Ali island: Tail end of the Bismark Archipelago in the West Sepik
Written by Nancy Sullivan

Ali island looks and feels like it's drifted  away from the Siassi Group all the way up to the West Sepik. It sits across the mainland from Aitape and yet, culturally, it exists far away, connected to a complex of ideas and traditions out there in the Bismark Archipelago. Traditional trade links extend from this part of the north coast all the way to Lou Island in Manus Province and beyond to the Mathhias Group, as well as to Talasea and elsewhere in New Britian and New Ireland. It almost seems as though some long ago trading expedition from Bismark Archipelago brought this beautiful little south sea island to the West Sepik coast as a gift, and left it there. If so, this little pearl must have been exchanged for a priceless valuable, and still the West Sepik Province got the better end of the deal.

Ali is part of a cluster of island at the western tip of a long tail running off the curl of the Bismark Archipelago from West New Britian, the Siassi Islands, through KarKar, Manam, the Schoutons, Kairiru, and finally little Tumleo, Seleo, Angel and Ali Islands. But while the handful of islands just west of Wewak (Tarawai, Walis, Kairiru, Mushu, Karesau, Yuo and Raboin) all belong to mainland cultures, these westernmost islands are different. They're truly islanders, with their dances, language, social structure and even their physical appearance. Ali and its neighbors are living proof that some extensive interaction occured between the islanders off coast and another group of people ---an ancient people whom we now refer to Lapita, seafarers traveling fom China through the Philipppines, and finally throughout island Melanesia roughly 5000 years ago. One potshard of Lapita pottery has been found near Aitape, on what was probably an island in prehistoric times (according to Pamela Swadling in 'Sepik Prehistory,' 1990, Sepik Heritage, Lutkehaus et al eds., p. 76).

There is also evidence of 5000 year old obsidian trade networks between Lou Island in Manus, and the north coast west of Wewak, and between Lou and Mussan Island, in the St. Matthias Group, New Ireland Province, as well as between Lou and Talasea in New Britian, and other spots along the Archipelago and the Solomons. Trade also existed between New Britian and all the coastal islands from Manam and KarKar, Bagabag and Long Island, facilitated by the those world-class inter-island traders, the Siassi Islanders, who were virtually the Lutheran Shipping Agents of their day. Anything from pots, shells, salt and stone to languages, women and ideas was moved between all the northcoast islands by the Siassi islanders. And because the pots all bear the same distinctive 'Lapita' markings, we can trace these networks back to this migration of a single Asian cultural group.

But the Ali islanders have had many cultural forces shaping them. Their cockatoo feather and boat headdresses; white and red laplaps; cowry and trocihus shell ornaments are very much like West New Britian and Siassi peoples'. And they wear the same dogs' teeth decorations as the people in Manus. Yet the Ali language is the same as that spoken by the Aitape and Yakamul people, and their everyday dress and many of their carvings look Sepik. Theirs is a matrilineal system with small chiefs, like so many others in the Bismark Archipelago. And yet when you stand at their shoreline, you don't see New Ireland or the Solomons, instead you see the Sissano Lagoon--where, during the terrible tsunami, they suffered an inverse effect of the tidal wave. The massive tsumani created such a fierce undertow that the tide raced out hundreds of metres from the shoreline off Ali, like water rushing down the drain.

The Germans established a trading station on neighnoring Seleo in 1894, and government and mission plantations were set up along the coastal mainland. But it is generally assumed that the first modern contact with the outside world and Sepik peoples would have come from Malay bird-of-paradise hunters. G.W.L. Townsend, in his memoir, District Officer: from Untamed New Guinea to Lake Success, 1921-46 (1968:65) claims that "most of the plantations along the New Guinea north coast were made possible by means of the money obtained from the sale of the birds." Like so many of the north coast islands in the Sepik region, however, Ali islanders had more to do with the Catholic Church than any government officialdom or commerce, before Independence. It was the Society of Divine Word Mission that first established a church on Ali, and that church remains one of the most beautifully 'indigenized' works of structural decoration anywhere. They also established a ship building business which still exists today. Shelters all around the island shelter private boats up to 20 metres long in various stages of repair.

Islanders still get their water from sinkholes to an undergound water table. One path runs around the perimeter of the island slightly inland from the warm white sandy beaches. Houses here and there are cement, and on the ground, or else made on traditional planking on stilts, both types hedging bets against the twin dangers of cyclones and floods. Once you leave the water's edge the feeling of vulnerability falls away and you walk through ferile and long-established gardens of yams, pawpaw, bananas, galip, tulip, and all the best of island foods. Ali's people are as friendly as family to villagers, and the swimming, snorkeling and diving is world-class. The only possible problem with visiting Ali is pulling yourself away.