Alternative Names
Wapei, Wapi.
Location and Linguistic Affiliation
The Wape live on the large island of New Guinea located just north of Australia. Their country, Papua New Guinea, occupies the eastern half of the island; Sandaun Province, where the Wape reside, is situated in its northwest corner bordering Irian Jaya and is one of the country’s poorest and the least developed. “Wape” is a term given by Westerners to the culturally similar Olo speakers. It is derived from the Olo word metane wape, which denotes a human in contrast to a spirit. Olo is one of the 47 languages of the Torricelli Phylum that is provisionally divided into 7 stocks and 13 families. Olo is classified within the Wapei Family, 23,378 speakers, and the Wapei-Palei Stock, 31,770 speakers (Foley, 1986; Laycock, 1975; McGregor & McGregor, 1982).
Most of the men, many children, and an increasing number of the women speak Tok Pisin (Melanesian Pidgin), the lingua franca (Mihalic, 1971). Tok Pisin is a post-contact...
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Mitchell, W.E. (2004). Wape. In: Ember, C.R., Ember, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-29905-X_103
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