Attracted or Compelled to Work?

Papua New Guineans and mining have become synonymous with civil conflict and turmoil. Numerous works, mainly from the anthropological perspective, have documented the conflict-ridden industry and offered explanations for the development of community antagonism (see, eg, Filer 1990; Connell and Howitt 1991; Rumsey and Weiner 2001). However, the existing literature on mining is somewhat sparse when it comes to the participation of Papua New Guineans as employees in the mines. The major aim of this paper is to discuss local employment in Papua New Guinea mines. It does so by examining some of the challenges and conflicts that Papua New Guineans have confronted since their first con-tact with mining in the late 1800s as adventurers and assistants to their participation as full-fledged paid workers in the current period. A central theme of this paper is that, although they first embraced mining as an adventure, the inevitable imposition of a capitalistic mode of mining operation compelled them to render their labor for a wage. Like miners everywhere, this paper argues, many Papua New Guineans now view mining employment as “the only way ” rather than as one of many ways of making a living. Labor, Conflict, and Mining in Premodern Papua New Guinea Papua New Guineans have had contact with the international mining industry since the late 1800s. Colonial officials, planters, soldiers, and missionaries provided other major avenues of contact with westerners (West 1958; Waiko 1993, 34). However, early engagement of locals with independent expatriate miners took the form of casual laboring in iso-lated alluvial goldfields around the country. From about the late 1870s