Resumo de First Contact - BOB CONNOLLY ,ROB ANDERSON

In the early thirties the last remaining large populations
in the world came into contact with Western civilization. First Contact
tells the story of the discovery of the New Guinea highlands by Australian
gold prospectors, and in particular Michael Leahy and his brothers.

The early chapters of First Contact provide the background to the
story. They include a brief description of the highlands and the highlanders, a
very brief history of the European presence in Papua and New Guinea and
an account of Leahy''s early life. The bulk of the book is about the events of
1933, when Leahy led a series of prospecting expeditions into the highlands and
initiated the first contacts between highlanders and Europeans. The account is
based on his diaries and later writings and on interviews with people still
alive who witnessed the events ? highlanders, white Australians, and their
carriers from coastal groups ? and is illustrated with numerous photos taken at
the time. (There is a film based on Leahy''s film footage, also called First
Contact, which is apparently an ethnographic classic.) What is brought out
most starkly is the sheer gulf between the two cultures and the massive
failures of understanding on both sides.

The later chapters move away from narrative and give a broad overview of the
processes of change unleashed by the contact. In particular they describe the
forces that would irrevocably alter highland culture: the missionaries
undermining the peoples'' spiritual beliefs; the district officers enforcing
their own conception of law and order and in the process destroying the
existing system (which they largely failed to understand at all); and the gold
prospectors destroying the economy with plane loads of kina shells and the
concept of a cash economy where one accumulates wealth in order to accumulate
more rather than in order to give it away. First Contact concludes
with a brief history of the highlands (and the Leahys) down to independence in
1975.

While First Contact does contain a lot of ethnographic information,
it is not primarily an ethnographic study; anthropologists will want more
scholarly sources. For the layman, however, it is an easy approach to a very
different culture. The authors do a good job of getting the reader to see
things from the point of view of the highlanders (although they are
understanding of the racism of the Europeans and their consequent abuses of
power). The puritan Lutheran missionaries tried to stop the highlanders spending
so much time singing and dancing while the Seventh Day Adventists wanted them
to eat goat instead of pig!

First Contact is an enthralling account of the collision of two
very different cultures. It as readable and almost as gripping as a novel (the
almost biographical focus on Michael Leahy helps here) and, as one of the best
popular works of anthropology I have read, I feel that it deserves a wide
audience. It is particularly recommended to Australians who aren''t aware that Australia had
its own share in the worldwide colonial enterprise externally as well as
internally ? and the parallels with contact with the Australian Aborigines are
themselves interesting.

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