Exhibition themes Yuat River

The Yuat River is a fast-flowing southern tributary of the Sepik. It has high banks giving way to grasslands and rainforest bordered by swamps to the east and west. Along the lower and middle region of the Yuat River are the Biwat and related Bun people, who live in small communities stretching over a handful of villages mainly situated on the banks of the Yuat. Central to Biwat religious beliefs was the great ancestral mother crocodile spirit Ashin, the creator of everything.

The Biwat were traders in tobacco, betel nut and coconut to the Maramba and Mekmek people in the west, to the Angoram on the main course of the Sepik River, the Yaul who live in swamplands to the east, and upriver to the Miyak people. The Biwat also imported and exported magic and associated objects. Unlike other Sepik communities, there were no permanent ceremonial houses and all ritual objects were kept in their owner’s homes. Art from the Yuat River is distinctive: according to anthropologist Margaret Mead male babies born with the umbilical cord twisted around their throats were destined to become carving artists.

By 1929 the main area of the Yuat River was under Government control through the work of the kiaps (patrol officers).