I can't speak for all New Guinea tribes, but I've read about some of them. Some of the ones who have been contacted, colonized, and christianized practice in very strange strange belief. Missionaries translated bibles into Tok Pisin, which began as a kind of lingua franca on the Melanesian and pacific islands New Guineans were brought to to work on plantations. The language was brought back to New Guinea in the 30s and has since penetrated much of the island as a second or first language. Before the onset of this language, most of these people were multilingual. Each village had it's own language. People would learn 7 or 8 different languages.
Back to the strange beliefs. The bibles that were translated are misinterpreted. Most were illiterate. Tok Pisin doesn't really have a written form. Children who went to schools outside the villages were taught english, but they never used english outside school. After the missionaries moved through a village and left a bible behind, the villagers could only go by the illustrations in their bible to understand it's stories. What emerged from this were religious followings based on even more lunatic stories than are already inthe bible. One village I read on, Gapun, has an idea of the cosmos that would seem like a joke. They believe that Jesus went aroundthe world after the great flood and began turning people white skinned. Apparently he was killed in Australia and never made it to Papua New Guniea. One day it is said that Gapuners will attain the secrets and cargo of the white man and then become white themselves, their black skin cracking off. At this point the islanders would acsend the astral plane and join the likes of Europeans and Americans at our heavenly local in the sky.
