Ongka’s Big Moka: The Kawelka of Papua New Guinea

(60 min.) 1974

Produced and Directed: Charlie Nairn

Anthropologist: Andrew Strathern.

Ongka, an endearing and charismatic tribal leader of the Kawelka tribe of highland New Guinea, has spent five years using all his skills as an orator and negotiator to amass the 600 pigs and assorted other valuables — including a motorbike— which he will give away in a festive ceremony, a moka. In highland society, status is earned by giving things away rather than acquiring them, and a moka is the single-most important ceremony. Ongka’s motives in planning his big moka are to gain influence over rivals and to win a sort of immortality for himself and his tribe in a changing world. “I decided, well, if the old ways must go, let’s at least do something as our last big show.” But things don’t go as planned, and Ongka’s painstaking preparations are threatened by accusations of sorcery and even the threat of war.