Prior to 1904, the Bilibil people lived on an

island An island or isle is a piece of land, distinct from a continent, completely surrounded by water. There are continental islands, which were formed by being split from a continent by plate tectonics, and oceanic islands, which have never been ...

offshore from

Madang Madang (old German name: ''Friedrich-Wilhelmshafen'') is the capital of Madang Province and is a town with a population of 27,420 (in 2005) on the north coast of Papua New Guinea. History Nicholai Miklukho-Maklai was probably the first Eur ...

, Papua New Guinea, trading clay pots along the coast from

Karkar Island Karkar Island is an oval-shaped volcanic island located in the Bismarck Sea, about off the north coast of mainland Papua New Guinea in Madang Province, from which it is separated by the Isumrud Strait. The island is about in length and in widt ...

to western

Morobe Province Morobe is a province on the northern coast of Papua New Guinea. The provincial capital and largest city is Lae. The province covers 33,705 km2, with a population of 674,810 (2011 census), and since the division of Southern Highlands Province ...

. The island was too small to produce enough food for the inhabitants, and the trade therefore was an essential element of their life. They moved to the mainland to their existing village site to improve their

subsistence A subsistence economy is an economy directed to basic subsistence (the provision of food, clothing and shelter) rather than to the market. Definition "Subsistence" is understood as supporting oneself and family at a minimum level. Basic subsiste ...

levels. They speak the

Bilibil language Bil Bil is an Austronesian language spoken by about 1,200 people near Madang town, Madang Province, Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the ...

, an

Austronesian language The Austronesian languages ( ) are a language family widely spoken throughout Maritime Southeast Asia, parts of Mainland Southeast Asia, Madagascar, the islands of the Pacific Ocean and Taiwan (by Taiwanese indigenous peoples). They are spoken b ...

Pot making

Women potters from Bilibili - Papua New Guinea - 1884-1885

Bilibil women make

pot Pot may refer to: Containers * Flowerpot, a container in which plants are cultivated * Pottery, ceramic containers made from clay * Cooking pot, a type of cookware * Pot, a beer glass Places * Ken Jones Aerodrome, IATA airport code POT * ...

s, which are still produced in the

tradition A tradition is a system of beliefs or behaviors (folk custom) passed down within a group of people or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common e ...

al way.

Clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolinite, ). Most pure clay minerals are white or light-coloured, but natural clays show a variety of colours from impuriti ...

for the pots is collected locally, and mixed with

sand Sand is a granular material composed of finely divided mineral particles. Sand has various compositions but is usually defined by its grain size. Sand grains are smaller than gravel and coarser than silt. Sand can also refer to a textural ...

and water. The pots are hollowed out with stones and smoothed on the outside by beating with a flat board. Before they are fired, red clay is painted on the pots. This turns them a glossy red and black when they are pulled out of the

fire Fire is the rapid oxidation of a fuel in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction Product (chemistry), products. Flames, the most visible portion of the fire, are produced in the combustion re ...

. The pots are put to many uses; most importantly, they are used for

bride price Bride price, bride-dowry, bride-wealth, bride service or bride token, is money, property, or other form of wealth paid by a groom or his family to the woman or the family of the woman he will be married to or is just about to marry. Bride dowry ...

ceremonies. Sometimes pots are still

barter In trade, barter (derived from ''bareter'') is a system of exchange (economics), exchange in which participants in a financial transaction, transaction directly exchange good (economics), goods or service (economics), services for other goods ...

ed for food. Inland people meet the Bilibils at a pre-arranged place, and pots are exchanged for

taro Taro (; ''Colocasia esculenta'') is a root vegetable. It is the most widely cultivated species of several plants in the family Araceae that are used as vegetables for their corms, leaves, stems and Petiole (botany), petioles. Taro corms are a ...

and yams from the mountains. No money is used in these exchanges.

Relationship to the ocean

Traditionally the Bilibils have been great

seamen Seaman may refer to: * Sailor, a member of a marine watercraft's crew * Seaman (rank), a military rank in some navies * Seaman (name) (including a list of people with the name) * ''Seaman'' (video game), a 1999 simulation video game for the Seg ...

. They built large two-masted

canoe A canoe is a lightweight, narrow watercraft, water vessel, typically pointed at both ends and open on top, propelled by one or more seated or kneeling paddlers facing the direction of travel and using paddles. In British English, the term ' ...

s which they would use to travel hundreds of kilometres along the coast to trade with other villages. Tools for boat building were made from wood, pig's bone, sharpened bamboo and stone. In 1978, it had been 40 years since a traditional canoe had been built by the Bilibil people, and the skills for building these boats had been almost lost. Four elderly men taught the others how to build a canoe using local trees for the

hull Hull may refer to: Structures * The hull of an armored fighting vehicle, housing the chassis * Fuselage, of an aircraft * Hull (botany), the outer covering of seeds * Hull (watercraft), the body or frame of a sea-going craft * Submarine hull Ma ...

, the

outrigger An outrigger is a projecting structure on a boat, with specific meaning depending on types of vessel. Outriggers may also refer to legs on a wheeled vehicle that are folded out when it needs stabilization, for example on a crane that lifts he ...

and the supports. The sail was woven out of

pandanus ''Pandanus'' is a genus of monocots with about 578 accepted species. They are palm-like, dioecious trees and shrubs native to the Old World tropics and subtropics. Common names include pandan, screw palm and screw pine. The genus is classified ...

leaves, a shelter was built from

bamboo Bamboos are a diverse group of mostly evergreen perennial plant, perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily (biology), subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family, in th ...

with palm leaves for a roof, and a wooden

cockatoo A cockatoo is any of the 21 species of parrots belonging to the family Cacatuidae, the only family in the superfamily Cacatuoidea. Along with the Psittacoidea ( true parrots) and the Strigopoidea (large New Zealand parrots), they make up t ...

, a clan

totem A totem (from or ''doodem'') is a spirit being, sacred object, or symbol that serves as an emblem of a group of people, such as a family, clan, lineage (anthropology), lineage, or tribe, such as in the Anishinaabe clan system. While the word ...

, was attached to the mast.

Bilibil traditions

Traditional houses had roofs that came to the ground, and each clan had a men's house which the women were not allowed to enter. Nowadays each family lives in their own house. They are made from bush materials and have large airy

verandah A veranda (also spelled verandah in Australian and New Zealand English) is a roofed, open-air hallway or porch, attached to the outside of a building. A veranda is often partly enclosed by a railing and frequently extends across the front an ...

s. The houses are about two metres off the ground; the women sit underneath and make their pots. Most of the cooking and eating is done outside. Yams and

are the staple diet and these are grown in large gardens behind the village. The men do the initial preparation of a new garden, but the women do most of the gardening. The yams are ready for harvest in June, and the harvest is celebrated with yam

feasts A festival is an event celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, mela, or eid. A festival constitutes ...

. June is also the traditional new year as marked by the appearance of the

Pleiades The Pleiades (), also known as Seven Sisters and Messier 45 (M45), is an Asterism (astronomy), asterism of an open cluster, open star cluster containing young Stellar classification#Class B, B-type stars in the northwest of the constellation Tau ...

. Young men are initiated into

man A man is an adult male human. Before adulthood, a male child or adolescent is referred to as a boy. Like most other male mammals, a man's genome usually inherits an X chromosome from the mother and a Y chromosome from the f ...

hood by the older Bilibil men who take them over to Bilibil Island for about 12 days and instruct them in the way to behave as adults. When they return to the village, they are paraded through the houses and a celebration is held with feasting and dancing.

References

{{authority control Ethnic groups in Papua New Guinea Madang Province