Sulka Pomio Culture Recordings

Brief description

Since 2014, I have been visiting Kilalum village, a rural coastal community along the south coast in the Wide Bay area of East Pomio in the Pomio District of East New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea. The village and surrounding areas is occupied by the Kaimun clan of the Sulka Tribe, one of the ethnic Papuan language groups on New Britain Island surrounded by other Austronesian language groups on the island. In the subsequent years, I became interested and got motivated by the conversations about culture preservation with the Chief and traditional leader of the Kaimun clan and its group of elders within its sub-clans of the Sulka Tribe who live in the Wide Bay region along the south eastern coastline of the Province. The Sulka tribe occupies an area located in between other ethnic tribal groups called the “Mengens” to the south, the “Bainings” to the north and the “Tomoip” to the west inland areas. The Sulka tribe is made up of two (2) mother clans being Kaimun clan and the other as the Masra clan with Kaimun as the biggest clan in terms of population and area coverage. The Kaimun Clan leadership had started an initiative before I made contact with them to undertake a study or a documentation project in their attempt and effort driven by their desire for the cultural preservation and maintenance for intergenerational knowledge sharing and transfer within the Sulka tribe and its various clans. The primary focus was on the history of where the Sulka tribe originated from, how they settled and migrated to where they are today, its tribal clans’ structure and social organisation, how its cultural practices and systems, traditions, customs and society practices such as customary laws, rituals and sacred society came to being and the external influences of missionaries and colonisation to the Sulka people. From the 1970s’, there has been mixed collection from various sources of cassette audio and video tapes, photos, textual information of mixed content in traditional stories, history, life histories, traditional and present day customs/culture, missionary and colonisation history, music (song and dance – traditional and contemporary) and other general life or events stories. From the 1970s’, there has been mixed collection from various sources of cassette audio and video tapes, photos, textual materials and interviews of mixed content in traditional stories, history, life histories, traditional and present day customs/culture, missionary and colonisation history, music (song and dance – traditional and contemporary) and other general life or events stories. This collection is a contribution towards the preservation of general cultural knowledge of Sulka tribe and efforts to documenting the Kaimun clan.