Losing the Forest but not the Stories in the Trees

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Logging

IN APRIL 1922, F. E. WILLIAMS (1893–1943) BEGAN HIS FIRST ASSIGNMENT AS THE AUSTRALIAN Territory of Papua’s assistant government anthropologist in the Purari Delta on the southern coast of what is now Papua New Guinea.1 During his eight-month trip, Williams obtained information on daily life, social relations, material culture, as well as religious beliefs and practices.2 As part of this research, he collected ethnographic specimens, made sketches and took some 96 photographs. 3 Twenty-nine of these photographs appeared in his 1924 monograph The Natives of the Purari Delta, a publication that subsequently came to define the area for Europeans.