Duk-Duk
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Duk-Duk is a secret society, part of the traditional culture of the Tolai people of the Rabaul area of New Britain, the largest island in the Bismarck Archipelago of Papua New Guinea, in the South Pacific.
[edit] Description
The society has religious and political as well as social objectives. It represents a rough sort of law and order through its presiding spirit Duk-Duk, a mysterious figure dressed in leaves to its waist, with a helmet like a gigantic candle-extinguisher made of network. Women and children were forbidden to look at this figure.
The Dukduk society uses male duk duk and female tubuan masks. Both types are cone-shaped and are constructed of cane and fibre, with short, bushy capes of leaves. Traditionally the duk duk was taller than the tubuan and was faceless. The tubuan had circular eyes and a crescent-shaped mouth painted on a dark background.
Only males could belong to Duk-Duk, the entrance fees (in dewarra, small cowrie shells strung on strips of cane) of which varied, often 50 to 100 fathoms.
The Duk-Duk can be seen as a piece of imposture, by which the older natives play upon the superstitions of the younger to secure the food they can no longer earn arrives regularly in a boat at night with the new moon, and receives the offerings of the natives. Women, who are entitled in New Britain to their own earnings and work harder than men, were the special victims of Duk-Duk, who levied blackmail upon them if they are about during its visits, generally timed to coincide with the hours at which the women are out in the fields and therefore cannot help seeing the figure.
The society has its secret signs and ritual, and festivals at which the presence of a stranger would have meant his death. Duk-Duk only appeared with the full moon.
Justice was executed, fines extorted, taboos, feasts, taxes and all tribal matters are arranged by the Duk-Duk members, wearing hideous masks or chalk their faces. In carrying out punishments, they were allowed to burn houses and even kill people.
The society is much discredited and its practice dying out since about a century, but Duk-Duk dancers are now featured as tourist attractions.
[edit] Sources and References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
- This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.
- Duk-Duk and other Customs or Forms of Expression of the Melanesians Intellectual Life, by Graf von Pfeil in "Journal of Anthropology"
- H. Romilly, The Western Pacific and New Guinea (London, 1886)pp 27-33
