for for for [Music] n [Music] 100 Mil off the North Coast of Australia is the territory of Papua New Guinea in the western Highlands of Papua New Guinea there are many tribes one of them is the cowel the most prominent leader or big man of the kka tribe is [Music] Ana for 5 years the Kaaka tribe driven on by Anka have been struggling to assemble a huge gift mainly of pigs to present to a neighboring tribe for Ana assembling and giving this gift is more important than anything in his [Music] life this film is about why Ana so wanted to do it and about his efforts to bring It Off [Music] the big man of the tribe who are going to receive the gift is Pera who is also the local member of the National Assembly one day this July Pera set off on his way back home to the highlands Pera knew pretty well what the kka were trying to prepare 5 or 600 pigs rare birds money tubes of decorating oil a truck and maybe a motor bike all his life perer like all Highland men has been involved in the system of receiving gifts and later repaying them these gifts are called mocka and mocka is the most important thing in the lives of the Highland people when he got home this summer Pera thought that Ana's mocka was going to be very soon but that's not how it turned out and Pera just had to wait till UNCA was ready early this summer after years of scheming and manipulating planning and persuading hka began to feel that he might finally be able to bring off his big mocker and that it could be the biggest mocker ever given the reason why Ana so wanted to give his big mocker is that only by giving can he earn Fame and status for his tribe and for himself in the west you can get status lots of ways from money from success from your job your possessions the only way Anka can get status is to outdo his fellow men in mocka to overwhelm them publicly by the sheer size of the gift that he gives it's an awful lot of work to organize a big gift and Anor needed the cooperation of a lot of people big men have no authority over their tribesmen Ana cannot order people around he can only persuade fore fore foree [Music] foree ANA gave them a favorite speech in which he told them to stop fiddling about in their Gardens to stop drinking beer and wasting time with women and to get on with it what you are supposed to be doing he said is getting pigs ready for the mocker not sitting around eating one for the kka are a small tribe about a thousand people all around are other tribes some allies some enemies there are no villages just scattered settlements around which Ana pled bringing news checking on progress and trying to set a date for the big marker the date is always a problem big men compete for the status of fixing the date and a lot of conspiring goes on fore foree spee Ana lives in his men's house 5 minutes away from the house of his favorite wife rle Mona has four wives and nine children but he talks rather wearily about trying to manage more than one wife and only rumal now looks after pigs for [Music] him Ana talk endlessly about pigs he said that pigs are the only worthwhile thing that if money looks after white people pigs look after them you have to have pigs for whatever you want to do foreign fore spe fore spee Pig can be used in lots of ways but there's a rare bird captured in the forest that is used only as a mocker gift much as the Chinese who up to give panders to visiting dignitaries it's called the Cy and Ana hoped to give [Music] five rle lives with her daughters in her women's house the pigs live there too separated off by a [Music] fence M the basic food of both pigs and people is sweet potatoes pigs are a lot of work hard at it rokle can look after eight full grown pigs maybe 10 for a [Music] while [Music] [Applause] H sometimes UNCA went back to his men's house sometimes he ate with rumal and the children you can survive all right without pigs your food the materials for your house the traditional clothes all come from The Gardens and Forest and you only eat pig on special occasions but if you want to get on in Life or even marry then you've got to have [Music] pigs [Music] [Applause] because it's not possible to look after more than a few pigs you cannot accumulate you can't hoard them what you can do is to assemble a lot of pigs and give them away in a big public show and it's by giving that you impress other people in his big mocka UNCA himself wanted to give about a 100 Pigs to have that many on the day there is a system of investment over the last four years Ana had invested pigs with other people mostly with ral's Father the next day ral's father was going to show them the pigs he owed and Ana sorted through his feathers and skins to see what he was going to wear for the [Music] occasion [Music] speee the next day anca's father-in-law and dber had some pigs staked out him to see Returns on the investment Ana had made with him if Ana was satisfied these pigs would be given to him later at a small mocker which would feed into Ana's big one it was not as many as Ana had hoped but it was a start pigs have always been important anca's father-in-law told us about the olden days [Music] [Music] foree [Music] [Laughter] although Ana had now been promised Pigs by his father-in-law and by other men that he'd invested with the small mocka ceremonies at which he would actually receive the pigs still had to happen and Ana started to dress up for the first of these before the Australians pacified the area in the 1940s hka too fought against his enemy tribes and sometimes against his allies big men planned the fighting and the peace and the pig givings that followed big men have always been especially vulnerable Mona has many stories about attacks upon himself including one about how one night he was about to visit his lavry Hut as he walked towards it he sensed his enemies lying in weight Ana hid in a nearby Bush and watched while his enemies crept up and drove their Spears through the walls thinking they'd got him inside Monker dressed in his feathers set off for the first small mocker that would feed pigs into the system [Music] while the pigs are tied up in the shade the donors put on their bird of paradise feathers and dance to celebrate their [Music] [Music] [Music] achievement [Music] who gets what is all worked out beforehand but the pigs are inspected and counted again usually by un [Music] the donors walk down the line of stakes shouting out the name of the man who will receive the pig that will be tied to [Music] it the correct pig is then brought on and tied to it's a lot in stake disputes about who gets what should at least in theory have been worked out before before the pigs are taken away men make speeches of a special kind full of Illusions and complex metaphors a whole language of their own speechmaking is Ana's great skill [Music] at one stage in his speech Ana said the men's house had fallen down the young girl's breast had fallen the young man's beard grew long but now that you've given these pigs I shall marry the young girl find a wife the young man I shall build the man's house [Music] [Applause] again Ana got one Pig and his fellow tribesman got the rest all to be fed into the big mocka Ana has a surprising qu quantity of money $1,800 Australian dollars sitting in the mount hugan Savings Bank at 3 and 3/4% interest but highly conscious of the value of money he refused to pay to put his pig on a track and walked it the 12 miles home it wasn't only that Ana wanted to give his big mocker he had to mocker gifts are given and some years later they should be paid with interest technically mocka is the interest the extra that you manag to give back open above the gift you received 10 years ago Ana's tribe were given 400 Pigs by their neighbors and to answer that Ana wanted to give at least 600 foreign spee I'm oute [Music] to organiz 600 pigs Ana had to do two things he had to gather in his own Investments and push his tribesmen into gathering in theirs with no authority over them he can only push and if he pushes too hard they won't cooperate anymore there was one place where he had constant problems he told them to stop looking for license the wife's aprons and get a [Music] move [Music] foreign speech [Music] [Applause] spee [Music] spee 3 weeks later another of the small mockers took place and fed in 55 more pigs for the big mocka Mona supervised the dancers to make sure they would perform well when the big mocka [Applause] came [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] where I [Music] [Applause] [Music] at this small mocka there was money as well as pigs money Australian dollars comes almost entirely from coffee which they grow and sell to the coffee companies in Mount [Music] har until 10 years ago pearl shells were used in mcka but now shells have been replaced by paper dollars and a big pig is now worth about $250 but [Music] [Applause] [Music] £140 [Music] this time there was a ritual War charge in which extra pigs were brought on as a surprise to get extra prestige [Music] within every tribe big men compete with each other Ana has one particular rival trying to OU him Rymer ryer has few of Ana's abilities but he always told us that he not Ana would be the one to fix the date of the big mocker in his speech Ana said that they all knew the story of the lady who made a lot of noise in her sweet potato garden until a man came along and gave her what she wanted and then she was happy and quiet and now that I've got what I want he said I too am very happy and like that lady I will sit in my corner and not say anymore thank you very much I'm very happy for as the pigs began to appear Ana said that they were like a snake half hidden in the grass he could see its head he couldn't tell tell how long its body was Ana went off to the Jimmy Valley two days walk away to get new feathers for his headdress and to chase up a 40 Pig investment while he was away something happened to jeopardize all he had been working for [Music] on [Music] in Ana's enemy tribe a big man died [Applause] [Music] [Applause] suddenly if a man especially a big man dies Suddenly It's always thought he was killed by sorcery and the men charge in Anger against the enemy who must have performed the [Music] sorcery [Applause] [Music] [Applause] live [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] in their song women's saying oh my father oh my father Whom Shall I turn to [Music] now in their song the men sang oh my brother oh my brother Whom Shall I live with [Applause] [Music] now [Music] [Music] [Music] h [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] as the day wore on visitors brought news of Kaa men of Anka's group who had been heard singing Drunk in a truck people said it must be our CA enemies who killed that big man by sorcery that they were singing because they were pleased and there began to be talk of going down to burn kka [Music] houses [Music] MO when Ana got home with his feathers he heard that his group were being accused of the sorcery at once he sent a pig down to the funeral with a message to say it wasn't true and a special Branch used in oath taking to emphasize the truth of what he was saying he wanted to go down to the funeral himself to tell them that it wasn't true but he didn't dare go some of his relatives married Into the Dead Man's tribe came and took his branch and his Pig down along with a pig of their own un's Pig was accepted and cooked along with others at a distribution of pork to Mark the end of the first period of morning but it only smoothed over the accusation it didn't get rid of the [Music] suspicion this sort of payment can become the basis of a mocker and the mocker sequence in which Anker is involved began in this sort of way as a payment of pigs for deaths in tribal fighting later more pigs were returned and the two in exchanges of a mocker the funeral held everything up for 3 weeks until the morning was over the cka were uneasy there were no mockers in case they antagonized the Dead Man's tribe [Music] [Music] help eventually the next small mocker did happen and Ana was given the pigs promised by his father-in-law but they didn't decorate or dance out of respect for the dead man [Music] Ana did rather better than he expected 80 pigs were given and Ana got half of them Mona was very happy happy but more pigs meant more work and the pressure was really on him and even more on rle to hand the pigs on rle had no sweet potatoes left they had to find them wherever they could at night with no more room for pigs inside someone had to sleep out with them Mona even found an extra wife a widow whose greatest attraction was her capacity for [Music] work [Music] [Music] before the big mocker could happen there were still three small mockers to go each one meant more pigs and mounting pressure to pass them on [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] as the big mocker got closer the pressure on rle got worse [Music] foree speech speech forign for the last few pigs were coming in hka began to talk about going down to buy Cows as an extra surprise the big mocker was very close [Applause] mocka isn't just about pigs it's about all kinds of things the cers say that it keeps the peace as a way of making a name for yourself it helps the tribe together it's the big social event on a more General level mocka is a system a framework all over the world people operate within some kind of framework mocka is one of them there was one more thing to do before the big mocka could happen the next day the money they had collected to give to Pera and his tribe had to be spread out and counted they got 10,000 Australian dollars about £55,000 [Music] [Music] each bundle is $200 and is destined for a particular group 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 two Pera the member of the assembly often says it's time they gave up mocka but he sat watching the piles of money mounting up when we asked Ana what he'd do if Pera didn't one day return the mocker Ana said he'd take him behind a bush and slit his throat but even if he did lose his investment he could never lose the glory of having given it then it happened suddenly Ana's right rival Rhymer did what he always said he'd do and upset the timing of the mocker Rymer put a whisper through the crowd that it was his group who would kill the Big Man by [Music] sorcery it's not the kind of thing you admit to in public but it had the effect he [Music] wanted broke up in confusion with people angry at ryer for stirring up old [Music] troubles that night Ana was still saying the big mocker would happen the next day in fact things turned out much worse than Ana had expected early next morning the group of kka married Into the Dead Man's tribe came down in a war charge to get [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Rimer [Applause] [Applause] on their way they came past anas to try and stop them Ana sat down in the road [Applause] [Music] fore told them that they must stop this talk of fighting that when the Europeans first came they had put ideas of fighting down the labatory hole and that's where they should stay just a hitch that they would finish the big mocka together monka with no power to stop them did his best to persuade them some listened some set off for [Applause] [Music] rhy the next day there was no big mocker Rhymer went into hiding a few nights later they killed four of his pigs Pera had been waiting 3 months but now he had to go back to the assembly to discuss the new constitution for the independence of Papa New Guinea Pera was getting used to delays the big mocker had originally been planned for a year ago and Ana and his group had got as far as buying a truck as part of their gift Pera said there was no point in the truck rotting away until the big mocker did happen that he might as well use it in the meantime sometime after we too had left anca's big mocka finally did happen there were 600 pigs $10,000 eight cows and 12 ceries they washed the truck and decorated it with flowers and there was a [Music] [Music] motorbike at the end of his mocka speech Ana said now that I have given you all these things I have one I have knocked you down by giving so much [Music] I'm spee spee I e e e e e e e e e e