Exploring Buai as a pedagogical knowledge system for teaching and learning creativity amongst the Tolai of Papua New Guinea.

Abstract

The decolonisation of Papua New Guinea’s art and culture education system is an urgent concern, as it currently pursues a western pedagogical structure for teaching dance and creativity. This study therefore examines the educational significance of the Buai pedagogical practice of the Tolai people of East New Britain. This presents an illustration of how indigenous philosophies, epistemologies, ontologies, methodologies and pedagogies can foster the learning, understanding and knowing of creativity: a holistic educational endeavour that has existed for generations and beyond formal education contexts. My research on the Buai revealed the significance of contextualising creativity as an indigenous pedagogical learning process for new artistic expressions that are integral to the Tolai artistic and cultural life. In doing so, I address the following research question: How does the Buai pedagogical knowledge system foster indigenous creativity and learning amongst the Tolai of Papua New Guinea? Through a phenomenological approach I draw on the experiences of Tena Buai and Buai initiates’ lived experience of their Buai creative practice, employing Pacific indigenous research processes towards the development of a relevant research method appropriate to the Tolai people. This has revealed that the Buai is a complex, indigenous knowledge system that has a pedagogical structure for sustaining the learning of creativity and new dance practices. It evidences that such indigenous systems are innovative and evolve with time. They not only preserve past and ancestral traditions but embrace, adapt, create and respond to the new. This study of indigenous pedagogies challenges perceptions in western anthropological discourse of cultural transmission in indigenous cultures as static, uncreative and simply focused on cultural preservation. In doing so, I address a literary gap in art and education scholarship which marginalises indigenous knowledge and practices and does not recognise them as pedagogical learning systems that generate creativity and new dance practices. This might allow indigenous art and non-formal education systems to be more effectively acknowledged, theorised, supported and valued across the world and within their communities of practice.