What did it mean to be Lihirian? This was the question that emerged most strongly for me during my fieldwork in Lihir. Life on Mahur continually turned on a number of key values: of respect (sio) for leaders, for relatives, for adults. Work or duty (pniez) was considered to be morally virtuous, and the proper basis for all gains of status and capital. Finally, nurturance (pniari, owo, ertnin) of children, visitors, pigs and gardens and its reciprocation through feasting was a constitutive component of social life. Christianity promoted love (leimuli) as core to families and social relationships. These key values promote the ideals of relational conduct in Lihir, ideals that fit well with relational personhood as the root metaphor of Melanesian sociality.

Yet as I have shown throughout this book, the ideals of moral relational conduct are often not met. Persons in Lihir have a sense of core self, of personality, and often act with themselves in mind. This leads to conflict and to charges of selfishness or greed, and censure of movement in the case of piot. Despite such conflict, people continue to practice autonomy, while others assert their relational ties through the medium of complaint and criticism.

This view of relationships requires a view of the person as an active subject, and this was my experience of persons in Lihir.