This week a colleague and I traveled to Goroka (the provincial capital of the Eastern Highlands Province) to attend a “Community-Based Inventorying Workshop,” sponsored by UNESCO. In 2003, in response to the growing awareness of the endangerment of many of the world's cultural traditions, UNESCO initiated the Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage. The worldwide aim is to register and safeguard traditional knowledge and cultural expressions. In Papua New Guinea, the first step is a process of inventorying the cultural traditions in the country—and with over 800 languages, this will be quite a process indeed!—and then create a “cultural map” of PNG. Inventoried traditions are then eligible for inclusion on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The workshop this week was training participants in UNESCO's method of ethnographic field research and documentation for the inventory. People learned the basics about audio and video recording, photography, and interviewing. Next year, a number of these people will do an inventory project on the Asaro Mudman tradition of the Eastern Highlands Province.
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| Workshop facilitators hold a press conference |
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| A small group discussion during the workshop |
I was attending in a consultative role, and also to learn more about UNESCO's aims in PNG. I enjoyed being with a group of Papua New Guineans who are deeply concerned about their cultural traditions. Discussions about the most appropriate ways of documenting cultural heritage were often very lively. The workshop facilitators asked for our assistance in translating some of the course materials into Tok Pisin, a language of wider communication in PNG. There may be more opportunities in the future to work with UNESCO as they continue to focus on the cultural traditions of PNG.
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| Are the meetings you attend punctuated by occasional traditional music and dance performances? A surprising number of meetings I attend are. |
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