The story
Trobriand Yam House Festival in Trobriand Islands
The Trobriand Yam House Festival centers on the traditional harvest and display of yams in elaborately built and decorated yam houses, known locally as bwayma, a practice central to status, kinship and gift exchange across the Trobriand Islands of Milne Bay Province.
The Trobriand Islands, a group of coral atolls in Milne Bay Province off the eastern tip of mainland Papua New Guinea, became internationally known through the fieldwork of Polish-British anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, who lived among the Trobriand people during the First World War and documented their gardening magic, kinship structures and the far-reaching kula exchange network in which shell valuables circulate between island communities.