ABSTRACT
In 1973, as an Australian Catholic missionary, I first went to Papua New Guinea. My encounters there with indigenous religious traditions and with Melanesian styles of Christianity have influenced my subsequent thinking about religion and, indeed, my thinking about thinking.1 Today, as a historian of religions, I spend most of my time teaching undergraduates at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York. Traditional Melanesia and an American college classroom provide the frameworks within which I think about indigenous traditions and modernity. I shall begin by explaining my current job, which, no doubt, bears similarities to the work of many who are concerned with the interaction of indigenous wisdom and modern knowledge. Then, I shall describe traditional ways of knowing among the Kewa and Huli of the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, focusing in particular on Kewa sky people and ancestors, and on Huli sacred geography. From there I shall reflect on the colonial incursion, the coming of Christianity to Papua New Guinea, and the changes in consciousness that it has occasioned. Finally, I shall return to the American classroom where, I suggest, indigenous and modern approaches to knowledge can complement each other and where there is need to develop appropriate pedagogies for teaching about indigenous traditions.
