MIDDLE FLY AND NORTH MOREHEAD AREA STUDY

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Western Province

This report examines social development issues among the lagoon people of the Fly River—the Boazi, Zimakani, and Suki people—in that section of the river marked approximately by Cassowary Island and the Binge River. The lagoon people are closely related in culture, social organisation and the form of their ecological adaptation both to the ‘canoe people’, or Marind Anim, of the southern border area of Papua New Guinea and Irian Jaya, and east to the Gogodala people of the Aramia River (Crawford 1981). In the west, there are enclaves of speakers of the Kaeti and Yonggom languages and, in the east, a small group of Aekyom (Awin) people. Each of these is a refugee group with a history of warfare-induced migration during the earlier part of the twentieth century; they will be mentioned from time to time, but only the Kaeti speakers at Kuem village in the Middle Fly have a presence in main part of the study area.