Yali (1912 – 26 September 1975) was a Papua New Guinean coastwatcher, local government councillor, police officer, political activist, prisoner, and soldier.
[1] After 1945, the Australian Administration of Papua New Guinea realised that it had to combat the antagonism of the native people towards the colonial power and Europeans in general.
The most prominent of these became Yali, of the Rai Coast, "born in the Ngaing bush area of Sor, a member of the Walaliang patriclan and the Tabinung matriclan, about 1912".
[2] Yali's father had been an important community leader, but he himself was not trained in the traditional skills of his forefathers and left home at a young age to work for Europeans.
In 1929 he met Tagarab of Milguk, who had been at the anti-colonialist Rabaul Strike in 1928 and would go on to lead a cargo cult between 1942 and 1944, when he was shot by the retreating Imperial Japanese Army.
Because of his faith in the integrity of Europeans he knew, he took at face value Australian promises of economic assistance in reward for helping the Allies.
He started to consider why Europeans obviously valued these items, and "he adopted a flexible attitude towards Christianity and paganism: each had a legitimate place in the scheme of things he saw".
[4] Yali now became informally employed by the Administration, to counter the anti-colonial belief that Europeans were withholding the secret to their material wealth from the native people.
He began to give speeches to villages along the Rai Coast, urging them to collaborate with the Administration in exchange for promises of economic assistance after the war.
Yali proceeded to put in place, over the next few years, an administrative system with himself as leader with loosely associated 'boss boys' representing him in different villages.
He aimed to reorganise his society along Western lines, with people living in larger villages in houses along straight roads and with more attention paid to cleanliness and tidiness.
Yali was away for 4 months, suffering travel and logistical problems, and was then denied the free hand-out he expected to receive from the administration.
Yali was appointed to the newly invented office of Foreman Overseer and his questions about the Administration's attitude to traditional religious practices were clarified.
He took this as confirmation of his legal authority over the missions, whom he saw as interfering, and decided to go back to Madang and lead a pagan revival, again with the propaganda aim of 'opening the road to cargo'.
Using the 'laws' he had written in Port Moresby, Yali tried to usurp the Administration's existing structure in legal, political and organisational matters in Madang.
On the third patrol in January 1949 more strong-arm tactics were used, and this time some women were raped by members of Yali's party, as well as Administration officials travelling with them.
Yali denied everything to the Madang District Officer, but when he tried to sue for libel the case was quickly dropped when the mission produced their evidence.
Yali died on 26 September 1975 at Sor, living just long enough to witness the declaration of Papua New Guinean independence from Australia.
[8] Following in his father's footsteps, James Yali became a prominent political leader in Madang who was also believed by many to be a powerful sorcerer, only to be jailed for raping his sister-in-law in 2006.