[ANU Pacific.Institute] MTR - The ideology of the boga esega and the formation of the LMS Mission at Kwato

[Nicholas Mortimer]

The ideology of the boga esega and the formation of the LMS Mission at Kwato
Salmah Eva-Lina Lawrence
10 to 11.30am, Thursday September 10.
Seminar Room C, Coombs Building, ANU

Kwato, an island in the China Straits of Milne Bay Province, is so small it does not appear on most maps of Milne Bay, let alone PNG. Yet it was a spiritual and educational centre that produced three members of the Legislative Council of the Territory of Papua in the 1950s, as well as a female member of the House of Assembly, and in the very early 1960s the first Papuan woman to be accepted into an Australian university. The isibaguna were the native pioneers who built the Kwato Mission in the 1890s and from inception, indigenous women assumed public roles. Early missionisation is deemed a key driver in women's public prominence. Drawing on decolonial theory I examine if this was the case. My thesis also examines the idea of political legitimacy by tracing the survival of indigenous values through Christianisation, colonisation and now ‘developmentisation’. For this post-fieldwork seminar I present some findings related to the first epoch analysed in my thesis, the 1800s prior to European settlement, and the socio-political structure of the ‘boga esega’ which translates to ‘one womb’ or, more broadly, to matrilineage.

Profile
After a decade long career with a global business advisory firm managing practices in London and New York, Salmah Eva-Lina Lawrence left to undertake work in international and community development to enhance gender rights, working primarily in PNG and in Afghanistan with the UN. She is now in the third year of her PhD candidature in the Department of Gender, Media and Cultural Studies, School of Culture, History and Language, CAP, and is associated with Professor Margaret Jolly’s ARC Laureate Project Engendering Persons, Transforming Things. Her transdisciplinary project draws from international relations, political economy and anthropology. Speaking for Ourselves. Kwato Perspectives on Matriliny and Gender, Culture and Development is a decolonial political and historical ethnography of the people of Milne Bay who helped establish the Kwato mission.


Nicholas Mortimer | ARC Laureate Administrator | HC Coombs Building (#9) | The Australian National University | Canberra ACT 0200 | Australia | Tel: +61 2 61253148 | Mobile: +61 (0)416 625 145






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