Dr. Simet congratulates Tolai tabu exchange facility

The National Cultural Commission Executive Director Dr. Jacob Simet has congratulated the Governor of East New Britain and the people of the Balanatan-man Local Level Government for the launching of the Tolai Tabu exchange facility. Dr. Simet said for almost 25 years now the Tolais have been expressing concern about the need for some kind of formal recognition of tabu in East New Britain, due to its importance in Tolai culture and economic activities. Dr. Simet did his doctoral thesis on “tabu” in the beginning of the 1980s, at the Australian National University in Canberra. He did research for this thesis in Rabaul and also through library research. In this process, Dr. Simet compared tabu to other media of exchanges in Africa, South-East Asia and the Pacific.

Part of his findings was that tabu was one of a very few indigenous media of exchange, which have survived in these three regions.
Of all the different media of exchange in these three regions, “tabu” stand apart from other traditional media of exchange was that it did not and has not devalued after the introduction of modern currencies. This is due to the system of usage of tabu in both
ceremonial/ritual and commercial exchange and which involves a banking-type system which puts large volumes of tabu into reserves at any given point in time. Dr. Simet wishes the people of Balantan Local Level Government and the East New Britain Provincial
Government, well in their endeavours to formalise tabu in the Province.