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I would bet $20 your parents were either evangelical missionaries or working with something directly adjacent to their efforts. Now at the risk of over generali

I would bet $20 your parents were either evangelical missionaries or working with something directly adjacent to their efforts. Now at the risk of over generalizing, there's basically three major reasons why (presumably white, foreign) people go up into the highland of PNG to live for extended periods of time: 1. Mining 2. Missionary work and ancillary things related to it. 3. Anthropological and linguistic research, biology/ecosystem related research and similar.

embedding-shape 24d ago
[flagged]
- walrus01 24d ago
  Right, because before today, I have such an extensive history of commenting on missionaries or PNG. My HN history is replete with it! I'm so predictable.
  - embedding-shape 24d ago
    Why the sudden insistence that every discussion about this article needs to include missionaries? Just woke up and felt like sharing the gospel?
    - walrus01 24d ago
      Well, in the sense that I'm resolutely opposed to the efforts of missionaries in general and personally believe they have caused a great deal of harm to indigenous cultures around the world, more like the anti-gospel.
      - kakacik 24d ago
        You are not alone, its pretty obvious what force of evil overall (even if some local good was done here and there) missionaries have been. And I don't mean just some 16th and 17th centuries horror stories, I mean even recent times. The idea that christianity is somehow above all other religions, while covering at best around 1/3 of world population... lets say I don't enjoy talking to irrational, highly emotional people on such topics. Where facts become irrelevant so does my presence in discussion.
      - iamshs 24d ago
        Let me tell of a missionary school and it has left me totally jaded about the cultural wipe-out that is practiced methodically. All the cultural icons are appropriated and a cross plastered on everything, from didgeridoo to the boomerang and placed alongside the holy book. Indigenous knowledge production is low because there frankly it requires audience and artist needs to be rewarded and paid, but this can be taken advantage of by well endowed people. If you search results for that local language on Youtube, all the main results you get are from Christian missions who have translated hymns and set it to indigenous rhythms. It is like you learn keys of the castle from somebody without telling them the end purpose you have in mind from the very beginning, take their knowledge and re-package it. Within the next gen you have new converts actively forgetting what their own parents are teaching them, and think this all is gift of missionaries.
  - dmichulke 24d ago
    [flagged]
    - deleted 24d ago
      [deleted]
som 24d ago
It's a reasonable guess but wrong. My dad is a carpenter and my mum is an artist. Dad was helping build houses up there for one of the government building contractors. Mum was along for the ride. Edit: And not that it really matters, but neither of my folks are religious.
kjs3 24d ago
Now at the risk of over generalizing And yet you couldn't help yourself.
TFNA 23d ago
It is a pity you are being downvoted. I do linguistic fieldwork in a similarly remote region and, yeah, you learn pretty quickly visitors fall into about those three types.
- walrus01 23d ago
  I worked in two way geostationary satellite for years and learned pretty quickly what sort of groups of people needed to pay money for Internet in truly the most off the grid locations. The other major users not so relevant for PNG which I intentionally didn't mention are military/government. I guess if it's not "mining" in some places you've also got "oil/gas", which basically falls into the same category of resource extraction. Sometimes forestry/logging.
  - TFNA 23d ago
    By the way, your discontent about missionaries shouldn't be centered just around "gospel" groups. Multiple denominations of Islam have pretty far-reaching missionary networks into seemingly faraway places.
    - walrus01 23d ago
      Yep, absolutely agreed. There's even Islamic parallels in the kinda-fundamentalist-Sunni world to weird USA TV Christian evangelists if you know who people like Zakir Naik are.

embedding-shape 24d ago

[flagged]

walrus01 24d ago
Right, because before today, I have such an extensive history of commenting on missionaries or PNG. My HN history is replete with it! I'm so predictable.
- embedding-shape 24d ago
  Why the sudden insistence that every discussion about this article needs to include missionaries? Just woke up and felt like sharing the gospel?
  - walrus01 24d ago
    Well, in the sense that I'm resolutely opposed to the efforts of missionaries in general and personally believe they have caused a great deal of harm to indigenous cultures around the world, more like the anti-gospel.
    - kakacik 24d ago
      You are not alone, its pretty obvious what force of evil overall (even if some local good was done here and there) missionaries have been. And I don't mean just some 16th and 17th centuries horror stories, I mean even recent times. The idea that christianity is somehow above all other religions, while covering at best around 1/3 of world population... lets say I don't enjoy talking to irrational, highly emotional people on such topics. Where facts become irrelevant so does my presence in discussion.
    - iamshs 24d ago
      Let me tell of a missionary school and it has left me totally jaded about the cultural wipe-out that is practiced methodically. All the cultural icons are appropriated and a cross plastered on everything, from didgeridoo to the boomerang and placed alongside the holy book. Indigenous knowledge production is low because there frankly it requires audience and artist needs to be rewarded and paid, but this can be taken advantage of by well endowed people. If you search results for that local language on Youtube, all the main results you get are from Christian missions who have translated hymns and set it to indigenous rhythms. It is like you learn keys of the castle from somebody without telling them the end purpose you have in mind from the very beginning, take their knowledge and re-package it. Within the next gen you have new converts actively forgetting what their own parents are teaching them, and think this all is gift of missionaries.
- dmichulke 24d ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 24d ago
    [deleted]

som 24d ago

It's a reasonable guess but wrong. My dad is a carpenter and my mum is an artist. Dad was helping build houses up there for one of the government building contractors. Mum was along for the ride. Edit: And not that it really matters, but neither of my folks are religious.

kjs3 24d ago

Now at the risk of over generalizing And yet you couldn't help yourself.

TFNA 23d ago

It is a pity you are being downvoted. I do linguistic fieldwork in a similarly remote region and, yeah, you learn pretty quickly visitors fall into about those three types.

walrus01 23d ago
I worked in two way geostationary satellite for years and learned pretty quickly what sort of groups of people needed to pay money for Internet in truly the most off the grid locations. The other major users not so relevant for PNG which I intentionally didn't mention are military/government. I guess if it's not "mining" in some places you've also got "oil/gas", which basically falls into the same category of resource extraction. Sometimes forestry/logging.
- TFNA 23d ago
  By the way, your discontent about missionaries shouldn't be centered just around "gospel" groups. Multiple denominations of Islam have pretty far-reaching missionary networks into seemingly faraway places.
  - walrus01 23d ago
    Yep, absolutely agreed. There's even Islamic parallels in the kinda-fundamentalist-Sunni world to weird USA TV Christian evangelists if you know who people like Zakir Naik are.