Looking Through Ancestors' Eye-Holes : Epistemic, body-mind-spirit and ethical discourse formations among the Lau'um of West Sepik, Papua New Guinea

This book is on epistemology, mind-body-spirit, and social ethical forms of the Lau'um people, West Sepik, Papua New Guinea. The aim of the book is to expose the Lau'um epistemology, mind-body-spirit, and ethical forms of life. The desire for understanding concerns two issues. The first concerns method. What are the best methods to use in reconstructing the Lau'um 'forms' of life? Oral history skills are used in collecting the data. For reconstructing the book, the author adopted a hermeneutic approach. Insights are drawn across various disciplines. Ethnography, history, linguistics, philosophy, and literature forged a dialogic understanding of Lau'um knowledge and values. The study concerns itself on the nature of knowledge in Lau'um. This book embraces the qualitative methodology. It engages the study on Lau'um epistemology, the concept of self, social ethics, spiritual, and aesthetic values. At the theoretical level, paradigms of understandings are engaged from ethnographers, historians, linguists, philosophers, and literary writers. The discussions, however, turn away from "a rational objectivism" and turn "toward the conception of a more relativistic universe and 'poststructuralist' epistemologies" (Rudestam 2001). The views presented belong to 'us' because they are informed by the Lau'um traditions and contexts. The views also engage in a reformulation of the Lau'um people's identity by the author in the present. The second issue is about preservation. Modernity entices the hearts and minds of the Lau'um people to move away gradually from their traditions. The way forward is via a critical analysis of western constructions of modernity. This must be followed by reconstruction. The book aims at reconstructing and re-empowering the Lau'um people. The author returns self-belief to the Lau'um people who must believe in their abilities to solve their problems and develop their full potentials. The book selects and explores the main cultural forms that are influenced by modernity. It discusses the experiences of the Lau'um culture heroes and heroines. It reveals the main elements of Lau'um pingis (wisdom). It reveals the body-mind-spirit and social ethical relationships. The book aims to encourage a productive engagement with the Lau'um epistemologies, spiritual, social, and ethical dimensions of living. The book presents a discursive discourse: "the articulation of language on real relations and conditions" (Hall 1993). The Lau'um narratives constitute real relations and conditions. The conventions underlying the present discourses are supported by a "code" namely cultural hermeneutics. This interpretation is a cross-cultural interpretation.