By Paige West and John Aini
A cultural and environmental anthropologist by training, Paige West, PhD, EC 50’21, is the Claire Tow Professor of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University and a Guggenheim Fellow. Since the late 1990s, her research and teaching have focused on the relationships between Indigenous ecological knowledge, environmental conservation, and socio-political transformation in Oceania, particularly in Papua New Guinea, where she has conducted more than 110 months of field-based research since 1997.
Chief John Aini, EC 50 ’22 is a Maimai in the Malangan culture, an Ainpidik in the Tumbuan Society, and a Merengen from his own Tungak culture. He has worked as a community-based resource management expert and Lecturer at the National Fisheries College of Papua New Guinea.
When you arrive on the shores of New Ireland, the first thing you notice is the quiet. It’s not an empty silence but a layered one—the kind that carries memory. The kind that tells you this land, this reef, this breeze, all remember. Here, the tide speaks to stone fish traps half-buried in coral rubble. Mangroves’ roots run deep, alongside stories passed from grandmother to granddaughter. The sea has a memory, and so do the people who live along its edge.
This is a story about that memory. About what happens when it’s honored, tended, and brought into the present. It’s about environmental conservation, yes—but not the kind with fences and acronyms. This is conservation as kinship. As the sacred obligation to care for what cares for you. This is the story of Ailan Awareness, an Indigenous organization in New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. And it’s the story of the people, New Irelanders, and others, who are weaving the sacred back into the everyday—one reef, one ritual, one classroom at a time.
New Ireland is long, slender island stretched like a canoe across the ocean. To the west lies Lovongai Island—mountainous, river-threaded, and lined with mangroves and coral reefs. These are not just landscapes. They are lifescapes: places saturated with ancestral presence, ecological knowledge, and stories that live in the names of fish, the rhythm of tides, and the direction of the wind. In the past, life here was guided by a system that didn’t separate the spiritual from the ecological or the social from the legal. Everything was connected. There were songs for planting, rituals for fishing, and stories that taught you how to listen to the reef.
However, that balance has since been disrupted—first by colonialism, then by missionary prohibitions, and, subsequently, by the accelerating pressures of a global economy. Slowly, painfully, the integrated system that held land and sea together began to fray.
By the early 1990s, many communities across New Ireland were witnessing the signs: fish stocks thinning, youth losing touch with ancestral languages, and sacred sites falling silent. In response, a group of young New Irelanders, including one of the coauthors of this story, came together to form Ailan Awareness with a vision for healing the relationships that colonialism tried to sever. Not just ecological relationships, but cultural ones as well. Spiritual ones. Intergenerational ones. While they were coming together, a young anthropologist from the United States, the other coauthor, was beginning to work in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, witnessing firsthand how conservation projects created by outsiders often failed to grasp the sacred.
When we met in 2007, our first encounter was not spectacular—it happened in a parking lot. But in that unlikely place, we started a conversation about listening and conservation. Despite our differences, we realized that we shared a vision for what Indigenous-led conservation could look like. So, in 2008, we decided to collaborate on a suite of projects in New Ireland, work that has since expanded across 16 communities.
To understand conservation in New Ireland, you must understand the islands themselves. New Ireland is not a place that reveals itself all at once. It unfolds gradually, like the way elders tell a story—starting with the land, winding through history, and arriving at the present with a quiet, unshakable logic. In the province, the islands rise steeply from the shore, and rivers wind from mountain to sea. Villages rest close to the coast, nestled where the forest meets the reef. Life here has always moved between land and sea. Gardens feed the body, but the reef is where protein and stories are gathered. It is also where spirits dwell. This land has been shaped by time and weather, yes—but also by memory. Fish traps built generations ago still rest beneath the waves. Mangrove channels carved by canoes still carry silt and song. Place names hold instructions. A rock might be where an ancestor slept. A lagoon might be where knowledge is tested. The entire island is a living map, and for those who know how to read it, every bend in the river or shift in the current carries meaning.
But not all memory is peaceful. Colonization brought violence to this place—not always in loud ways, but in the quieter violence of erasure. Missionaries silenced songs. Administrators redrew land boundaries. A cash economy emerged, replacing reciprocity with transactions. What had been sacred became labeled “superstition.” What had been governance was called “custom” and sidelined. Still, the knowledge never disappeared.
In New Ireland, knowledge is something you carry and tend to, even if others don’t see it as “scientific.”
Today at Ailan Awareness, knowledge is not divided into “traditional” and “scientific.” It’s not measured only by data or degrees. It lives in stories, ceremonies, tidal rhythms, and the quiet attention of reef walks at dawn. It resides in what some scholars refer to as “biocultural diversity.”
That knowledge is helping us revitalize Vala—a practice that governs when and how communities interact with their environment. Vala is both ritual and rule. A reef under Vala is not just closed—it is sacred. It is under the protection of spirits and community agreement. And to break a Vala is to fracture more than a rule—it is to wound a relationship. That knowledge is also why we founded the Ranguva Solwara Skul—not a school in the Western sense, but an epistemic gathering place. A place where elders teach youth how to read the reef, how to chant for the rain, and how to know the wind by its scent. Where spiritual practice and ecological practice are the same thing, these practices are alive, evolving, and shaped by dialogue between elders and youth, between memory and change. The shape of knowledge in New Ireland bends like the mangrove, adapting while holding firm.
Ask anyone who has witnessed a Vala ceremony, and they’ll tell you—it isn’t just about rules. It’s about rhythm. A reef doesn’t close because someone says so. It closes because a death has occurred, a spirit needs time, or the community has decided that the sea needs to rest. Vala is part of a more extended conversation—between people and fish, between ancestors and tides. Reviving the practice of Vala has been a central focus of Ailan Awareness’s work. In many villages, the tradition had gone dormant—not because it was forgotten, but because it had become fragile under the pressures of change. So, we did not reintroduce Vala by declaring new rules. We began by sitting with elders and asking them to speak about the times when the reefs still sang.
Slowly, stories emerged. Not just about abundance but about responsibility. About what it meant to know when to take and when to leave. About the taboos that once protected spawning seasons and sacred reef points. These conversations grew into gatherings. And from those gatherings came action. In one village, elders closed a reef for six months in honor of a clan leader who had passed. No fishing. No walking. No disturbance. During that time, they told stories. They drummed. They watched. And when the reef reopened, the fish had returned. But more than that, the community had changed. Children were now asked why certain areas were sacred. Young men stood quietly during ceremony. Something intangible had been restored.
Vala isn’t fixed. In today’s world, it adapts. Some communities shorten closures to match school calendars. Others include women as Vala stewards, recognizing their deep intertidal knowledge. These are not compromises—they are continuities. They reflect the fact that Vala is not about the past. It’s about the future we want to be worthy of.
The Ranguva Solwara Skul doesn’t have uniforms or bells. What it has is presence—a clearing in the trees, a stretch of reef, a firepit, a drum, a circle of elders, and the sound of stories rising like smoke. The Skul was born out of a question: How do we teach in a way that remembers? That question shaped everything. The Skul is where conservation isn’t explained; it’s enacted. Where knowledge doesn’t sit in books; it sits in the eyes of the people around you. One morning, girls gather at the tide line to learn the old ways of harvesting shellfish. An elder shows them which shells sing when they’re touched. Another morning, a group of boys follows a grandfather along the reef crest, learning how to read wave color to predict storms. Lessons are held in walking, in silence, in return. There are no grades—only responsibility.
The Skul also nurtures inquiry. Young people ask questions not just about how things were done but why. Why do we open the reef after a funeral? Why are some plants used in offerings and not others? This curiosity isn’t discouraged—it’s honored. It’s seen as a sign that the teachings are alive. Elders come not just to speak but to be witnessed. Their authority isn’t enforced—it’s embodied. And youth don’t memorize facts—they apprentice into ways of seeing, ways of listening. The Skul is a refuge, a spark, a promise. Above all, it is a ceremony that breathes new life into tradition, memory, and futurity.
To walk through a New Ireland village is to walk through a living archive. Each path has a story. Each tree has a name that means more than its species. And each reef carries a history that belongs not just to people but to spirits, tides, and time. Biocultural diversity here is not a concept. It’s a way of being. It lives in the way a grandmother tells her grandson which fish are kin. In this way, a father teaches his daughter to whisper before harvesting sea cucumber. It’s in the languages spoken, the ceremonies remembered, and the foods that only appear when certain stars rise.
Through our work, we have helped communities not just protect but remember these connections. In one village, community members mapped their land—not with GPS coordinates, but with stories. “This is where the eels live,” they said. “This is where the spirit rests.” The map that emerged was not one of boundaries but of belonging. Women’s knowledge has been especially central. Their stories of intertidal zones, shellfish cycles, and lunar tides have enriched conservation efforts in ways that data alone never could. Youth now record these stories, and in doing so, they ensure that biocultural diversity is not a relic—it’s a practice.
Every act of remembering—of planting a tree, of preparing food in the old way, of using the right word for the wind—is an act of conservation. It’s a way of saying: we are still here. And we remember how to live well.
If you ask people in New Ireland what conservation means, you might not hear the word “biodiversity,” but you will hear “respect,” “responsibility,” and “Don’t take more than you need.” Conservation here isn’t about setting land aside or cutting off access to reefs —it’s about setting relationships right. It’s not managed by strangers in uniforms but by grandmothers, uncles, clan leaders, and children. It’s not a strategy. It’s a story you live inside. The work of Ailan Awareness has never been about replacing one system with another. It’s about listening to what already exists and helping it breathe again. It’s about honoring the authority of elders, the curiosity of youth, and the sacredness of land and sea.
This way of doing conservation doesn’t always fit neatly into funding frameworks. It resists measurement. It doesn’t rush. But it endures. Because it is woven from the strongest fibers: memory, kinship, ceremony, and care.
In a time of global environmental crisis, the world is looking for solutions. But maybe the most important solutions are not new. Perhaps they are ancient. Maybe they are rooted in stories like these. And maybe, just possibly, conservation’s future will be shaped not in boardrooms or labs but in places like Lovongai—where the reef meets the ancestors, and the tide brings the stories home.
The tide doesn’t stop moving just because we stop to listen. It carries stories forward, washing over stone fish traps and mangrove roots, brushing against the ankles of children. It moves with the moon, and with it, so does memory. For us, the work of conservation is never finished. It is mended, tended, and passed along. It is spoken in prayer, walked in silence, and held in the calloused hands of those who still know which stars rise with which fish. The sea is still generous, but she listens more closely now, waiting to see who remembers how to ask. For the people we work with, the future is not a destination. It is a rhythm. One that beats in the drum circles at the Skul, in the laughter of youth returning home, in the soft breath of mangroves swaying at dusk. The future, like the past, lives in relation. This story—of reefs and rituals, of ancestors and adaptation—is not just a New Ireland story. It is an invitation. To conservationists, to scholars, to funders, to those who have forgotten how to listen: come sit with us. Come walk the reef. Come remember what it means to belong. Because, in the end, the work is not just about saving Nature. It is about returning to the relationships that make life sacred.
