Welcome to Papua New Guinea, the second largest island in the world, a mountainous, inhospitable and primitive land that recalls the dawn of humanity. This country north of Australia is inhabited by more than 1,000 tribes and 850 different languages. Failure to understand members of other communities can cost you your life, hence the system known as Wantok, from English, which means “One speech.”
Papua New Guinea is a remote and primitive country with tribes still settled in the Stone Age. Discovered by Spanish sailors in the 16th century, this large island, second only in size to Greenland, is a mosaic of peoples in constant rivalry and a state of war. To understand this country in Oceania, it is essential to know the Wantok system. The word Wantok is the “pidgin” version of “one talk.”
Wantok is the linguistic glue that binds together this country where many tribes live in permanent hostility. But Wantok is not just about people being able to understand each other using the same language or dialect, it is much more than that: it is also a traditional social support system that ensures that no one is left without help.
Every member of a Wantok must provide unconditional support to any other Wantok in need, providing them with everything they need: accommodation, food and care if they are injured. In other words, solidarity within the Wantok provides a protective shield and ensures that members receive help in times of need. Bridging the differences is like the origin of the Italian mafias that emerged as networks of unconditional protection between members of a clan.
In Papua New Guinea’s tribal-based society, relationships with other communities are essential for trading, hunting and defending. That is why the Wantok system has evolved as a means of communicating between different and distant clans in order to achieve help and security. In other words, understanding each other through the Wantok dialect is vital for survival, as it protects individuals from external threats, including violence, slavery or abuse from other groups.
In a country where law enforcement can be irregular, belonging to a Wantok, that is, to the human group that speaks the same language, can be the difference between life and death, because in these mountain tribes, disputes are resolved in an atavistic way, that is, using violence with arrows, machetes and spears. The only way to stop the orgy of blood that pitched battles become is through parley, negotiation, but this is not always possible. If the two clans that are facing each other cannot understand each other, the result can be tragic, with deaths, capture of slaves and rapes.
The Wantok is therefore the only possible means to compromise and find an arrangement that will put an end to the war. However, the Wantok system also has a dark side in Papua New Guinea, a country that gained independence from Australia in 1975. Wantoks, or tribal federations that speak the same language, hold positions of power in Port Moresby, the capital, whether in business, public administration or politics.
This power sometimes leads to false accounting practices and corruption, negatively affecting the country’s development. And as we mentioned the parallel with the mafia, the Wantoks also engage in extortion practices, demanding that merchants provide goods and services to their Wantoks at reduced prices or even for free, which can lead to bankruptcy.
Looking at New Guinea is like taking a trip back in time, going back more than 40,000 years when humanity lived in a permanent state of war of all against all. The only way to achieve peace was to resort to a language that the enemy understood, which is why the Wantok of Papua New Guinea shows us that for human beings, now and always, the true homeland is not the territory and its borders, but the language.
