Fern Ridge (Safla Rama) Digest

Chief JK John Kasaipwalova and Russell Soaba making the point: 'Read before you write.'  Read Drusilla's Modjeska's book, The Mountain . I was born speaking Nagum Boiken, a Sepik language for the best part of my early seven years. The village I was born into had no speakers of English language. Everyone spoke and communicated in the vernacular. Between 1964 and 1972 I was a simple village boy with no dreams of going beyond the forest hamlet I was born into. I found the life of forest hunting, gardening, sago pounding, feasting, and gift exchange more enticing than the lures of the outside world. My parents had other ideas that saw them enroll me in Mongniol Primary School in Wewak. The year was 1972, the year PNG became a Self-Governing Territory, a move towards early Independence in 1975. It was a government school with all instructions given in English, but which I could not even understand everything taught to me from Grade 1-4, which fortunately for m...

The highest reward for man’s toil October 27, 2017 The National Weekender  Article Views: 62 By STEVEN WINDUO I TRADE my intellectual capital for a high return. It helps me to participate in the international labour movement from a developing world to a developed world. All my intellectual training and preparation are traded at the international level. I have enjoyed the privilege of working as an academic in USA and New Zealand. The conditions of employment were much more attractive than those offered to me in my home university. The salaries are three or four times more attractive than that earned in Papua New Guinea. In the past I have held positions of visiting professorship with the University of Minnesota, USA, Research Fellow with the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, University of Canterbury, New Zealand, Arthur Lynn Andrews Chair of Asian and Pacific Island Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA, and Associate Resear...

Help our children write and publish their own books October 20, 2017 The National Weekender   Article Views:  84 By STEVEN WINDUO THE gem of writing is already present in young children by the time they start school. Through assisted learning, children can write some of the great stories in our societies. Imagine a writing and publishing program designed to help our children write and publish their own books. I discovered this gem in my own children’s lives.  Last year my daughter, Cheryl Winduo, published Two Sisters and Nokondi’s Head (2016), with illustrations by Tommy Ella. This is her first children’s book developed out of her writing first written as composition pieces in her Grade 5 class. I helped her to develop the first composition piece published as a children’s book. The Storm is her second children’s book, which is still in press. Cheryl, a mother now, read her first book to her son soon after his birth. I discovered the same gem in the composition...

The Pacific We All Share by   Susie Thatcher September 28, 2017 2017 Melbourne Writers Festival Asia What?: Indigenous Connections We are at the Melbourne Writers Festival, at the first session of  Asia What?  The line-up is impressive; the room is full.  Bruce Pascoe  joins WrICE Fellow  Steven Winduo  to discuss the topic of Indigenous Connections.  Eugenia Flynn  chairs. Eugenia Flynn It is the first day of Spring, but Flynn points out that it is also the beginning of the Poorneet Tadpole season, one of the seven seasons observed by the Kulin people. This observance situates us on indigenous land—the land of the Kulin Nation. It reminds us that the concept of spring is an imported one. Throughout this session we are reminded of many such cultural overlays, and few that are benign. But that is not the focus of this discussion. Rather it is a lively and intelligent meditation on indigeneity, on talking back and sp...

About Us  » On Verse On Fiction On Nonfiction Essays Conversations ← The Trobriand Tower of Babel Posted On 9 Nov, 2016 - By  Steven Winduo In late November 1978, a small plane went missing after it left Alotau, the capital of Milne Bay Province in Papua New Guinea. The plane was en route to Losuia, the government station on Kiriwina, the largest of the Trobriand Islands. Many people said that witches took control of the plane at the high-rising volcanic peaks of Goodenough Island in the D’Entrecasteaux group to the south. This explanation is anchored in Trobriand folklore, which depicted similar experiences at sea. Stories about the prowess of witches have long been a common stalk of tales among the Trobriands. “The probable demise of the aircraft, according to the villagers,” writes ethnographer Shirley F. Campbell, “was not based on some whimsical musing but was in fact based on generations of rational delibe...