Motu

Motu

ETHNONYMS: none

Orientation

Identification. At the time of their first recorded contact with Westerners, in 1872, the Austronesian-speaking people known as Motu lived in thirteen nucleated seaside villages on the south coast of the New Guinea mainland, immediately east and west of Port Moresby (9°29′ S, 147°8′ E), the first center of European settlement and the present capital of Papua New Guinea. One further Motu village was established subsequently. Three Motu villages, Elevala, Tanobada, and Hanuabada, were located close together on the shore of Port Moresby harbor, only a mile or so to the west of the present city's docks and commercial center. The Motu shared this coastline and its hinterland with a non-Austronesian-speaking people, the Koita, who occupied small residential enclaves in a number of Motu villages in addition to their own independent villages in the immediate hinterland. Today, Motu still inhabit the same fourteen seaside villages, though many of them have migrated from villages outside Port Moresby into its suburban residential areas. Most Motu villages were traditionally built over the water in tidal shallows, facing a barrier reef some distance offshore.

Location. From about April to November, when the southeast trade winds blow in from the sea, the Motu coast is hot and dry. Between November and March, the northwest monsoon brings some rain and increased humidity. The slopes, low hills, swamps, and valleys of the immediate hinterland behind and between Motu villages, where traditionally the Motu maintained gardens and occasionally hunted game, were sparsely covered with humid tropical savanna, mainly dry grass and stunted eucalypti. At the edges of the barrier reef, along the inshore beaches, and in the waters between, Motu fished.

Demography. Although no precise figures are available, from the random observations of early missionaries and other visitors the total population of all Motu villages at the time of first contact, including the small Koita minorities in some Villages, has been estimated at between 4,000 and 5,000. Subsequently, in the early decades of colonization, there were increases and decreases in particular villages and a slight but not spectacular increase overall. After World War II, However, with rapid urbanization, a shift from a subsistence Economy to wage labor, and improved medical services, the Motu population began to increase rapidly. For example, village population records show that the total population resident in the fourteen Motu villages increased between 1954 and 1968 from approximately 7,500 to 13,500. Precise figures on a Village basis are no longer available, but the Motu population has continued to increase rapidly and may now number more than 25,000. Doubtless because of their proximity to Port Moresby, the Motu have played a role in the history and development of Papua New Guinea disproportionate to their numbers.

Linguistic Affiliation. In common with some other Peoples scattered over Papua New Guinea's coastal periphery and offshore islands, the Motu speak an Austronesian Language, classified in the Central Family, Eastern Subgroup.

History and Cultural Relations

Available archaeological evidence suggests that the Motu, seafarers with their own distinctive maritime culture and ceramic tradition, first occupied their present habitat Comparatively recently in the history of settlement on New Guinea's southern shores. From 1872, when the first Christian missionaries arrived, through the entire colonial period inaugurated in 1884 with the establishment of a British Protectorate, Motu—particularly in the Port Moresby villages—participated actively and significantly in the social, Economic, and political developments that culminated in the establishment of Papua New Guinea as an independent nation-state in 1975. The early colonial government employed Motu speakers—including policemen recruited from the Solomon Islands who acquired a knowledge of simplified Motu when stationed in Port Moresby and, subsequently, Motu themselves—in remoter administrative Districts. As a result, a simplified version of the Motu language, at first called "Police Motu," but now known officially as "Hiri Motu," became established as a lingua franca in Papua. Motu from Port Moresby villages, educated in English at their mission school, were also recruited to clerical or commercial jobs in Port Moresby. Nevertheless, before World War II, only a small proportion of Motu in the Port Moresby villages and almost none from other villages worked for wages, and most villagers made their living from traditional subsistence activities. Since World War II, Motu—first from the Port Moresby villages and then from the remoter villages as they were connected to the town by road—have increasingly entered the work force of Port Moresby's expanding commercial, industrial, and service economy, until today almost all Motu men and many women work full-time for wages in the town; those from nearer villages commute daily, and those from remoter Villages live in town during the working week and return home at the weekends. As the Motu work force was absorbed into the urban economy, traditional economic enterprises Declined and eventually disappeared. Apart from a few Commercial fishermen, most able-bodied Motu men and many women are today urban workers: entrepreneurial, professional, white-collar, and blue-collar. Traditionally, Motu maintained trading relationships and lived in peace with some of their immediate inland neighbors, with whom they traded mainly fish for vegetables and fruit, and with the Erema and Toaripi peoples some distance west across the Gulf of Papua, to whose villages they made annual overseas trading expeditions (known as hiri ), exchanging pottery and ceremonial ornaments for sago, canoe hulls, and areca nuts. Outside of these exchange relationships, contacts with other neighboring peoples prior to colonization were fortuitous and hostile.

Settlements

Motu villages were traditionally closely nucleated, the houses typically built out in lines over the water. Wooden walkways linked the houses in each line. Each of the independent, localized descent groups (iduhu ), which together constituted the village polity, occupied its own line of houses. Although large numbers of Motu still live over the water in this way, many others have now built houses ashore. Traditionally, Motu traveled between villages by canoe or on foot, but now all Motu villages are linked to Port Moresby, and they can thus be reached from each other, by road.

Economy

Subsistence and Commercial Activities. Traditionally, Motu grew yams and bananas, with other minor crops, in Garden plots scattered along the shore and over the coastal hillsides, maintained clusters of coconut palms near their Villages, reared pigs (primarily for ceremonial purposes), fished, and gathered shellfish and crabs. They did not, however, produce enough staple food to meet their needs, so they augmented their food stores by trading fish, pottery, and Ceremonial ornaments with their neighbors and overseas trading partners.

Industrial Arts and Division of Labor. Traditionally, there were no specialist craft workers among the Motu. The only division of labor was sexual. All men fished, sailed on the hiri, and constructed canoes, houses, and fishing nets. All women gathered crabs and shellfish, manufactured pottery, cooked, and fetched water. In the gardens, the soil was first broken by men and then weeded and cleared by women, but crops were planted, tended, and harvested by both sexes together.

Trade. Trade transactions usually took the form of reciprocal gift exchanges, but on the hiri direct baiter supplemented gift exchange. Gift exchanges involving ceremonial valuables (mainly arm shells and other ornaments, pigs, and yams) occurred between individuals and groups in different villages or iduhu at feasts with dancing, often associated with mortuary rites, and between kin and affines during marriage ceremonies. Except for a few commercial fishermen, Motu have not tried to find commercial markets for their traditional produce or to introduce new cash crops.

Land Tenure. In theory, Motu hold that rights to use or alienate any piece of land are shared by all descendants, through males or females or both, of the person who is known to have first cultivated or occupied it. In practice traditional rights to residential or garden land were mainly exercised by agnatic descendants, since males and their immediate Families tended to live in the residential section (iduhu) and cultivate the land of their fathers, whereas females married out. In colonial and postcolonial times, however, when Motu sold land for cash sums that were easily divisible, all descendants of the original occupant shared in the proceeds.

Kinship

Kin Groups and Descent. There are two significant corporate groups in a Motu village: the household, comprising one or more nuclear families; and the iduhu, comprising a number of households located together in their own residential section of the village. Nuclear families within a Household, and households within an iduhu, are usually linked by agnatic ties: between fathers, sons, and brothers in a Household, and between agnatic descendants of its founder in an iduhu. Some rights (e.g., to share in an iduhu's fishing catch) extend also to sisters and their children, and some (e.g., to land) extend to further descendants bilaterally, but the core members of the iduhu with the strongest claims to its scarce material and ritual resources are agnates. Females marry out, but subsequently retain close bonds with their fathers and brothers.

Kinship Terminology. With one complication, Motu Kinship terminology is of the so-called "Hawaiian" type, distinguishing cognates of one's own generation only by age (kaka, older; tadi, younger) or sex (taihu, opposite sex) and applying only one term (tubu ) to all cognates of one's grandparents' or grandchildren's generation. The complication occurs in the terms used by proximate generations: In the generation of one's parents, mother's male cognates and husbands of Father's female cognates (both called vava ) and father's female cognates and the wives of mother's male cognates (lala ) are distinguished from father and his male cognates (tama) and mother and her female cognates (sina ), and these distinctions operate reciprocally for cognates of one's children's Generation. This type of terminology, sometimes called bifurcate-merging, is associated with classificatory brother-sister exchange marriage, which was traditionally not uncommon among the Motu.

Marriage and Family

Marriage. Although, traditionally, important men sometimes married several wives, Motu marriages today are monogamous. There is a rule against marrying any cognate but traditionally marriage within the village was preferred, which sometimes severely limited the range of choices and encouraged relaxation of the rule in the case of distant cognates. Traditionally, too, marriages were arranged, and childhood betrothals were common, but nowadays young people are mainly free to choose their own spouses. Gift exchanges traditionally accompanied various stages in the process of betrothal and marriage, culminating in the main presentation of bride-wealth (in the past consisting mainly of arm shells but now including substantial sums of money). In recent times, bride-wealth inflation, led by wealthier Motu, has delayed or impeded this final legitimation of marriages according to

Motu custom among the less wealthy. Residence after Marriage was traditionally viripatrilocal. Divorce, involving a Return of bride-wealth, was possible but infrequent.

Domestic Unit. Traditionally, household members pooled foodstuffs and cooked together, but component nuclear Families ate separately. Households, or sometimes component Nuclear families within households, maintained their own Garden plots. Each household had its own small fishing nets, though larger nets were owned and operated by the whole iduhu.

Inheritance. Houses and major household effects were (and are) usually inherited by the householder's oldest son. Other sons and their families might continue to live there, but they would seek eventually to establish their own separate households.

Socialization. All members of the household help in caring for and raising children, but mothers undertake the major chores. Traditional skills were learned by boys from their Fathers and other senior men of the household, and by girls from their mothers and other senior women.

Sociopolitical Organization

Although there are perceived to be specific historical links Between certain Motu villages, traditionally all villages were Politically independent and there was no formal sociopolitical organization above the village level.

Social Organization. Normally, the senior married male agnate is recognized within an iduhu as its leader, and within a household as its head, and the status of other male Members is determined by genealogical seniority both between and within generations. At the village level, there was Traditionally no formal status hierarchy, but prominent men, for the most part iduhu leaders, competed for status and influence through the sponsorship and management of enterprises that conferred prestige, such as hiri expeditions, feasts with dancing, bride-wealth payments, and (in precolonial times) feats of military leadership. Nowadays, in the cash economy, Motu men of outstanding achievement seek—through bride-wealth payments, hospitality, and other forms of conspicuous consumption—to convert wealth into status, influence, and, ultimately, public office.

Political Organization. Political decisions at the village level were traditionally achieved and maintained through public debate, in which political leaders (big-men) used a rhetoric invoking their superior achievements and prestige, which in turn reflected the range and size of their support networks, to "shame" other participants out of contention until a clear victor or a winning consensus emerged. In the modern postindependence polity, important decisions affecting the Motu are made by politicians who build on local support to pursue power through formal organizations (including Political parties) and informal alliances, all operating within a wider structure of democratically elected local, regional, and national legislatures and their supporting bureaucracies.

Conflict. At the village level, competition and conflict were endemic and essential features of the traditional Motu way of life: ultimately, victory over their rivals in the rhetoric of the political arena motivated individuals and groups to work, compete, and achieve to their maximum capacity. Victory was never complete, defeat rarely absolute; the pursuit of advantage was never-ending. Consensus—or, in its absence and as a last resort, physical confrontation—might temporarily give victory in a dispute to one party over the other, and the loser might offer a gift to placate the winner for the time being, but most losers withdrew only to fight again another day. Beyond the village, oral traditions and early historical Records suggest that Motu engaged in warfare or conducted raids intermittently against other neighboring peoples and even sometimes against other Motu villages. Such warfare, endemic in this area, was eventually suppressed by the British administration after its establishment in 1884.

Social Control. Within the iduhu, traditionally, social control was usually maintained and conflict avoided or resolved through the exercise of agnatic authority, supported by ancestral ritual sanctions.

Religion and Expressive Culture

The Motu were the first people in mainland Papua New Guinea to receive Christian missionaries, and most Motu are now church members. For some generations, however, Christianity and traditional religious beliefs coexisted.

Religious Beliefs. Motu traditionally believed that their well-being depended on the continued support of their ancestral spirits, who were believed to go after death to a place of plenty over the sea, to the west, but who were thought also to maintain a concern for, and spiritual contact with, their living descendants in the village. Households and iduhu regularly performed mystical rites instituted by their ancestors to promote success in such enterprises as gardening, fishing, and the hiri. The ancestors of a household or iduhu were thought to monitor the behavior of members and to punish misbehavior by inflicting illness or misfortune.

Religious Practitioners. There were no specialist religious practitioners in traditional Motu society, except for diviners who could identify certain illnesses and calamities as punishments for particular infringements of the ancestral code or as the effects of sorcery (mea ) or witchcraft (vada ). The Motu believed that, in general, only Koita and other neighboring peoples practiced sorcery and witchcraft, but individual Motu could buy or otherwise enlist their services or skills.

Ceremonies. To gain the ancestors' support or to placate them, Motu traditionally held private ceremonies at the sacred place (irutahuna ) of a house or canoe. Following the death of an important household member, to ensure a successful transition to the world of ancestral spirits, a series of public ceremonies took place over several years or more, culminating in a major feast with dancing (turia ) during which the deceased's bones were disinterred.

Arts. Traditionally, Motu women were elaborately tattooed, but the practice has now ceased. Their ceramics (cooking pots, water jars, and food platters) were elegant but plain, with little decoration. Motu achieved their most spectacular artistic expression in their dances in which, with elaborate feather headdresses, brightly painted faces, arm shells and plaited amulets, colorful grass skirts on the women, and elegant perineal bands on the men, they danced in various formations to the percussion rhythms of wooden hourglass drums. Early missionaries viewed Motu dancing as a prelude to sexual abandon, and they forbade it. For some generations, Motu were divided between Christians, who did not dance, and pagans, who did. Although the Christians eventually won, some of the dance forms still survive, but only as cultural relics performed occasionally for tourists or in historical pageants.

See also Koiari, Namau, Orokolo

Bibliography

Belshaw, Cyril S. (1957). The Great Village. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Dutton, Tom, ed. (1982). The Hiri in History. Pacific Research Monograph no. 8. Canberra: Australian National University.

Groves, Murray (1960). "Western Motu Descent Groups." Ethnology 1:15-30.

Seligmann, C. G. (1910). The Melanesians of British New Guinea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

MURRAY GROVES