The Indonesian Embassy
30 Great Peter Street
Westminster
London SW1P 2BU
Last month, John Carlile gave an excellent presentation about The Moni tribe who live in the remote highlands of Papua. His captivating stories, accompanied with interesting pictures, sparked lots of questions during the Q&A session. We received a lot of positive feedback about the presentation. To see pictures from this event, click here.
John Carlile is a geologist from Jersey in the Channel Islands who has spent the last 40 years or so exploring for gold in the Australasia-Pacific Region. Gold tends to occur in remote out of the way places and working in this environment has provided exposure to some spectacular terrain and many isolated communities of which the Moni are one.
In this session, John Carlile talked about the Moni Way. The Moni are a Melanesian Tribe of around 50,000 people made up of 75 clans who live in the remote highlands of Papua. They are the third largest tribe in the highlands after the Dani (250-300,000) and the Me (200-250,000) and their traditional lands straddle the rugged Sudirman dividing mountain range.
The first contact between the Moni and the outside world is thought to have been in the 1920’s which also marked the first introduction of metal. The Moni Way aims to describe the physical environment, customs, traditional way of life and the life cycle of the Moni. Started in 2003 and now after 16 years, The Moni Way is still a “work in progress”.