Essay On Meakambut

A nomadic people in Papua New Guinea called the Meakambut exhibit several concepts of anthropology and culture. The Meakambut are located in Papua New Guinea, ironically just off the coast of Australia, ironically where some of the aborigines we have been studying are residing. Similarly to the Australian aborigines, the Meakambut have specific social groups that operate comparably to clans and tribes.

One such group, the Embarakal group, consists of twelve members. In total there are four of these groups that comprise the Meakambut. Mark and John are two members from the Embarakal group that lead the Meakambut. They explain that they have Christian names because a few of the Meakambut lived in villages where they attended a Bible school and baptized the rest as they returned.

Another similarity between the Australian aborigines and the Meakambut is that they are both cultures that embrace foraging. The Meakambut spend anywhere from

days to weeks in a cave or hut before continuing to their next destination. The women and children plant seeds that will be harvested whenever they come back to their currrent location again. The men either help the women create flour or hunt wildlife such as fish, birds, and pigs.

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Akin to a band, the Meakambut’s caves possess ownership as well as a name.

The ownership is inherited from father to son. A few caves have myths or legends attached to them and only the owner of the cave himself can share them. Ancestor worship is another staple within the Meakambut’s culture, as the most sacred cave, Kopao, contains hundreds of their ancestor’s skulls lined up next to each other. This sacred cave would definitely be the most important part of “The Dreaming” if it was a part of the Australian aboriginal culture, as it also provides the creation story.

Sebastian, a member of the National Geographic group studying the Meakambut, led a sick group to a “nearby” clinic twelve hours away, in order to save one of the leaders’ wife. However the clinic did not have supplies to help her, so they were forced to just provide her with simple antibiotics. She ended up surviving, but her run in with Pneumonia gave Sebastian a thought: “Protecting the caves? What does it matter - if there are no Meakambut left?”

(Jenkins)
This left me wondering, is it ethical to study a culture anthropologically while it is dying or in rapid decay? If there are resources to be allocated to researching a culture from a hands-on approach, would those resources be better allocated towards extending the culture’s lifespan, at least in “natural” ways? As with almost all ethical questions, there is no definite answer, however, a dying culture is at the mercy of those interested in it. If the government is not interested in it, such as in the case of the Meakambut, they were at the mercy of Nancy Sullivan, who “runs a consulting firm in Papua New Guinea that conducts social assessments for development projects.”
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(Jenkins) After the National Geographic team’s visit, Sullivan’s team “provided building supplies, water tanks, and solar panels.” (Jenkins) Therefore Sullivan successfully prolonged the disappearance of the culture of the nomadic Meakambut.