Baruya people

Description

In 1973 there were approximately 1500 Baruya people living in the Wonenara and Marawaka valleys. They have been described as characterised by a strong inequality between males and females; all their organisations, institutions, and myths present male domination. They have traditionally practised a ritual in which boys give fellatio to young males and drink their semen, to "re-engender themselves prior to marriage". According to French anthropologist Maurice Godelier,

• At the age of nine, young boys are taken from their mothers to become Yivupbwanya and as a result their skirts are cut short at the front and removed from behind, while their noses are pierced.
• At age eight they begin to ingest semen from older boys 12 and up.
• At the age of 12, the skirts are completely removed and replaced with a male multi-layered skirt and a narrow strip of bark is worn behind, and their noses are pierced with a large nose peg. They are also adorned with many other insignia representing an approach to manhood. The initiates are now known as Kawetnya.---

However, according to a 2016 study by Anne-Sylvie Malbrancke, "male domination is no longer ideologically inscribed in the superiority of semen by analysing the symbolic shift that both semen and menstrual blood have undergone and showing how closely tied this shift is to a new organisation of gendered roles and places within Baruya society".

Studies and film

For seven years between 1967 and 1988, French anthropologist Maurice Godelier, assistant of Claude Lévi-Strauss, lived among the Baruya people and studied them. as well as another 13-part series.

References

References

1. "Towards Baruya Manhood".
2. Goody, Jack. (2007-07-24). "The Labyrinth of Kinship". [[New Left Review]].
3. Malbrancke, Anne-Sylvie. (2016). "WOMEN DON'T HAVE TESTICLES: The 'making' of masculinity among twenty-first century Baruya (Eastern Highlands, Papua New Guinea)". Frobenius Institute.
4. (25 October 2013). "Venus and a Cosmic Serpent in Papua-New Guinea".
5. (20 September 2011). "Towards Baruya Manhood".
6. Fiske, Pat. "Taking Pictures".