Joe Leahy’s Neighbours: ‘Bride-price’

There are no Ganiga working on the plantation. The labourers on the plantation come from 100 miles away. The Ganiga’s notion of work is social interaction – dealing with things like tribal disputes and bride-price negotiations. Because of this they often have no ‘money’.

Joe Leahy's Neighbours synopsis

Joe Leahy’s Neighbours is the sequel to First Contact (1983) and is the second documentary in The Highlands Trilogy. This well-constructed film traces the fortunes of Joe Leahy, one of the highlander sons of the gold prospector Michael Leahy. Joe was raised in the highlands, worked his way up on coffee plantations, learned from the white colonials and adapted to Western ways. He bought Ganiga land, established a coffee plantation and became wealthy while all around him are his Ganiga neighbours, who live a subsistence existence. Joe understands the highlander protocols and values of sharing wealth and resources but also feels free from tribal obligation. Joe Leahy’s Neighbours explores Joe’s troubled relationships with his employees, members of the Ganiga tribe and the many tribal factions. The film is about new ways versus old and the momentous struggle to adapt to changing circumstances. Joe Leahy’s Neighbours is shot in an observational style with narration, some interviews and excerpts from First Contact (1983).

Joe Leahy's Neighbours curator's notes

In 1985 Robin Anderson and Bob Connolly received the AFC Documentary Fellowship and this enabled them to go back to PNG to make another film which became the second film in the The Highlands Trilogy. The filmmakers felt that this could be an excellent opportunity to make a contemporary film about the Papua New Guinea highlands and explore what sort of society was forming in the wake of Western contact.

During the making of First Contact (1983), Joe Leahy – one of the sons of Michael Leahy – had acted as a guide and introduced Connolly and Anderson to highlanders who remembered the first Europeans (the three Leahy brothers) coming into the highlands in the 1930s. Joe Leahy wasn’t like any highlander they had met before as he was flamboyant, self-confident and very wealthy.

While Joe was driving them around, he talked about his life on the Kilima coffee plantation and his relationship with the Ganiga tribe who lived all around him and whose land he’d bought to establish the plantation. Joe had been trying to get the Ganiga people onside since he started the coffee plantation. Coffee growing was very lucrative and his 300-acre plantation was flourishing. Joe was bringing in about 1.3 million Australian dollars a year but the Ganiga people still lived a traditional life where there was very little cash coming in.

Connolly and Anderson set up in Mount Hagen in October 1985 thinking they would spend a few months filming around the plantation but ended up building a house on the edge of Joe’s plantation and living in the highlands for 18 months. The filmmakers tried to remain as neutral as they could (which would have been very difficult to do) as they followed the many strands and conflicts in the story.

Joe Leahy’s Neighbours captures the conflict between Joe’s modern business outlook and traditional tribal values of sharing wealth and resources and sets the scene for the third film in the series, Black Harvest (1992).

Joe Leahy’s Neighbours won many awards, including the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Documentary in 1989; the Australian Film Critics Circle prize for Best Documentary in 1989; Festival Cinéma du Réel in Paris, the Grand Prix; Society for Visual Anthropology Award of Excellence; Royal Anthropological Institute, Basil Wright Prize for Best Documentary; Earthwatch Award; and the Festival d’Aurillac, Grand Prix.

Joe Leahy’s Neighbours screened in many film festivals around the world before it was broadcast in Australia on the ABC in 1989 and then in many countries including the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Japan.

Notes by Pat Fiske

Education notes

The clip shows a village meeting of Ganiga people and members of a visiting clan discussing a bride price of pigs rather than of money. Male Ganiga speakers present the lower-than-expected bride price and say they cannot pay with money. The girl’s representatives say that they do not often see money, and so pigs are acceptable. The girl is asked to clearly indicate her wishes regarding the bride price and the boy. She says she wants to stay with the Ganiga. The footage includes women and children and features large tethered pigs very prominently. Subtitles are included.

Educational value points

• The bride price negotiations in the Papua New Guinea (PNG) Highlands reveal the importance of engaging in the affairs of the clan rather than earning cash income. The men’s role in public speaking and negotiating takes time and skill, and involvement in meetings is a cultural obligation, part of the work of the Ganiga. Such demanding social interaction means that few Ganiga work in the cash economy and so they have ‘no money’.

• The Ganiga are negotiating the bride price for a girl from another clan and the clip indicates that marriage is clan business. The choice of a marriage partner is rarely left to the individual. Women plant gardens and tend pigs, and so a hardworking wife is a valuable asset, but marriage is also important in establishing good alliances with other clans for exchange and war. A large bride price to the bride’s family will compensate them for their loss and raise their status.

• The negotiation of the bride price gives an example of the important male role of public speaking in PNG Highlander society. The discussion is robust and humorous with comments made about the large amount of talking being out of proportion to the price being offered. Speakers from both clans indicate they have listened by referring to the words of earlier speakers. The formal speeches will continue until an agreement is reached.

• The bride is shown in this clip as being able to decide whether the marriage negotiations will proceed. While the men are engaged in speeches the girl sits next to her family. She looks down shyly but when she is urged to state her wishes, she states them decisively. Such negotiations take place after time for meeting and courtship and it is usual for the girl to leave her home to go to the home of her prospective husband before the negotiations begin.

• The clip, from Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson’s 1988 film Joe Leahy’s Neighbours, illustrates the continuing traditional life of the Ganiga people who live around Joe Leahy’s coffee plantation in the PNG Highlands. The film explores issues of continuity and change, referring to bride prices in PNG involving cash. The filmmakers spent 18 months living in the Highlands and filming regularly. The subsequent film is an observational-style documentary.

• In this clip pigs are referred to as items of currency and often feature in the foreground of the footage. Pigs in the Highlands of PNG are very valuable. They are raised and cared for almost as part of the family and regarded as a measure of wealth. Pigs are traded, used to pay compensation for offences and given as gifts to establish and consolidate relationships. They are slaughtered and cooked in ground ovens for large gatherings on special occasions.

Education notes provided by The Learning Federation and Education Services Australia