New Guinea’s Mt. Hagen Show
Rivals Paris Couturiers’ Best

Photographs: Peter Bennetts

In the human world, coincidences abound. Off the European continent lies an island nation that held itself aloof from its continental neighbors, built a great navy and became very good traders. Off the coast of Asia, another island nation did much the same. Thus, did Japan and Great Britain come to mirror each other in certain ways.

Another coincidence involves the Scots and some people who live 10,000 miles away. In older times the fiercely warlike Scottish clans would declare a truce in summer and meet in competitions of physical skill. This was the origin of the highland games, an institution the Scots have taken with them wherever they’ve settled.

In New Guinea, the British Columbia-sized tropical island north of Australia, the hundreds of tribes that live in that island’s vast highlands don’t even have the Scots’ advantage of a common language. With scores of mutually unintelligible languages and cultures, it is no surprise that warfare there had been constant up until modern times.

But in 1964, with the encouragement of the Australian colonial authorities who administered the eastern half of the island at that time, tribes in the western highlands came together at the first Mt. Hagen Cultural Show. (It took its name from Mt. Hagen City, which is the current capital of what is called Western Highlands Province.) The festival, which lasted about a week, recalled the Scots’ highland games in that it brought together often warring tribes in a sort of “time out” where they could compete in peaceful competitions that involved elaborate costumes and aggressive singing and dancing. 

Within that peaceful bubble, participants at Mt. Hagen began a tradition of awesome, fiercely colored displays of makeup and ornamentation. Drawing from an ornamental inventory developed over thousands of years, tribesmen combined feathers, grass, flowers, natural dyes, bones, shells, shiny metals and any other remotely decorative object into detailed ceremonial costumes. The object was to wow everybody who saw them. The subtext was simple: “If you think we dress well, imagine how well we fight.”

That first festival worked nicely, and the Australians decided to sponsor it as an annual event alternating years with Goroko in the eastern highlands. Over the years, word got out about the color and exuberance of what had been intended to be a strictly a regional event, and a small trickle of out-of-area and overseas visitors began showing up. (In 2001, about 1,000 overseas visitors took in the show, while another 70,000 New Guineans did the same.)

In 1975 Australia ceded its claim on eastern New Guinea. This half of the vast island became an independent nation, Papua New Guinea, while the western half had already been seeded to Indonesia by the Dutch in the 1960''s. Even as authority changed hands, the Mt. Hagen Cultural Show continued uninterrupted, by then already a cultural icon.

These days, as the highland tribes have settled into a rough peace and open warfare gets rarer, the festivals are really a money-making device, a way of helping the various tribes pay for their development schemes. The change in motivation may be off-putting to some people who think the old enmities and rivalries were a purer motivation than money, but it all comes out in the wash: The competition to dress, sing and dance more artfully is still there. The tribesmen arrive in the modern era just as determined to shine as in the old.

The actual singing and dancing at the festival, which has always taken place in August, take two days. But until the festival begins, nobody know exactly which two days, because of imponderables involved, not the least of which is timing the arrival of many tribes who have different concepts of time and different distances to cover. Nevertheless, organizers have set this year’s festival for Aug. 18-25,  promising that that competitions will take place some time within that span. Sandwiched in before and after will be exhibitions, craft displays, minor competitions and the other usual sideshows of a big-time event.

Goroko also has a yearly festival which takes place in September.

Papua New Guinea is not sedate like Paris or Peoria. But the nation has done a pretty good job of tamping down tribal rivalries and establishing the rule of law in the more populated and trafficked areas. Mt. Hagen City is accessible by plane and the city’s infrastructure is capable of handling tourist traffic in a modestly comfortable manner. Because the Mt. Hagen show is vital to the region’s purse and how it is perceived by the wider world, the authorities are solicitous of travelers and make a good-faith effort to control crime. Prudent travelers will take the usual precautions about how they handle and display their money, as well as deal only with authorized tradesmen and providers. — Patrick Totty