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Landmarks and Kwoma identity

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Files

FEL-2018-04.pdf (1.31 MB)

Links to Files

http://www.elpublishing.org/PID/4004

Permanent Link

http://hdl.handle.net/11603/30921

Collections

UMBC Modern Languages, Linguistics & Intercultural Communication Department
UMBC Language, Literacy, and Culture Department

Author/Creator

Author/Creator ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1339-4531

Date

2018-12

Type of Work

conference papers and proceedings
Text

Department

Program

Citation of Original Publication

Lambert-Brétière, Renée. 2018. Landmarks and Kwoma identity. In S. Drude, N. Ostler & M. Moser (eds.), Endangered languages and the land: Mapping landscapes of multilingualism, Proceedings of FEL XXII/2018 (Reykjavík, Iceland), 19–25. London: FEL & EL Publishing. http://www.elpublishing.org/PID/4004

Rights

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Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0 DEED)

Subjects

Abstract

This paper discusses how various landmarks serve as symbols of identity for the Kwoma, a people living in the East-Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea, and suggest that geographical space is constructed as an anchor for culturally-construed realities. Three different ideologies are analysed — the origin of the Kwoma people, their history, and their myths — to illustrate how location encapsulates a variety of meanings that serve as identity builders. I argue that the different place-names and landmarks reflect the ideology of landownership that counts every indigenous citizen as a customary landowner (Filer 2006), and that territoriality, i.e., the influence and control over a geographic area (Sack 1986), is determinant of the Kwoma identity.