Huli people

The Huli, 250,000 people of Hela Province in the Papua New Guinea highlands, are among the island's largest cultural groups, speaking Huli, Tok Pisin, neighbours' tongues and some English. Great wigmen with ochre wigs and painted faces, they farm sweet potato in drained wetlands, hunt possum, keep pigs as wealth and settle wars by compensation feasts. Bachelor cults, sacred groves and the dindi gamu earth rituals order highland life; gas flares of the LNG project now light the same valleys. Huli MPs, rugby stars and sing-sing dancers carry highland pride to Port Moresby and Brisbane, and the wig schools still teach boys to grow the human-hair wigs of manhood. Hela's 249,449 souls anchor the census count. Tok Pisin bridges Huli to every neighbour. English opens the schools and offices. Surrounding tongues fill the markets. Hela Province's name honours the Huli heartland. A quarter-million Huli make the highlands populous. Huli is spoken in every Hela home.