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Accepted Paper:

Bwekasa: the life-giving sacrificial rites of Trobriands Islanders, living and deceased  
Mark Mosko (Australian National University)

Paper short abstract:

As Malinowski noted, public rituals in the Trobriands are initiated with ‘oblations’ to ancestral baloma spirits. This paper describes how the offerings as ‘sacrifices’ (bwekasa) critically regulate reciprocal relations between the living and the dead.

Paper long abstract:

Malinowski observed that in the Trobriands virtually all public ceremonials performed by chiefs, leaders and ritual experts were formally initiated by the presentation of specific 'oblations' (ula'ula) donated in the first instance by community members at large to the officiating magician, portions of which (termed bwekasa) are then given by him sacrificially to those baloma ancestral and other spirits of Tuma, the land of the dead, with whom he is personally connected through dala lineage and other ties. Unfortunately, neither Malinowski nor his numerous ethnographer successors has presented an interpretation or analysis of ula'ula or bwekasa offerings other than to suggest that such rites serve to maintain generally harmonious relations between the living and the dead. This is puzzling insofar as Malinowski staunchly maintained that the spirit recipients of those oblations, which are mandatory preliminaries to virtually all magico-ritual acts, are not considered to be the effective agents of those activities. In this paper, based on recent field studies at Omarakana, I attempt such an analysis, describing how, through ula'ula and bwekasa sacrifices humans and spirits give mutual substance and form to the life upon which both are dependent and in so doing animate the reciprocal relations between the visible material world (Boyowa) and invisible realm of the dead (Tuma).

Panel Ethn01
Research in the Pacific Islands
  Session 1