought with money that had to be earned. “When they visited us,” he said, “everything we used came from the land.”
Nevertheless, the products of the industrial economy were visible in every Papua New Guinea village I saw, from metal pots and pans to woven cloth in shirts and pants to radios and chain saws. I kept thinking how different it must have been to go there in the 1950s and 1960s. That's when biologists like the Harvard ant expert E.O. Wilson, and the University of California (Los Angeles) bird authority Jared Diamond had studied in these wild lands. Having become an independent nation, Papua New Guinea must find a source of revenue for the government and bring the benefits of education and medical care to very remote communities. The challenge is to decide whether traditional customs and practices have value in a global economy and, if they do, how to protect them while generating incomes.