Pamela Swadling is visiting research fellow at the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific. She carried out archaeological fieldwork in the Solomon Islands before coming to Papua New Guinea in late 1972. Her study of the former plume trade on the Sepik coast and subsequently along the Ok Tedi led to the writing of this book.
Billai Laba is from Waidoro village in the Daru district of Western Province. He graduated from the University of Papua New Guinea in 1978 and currently works as an Environmental Planner in the Department of Environment and Conservation.
Roy Wagner is professor of anthropology at the University of Virginia, USA. He has done anthropological field research among the Daribi people of Karimui as well as the Usen Barok of central New Ireland, and has also collected texts and origin-accounts among Polopa speakers at Lake Tebera and on the lower Erave River.