Free The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? by Jared Diamond

Gideon talked to the senior member of his staff, an older New Guinean named Yaghean, who was a native of a different district but was experienced in New Guinea compensation negotiations. Yaghean offered to handle the negotiations. On the following day (day 3) Gideon convened a staff meeting of his company to discuss how to proceed. Everybody’s main fear was that the extended family of the dead boy (his more distant relatives and clanspeople) might prove violent, even though the father had given assurance that the immediate family would cause no trouble. Encouraged by Peti’s calm behavior during their two encounters, Gideon’s first inclination was to go straight to the lowlander settlement himself, to seek out Billy’s family, to “say sorry” (formally apologize), and to attempt to defuse the threat from the extended family. But Yaghean insisted that Gideon should not do this: “If you yourself, Gideon, go there too soon, I’m concerned that the extended family and the whole lowlander community may still have hot tempers. We should instead go through the proper compensation process. We’ll send an emissary, and that will be me. I’ll talk to the councilor for the ward that includes the lowlander settlement, and he in turn will talk to the lowlander community. Both he and I know how the compensationprocess should proceed. Only after the process has been completed can you and your staff have a say-sorry [
tok-sori
in Tok Pisin] ceremony with the family.”
    Yaghean went to speak to the councilor, who arranged for the next day (day 4) a meeting involving Yaghean, the councilor, Billy’s family, and the extended clan. Gideon has little knowledge of what went on at that meeting, other than Yaghean’s report that they talked at length about how to handle the issue, that the family itself had no intention to resort to violence, but that some men in the settlement felt strongly for Billy and were still stirred up. Yaghean told Gideon that he should buy more food for the compensation ceremony and funeral, and that agreement had been reached on a compensation payment of 1,000 kina (equivalent to about $300) from Gideon’s company to the family. (The kina is the national currency of Papua New Guinea.)
    The compensation ceremony itself took place on the following day, day 5, with formal and structured arrangements. It began with Gideon, Yaghean, and the rest of the office staff except for Malo driving in the company car into the lowlander settlement. They parked the car, walked through the settlement, and entered the yard behind Billy’s family’s house. Traditional New Guinea ceremonies of mourning take place under some kind of shelter, to cover the mourners’ heads; in this case the shelter that the family set up was a tarpaulin, under which everyone—the family and the visitors—was to gather. When the visitors came in, one of the dead boy’s uncles pointed out to them their place to sit and motioned the family to other seats.
    The ceremony began with an uncle speaking, to thank the visitors for coming, and to say how sad it was that Billy had died. Then Gideon, Yaghean, and other office staff talked. In describing the event to me, Gideon explained, “It felt awful, just awful, to have to give that talk. I was crying. At that time, I, too, had young children. I told the family that I was trying to imagine their level of grief. I said that I was trying to grasp it by supposing the accident to have happened instead to my own son. Their grief must have been unimaginable. I told them that the food and the money that I was giving them were nothing, mere rubbish, compared to the life of their child.”
    Gideon went on to tell me, “Next came the talk of Billy’s father, Peti. His words were very simple. He was in tears. He acknowledged that Billy’sdeath was an accident, and not due to negligence on our part. He thanked us for being there, and said that his people wouldn’t make any problems for us. Then he talked