Our own type of Ezekiel

By DOMINIC NAVUE SENGI
PACIFIC-Melanesia’s iconic patriarch, 84-year-old ‘Sana’, Michael Thomas Somare, founding father of Papua New Guinea died on Feb 26, 2021.
The sub-region’s first papal cardinal John Ribat MSC, from East New Britain was at Grand Chief Sir Michael’s bedside right on midnight as time was changing to a new day.
Administering the sacred Catholic sacrament of extreme unction, Sana passed over. His earthly commission expired. It was as if, the great papal decree of six centuries ago and the visionary intuitions of indigenous shamans who saw the cardinal north-wind coming had reached the grand cornerstone.
Six centuries ago, Pope Alexander VI divided the primitive, undiscovered world at that time into two halves – one he gave to the Spaniards, the other to the Portuguese – decreeing that each go into this unknown world to convert heathens into the faith within their prospective domains. This was inevitable following disputes over limits of conquest boundaries of the Spaniards and the Portuguese.
The cardinal winds of the four quadrants of the earth were out.
Wallis Island shaman, Parjani, at his Moxhu domicile, an ancient holy grail spot on this North PNG East Sepik island abode had drifted into a séance century past and got a message that ‘a son of the place where his head will be grounded will rise to be a great leader of the world”. His shamanic dominion had kept this message until 1968, the year the now deceased GC Sir
Michael Somare first entered the House of Assembly and become the ‘Chief’ Minister’ that Parjani’s prophecy was fulfilled whole, according to his contemporary relative Andrew Kalupio who had revealed this time-capsule account when joining the thousands of PNG people in mourning the death of GC Somare last week.
Kalupio talks about the critical role Parjani played while commanding the winds – the westerly and the easterly trade winds around much of PNG’s northern frontier regions stretching from beyond Malol in the coastal sundown region and eastward to GC Somare’s Murik Lakes region.
Well before surviving believers of Parjani were able to reaffirm their ancient shaman’s fortune-tell, who had his form grounded in Karau and Murik areas, Manus’ Lipan Island villager, a renown prophet of the same order, Paliau Maloat, endowed of and enlightened by his own spirits of cultural wisdom had on April 14, 1936 in Rabaul’s Rapindik Hospital, Matupit, New Britain Island, had the scalpel in his hand, severing and tieing up the umbilical cord of the ‘Sana’ child. Indeed, a Karau-Murik child born of a policeman father Ludwig Sana and his dear wife Kambe in far away East New Britain. The cardinal north wind spirit and light script transgresses down and manifesting physically on a chosen vessel of choice with a Manus Islander orchestrating the windy command.
Giving the child the middle name of ‘Thomas”, Paliau was ‘delivering’ a future leader, Michael Thomas Somare – Saana – Chief of the Saet Clan of Karau village, Murik Lakes, East Sepik.
Two shamans – ancient and contemporary – at different epochs of history, from PNG’s Northern maritime region of today’s Papua New Guinea had translated vision, wind and light all together.
Well before Sana’s birth, in the dark and spooky interior of the mountainous Erepesh nation – also north – in the Worebegesh-Hobenugu tribal domain came Pita Simogun. In the same mountain range further east, came another Sepik of contemporary history, Yauwiga. Their individual role and commission were defined – to protect, safeguard and liberate from some unknown external forces that would intervene into the frontier for reasons of their own sake.

Without a word of colonial English, nor writing and speaking knowledge of the same, Simogun was plucked out his jungle abode, trained as a native policeman, served briefly in Morobe and later served under a Patrol Officer in the Nakanai area of New Britain Island. GC Somare’s father Ludwig Sana was already also in service there.
Sana Somare was six years old when Simogun and other Sepik native policemen in New Britain had instructed for all their children and families to be repatriated back to their homelands as World War II was approaching in the years leading up to 1942 as the impending Japanese Imperial Forces were closing in on Rabaul and the Gazelle Peninsula. Ludwig and and Kambe had to pack young Somare for the return to Murik Lakes. This is so that all the kinsmen would be the only one remaining, including Ludwig to fight off unknown foreign enemies.
Elsewhere in the deep Highlands and Far-east lowland regions of the then Papua and New Guinea territory, the same spiritual light was hovering and pre-selecting change-makers and innovators of what seem like the biblical valley of bleached ‘dry bones’ at the mercy of the cardinal north wind to open up a window of opportunity for a transformational miracle to occur.
Renee Baribeau, author and shamanic healer in a compelling book entitled Winds of Spirit (paperback, Amazon Books.com) talked about the rich mythology of cultural significance of the wind, revealing ancient sacred techniques used by shaman’s and in particular sailors. Winds of Spirit teaches about how to connect with your true inner self – spiritual magnetic north – using the body as a compass to avoid getting lost in the midst of calamities and climatic doldrums.
Baribeau’s touch of ancient wisdom speaks of the winds as transnational forces of nature that live around and within us throughout our lives.
The San Juan
On Aug 20, 1545 Spanish navigator Inigo Ortiz des Retes, when onboard the carrack or big sail ships San Juan tried to return from Tidore in Indonesia’s Moluccas region to New Spain (Mexico). His ship and crewmen found themselves besieged by an extraordinary north-easterly doldrum or strong wind that swept them off course. They were forced toward the northern coastal lands of now West Papua. After encountering the dark and frizzy-haired fearsome natives, planting the Spanish flag and claiming the Island for the King of Spain at the mouth of the Mamberano River, the monsoonal North-easterly doldrum continue its onslaught, pushing the Spaniards toward PNG’s northern frontier regions and its then primitive coastline of Vanimo, Wewak, Madang and Morobe. After sighting Bagabag, Karkar and Manam Islands following East Sepiks Schouten Island group, the wind changed direction, driving them further north to Manus’ Western Islands. The north-easterly eventually retired its fury as the San Juan found its way back to Tidore, where it started from. Heavily battered and starved of ration and men, Inigo Ortiz des Retez, loaded into another carrack and pushed into the Philippines and found its original bearing enroute to New Spain.
The Embassy Church teachings of the book of Ezekiel Chapter 37, verses 1-14 about the ‘window of opportunity’ where God took prophet Ezekiel into the ‘valley of dry bones’, window of opportunity where the good prophet was asked to ‘speak to the bones’ in the biggest delivering miracle and transformation of the Hebrew world at this ancient epoch in biblical history.
Shaman healer, author Baribeau’s four quadrant winds of the sky – North-Easterly – of Spirit and Mind respectively. South wind – wind of emotions, of change, calm and beauty and the West wind – of body.
Where Sana’s umbilical cord severed, and blood fell, fire and brimstone set forth the yearn for freedom courtesy of the Mataungens. Oscar Tamur of old, Damien Kereku and John Kaputin staged the first native physical confrontation against colonial Australia. Then Prime Minister Gorton of Australia was booed and shouted at and the foreign intellect attacked with the learnt of the natives.
Earlier, the Tolais had even taken the life of a colonial in a ritual killing.
To Palangat, in what Dr Andrew Moutu, Director of the PNG National Museum and Art Gallery aptly described summarily as a ‘philosopher’s stone, Sepik alchemist’, became men of the dark dukduk society.
The east wind took Sana in his formative years to Dregehaffen, Tusbab, Brandi and Administrative College to refine his mind and consolidate his future. The east wind culminated, with the cardinal north all around him, Sana delivered PNG independence on 16th September 1975.
But that is not without his north and east wind product, Bernard Narokobi, Sana’s eight grade English student reminding him of the need for paying homage to the maker – the greater Light and his north wind spirit that came on the sails of the Spanish carrack, San Juan to anoint and chose – and make Pacific Melanesia’s iconic patriarchal own light of liberation.
In the preamble verses of the PNG constitution is written the covenanting prose, We the people, give you our God, this nation, this constitution and its people to you. Upon this covenant Sana delivered Papua New Guinea – the North wind miracle, fulfilled in full.
In our time, did the Cardinal North Wind Spirit driving the Spaniards off-course just so that they could see ‘opportunity’ in the valley of dry bones and the Spaniards led by Inigo Ortiz des Retes and his crew mere prisoners of hope or sacrifices for Sana to rise?
Post-Rapindik, and in retrospect, much of Sir Paliau’s life, the man who named Sana ‘Thomas’ through what seemed like an ancient episcopal prophet-shaman spent his later years on Manus largely working with the omnipresent winds affecting his and his people’s life and living that was had remained oblivious to many. The unfaithful saw it as cargo cult. Perhaps it was not, just the Northwind spirit in retirement.
Like his wanples Parjani, Paliau focused on his ‘wind nation’ philosophy, restoring harmony and balance, healing the body and inspiring creativity, invoking wind deities or gods and goddesses from around the world.
If this Admiralty shaman ever did, Manus and PNG never really paid attention to the spirit of the cardinal winds from the four quadrants of the sky that were relating through Paliau to the inner landscape of each of our lives – mind, emotions, body and spirit.
Celestial Sana he might have been, left PNG and us, on 26 February 2021, right at midnight with the Papacy’s cardinal the only one there – among others. The Eastern phoenix has burnt itself out.
Jeremiah 1: 5-8 (New International Version) says instructively: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I set you apart, I appointed you as a prophet to the nations”.
GC Sana Somare had asked not what God commanded. He had delivered a nation from the valley of dry bones from a window of opportunity.
Aug 2, 2011, amidst the political upheavals of that moment recorded a spell, perhaps a curse. The great miracle anointment was stolen and Papua New Guinea on that date was set on full reverse.
As the Sepik nations and PNG mourn, we also must ask: Is our ‘Sana’ the translated microcosmic prophet in the valley of bleached bones of the 16th century? Are we of today, children of that very wind nation that came out from the valley of dry bones?
Is Sana the prophet Ezekiel that prophesied to the bones to come together and form a nation of living beings when at the command of the cardinal north wind or Holy Spirit that blew the Spaniards off course just to experience a window of opportunity?
Rest easy in eternal peace in the Lord, Sana, cardinal north-wind – my great Sepik story.

• Dominic Sengi is freelance writer.