ABSTRACT
In this chapter the author describes her experience working as an ethnomusicologist in partnership with a multinational mining company in the Lihir Islands, Papua New Guinea. Taking as a case in point a decade-long project documenting the sung narratives of the Islands known as pil, which culminated in the publication of the book Pil: Ancestral Stories of the Lihir Islands (Institute for Papua New Guinea Studies 2018) and a book launch celebration in September 2019, the author examines the role of the mining company in supporting Lihir cultural heritage and what this engagement means for Lihir people. Ultimately the author concludes that the ethical dilemma in this complex relationship is less about engaging with a mining company and more about the personal, and global, decisions made in maintaining one’s work and research relationships as individual lives and the wider world change.
