[2] During Koriam's parliamentary career he, Bernard, and his successor Kolman Kintape Molu ('Kolman') were all accorded a divine stature by Pomio Kivung devotees, as intermediaries between the physical and spiritual worlds.
[3] The Pomio Kivung movement incorporates narratives of sovereignty and economic development, syncretic Christianity, and traditional Papuan ancestor worship into a single religious system.
Its adherents believe in a coming millennium, during which the ancestors of Pomio-Baining people will return as "Western scientists and industrialists"[4] to transform East New Britain into a vast urban metropolis, politically and economically independent from Papua New Guinea.
However, those who do not indulge themselves in this time and instead devote themselves to the movement will enter a second millennium, the paradisaical 'Period of Government' (Taim bilong Gavman) free of death, disease, reproduction, work and warfare.
[6] Unlike the Christian Heaven, this plane is conceptually located underground, as part of a web of metaphors contrasting the material surface or 'skin' (patuna) with underlying spiritual reality or 'food' (kaikai).