Abstract. – This is a review of Jacques Derrida’s “The Beast and the Sovereign.” It is written in such a way as to consider the essentials of Derrida’s twenty-three seminars in relation to some of the major features of its own argument and some features of the ethnography of the Ai’i Barai of the Wawaga Valley (Upper Kumusi River Valley) in Oro Province, PNG. Generalized problems for consideration were largely those constituting “region.” The original fieldwork on which the ethnography was based was carried out from 1973 to end 1974, 1990 and 1992–93. [Melanesia, New Guinea, Ai’i Barai people, Derrida, indigenous cognitive systems]