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Home > Featured Stories > International Connections > August 2007 > All That Glitters Isn't GoldAll that Glitters Isn't Gold
Papua New Guinea men pan for gold in the Porgera Valley wasteland behind the processing plant.
Diamonds may be forever, but gold is forever changing the lives, land, and longevity of the Ipili, an indigenous people in highlands Papua New Guinea. Jerry Jacka, assistant professor of anthropology at North Carolina State University, is researching the impacts of multinational gold mining on the subsistence gardeners' lives, who just happen to have one of the world's largest goldmines on their homeland. The changes that have occurred since his first trip to the country in 1998 for his doctoral research have him concerned—and keep him going back.
As the most culturally diverse region on the planet, Papua New Guinea is a fascinating place for an anthropologist to work. Approximately one-sixth of all the world's languages are spoken there. And since most of the people were isolated from the outside world until after World War II, says Jacka, it offers an excellent opportunity to study cultural change among people only recently engaged with the global economic system.
Jacka says the impact of globalizing forces and mining is destroying the environmental and social fabric of the Papua New Guinea highlanders. His research shows that globalization is also corrupting the languages of the Ipili. And with a waste dump that can be seen from Google Earth, chemical and environmental damage runs rampant in the valley. Waste rock containing cyanide, heavy metals, and arsenic, along with traces of remaining gold, is dumped into the Porgera River valley.
Jacka is watching and recording it all. When his research first brought him to Papua New Guinea, Jacka thought he would one day study the end of mining in the valley. Now, he's certain that won't happen. "Each time I go, a new mountain is gone."
Jacka wants to make the mining companies aware of the cultural and cosmological implications their activities have on the Ipili. Jacka uses his work to emphasize with his students that the decisions we make have global ramifications. "Our cultural desires have profound impacts. When I teach, I want to impart that gold—this thing we've determined has so much cultural value that it drives our economic system—was for centuries just a rock on the ground to the Ipili. They saw it and left it there. Now we have this remote valley in central Papua New Guinea that has exploded with human desires because of the things we hold culturally valuable in this case, gold jewelry."