The Fore people ()Laurie Bauer, 2007, The Linguistics Student's Handbook, Edinburgh are an ethnic group inhabiting Okapa District of the Eastern Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea. There are approximately 20,000 Fore who are separated by the Wanevinti Mountains into the North Fore and South Fore regions. Their main form of subsistence is slash-and-burn farming. The Fore language has three distinct dialects and is the southernmost member of the East Central Family, East New Guinea Highlands Stock, Trans–New Guinea phylum of Papuan languages.
In the 1950s, the neurological disease kuru was discovered in the South Fore. The local tradition of ritual cannibalism of their dead had led to an epidemic, with approximately 2,700 deaths between 1957 and 2005.
History Until the 1950s, the Fore people had minimal direct contact with outsiders who were, at the time, colonizing Papua New Guinea. A small number of prospectors crossed through their territory in the 1930s and at least one plane crashed there during World War II. New diseases such as influenza reached them before significant contact with colonial people occurred.
In the late 1940s, colonial government patrols reached further and further into Fore territory. The patrol officers, called kiaps by the Fore, tried to conduct a census in each village they passed through and lectured the villagers on the importance of hygiene and road construction. They encouraged the people to give up village warfare, traditional beliefs and cannibalism. These officers attempted to recruit local 'big men' to represent the colonial authorities as headmen (luluais) or as deputies ().
In 1951, a police post was set up at Okapa (then known as Moke) among the North Fore. A patrol officer, John R. McArthur, was stationed there from 1954 when the "rough track" from Kainantu opened to traffic. Transportation in the region improved to such a degree that it was possible to drive a Land Rover or motorbike to Purosa among the South Fore by 1957. At this time, colonial authorities estimated that there were at least 12,000 Fore living in the region.
In addition to government officers, other outsiders began to enter Fore territory. Anthropologists Ronald and Catherine Berndt spent time with the North Fore in 1953, while missionaries and traders penetrated further south. The Fore underwent considerable cultural change as a result of this contact: they traded with the outsiders, began growing coffee, and started to adopt a money-based economy. Gordon T. Linsley, a patrol officer stationed at Okapa, noted the rapid pace of social change among the Fore in a 1951 report. He observed that village warfare had declined considerably and that young Fore men were seemingly glad to have an excuse to quit fighting. The region was already under the control of the Australian government and some villages were relocating from the high ridges down to their gardens. Rest houses were present in the larger villages and separate men's houses remained only in the more isolated villages. Many people regularly used the rough track to travel to Kainantu and were able to see the latest fashions and hear Pidgin spoken, and broad paths linked communities together. However, Linsley noted that inter-district fighting persisted and accusations of sorcery were still common in Purosa.
Geography
The Fore people live in the Okapa District: a mountainous region in south-eastern Papua New Guinea. Combined, the 20,000 members of the North and South Fore live on approximately of land, almost all of which is steep mountain. Of this area, the majority belongs to the region belonging to the South Fore, who also make up the majority of the population. In this mountainous region, there is an average of over of rainfall per year, much of which falls in the rainy season, lasting from December to March.
Much of the landscape the Fore reside on is untouched forest. Areas of grassland or clearings in the forest appear only in locations of present or past agricultural cultivation. The settlements of the Fore people, usually consisting of a cluster of larger buildings, occur near tracts of land cleared for cultivation, and are frequently demolished and rebuilt elsewhere as new land is acquired for cultivation. These are almost exclusively on mountainsides, with the majority of Fore hamlets being established between above sea level, compared to the valleys which descend close to above sea level. The Lamari and Yani rivers are the two largest rivers in the Fore region. Both are tributaries to the larger Purari river to the south.
Language The Fore language is spoken in the Okapa District in the Eastern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. It is part of the East New Guinea Highlands Stock, and the Trans-New Guinea Phylum. It has three dialects: Northern (which is the prestige dialect), Central, and Southern.
Societal structure Fore society has no central political structure; leadership is undefined, and those who assume it do not hold formal power.
Fore society is traditionally organized into kinship groups, although these groups are not always strictly familial. A kinship group is made up of a male lineage, but may include other members, such as refugees or distant relatives, that migrated from other Fore kinship groups and became fully integrated into the group, taking on the same privileges and responsibilities as the biologically related members. Men from the same patriarchal lineage are not accorded any benefits over other non-related men in the group; in fact, it is considered beneficial and a strength to the village to bring in men from other kinship groups by offering them land to integrate them.
Generally, each kinship group lives in a village with several small offshoots, each consisting of a single house for the men and boys and several small surrounding houses for the women and children. These hamlets are established when gardening land surrounding the current settlement is exhausted and it is necessary to move outwards and clear more areas of woodland for growing crops. Each cluster of villages and hamlets consists of 50–400 people, with an average of 185.
Fore culture is heavily patrilineal: for example, land is passed down through the male lineage, and boys marry and remain on the land on which their fathers lived. Daughters of one clan typically marry into many different clans, but these marriage alliances often do not last long. Conflict often arises over unused land for expansion of farming and grazing, and villages or kinship groups will often band together to defend territory. Generally, these battles are fought with bows and arrows as the primary weapon. Settlements are temporary; a group will flee when they lose a battle over their land and will take refuge with other groups of friends or relatives.
Males born at the same time or in the same childbirth hut are considered agemates, or . Throughout his lifetime, a man's remains a significant part of his life; for example, agemates will hunt and battle together. The ties among are considered as strong as family ties.
Nagaiya , or age mates, are individuals bonded together for life in a manner similar to siblings, though they are not necessarily blood relations. Two individuals can become if they are born at the same time or if their mothers are isolated in the birthing hut at the same time. Boys have a second opportunity to become if they go through the manhood initiation ceremony together. This ceremony consists of living isolated in the forest for a month, receiving a new name, getting piercings, and playing music with sacred flutes. Women can become , but it is not as important for them as it is for men.
help each other through difficult and dangerous times, such as hunting in dangerous forests. During times of war, they are expected to help by giving food and lodging. Sometimes, if there is a conflict between a husband and his wife, the will help resolve it. The husband and his will slather themselves in mud and ash (symbols of mourning), hit the wife, and consume one of her pigs and one of her sweet potato gardens. To express her displeasure at her husband's actions, the wife will hold a banquet with the women in the clan near her husband's meal. Later, after the wife gives her husband a small reparation, the conflict between them will be resolved.
provide support when normal kinsmen would not be able to. For example, when a man consummates his marriage, he does not tell his kinsmen as to do so would be shameful, admitting that he is contaminated from sexual contact with a woman. However, he can freely tell his without shame, as his are obligated to share the burden with him. Additionally, when his wife first menstruates, a man stops eating pork, rats, possums, and spinach-like vegetables until his wife gives birth to his first child, in order to protect himself, as menstruation is thought to be dangerous to men. share these diet restrictions in order to show their support.
When a man dies, his are obligated to attend his funeral where his family will give them or "head pay". The are then duty bound to avenge the death of their age mate. Thus, elderly men whose are all dead fear that they will be killed by an enemy sorcerer, as there is no one left to avenge them. After a man's death, his and brothers become potential husbands for the widowed wife, although the wife decides who she will marry. This creates stress on the relationship between a wife and her husband's , as the are both friends and potential husbands.
The bond between is extremely close. Sometimes younger men jokingly use the term to describe elders with which they have a very close bond. Due to this bond, it is a sin punishable by death to abandon or betray one's .
Culture Diet The Fore diet consists of pigs, small animals, insects, wild plants, and root vegetables such as taro. Root vegetables are cultivated on land cleared by slash-and-burn farming. After the introduction of the sweet potato roughly 150 years ago, food production increased, as the crop could be grown in harsher conditions than existing root vegetables. Around the same time, the Fore began domesticating pigs, replacing the need to hunt wild ones. The sweet potato not only became a staple food, but was used as feed for domesticated pigs.
In their analysis of a 1957 study, Hamilton-Reid and Gajdusek determined that the Fore people have an unusually rich and varied diet, especially when compared to other civilizations in the New Guinea highland regions. In addition to growing sweet potato, ebia, sugarcane, and pitpit in their large and productive gardens, the Fore supplement their diet with pigs, rodents, and adult insects. The quality of their diet is so high that, in the 1957 study, no evidence of clinical malnutrition was found in the general population despite lacking access to any modern nutritional or medical services.
Precolonial marriage A Fore girl becomes eligible for marriage when she first menstruates. When she marries, she leaves her home to go live with her husband. If her husband is in a different clan, then she must leave all her family and old friends behind, including any . During a marriage ceremony, the husband's family pays the bride's family a marriage fee. This money is thrown on the bride's head as "head pay". Then, the husband and bride attend separate feasts. The groom is often pierced in the nose, as piercings are thought to increase a man's strength.
Religion