Chambri Culture

Chambri (Tchambuli) Culture

Location: Chambri Lakes which is shallow, swampy water region in the East Sepik province of Papua New Guinea.

Population: There are three Chambri villages: Indingai, Wombun, and Kilimbit, that have a population of about 2,900 people combined (Gewertz, 1977).

Livin’ Life: Primarily speaking, the Chambri people live in villages and originally started are a large hunter-gatherer fishing community. They have now transitioned to a culture that relies on trading and bartering. A large part of their diet is fish, as fishing is still a trademark of their tribal culture and is used as one of their primary trading items (Gewertz, 1978).

Margaret Mead did extensive research on the Chabri for her study Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. She compared the gender roles she observed amongst the Tchambuli, the Arapesh, and the Mundugamor for her study. Her work and findings of the Chambuli contributed to her idea that gender roles vary across cultures, due to the theory that gender is socially constructed.

Aspects of Culture:

Language: The Chambri people speak the Chambri language

Religion: The Chambri people have considered themselves devout Catholics, however they also believe that power is related to their ancestors. Their religious practices has to do with appreciating or embodying the power of their ancestors through secretive ancestral names that connect them to the dead. Additionally, they believe that power sources come from items like stones, trees, and crocodiles (Everyculture.com, 2019). Crocodiles are especially important because it is believed that the Chambri people descended from crocodiles that migrated from the Sepik River. In fact, there is an initiation ritual among men that respects this background. In early adulthood, young men live separately from their tribe for about six weeks before the ritual ceremony which consists of tribal elders making scarification marks along men’s backs and buttocks. Then, smoke and tea tree oil is rubbed into their scars not only in order to clean them out, but also to make sure that the scars will heal in a raised fashion. The finished result? Skin that is akin to that of a crocodile(https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/08/12/article-2722740-2079339200000578-777_634x868.jpg) (Zegrahm Expeditions, 2019).

(click on the hyperlink for pictures on body modification!)

Family practices: In a typical Chambri family, the women are usually the breadwinners of the household, often out to hunt or trade with other people. The men usually attend to the children and help out around the house. Brothers and sisters as well as mothers and fathers try to help each other out to maintain a balance between the roles. For example, brothers request their sister’s council on political matters and sisters turn to their brothers to help them with rearing of future children. This also helps out the brother because his nephew will later on help him with political decisions. Brothers and sisters are not always biological in the Chambri culture. In a clan, if there is a loss that occurs, people will act as brothers or sisters in support of that person and their family (Everyculture.com, 2019).

Economic practices: Through modernization, the Chambri people’s way of trading and bartering for goods between villages is growing significantly less stable, however they still continue these practices today (Gewertz, 1978).

Political practices: As for political practices, it is extremely rare to see women involved in the role of politics. Men usually take on this role within the community. So, even though much of the women are the main providers in terms of food and production, they do not have much control over the fruits of their labor (Gewertz, 1977).

Marriage: In Chambri culture, neither the males or females have the upper hand in the marriage, meaning that they are viewed as equals. Men typically plan the marriage as an arranged one, however, there are marriages (https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/ae.1981.8.1.02a00060) that are not arranged too, but this is not as common (Lutkehaus, 1988). Women are allowed to have a say as to who they marry, and that discussion is typically held with their male family members. Bride price, or a gift of money or other materials that is given from the groom to the bride’s family, exists within the Chambri people. Shells are the most used bartering item since they stand for various aspects of women’s health and are supposed to bring good fortune (ERRINGTON and GEWERTZ, 1985).

(click on the hyperlink for more on different types of marriages!)

Gender Studies and Norms: Women are considered to be the “power figures” in the community. They are perceived to be more dominant and managerial as opposed to the males in the community who are viewed as more sentimental and emotional. Women are the main providers of food and are the ones that facilitate trade for other food or supplies. This mainly happens between the exchange of fish for sago, which is starch from palm trees. However, this does not mean that the men are looked down upon or are less important in any way. Typically, men in Chambri culture are more involved with the politics within the tribe. Men and women in the Chambri culture are not submissive towards each other, and they view each other as equals in their society. This is pretty much the reversal of what is typically seen in Western cultures, where the men hold much of the power and the women do not. (ERRINGTON and GEWERTZ, 1985).

Photo Gallery

Learn More About…

….Margaret Mead’s Research on the Chambri people and gender roles https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/mead/field-sepik.html

https://faculty.washington.edu/stevehar/Temperament.pdf

….Spiritual Scarification!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJDOh3VSoxQ

….Septik River Basin!

https://sacredland.org/sepik-river-basin-papua-new-guinea/

….Social Change and Permeability!

https://www.jstor.org/stable/644531?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

….Chambri Art!

https://www.cairn.info/revue-journal-de-la-societe-des-oceanistes-2018-1-page-35.htm#

Works Cited

Cheer, Louise. 2014. "Agonising rites of the crocmen: Boys are cut so that the scars look like crocodile scales in tribal initiation into manhood." DailyMail: Australia. Accessed December 10, 2020 (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2722740/The-ancient-initiation-ritual-scars-boys-look-like-crocodiles.html).

ERRINGTON, F. and GEWERTZ, D. (1985). the chief of the Chambri: social change and cultural permeability among a New Guinea people. American Ethnologist, 12(3), pp.442-454.

Gewertz, D. (1977). The Politics of Affinal Exchange: Chambri as a Client Market. Ethnology, 16(3), p.285.

Gewertz, D. (1978). The Myth of the Blood-Men: An Explanation of Chambri Warfare. Journal of Anthropological Research, 34(4), pp.577-588.

GEWERTZ, D. (2019). a historical reconsideration of female dominance among the Chambrl of Papua New Guinea.

Lutkehaus, N. (1988). : Cultural Alternatives and a Feminist Anthropology: An Analysis of Culturally Constructed Gender Interests in Papua New Guinea . Frederick Errington, Deborah Gewertz. American Anthropologist, 90(3), pp.731-732.

Zegrahm Expeditions. (2019). Papua New Guinea Culture: An Introduction to Ancient Traditions. online? Available at: https://www.zegrahm.com/blog/papua-new-guinea-culture-introduction-ancient-traditions Accessed 26 Sep. 2019?.

Everyculture.com. (2019). Religion and expressive culture - Chambri. online? Available at: https://www.everyculture.com/Oceania/Chambri-Religion-and-Expressive-Culture.html#ixzz60eByt6I8 Accessed 26 Sep. 2019?.