Father Bernard Baldwin spent several years at the Sacred Heart Mission in the Trobriand Islands, Papua New Guinea.

In an introduction to his work, Father Baldwin says that Biga Boyowa is the language of the district commissioner's office (in the Trobriands area), mission translations, school programmes and the anthropological works of Malinowski, Powell, Uberoi, and others. He goes on: "Mastery of the Biga Boyowa will enable conversation with people of the Lousancays, Marshall Bennets, Woodlarks, Laughlans, Amphletts and a goodly number of those living to the south, upwards of sixteen thousand people. To know the Boyowan language and culture is to know in a way the better half of the language and culture of the rest of the Massim people. Contact with these is frequent and familiar, and the evidence of the interpenetration of their language and culture with Boyowan abundant..."
See also PMB 63 and PMB 64.