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Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I explore interconnected, embodied and intimate relations between animals and Ancestors in an ancient migration to ‘lively’ places in PNG, and argue that the bodies and capacities of Ancestors and animals were transformed as they moved in and through these dynamic and powerful places.

Paper long abstract:

Ancestral stories prominent among the Gogodala speakers of Papua New Guinea, foreground the role and agency of animals as intimate companions of the Ancestors in their travels and actions throughout the original migration from the ‘the first place’ to the spaces villagers continue to inhabit. The Ancestral stories narrate the movements and role of these non-human animals as attentive agents, who once shared a language with the Ancestors during the time when the environment was ‘alive’ and places engaged with animals and Ancestors, alike. These stories note that the Ancestors were the first to discover ‘alive’, powerful, and engaged places, followed closely by non-human animals, who walked, talked and worked with them. In these ‘alive’ places, Ancestors and animals as well as canoes, bushes and palms spoke to each other in a common language with cassowaries, birds-of-paradise, bush wallaby, dogs, crocodiles and pigs. In and through the experiences of the Ancestral migration, the bodies and capacities of both Ancestors and animals were transformed, as they moved in and through these lively places. In this paper, I explore the interconnected and intimate relations established in and through these places in the motions and actions of animals and Ancestors via an analysis of the complex and multidimensional aspects of the relations between non-human animals and more-then-human beings. Such relations and actions continue to shape not only the living world of Gogodala Ancestors, but also their human descendants living in Papua New Guinea.