Papua New Guinea (PNG) is a country composed of thousands of tribes, clans, cultures and customs, with well over a hundred languages and totemic groupings spread sparsely across its lands (Bonney 1986: 2) (see Map A). Today the country has a total population of four million people (NSO 1991). Before colonisation, Papua New Guinea’s indigenous settlement patterns and social organisation reflected the fragmented nature of the country’s environment, its isolation from the eastern and western centres of civilisation, and the needs of small-scale subsistence economies. Over thousands of years, Melanesian societies have been too diverse for any particular area or group to typify the country’s culture or to maintain a dominant role within government. Deviance, regulatory mechanisms and methods used by each tribe or cultural group to resolve disputes, varied according to the community’s culture and customs. At the time of colonisation the indigenous people were artificially united in one nation-state. With the introduction of Western social, political, economic and judicial systems, they were forced to live under alien dispute resolution procedures and to accept an imposed Western system of sanctions, which overlaid or supplemented the customary dispute resolution procedures. Since colonisation, a Western legal system of sanctions has been imposed on Papua New Guineans in which the colonialists have overlooked traditional, unwritten customary systems.

Thesis (Ph.D.) Dept. of Human Physiology, University of Adelaide, 1982. / Typescript (photocopy).

Thesis (D.Sc.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Environmental Biology, 2002. / Vol. [2] comprises 6 reprints of published monographs in box folder; but numbered within the publications submitted listing (90 items), and within the 3 categories identified; at the beginning of vol. 1. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Oregon State University, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 359-373).

Thesis (J.C.L.)--Catholic University of America, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 69-75).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri--Columbia, 1997. / "December 1997." Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (l. 176-196). Also available on the Internet.

Zugl.: Frankfurt (Main), Univ., Diss., 2007

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri--Columbia, 1997. / "December 1997" Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves: 176-196). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (S.T.M.)--Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Mo., 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 121-124).

Thesis (S.T.M.)--Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Mo., 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 121-124).