About 940 Pawaia people are based in the Pio-Tura Census Division. Estimated population density for the region is about 0.5 people per square kilometre. Total population figures for people of Pawaia ethnicity across the entire territory in three provinces are not available, though research suggests that there are between 4000 and 5000 people. There is said to be a population of Pawaia ethnic origin in Port Moresby (the capital of Papua New Guinea) though no recorded links are maintained with people of the Pio-Tura area.

	People in the Pio-Tura region practise a variety of activities to gain their subsistence, including the following:

• Sago cultivation and production;

• Swidden gardening;

• Cultivation of yielding trees and palms;

• Pig husbandry;

• Hunting and trapping of wild animals and birds;

• Fishing in rivers and small lakes;

• Collection of wild foods and materials in the forest.

Mobility is a key characteristic of Pawaia subsistence and culture. The variety of subsistence activities, combined with social factors of land and resource tenure and the seasonality of harvests from crops, gathering and hunting all influence the mobility of people across the land. Prior to the 1970’s, conflicts between groups were a further factor contributing to movement through the forest.

One of the reasons men move through the forest is to serve the family of their prospective or actual wives – either with their labour on the lands of the wife’s family, or by hunting and delivering meat procured from their own lands. Thus, what we refer to in English as ‘brideprice’ is not merely a transaction between two families when a man takes his wife, although exchanges do occur on this occasion; it is a rather a long-term relationship of exchange between social groups and kin networks.

It is difficult to generalise about social organisation and land tenure, but in brief, there are two principal levels of group membership within Pawaia ethnicity – larger groups, such as Haia and Pou, and smaller divisions within these groups. There does not appear to be a specific collective term in the vernacular for the larger groups, other than the general word ‘people’ [te e]. The smaller groups do have a collective term [dja], and it seems to be at this level that land has been divided and collective rights have arisen. According to local laws, it seems that important decisions were made customarily with the consensus of all members of these smaller groups.

I have avoided using the word ‘clan’: its meaning and definition is as ambiguous in English as it is in Tok Pisin, and it is generally an unhelpful term when talking about Pawaia social life and land and resource use. When Pawaia people respond to others speaking in Tok Pisin, they use the term ‘klan’ interchangeably to refer to both levels of group. ‘Development’ workers or other outsiders who might have no knowledge of Pawaia history and custom can have no means of knowing which level of social organisation is being referred to if they use the term ‘clan’.

Over 750 people have a base in Haia village today, though such large numbers never gather there at any one time. The relatively large congregation of houses near the airstrip is due to the presence of the New Tribes mission whose members negotiated to locate there in 1973 and subsequently built an airstrip with local people. There are skeletal health and education services in Haia, which attract people when needs and availability arise simultaneously.

With the approval of people of the landholding groups of Haia and Pou, the missionaries encouraged Pawaia people of the region to settle in Haia and hear Christian teachings. People of 12 larger landholding groups have bases in the village, on the land of the 2 groups mentioned. This has had a further impact on the shaping of an already distinctive subsistence dynamic. People who have a base in Haia but have no land rights have usually been granted rights to make small gardens on the land of Haia and Pou people. Yet the lands they use to plant and harvest sago, or to plant substantial gardens, or to hunt – in short, their own ancestral lands - may be further away. So most people move across the land, between a range of temporary or more permanent dwellings and shelters constructed to carry out a variety of activities which meet cultural and subsistence needs and obligations.