TRADITIONAL YANGORU MINJI (CENTIPEDE) SKIN CUTTING

By Maxine Hwawai Rai

A few days ago I went to a family bung and I met an aunty who had these marking on her skin. She told me that the scars on her arms and chest were from a traditional practice that our people used to do.

It was apart of ones initiation into womanhood; after a woman has her first period she would have her arms and chest cut with a sharp piece of bamboo into the shape of the minji. Afterwards, a special leaf is rubbed onto the wound to help it heal and once it does a woman is now then able to be married off.

Both my parents and my entire family is from Yangoru yet I haven’t heard of such a practice nor have I seen such markings before. Maybe that’s a result of my own ignorance but I’ve come to know that this practice is dying out and it’s becoming very rare to see women with these markings. It’s sad to see how our indigenous cultural practices and the knowledge of it is fading away into obscurity as we move into the modern way of life.