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PARI HANUA: An Appreciation of the Traditional, Colonial and Modern Life of a Papuan Village, Inspired by 50 Years of Contact and 6 Years of Residence. By Ian Maddocks. Port Moresby: University of Papua New Guinea Press and Bookshop; Oakland, CA: Masalai Press (distributor), 2012. iii, 220 pp. (Figures, plates.) US$34.95, paper. ISBN 978-9980-945-79-2.
In 1968 physician Ian Maddocks and his family moved from the Europeandominated suburb of Boroko in Papua New Guinea's capital city, Port Moresby, to a traditional coastal village named Pari a short distance from town. He stayed in residence, with the approval of the villagers, for six years, operating a medical clinic from his house until shortly before Papua New Guinea (PNG) became an independent nation in 1975. Although he subsequently moved to Australia, he stayed in contact and was able to revisit the village several times over a period now amounting to half a century. This book is a fond and nostalgic social history of Pari based on the author's intimate knowledge of the village and its inhabitants. It is also informed by early missionary and colonial documents, and academic publications on Port Moresby and its traditional landholders. The latter are the Motu and Koita people, two groups who were originally culturally different but who had intermarried to a significant extent by the time of European contact late in the nineteenth century and are nowadays commonly referred to jointly as the "Motu-Koitabu."
The book represents the best of its genre: a...