Up and down through a flat land : Abawiri (Fuau) travel stories

Abawiri, also known as Fuau, is a language spoken by a small group of people in the northern lowlands of Papua, Indonesia. Abawiri speakers were formerly nomadic and continue to live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle in the flat, swampy lowlands they call home. This volume presents 26 narratives told by Abawiri speakers, totaling over 16,000 words, that have been transcribed, translated into English, and interlinearized. Each text is presented here in both full interlinear and paragraph-by-paragraph parallel formats, along with an introduction that provides relevant ethnographic and sociocultural information. The narratives cover a wide variety of topics, but most include travel. Because of the preponderance of vertically oriented language in these narratives about travel through a flat landscape, a chapter is included that discusses the relationship between the language used for location and direction and the landscape of the region.