The event to be examined in this chapter is the public payment presented on July 24, 1983 by Kopia and Kubuka – the first in the series of compensation payments arising from the Marsupial Road War of 1982 (see section 1.1 for summary of those events, and section 3.2.2 for details). Our general aim in this chapter is to exemplify and elucidate the discursive construction of segmentary social identities, and of transactions among them in the public sphere of intertalapi relations. In addition to the background material presented in Chapters 1 to 5 above, essential data for this analysis have included: (1) notes on our attendance at this (and other linked) events, in which we were generally spatially separated and in different company, hence viewing the proceedings from differing perspectives; (2) sound recordings of the speeches made at this event; (3) the full transcript of those recordings which is reproduced in Appendix A; and (4) extensive commentary about the speeches by participants and other observers at the event, much of it on the basis of (2) and (3).

Though it is based upon careful consideration of extensive evidence of all of these kinds, the analysis presented here does not purport to be a final or definitive one. To claim as much would be the height of arrogance, since the meaning of exchange transactions is chronically contested among the transactors themselves (as we hope to show). It should go without saying that the same is true among would-be analysts of those transactions.