The Urapmin people are an ethnic group numbering about 375 people in the Telefomin District of the West Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea. One of the Min peoples who inhabit this area, the Urapmin share the common Min practices of hunter-gatherer subsistence, taro cultivation, and, formerly, an elaborate secret cult available only to initiated men.
The Urapmin used to ally with the Telefolmin in war against other Min peoples, practicing cannibalism against the enemy dead, but warfare ceased by the 1960s with the arrival of colonialism. A Christian revival in the 1970s led to the near-complete abandonment of traditional beliefs and the adoption of a form of Charismatic Christianity originally derived from Baptist Christianity. The Urapmin vigorously use their native Urap language, and their small community maintains the practice of endogamy.
Classification
The Urapmin are one of the Min peoples, a group of related peoples in Papua New Guinea who number about thirty thousand in total. Min peoples are mainly found in the Telefomin District, spread from the mountains of the Strickland River to West Papua Province. The name Min derives from the suffix -min, meaning 'peoples', which is present in their names (e.g. Telefolmin, Wopkaimin, etc.).
Min peoples may also be known as Mountain Ok peoples, from the word ok meaning 'river' or 'water'. The latter name contrasts them with the Lowland Ok people to the south who speak related languages but differ greatly culturally and in the environment that they live in.
The Urapmin speak a Mountain Ok language. Although this language family is tied to the Min ethnic grouping, it does not absolutely define the group, since the Oksapmin to the east and the Om river groups speak non-Mountain Ok languages. The Urapmin kinship system is cognatic; in general the western Min groups have bilateral kinship systems, while the eastern Min groups have patrilineal kinship systems.
The Min peoples are fairly homogeneous in technology, economy, and subsistence. This includes hunting and gathering from forests and stream-beds, shifting taro cultivation, and raising small numbers of domestic pigs. Min material culture is also fairly uniform; Telefol women describe bilums throughout the Min region as being of "one kind", though there is some stylistic variation.
A salient shared feature of Min culture is a common origin myth and initiation into a secret male religious cult. Traditionally, the Min believed that all Min peoples other than the Baktaman are children of Afek, the "Primal Mother" and originator of all Min culture and religion. The types and number of cult initiation ceremonies differed among different Min groups. The Telefol in particular were viewed as being guardians of Afek's legacy since they were her lastborn, and the Urapmin were close to the Telefol in the Min ritual hierarchy.
History
Historically, the Min peoples were in a constant state of warfare with one another. Each Min tribe was a unified group whose component groups did not wage war among each other, with the exception of the Tifalmin people who were split into four mutually hostile groups. The primary weapon used in war was a bow of black palm wood, usually using arrows with barbed wooden heads.
Spears were unknown, though some tribes (e.g. the Telefolmin, but not the Tifalmin) used wooden clubs. Warfare might consist either of small ambush parties, which would surprise people on paths and in gardens and kill and eat all of those caught, no matter their age or sex. Other times, warfare was more formal, with groups marching out to meet each other for battle with freshly-painted shields.
The Urapmin divided up peoples encountered into traditional allies (Urap: dup) and enemies (wasi), along with foreigners (ananang). The Urapmin were allied with the Telefolmin, and engaged in trade with them, and in war joined with them to become a single unit. This was based on the belief in descent from common ancestors. The Urapmin also were friendly with their southern neighbors, the Faiwolmin.
Friendly relations with foreign groups were based on trade—the Urapmin practiced a custom whereby men would have tisol dup (literally "wealth friend"), trading partners from other Mountain Ok groups. The Telefol and Urapmin were traditionally enemies with the Tifalmin to the northwest and the Feranmin to the southeast. Warfare was still practiced between the Min peoples in the first half of the twentieth century.
European contact European contact came late to Papua New Guinea, and to the Highlands in particular. While the European contact with the Telefolmin dates to 1914, the earliest European contact with the Urapmin was made by the Williams party of 1936–1937, which was searching the Fly and Sepik areas for mineral deposits. Led by an American by the name of Ward Williams, the party consisted of eight (later nine) Europeans and twenty-three natives recruited from the coast. The Williams group had minimal contact with the Urapmin.
Urapmin who were alive at the time attest that the Urapmin, unsure how to refer to the newcomers, learned from the Telefolmin to refer to them as the , a portmanteau of the name 'William' and the suffix used for demonyms among the Min peoples, -min.The Urapmin later abandoned this term and began calling the whites , meaning the smell of a penis gourd. Eventually the coastal natives that were hired by another patrol taught the Urapmin the term , which is the term that is currently used in the Urap language for whites. See . A trade relationship was quickly established, with salt being the most desired commodity among the Urapmin. The Urapmin relate that:
In 1944, the Australians built up the airstrip in Telefomin for use by the Allied Forces as an emergency landing strip in the New Guinea campaign of World War II. From this point until the end of the war, the Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit kept a post in Telefomin, though it is unclear to what extent this affected the Urapmin at the time. In 1948, after the conclusion of the war, a patrol station was established at Telefomin, marking the beginning of Australian colonization of the region.
The Urapmin refer to the subsequent colonial period as the time when "the law came and got us" () or when "we got the law" ().
What was likely the first government patrol of the Urapmin area was conducted in 1949 by Patrol Officer J. R. Rogers, accompanied by nine native policemen. Rogers convinced the Urapmin to make peace with the Tifalmin, stating that "fighting and cannibalism must cease." The Urapmin performed a tisol dalamin ("equivalent exchange ceremony"), a traditional form of dispute resolution which had not been used before by the Urapmin to make peace with enemy peoples.
By the 60s the majority of the Telefomin region had been pacified. Large numbers of Urapmin converted to Christianity between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s. The religion was brought to Urapmin by Telefol and Urapmin pastors who had studied in Telefomin at the Australian Baptist Mission. While Urapmin never hosted expatriate missionaries, by the mid-1970s there were a number of knowledgeable Christians in the community. However, the majority of conversions occurred during a Christian revival which swept the New Guinea Highlands in the late 1970s. The , as it is known in Tok Pisin, had begun in the Solomon Islands and reached Urapmin by 1977. This movement caused all of the Urapmin to convert, and led to the rise of Charismatic Christianity among the Urapmin.
Urapmin society has been significantly affected by the Ok Tedi mine. The mine is located in Tabubil, built in the early 1980s, which is located two-and-a-half days by foot from Urapmin, or accessible by plane from Telefomin. By the early 1990s, many Urapmin had begun visiting Tabubil once every few years, more frequently for prominent families. For the Urapmin, Tabubil has become both a place where consumer goods are visible and a haven from sharing resources.
Few Urapmin have been employed by the mine at any time, and due to the lack of a road or airstrip, the Urapmin have been unable to market vegetables to the mine as have their neighbors. As a result, the Urapmin have not experienced much of the economic development that has occurred in neighboring groups. The Kennecott company began prospecting for gold on Urapmin land in 1989, raising hopes, and while the company left Papua New Guinea in 1992, the Urapmin remain optimistic about future prospecting.
Geography
The Urapmin number about 375, living in the Telefomin District in West Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. Along with the more-numerous Telefol people, they are located by the headwaters of the Sepik River, the Telefomin Valley, and the nearby Elliptaman Valley. They live in a remote region; Telefomin, the District Office, and an airstrip can only be reached by a difficult seventeen-mile walk.
The total area of Urapmin territory is small, and most villages are within walking distance. Most of the Urapmin villages (Urap: ) are located along the top of a ridge in the foothills of the Behrmann mountains. The ridge is known in Urap as , named after the earthquake spirit who is believed to have flattened out the ridge.The word for "earthquake" in Urap is also . See The villages along the Bimbel ridge are Danbel (Muli Kona), Salafaltigin, Drum Tem, Atemkit, and Dimidubiip.
There are also two villages known as "places at the sides" () which are near the ridge but not directly on top of it; these are Makalbel and Ayendubiip. Urapmin from the more northerly villages of Atemkit, Dimidubiip, and Ayendubiip are known as "bottom" Urapmin, while the others are known as "top" Urapmin.
Culture As with other remote Papuan groups, the central elements of Urapmin life are subsistence agriculture, hunting, and Christianity.
Language
The native language of the Urapmin is known as the Urapmin or Urap language (Urap: ), a member of the Mountain Ok subfamily of the Ok languages. Although Urap is linguistically intermediate between its geographic neighbors Telefol and Tifal, it is not a dialect of either. Multilingualism among the Urapmin has led many Telefolmin to believe that the Urapmin speak Telefol among themselves, but this is not the case. Although the Urapmin view the Tifal language as being closer to Urap than the Telefol language is, and an early account claimed that the Urapmin speak Tifal, more recent research indicates that they should not be considered the same language. Urap remains in vigorous use among the Urapmin, and is the main language that they use.
One unusual feature of the Urapmin language is the use of dyadic kinship terms. These terms translate into English as reciprocal kinship or affinity relations such as "(pair of) brothers" or "father and child", and may sometimes even refer to relations between three or more people. These terms can encode relative age, kinship or affinity, number of members, and gender. For example, a pair of siblings is (plural ), a pair of affines is (plural ), a couple is (plural ), a woman with a child is (plural ), and a man with a child is (plural ).Urapmin differs from Telefol in that it does not distinguish groups of siblings () based on whether they are single or mixed sex groups. See .
The plural forms are not marked for which generation is pluralized; thus may either mean (a) one man and two children or (b) one man, one woman, and one child. These terms are used to address groups, but not single individuals, so for example a mother of two children would never to referred to or addressed using the term (rather, one would use 'mother'). However, a pastor could address his congregation—a collection of husbands and their wives and children—as 'church alimal' or just .