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Resumo

In 1986 a goldfield was discovered in a high‐altitude valley of the Papua New Guinea Highlands. Hundreds of Huli people from the Southern Highlands Province soon arrived to take advantage of the fortunes that could be made. This article examines the gold's incorporation into Huli mythopoeia, relates it to men's explanations of the illnesses they suffered at the goldfield, and shows how gold became analogous to menstrual blood as an agent of pollution. It is proposed that the polluting aspect of gold provides a metacommentary on the Huli experience of colonialism and new structures of power, and that this experience is interpreted through metaphors of gender. [Melanesia, mythology, gender, social change]

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