Paper short abstract:

In this paper I present a recent documentation project for the narrative genre 'pil' and the newly-published bilingual collection 'Pil: Ancestral Stories of the Lihir Islands'. I discuss the process of putting the book together and some of the challenges.

Paper long abstract:

In the Lihir Islands of Papua New Guinea there is a form of storytelling known as pil, where a fictional narrative is punctuated by recurring song. The practice of telling pil has been identified by the people of Lihir as a tradition under threat by recent social change—change that has been accelerated by the introduction of gold mining in the islands in the mid-1990s. This perceived threat has resulted in the pil genre being included in the Lihir Cultural Heritage Plan as something to be safeguarded through documentation and transmission.

In this paper I share this narrative form, reflecting on the role of song in the stories by examining a few key examples. I present a recent documentation project for pil which has resulted in the newly-published bilingual collection entitled Pil: Ancestral Stories of the Lihir Islands; I discuss the process of putting the book together and some of the challenges. Finally, in acknowledging that a primary funding source for this work on Lihir has come from the mining company itself, I reflect on this research partnership with industry and what this means for the documentation, promotion and very viability of Lihir performance traditions now and to come.