We hope to convey a sense of appreciation and understanding for these very special and unique environments, its history and cultures, through a varied series of educational programs including lectures, slide shows, documentary videos, exhibits at schools and other media. To attain this, your help is fundamental, be it thru direct funding to our field projects, or by aiding us contact interested persons or organizations.
Current efforts are focused on some of the most remote islands of the Pacific, such as Raivavae, Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and Papua New Guinea and Melanesia. To date, a documentary video about their 2008 Expedition to Papua New Guinea is in post-production and we are compiling a collection of over 20,000 photographs about the ethnographic record of numerous Pacific Islands and its rock art, that will be available in the future to valid researchers through this web site.
PIRI is a 501c3 tax-exempt organization
In 2008, Explorers Club members, Edmundo Edwards FI’90 of Chile/Easter Island and Lynn Danaher MN’05 created the Pacific Islands Research Institute, a 501c3 non-profit Institute dedicated to support the study, understanding & preservation of the unique cultural heritage & fragile environment of the remote islands of the Pacific Ocean. Our present board of Directors is composed of the following.
Ongoing Research Projects.
The Cruz-Mayor 2009 Expedition to Papua New Guinea.
In 2008, the “Cruz Mayor Rock Art Expedition to Papua New Guinea” recorded cave paintings/rock art in the Upper Arafundi Region, East Sepik Province. Next June we have planned to continue this archaeological research in more remote area, in association with Dr. Nancy Sullivan PhD and her staff of former Divine Word University (PNG) students. We have planned to carry out transects of the natural forest to establish its bio-diversity, and photograph and document on video these remarkable people and their culture.
The Upper Karawari and Arafundi people have been largely ignored due to their geographical isolation and low population. Since 1968 most of these groups have settled next to rivers in the lower part of their homelands where contact between them was made easier and contact with the outside became more fluent. Only one group of hunter-gatherers remains in the mid highland area, living a semi traditional life style.
Since 2007, Nancy Sullivan and Associates have established camps and made important contacts with the local people of this region. In 2008 Nancy Sullivan and her team of Nancy Sullivan and Associates ethnographers established permanent camps in Yimas 2, and in Awim, to better access some remote groups further to the interior that are part of this study, such as the Meakambut, a small tribe composed by 52 individuals that still live as hunter-gathers and maintain little outside contact.
They also located and visited with their owners over 150 sacred rock shelters with numerous rock art images, some of them containing several hundred stenciled paintings. Over another 150 rock shelters and caves remain to be visited, and they constitute the largest complex of rock art in Melanesia, and probably the World. The enormous corpus of ethnographic information collected by these researchers, regarding their creation and it’s meanings, sheds new light about the significance of these motifs in rock art. Such universal symbols as hand stencils, and other motives with a world wide distribution and great antiquity elsewhere, still continue to be made by them during their initiation ceremonies, and although we cannot assure that they have the same meaning as those several thousand years old, it is a valid possibility that analogous magic-religious thoughts underlie both creations.
To be able to finance these research projects, as well as to maintain an educational and health assistance to there groups, we look forwards to raise funds through the sale of their traditional bark paintings, the publication of books, photographs and video documentaries. The help you can provide to attain these goals is deeply appreciated.
During our time in the field, the PIRI web site will be dedicated to document their work thru a "field blog," and throughout the life of these projects we plan on submitting regular reports on the progress attained.
Funding
Online donations and web payments to our non-profit 501c3 fund can be accepted through Google checkout on our secure donation page.
All suggestions for grants and other resources for us to explore are welcomed:
lynn@islandexplorer.org
Your donation is tax exempt, we can also accept direct donations by mail.
Send checks to:
Pacific Islands Research Institute
C/O Lynn Danaher
P.O. Box 2627
Friday Harbor, WA 98250
lynn@islandexplorer.org
Or Donate Using Our Secure Online Account
For more information email:
To Contribute: