Fern Ridge (Safla Rama) Digest

A nephew wanted to know how I could send my articles to The National newspaper every week from the village where there are no modern amenities or electricity. The curiosity of the nephew made me realize that many people think of using mobile phones for ringing and text messages only. Others use their mobile phones for music, radio, photos, and even as torch light in the night. The conversation I had with my nephew revealed that many people are still learning about the power and impact the mobile phone and other media technologies have on their lives. We live in a society that is already saturated with media technologies. The choice is ours to make on what technologies to use and for what purposes. ‘We need to take advantage of the technology at our disposal’ as the adage goes. Indeed, the willingness to select the technologies relevant for our purposes is the first step on the road to advancing our goals and broadening of our visions. There are many different r...

In the process of working with folktales during my study of Nagum Boiken medicinal knowledge system I encountered another important relationship between translation and power. I had collected a version of a folktale earlier in my research, but on further analysis, I was told that the version I collected earlier was “not a serious version” to the one my collaborator wanted me to collect. At that time, without knowing the complex nature in which various versions of folklore texts are structured and layered in terms of their power and authority, we disagreed. What did we disagree on? First, we disagreed because the version I had collected earlier was the popular version. My collaborator argued that my research lacked any seriousness. The popular version is heard and performed in public for a general audience. The version which he wanted me to collect was a sacred version. He is the only person to know the sacred version. He felt it was time for me to know the sacred version and wanted ...

During the period leading up to Papua New Guinea’s Independence in 1975 students used folktales to enforce the agenda of nationalism. Institutions such as the University of Papua New Guinean, the Administrative College, the PNG University of Technology, and the Goroka campus of University of Papua New Guinea were hubs of cultural and political consciousness. Students at the University of Technology in Lae contributed their folktales to the student yearbook called Nexus between 1970 and 1971. Seven years later in 1978, Donald Stokes published a representative of these stories as retold by Barbara Ker Wilson in The Turtle and the Island . Oxford University Press published a later edition as Legends from Papua New Guinea: Book Two (1996). These young writers heard their Indigenous folktales as they grew up in their villages. To negotiate with others they used stories from their own societies to explain their cultural background and explanations of the world. They also learned fro...

Research and writing are important tools in education, work, and other life-long pursuits people have in their lives. Research is an active, diligent, and systematic process of inquiry in order to discover, interpret or revise facts, events, behaviours, or theories, or to make practical applications with the help of facts, laws, theories, or examples, sometimes referred to as supportive evidence. The term "research" is also used to describe the collection of information about a particular subject. Research is also a systematic investigation, including research development, testing and evaluation, designed to develop or contribute to general knowledge. According to Roberta H. Markham, Peter T. Markham, and Marie L. Waddell in their 10 Steps in Writing the Research Paper (1989), research is described as “the disciplined process of investigating and seeking facts which will lead one to discover the truth about something. This truth, stated as one’s thesis is a result...