Kuru Sorcery: Disease And Danger In The New Guinew Highlands

The South Fore people live in the Eastern Highlands of Papua new Guinea between the Kratke Mountains and the Lamari and Yani Rivers. They live in hamlets with populations ranging from seventy to 120 people in twelve to twenty houses. They practice slash-and-burn horticulture (swidden) which most commonly sustains sweet potatoes, taro, yam, corn, and other vegetables. The men hunt for birds, mammals, reptiles, and cassowaries and raise pigs, which are considered to be equal to humans, while the women spend most of their time harvesting and planting crops.

Among the South Fore (particularly among the women), a rare disease reached debilitating proportions in the middle of the twentieth century. “Since record-keeping began in 1957, three years after the Australian admin

In the beginning of the book, Lindenbaum went a little “Goodall” with her descriptions of the environment the Fore live in: “The forest rings with the sound of birds feeding on tall fruit trees (p.3).” That, coupled with sparkling impatiens, made me proceed with caution, however, Lindenbaum shifted from creative writing mode to anthropological perspective making this book a good read.

Lindenbaum illustrates the cultural materialist model in chapter six. Prior to the arrival of white men, the appearance of Nokoti (a spirit in human form) was common among the South Fore but with the construction of the Okapa-Purosa road and introduction of canned proteins, he disappeared, as did the many the infant-wasting illnesses for which Nakoti was blamed. Before the 1930’s, the South Fore people traded salt, animal furs, feathers, betelnut, cane, and other forest materials for stone axe blades, black palm bows, pearlshells, and amelia shells with the neighboring peoples. In 1933, joint exploratory flights by the Australian administration and the New Guinea Goldfields Company flew from the Bena Bena region to survey the Eastern Highlands. What Lindenbaum describes as an “intrusive phenomena” brought many material goods to the South Fore and surrounding peoples including the first steel tomahawk, piece of cloth, saucer, mirror fragments as well as new foods, new ideas, and new forms of wealth (pp. 78-9). In 1962, the reported cash crops were peanuts and coffee.

istration established a patrol post at Okapa, some 2,500 people in this region have died from kuru, a subacute degenerative disorder of the central nervous system (p.6).” The South Fore attribute the disease to sorcery and treat it just as they do the other diseases they encounter, however, kuru proved to be the most detrimental, with a depopulation rate of 80%.

The South Fore people began practicing protein endocannibalism as recently as the early 1900’s while the first case of kuru appeared among them in 1922 in Kasokana. The victims of the disease were primarily women and children of both sexes who relied upon small game, insects, frogs, and dead humans for protein while the men claimed wild boar and domestic pigs. “Among South Fore, a man’s brain could be eaten by his sister, and in the North, by his sister as well as his son’s wife and maternal aunts and uncles. A woman’s brain, perhaps the most significant body matter in transmission of the disease, was said to be given to her son’s wife or her brother’s wife (p. 21).” The Australian government attempted to stop cannibalism in 1947, only succeeding with the North Fore, while the South Fore continued the practice. The South Fore abandoned cannibalism only after 1955, when a major road was constructed which ran from Okapa to Purosa. The cessation of cannibalism among the South Fore was the contributory factor to the virtual elimination of kuru. However, because of the slow incubation period of the disease (minimum 2 years, maximum 23 years)

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