Biden told an inaccurate and risky anecdote about his uncle and the cannibals of New Guinea

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During an election campaign event, US President Joe Biden told an anecdote about his uncle Ambrose “Bosie” Finnegan, who died during the Second World War, which in addition to being very inaccurate has created some embarrassment with the oceanic state of Papua New Guinea. Biden has in fact claimed that Finnegan, a US Army aviator, crashed after his plane was hit in flight over the Pacific, and was eaten by the cannibal populations who inhabited the island of New Guinea at the time: a circumstance which however it does not appear at all in the official documents.

“They never found the body because there were a lot of cannibals, seriously, in that part of New Guinea,” Biden said, reiterating a stereotype that exaggerates the spread of cannibalism among the Guinean populations and contradicting the US agency’s version. United States tasked with finding missing soldiers, according to which her uncle sank along with the plane he was flying on off the coast of Papua New Guinea. The report does not even mention a collision, but attributes the accident to “unknown causes”.

Until a few decades ago, cannibalism was a relatively widespread practice on the island of New Guinea, but only in some contexts and with predominantly ritual functions. Michael Kabuni, a political science professor at the University of Papua New Guinea heard from Guardiansaid that Biden’s story is offensive not because it recalls the practice of cannibalism in the country, which “is an established fact”, but because he talks about it without considering the context.

According to Kabuni, implying that your uncle “comes out of a plane and the first thing we think about is that it’s a good meal is unacceptable.” Cannibalism was practiced by some groups in specific situations, including eating the corpse of a dead relative as a form of respect, to prevent his body from decomposing, but it was not linked to food scarcity. “It’s not like they ate the first white man to fall from the sky.”

There are also several doubts about the reliability of the story told by Biden. According to the official account of the United States agency responsible for finding the missing soldiers, Lieutenant Ambrose J. Finnegan died when his plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of New Guinea, after both engines stopped working for unknown reasons . The report says the bodies of Finnegan and three other crew members sank along with the plane, while one other passenger managed to survive.

There have been no official comments from the Papua New Guinea government, with which the Biden administration has been working for some time, reaching various military cooperation agreements, linked to the US desire to limit Chinese influence in the region. «The Melanesians, the ethnic group to which the inhabitants of Papua New Guinea belong, are very proud people. They will find this generalization very offensive,” Kabuni said.

Allan Bird, governor of the Guinean province of Eastern Sepik, however took Biden’s comments more lightly. He told the Guardian: «I was left speechless. She actually made me laugh. I’m sure that when Biden was a child these were the stories he was told.”

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