ABSTRACT
This chapter stands a dispute, an episode of conflict talk, which takes place within the framework of a mediation among the Warn people of the East Sepik Province (ESP) of Papua New Guinea (PNG). The Warn form an ethnic and linguistic group in the southern foothills of the Torricelli Mountains in the ESP of PNG. The experience of colonialism and postcolonialism over the last roughly seventy years has changed the way of life among the Warn in many significant ways. Although conflict resolution through talking also belonged to the traditional means of managing tensions in Warn culture, mediations in their present form are a modern institution and are associated strongly with the concept of komuniti. In the course of the dispute they at times reveal knowledge that would have the quality of well-guarded secrets in traditional Warn society.
