[Kabar-Irian] News: January 22-25 2008
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KABAR IRIAN NEWS
Jan 22-25 2008
TOPICS
* Persipura, Persija book semifinal slots in RI Premier League
* Formation of new provinces 'unwanted'
* Indonesia's Pertamina targets 26 percent rise in oil output in 2008
* West Papua: Illegal Logging Devastates Rainforest
* Polynesians Have Little Genetic Relationship To Melanesians
* Link Confirmed Between Polynesians And Indigenous Taiwanese
* New DNA Study Helps Explain Unique Diversity Among Melanesians
* Sleeping with Cannibals
---
http://www.thejakartapost.com/yesterdaydetail.asp?fileid=20080123.V02
Persipura, Persija book semifinal slots in RI Premier League
Sports News - January 23, 2008
Blontank Poer and Indra Harsaputra, The Jakarta Post, Surakarta, Sidoarjo
Persipura of Jayapura and Persija of Jakarta have booked slots in the
semifinals of Djarum Indonesian
Premier League following their goalless Group B game Tuesday at Delta
Putra Stadium in Sidoarjo.
With the 0-0 result, Jayapura tops the standings with seven points,
trailed by Persija with five. Other
group members Persik of Kediri and Deltras of Sidoarjo did not advance to
the final four since they only
collected three and zero, respectively.
Unlike in their previous performances in important games, both played in
lackluster tempo and without
their typically aggressive attacks.
Despite the lackluster performance, Persipura coach Raja Isa said his team
had played well.
"Our players gave it their best in the game. Maybe the players were less
spirited since there were not as
many supporters watching," the Malaysian coach said.
Meanwhile, Persija, which played without its coach Serghei Dubrovin or
first goalie Evgheny Khmaruk,
said players were not in their top form.
"What was most important for us was that our opponent couldn't take any
points from us," coach
assistant Isman Djasulmei said at the post-match conference.
Dubrovin was barred from training any clubs in the country for two years,
while Khmaruk got a two-
match ban.
"A draw is enough for us (to advance to the semifinals)," Isman said.
"There's no need for us to win."
With the result, Persipura maintains its unbeaten record from Persija.
Persipura beat Persija in the league finals in 2005 when the former became
the eventual champion.
Persipura extended its winning streak in the semifinals of the Copa Dji
Sam Soe tournament in 2006.
Early this month, Persipura defeated Persija again in the Copa quarterfinals.
Separately in another Group B match in Surakarta, Central Java, Persik of
Kediri beat Deltras of
Sidoarjo 1-0.
The victory was not enough for the defending champion Persik to repeat its
feat last year.
Persik's coach assistant Aris Budi Sulistio said that the absence of
skipper cum striker Christian
Gonzales had slowed them down.
Gonzales was off for two matches after being caught in a brawl against
Khmaruk.
Persipura and Persija will take on the winner and runner-up from Group A,
which will be decided in the
Jan. 26 matches.
Group A matches have been delayed and moved from Kediri to Sidoarjo
following a riot last week.
Arema of Malang, Persiwa of Wamena, PSMS of Medan and Copa Dji Sam Soe
champion Sriwijaya FC
of Palembang will compete for two tickets to the semifinals. (dre)
---
http://www.thejakartapost.com/yesterdaydetail.asp?fileid=20080124.H01
Formation of new provinces 'unwanted'
National News - January 24, 2008
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The House of Representatives has unanimously endorsed its initiative to
create eight new provinces and
13 new regencies, while local figures say the plan will not benefit the
people affected.
Septer Manufandu, the executive secretary of the Cooperation Forum of
Non-Governmental
Organizations, said Papuan people did not need new provinces but better
public services.
"The formation of new provinces might be aimed at accelerating development
in Papua, but whether it
will materialize remains a big question.
"Everybody knows Papua is the territory that endured the longest period of
violence in the country, and
the central government is eager to curb movements that are linked to
separatism by splitting the
province," Septer told The Jakarta Post.
The House approved Tuesday the formation of four new provinces in Papua,
along with two provinces in
Aceh and another in Sulawesi.
The endorsement came despite the government's call for the suspension of
regional division, citing
budget constraints and findings that many newly established administrative
regions lacked the capability
and resources to provide basic services to their people. Home Minister
Mardiyanto has said the
government will amend a regulation on regional division and incorporation,
which will apply stricter
requirements for regional division.
If the House's decision takes effect, Indonesia will have 41 provinces and
over 500 regencies and
municipalities.
Septer said Papua, home to 2 million people, had long been deprived of
basic services. He said the
special autonomy measure of 2002 had not improved public services despite
the huge funds channeled
to the natural resources-rich province.
"About 90 percent of the special autonomy fund has gone to the
bureaucracy, which means Papua does
not need new provinces but access to basic services. Regional division
will only create little kings who
only seek money," he said.
Papua is home to one of the world's biggest gold mining companies, but
nearly 80 percent of its
population is poor.
To improve public services, Papua needs new districts and subdistricts
more than regencies or
provinces, Septer added.
The government pushed for the creation of West Papua province in 2004
without approval from the
Papua People's Council as mandated by the 2002 law on special autonomy for
the province. The most
recent proposal for new provinces in Papua has never received the
council's endorsement either.
Law expert Mawardy Ismail of Syah Kuala University in the Aceh capital of
Banda Aceh said the
creation of new provinces in the country's westernmost territory was
untimely and would only levy
heavier burdens on the Aceh people.
"The regional division is disadvantageous. Aceh will no longer be united
and will lose much of its
bargaining power," Mawardy told Antara, adding that unity was all Aceh
people needed to rebuild the
province following years of conflict and the killer tsunami waves of 2004.
Demand for creation of new provinces in Aceh had mounted as peace talks
were underway to end the
armed conflict in the 4-million-person province.
Mawardy said Aceh people would have to spend extra on a budget to
financially support the new
provinces. The law on regional administration requires mother provinces to
support newly established
regions for two years.
Mawardy said the formation of new provinces in Aceh could be classified as
a breach of the 2006 law
on Aceh government, which aims to protect Aceh unity.
Newly formed regions
Provinces:
1. Central Papua
2. South Papua
3. Southwest Papua
4. West Papua
5. North Kalimantan
6. South Aceh Barat
7. Aceh Leuser Antara
8. East Sulawesi
Regencies:
1. Arfak Mountains (Papua)
2. Grime Nawa (West Papua)
3. South Manokwari (West Papua)
4. Banggai Laut (Central Sulawesi)
5. North Morowali (Central Sulawesi)
6. East Kolaka (Southeast Sulawesi)
7. West Muna (Southeast Sulawesi)
8. Kota Raha (Southeast Sulawesi)
9. Central Mamuju (West Sulawesi)
10. North Musi Rawas (South Sumatra)
11. Penukal Abab Lematang Ilir (South Sumatra)
12. Rokan Darussalam (Riau)
13. Pesisir Barat (Lampung)
---
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/newstex/AFX-0013-22485655.htm
Indonesia's Pertamina targets 26 percent rise in oil output in 2008
January 24, 2008: 04:11 AM EST
JAKARTA, Jan. 24, 2008 (Thomson Financial delivered by Newstex) --
Indonesia's state oil and gas
company PT Pertamina said Thursday the government has set a target for it
to produce 181,000 barrels
of oil per day this year, an increase of 26 percent from last year.
In 2007, Pertamina's oil output grew 10 percent to 143,000 barrels a day.
The company's natural gas output is projected to rise to 1.49 billion
cubic feet a day this year from 1.11
billion cubic feet in 2007, Pertamina said in a statement.
To achieve the target, it will intensify exploration at its main fields in
West Java and South Sumatra,
accelerate production at new fields and apply new technology at old fields
in Sumatra, Kalimantan and
Papua, it said.
Pertamina has increased its reserves to 5 billion barrels of oil
equivalent following the discovery of new
reserves totaling 124 million barrels of oil equivalent in 2007.
Pertamina is the second biggest oil producer in Indonesia after
ChevronTexaco Corp (NYSE:CVX) unit
PT Chevron Pacific Indonesia. Pertamina is also the second largest gas
producer after Total E&P
Indonesie, a local unit of France's Total.
aloysius.bhui@bhui@thomson.com
Copyright Thomson Financial News Limited 2007. All rights reserved.
---
http://www.unpo.org/article.php?id=7494
West Papua: Illegal Logging Devastates Rainforest
2008-01-22
Rapacious logging activities are stripping the island of a valuable
resource and adding to the destruction
of rainforests worldwide.
Below is an article written by Sarah Matheson of the Epoch Times:
TVNZ is facing severe criticism over its decision to allow the National
Bank to sponsor its news updates.
The National Bank is a subsidiary of the ANZ Banking Group, which is
providing financial services to
one of the world's largest and most controversial logging companies,
Rimbunan Hijau.
This Malaysian logging company is responsible for large-scale rainforest
destruction in Papua New
Guinea (PNG).
Greenpeace, the Green Party and the Indonesia Human Rights Committee are
calling on TVNZ to
reassess their commitment to the National Bank.
Green Party Co-Leader Dr Russel Norman said TVNZ now had a vested interest
in protecting the
National Bank brand, which could lead to news going unreported if it could
harm the National Bank.
He said this could compromise TVNZ's ability to carry out its democratic
functions as a credible news
media.
"Once again this demonstrates why we need public news broadcasting free
from commercial linkages in
New Zealand," he said.
He said media should be holding large corporations accountable for their
environmental performance.
"It is disturbing to find these same news organisations being sponsored by
the companies linked to the
destruction of the environment," he said.
TVNZ failed to return calls and Minister of Broadcasting
Trevor Mallard was unavailable for comment on Friday [18 January 2008].
Rainforest destruction is thought to be responsible for 20 percent of
greenhouse gas emissions globally.
He said human rights abuses associated with logging in PNG are also well
documented by the World
Bank, and most of the logging is carried out illegally.
The World Bank has now pulled out of logging projects in PNG, he said.
The ANZ Banking Group are also causing controversy in Australia, for
considering financing a paper
pulping plant in Tasmania.
Dr Norman said the plant would cause "massive forest destruction" and
release poisonous chemicals
into the air and waterways.
"TVNZ says that one of the reasons they are happy with the National Bank
sponsorship is the credibility
of the National Bank brand," Dr Norman said.
Greenpeace New Zealand forests campaigner Grant Rosoman said the logging
industry is dominated by
Rimbunan Hijau, who are one of the world's most destructive loggers of
tropical forests.
Mr Rosoman said Rimbunan Hijau owns The LumberBank in Onehanga, Auckland
and some plantations
in New Zealand through Ernslaw One in the Coromandel, Manuwatu and
Southern Otago.
He said Rimbunan Hijau simply use a bulldozer to decimate forests.
"It's called predatory logging. They hunt down the trees and just take the
ones they want. They damage a
huge amount of forest just to get a few trees."
He said most of the kwila timber in New Zealand has originally come from
illegal logging in PNG and
through Indonesia -- and because New Guinea Island has the world's largest
remaining forest, logging
companies were honing in.
"Go down to any outdoor furniture store or DIY retailer and you will find
kwila," he said.
Twenty to 70 percent of the forest is destroyed by Rimbunan Hijau in their
logging process, Rosoman
said, and the company also bribes and corrupts members of communities in
PNG to persuade them to
give them the rights to log.
"They buy off a faction of the community and often corrupt the community
leaders and the community
ends up fighting against themselves."
The loggers often promise the communities they will build schools,
hospitals and roads, but often they do
not even pay the royalties let alone fulfill these promises, he said.
"The World Bank says between 70-80 percent of the logging is illegal in
PNG. We think it would be
higher than that probably 90 percent," Rosoman said.
He said the only way to stop illegal logging in PNG was to not buy kwila
products.
"Until the consumers insist on corporate responsibility they won't change.
They have no ethics at all, apart from making money."
He said scientists have said the best way to battle climate change is to
protect our tropical forests and
the largest remaining forest is on New Guinea Island.
"Globally tropical deforestation is responsible for 20 percent of green
house emissions, causing climate
change."
He said there was a growing call around the world to boycott the ANZ
Banking Group because of its role
in the decimation of forests and its lack of corporate responsibility.
"ANZ are particularly the company in Asia-Pacific who are bank rolling the
destructive activities, but
particularly assisting with Rimbunan Hijau highlights their lack of
corporate responsibility," he said.
China is the biggest tropical timber importer in the world and 70 percent
of all timber felled in PNG goes
to China, Mr Rosoman said.
"That is a big part of the problem. If China refused to import timber from
PNG then that would disable
companies like Rimbunan Hijau overnight," he said.
Maire Leadbetter of the Indonesia Human Rights Committee said when illegal
logging in West Papua
was first exposed they found that vast quantities were going to China, and
much of the wood was
destined to help construct infrastructure for the Olympics.
---
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080118093728.htm
Genome Scan Shows Polynesians Have Little Genetic Relationship To
Melanesians
ScienceDaily (Jan. 23, 2008) — The origins and current genetic
relationships of Pacific Islanders have generated interest and
controversy for many decades. Now, a new comprehensive genetic study of
almost 1,000 individuals has revealed that Polynesians and Micronesians
have almost no genetic relation to Melanesians, and that groups that
live in the islands of Melanesia are remarkably diverse. See also:
Health & Medicine
The researchers analyzed more than 800 genetic markers (highly
informative microsatellites) in nearly 1,000 individuals from 41
Pacific populations, as opposed to prior small-scale mitochondrial DNA
or Y chromosome studies, which had produced conflicting results.
"The first settlers of Australia, New Guinea, and the large islands
just to the east arrived between 50,000 and 30,000 years ago, when
Neanderthals still roamed Europe," says Jonathan Friedlaender,
professor emeritus of anthropology at Temple and the study's lead
author. "These small groups were isolated and became extremely diverse
during the following tens of thousands of years. Then, a little more
than 3,000 years ago, the ancestors of the Polynesians and
Micronesians, with their excellent sailing outrigger canoes, appeared
in the islands of Melanesia, and during the following centuries settled
the islands in the vast unknown regions of the central and eastern
Pacific.
"Over the last 20 years there have been many hypotheses concerning
where the ancestors of the Polynesians came from in Asia, how long it
took them to develop their special seafaring abilities in Island
Melanesia, and how much they interacted with the native Melanesian
peoples there before they commenced their remarkable Diaspora across
the unexplored islands in the Pacific," he adds.
According to Friedlaender, one scenario called the 'fast train
hypothesis,' which is supported by the mitochondrial evidence, suggests
that ancestors of the Polynesians originated in Taiwan, moved through
Indonesia to Island Melanesia, and then out into the unknown islands of
the Pacific without having any significant contact with the Island
Melanesians along the way.
A counter argument called 'slow boat hypothesis,' which the Y
chromosome evidence supports, suggests that the ancestors of the
Polynesians were primarily Melanesians, and that there was very little
Asian or Taiwanese influence. A third position, called the "entangled
bank hypothesis," suggests these ancient migrations simply can't be
accurately reconstructed by looking at the genetics of today's
populations, even in the context of the available archaeological
evidence.
In their paper, the researchers state that their analysis is consistent
with the scenario that the ancestors of Polynesians moved through
Island Melanesia relatively rapidly and only intermixed to a very
modest degree with the indigenous populations there.
"Our genetic analysis establishes that the Polynesians' and
Micronesians' closest relationships are to Taiwan Aborigines and East
Asians," says Friedlaender. "Some groups in Island Melanesia who speak
languages related to Polynesian, called Austronesian or Oceanic
languages, do show a small Polynesian genetic contribution, but it is
very minor -- never more than 20 percent.
"There clearly was a lot of cultural and language influence that
occurred, but the amount of genetic exchange between the groups along
the way was remarkably low," he says. "From the genetic perspective, if
the ancestral train from the Taiwan vicinity to Polynesia wasn't an
express, very few passengers climbed aboard or got off along the way."
Friedlaender adds that this study also confirms and expands their
findings from previous studies about the genetic diversity of Island
Melanesians--among the most genetically diverse people on the planet,
showing further that their diversity is neatly organized by island,
island size, topography and language families.
The study, "The Genetic Structure of Pacific Islanders," is published
in the January issue of PLoS Genetics. It involved researchers from
Temple University, University of Maryland, Yale, Binghamton University,
the Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation, Victoria University in New
Zealand, Mackay Memorial Hospital in Taiwan, and the Institute for
Medical Research in Papua New Guinea.
The study was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation,
the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the National
Geographic Society, The National Institutes of Health, Taiwan National
Science Council, and Temple, Binghamton, and Yale Universities.
Adapted from materials provided by Temple University.
Need to cite this story in your essay, paper, or report? Use one of the
following formats: APA
MLA
Temple University (2008, January 23). Genome Scan Shows Polynesians
Have Little Genetic Relationship To Melanesians. ScienceDaily.
Retrieved January 23, 2008, from
http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2008/01/080118093728.htm
---
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/07/050705011348.htm
Genetic Link Confirmed Between Polynesians And Indigenous Taiwanese
ScienceDaily (Jul. 6, 2005) — According to folklore, Polynesians
originated from a mythical homeland called Hawaiki. Their origins and
the existence of such a place, however, have been the subject of much
speculation. In a new study in the premier open access journal PLoS
Biology, Jean Trejaut and colleagues now provide the first direct
evidence for the common ancestry of Polynesians and indigenous
Taiwanese. See also: Health & Medicine
Genetic techniques involving mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) have been used
to try and determine whether there is a link between Polynesians and
other Southeast Asian populations by estimating how much mtDNA
different populations have in common. Early results were conflicting or
inconclusive; however, the research by Trejaut et al. has finally
nailed this down. Trejaut et al. analyzed mtDNA from people in China,
Southeast Asia, Polynesia, and Taiwan. The authors focused specifically
on the aboriginal populations of Taiwan, suggested to be ancestors of
today's Polynesians, and looked for unique genetic markers that
occurred in the aboriginal people. They then compared these markers to
those found in mainland Chinese, Taiwanese, and other Southeast Asian
peoples.
Trejaut et al. found that the indigenous Taiwanese, Melanesian, and
Polynesian populations share three specific mutations in their mtDNA
that do not occur in mainland east Asian populations. Furthermore, they
showed that there are enough different mtDNA mutations between the
mainland Chinese population and the aboriginal Taiwanese to support
archeological findings suggesting a long period of habitation. These
results indicate that Taiwanese aboriginal populations have been
genetically isolated from mainland Chinese for 10,000 to 20,000 years,
and that Polynesian migration probably originated from people identical
to the aboriginal Taiwanese. Further research will be necessary to
precisely determine the origins of the aboriginal Taiwanese; however,
these results are a step towards clarifying the origins of Polynesians.
###
Citation: Trejaut JA, Kivisild T, Loo JH, Lee CL, He CL, et al. (2005)
Traces of archaic mitochondrial lineages persist in
Austronesian-speaking Formosan populations. PLoS Biol 3(8): e247.
Adapted from materials provided by Public Library Of Science, via
EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS. Need to cite this story in your essay,
paper, or report? Use one of the following formats: APA
MLA
Public Library Of Science (2005, July 6). Genetic Link Confirmed
Between Polynesians And Indigenous Taiwanese. ScienceDaily. Retrieved
January 23, 2008, from
http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2005/07/050705011348.htm
---
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070228064916.htm
New DNA Study Helps Explain Unique Diversity Among Melanesians
ScienceDaily (Mar. 1, 2007) — Small populations of Melanesians -- among
the most genetically diverse people on the planet -- have significant
differences in their mitochondrial DNA that can be linked to where they
live, the size of their home island and the language they speak,
according to a study being published in the Public Library of Science
One. See also: Health & Medicine
The study, "Melanesian mtDNA complexity," was lead by Jonathan
Friedlaender, emeritus professor of anthropology at Temple University.
The study appears in the Feb. 28 issue.
Friedlaender and his collaborators from Binghamton University, the
Institute for Medical research in New Guinea and the University of
Pennsylvania, examined mitochondrial DNA sequences from 32 diverse
populations on four Melanesian islands, an island chain north and
northeast of Australia that includes Fiji, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, the
Solomon Islands, and New Guinea. The islands that were intensively
covered were Bougainville, New Ireland, New Britain and New Guinea.
"Mitochondrial DNA has been a focus of analysis for about 15 years,"
says Friedlaender. "It is very interesting in that it is strictly
maternally inherited as a block of DNA, so it really allows for the
construction of a very deep family tree on the maternal side as new
mutations accumulate over the generations on ancestral genetic
backgrounds.
"In this part of the world, the genealogy extends back more than 35,000
years, when Neanderthals still occupied Europe," he adds. "These island
groups were isolated at the edge of the human species range for an
incredible length of time, not quite out in the middle of the Pacific,
but beyond Australia and New Guinea. During this time they developed
this pattern of DNA diversity that is really quite extraordinary, and
includes many genetic variants that are unknown elsewhere, that can be
tied to specific islands and even specific populations there. Others
suggest very ancient links to Australian Aborigines and New Guinea
highlanders."
Friedlaender also says that the study gives a different perspective on
the notion of the "apparent distinctions between humans from different
continents, often called racial differences. In this part of the
Pacific, there are big differences between groups just from one island
to the next -- one might have to name five or six new races on this
basis, if one were so inclined. Human racial distinctions don't amount
to much."
The study was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation,
the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the National
Geographic Society Exploration Fund and the Penn Faculty Research Fund.
Adapted from materials provided by Temple University.
Need to cite this story in your essay, paper, or report? Use one of the
following formats: APA
MLA
Temple University (2007, March 1). New DNA Study Helps Explain Unique
Diversity Among Melanesians. ScienceDaily. Retrieved January 23, 2008,
from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2007/02/070228064916.htm
---
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/10022676.html
Sleeping with Cannibals
Our intrepid reporter gets up close and personal with New Guinea natives
who say they still eat their
fellow tribesmen.
* By Paul Raffaele
* Photographs by Paul Raffaele
* Smithsonian magazine, September 2006
For days I've been slogging through a rain-soaked jungle in Indonesian New
Guinea, on a quest to visit
members of the Korowai tribe, among the last people on earth to practice
cannibalism. Soon after first
light this morning I boarded a pirogue, a canoe hacked out of a tree
trunk, for the last stage of the
journey, along the twisting Ndeiram Kabur River. Now the four paddlers
bend their backs with vigor,
knowing we will soon make camp for the night.
My guide, Kornelius Kembaren, has traveled among the Korowai for 13 years.
But even he has never
been this far upriver, because, he says, some Korowai threaten to kill
outsiders who enter their territory.
Some clans are said to fear those of us with pale skin, and Kembaren says
many Korowai have never
laid eyes on a white person. They call outsiders laleo ("ghost-demons").
Suddenly, screams erupt from around the bend. Moments later, I see a
throng of naked men
brandishing bows and arrows on the riverbank. Kembaren murmurs to the
boatmen to stop paddling.
"They're ordering us to come to their side of the river," he whispers to
me. "It looks bad, but we can't
escape. They'd quickly catch us if we tried."
As the tribesmen's uproar bangs at my ears, our pirogue glides toward the
far side of the river. "We
don't want to hurt you," Kembaren shouts in Bahasa Indonesia, which one of
our boatmen translates into
Korowai. "We come in peace." Then two tribesmen slip into a pirogue and
start paddling toward us. As
they near, I see that their arrows are barbed. "Keep calm," Kembaren says
softly.
Cannibalism was practiced among prehistoric human beings, and it lingered
into the 19th century in
some isolated South Pacific cultures, notably in Fiji. But today the
Korowai are among the very few
tribes believed to eat human flesh. They live about 100 miles inland from
the Arafura Sea, which is
where Michael Rockefeller, a son of then-New York governor Nelson
Rockefeller, disappeared in 1961
while collecting artifacts from another Papuan tribe; his body was never
found. Most Korowai still live
with little knowledge of the world beyond their homelands and frequently
feud with one another. Some
are said to kill and eat male witches they call khakhua.
The island of New Guinea, the second largest in the world after Greenland,
is a mountainous, sparsely
populated tropical landmass divided between two countries: the independent
nation of Papua New
Guinea in the east, and the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Irian
Jaya in the west. The
Korowai live in southeastern Papua.
My journey begins at Bali, where I catch a flight across the Banda Sea to
the Papuan town of Timika; an
American mining company's subsidiary, PT Freeport Indonesia, operates the
world's largest copper and
gold mine nearby. The Free Papua Movement, which consists of a few hundred
rebels equipped with
bows and arrows, has been fighting for independence from Indonesia since
1964. Because Indonesia
has banned foreign journalists from visiting the province, I entered as a
tourist.
After a stopover in Timika, our jet climbs above a swampy marsh past the
airport and heads toward a
high mountain. Beyond the coast, the sheer slopes rise as high as 16,500
feet above sea level and
stretch for 400 miles. Waiting for me at Jayapura, a city of 200,000 on
the northern coast near the
border with Papua New Guinea, is Kembaren, 46, a Sumatran who came to
Papua seeking adventure
16 years ago. He first visited the Korowai in 1993, and has come to know
much about their culture,
including some of their language. He is clad in khaki shorts and trekking
boots, and his unflinching gaze
and rock-hard jaw give him the look of a drill sergeant.
The best estimate is that there are some 4,000 Korowai. Traditionally,
they have lived in treehouses, in
groups of a dozen or so people in scattered clearings in the jungle; their
attachment to their treehouses
and surrounding land lies at the core of their identity, Smithsonian
Institution anthropologist Paul Taylor
noted in his 1994 documentary film about them, Lords of the Garden. Over
the past few decades,
however, some Korowai have moved to settlements established by Dutch
missionaries, and in more
recent years, some tourists have ventured into Korowai lands. But the
deeper into the rain forest one
goes, the less exposure the Korowai have had to cultures alien to their own.
After we fly from Jayapura southwest to Wamena, a jumping-off point in the
Papuan highlands, a wiry
young Korowai approaches us. In Bahasa Indonesia, he says that his name is
Boas and that two years
ago, eager to see life beyond his treehouse, he hitched a ride on a
charter flight from Yaniruma, a
settlement at the edge of Korowai territory. He has tried to return home,
he says, but no one will take
him. Boas says a returning guide has told him that his father was so upset
by his son's absence that he
has twice burned down his own treehouse. We tell him he can come with us.
The next morning eight of us board a chartered Twin Otter, a workhorse
whose short takeoff and landing
ability will get us to Yaniruma. Once we're airborne, Kembaren shows me a
map: spidery lines marking
lowland rivers and thousands of square miles of green jungle. Dutch
missionaries who came to convert
the Korowai in the late 1970s called it "the hell in the south."
After 90 minutes we come in low, following the snaking Ndeiram Kabur
River. In the jungle below, Boas
spots his father’s treehouse, which seems impossibly high off the ground,
like the nest of a giant bird.
Boas, who wears a daisy-yellow bonnet, a souvenir of “civilization,” hugs
me in gratitude, and tears
trickle down his cheeks.
At Yaniruma, a line of stilt huts that Dutch missionaries established in
1979, we thump down on a dirt
strip carved out of the jungle. Now, to my surprise, Boas says he will
postpone his homecoming to
continue with us, lured by the promise of adventure with a laleo, and he
cheerfully lifts a sack of
foodstuffs onto his shoulders. As the pilot hurls the Twin Otter back into
the sky, a dozen Korowai men
hoist our packs and supplies and trudge toward the jungle in single file
bound for the river. Most carry
bows and arrows.
The Rev. Johannes Veldhuizen, a Dutch missionary with the Mission of the
Reformed Churches, first
made contact with the Korowai in 1978 and dropped plans to convert them to
Christianity. "A very
powerful mountain god warned the Korowai that their world would be
destroyed by an earthquake if
outsiders came into their land to change their customs," he told me by
phone from the Netherlands a few
years ago. "So we went as guests, rather than as conquerors, and never put
any pressure on the
Korowai to change their ways." The Rev. Gerrit van Enk, another Dutch
missionary and co-author of
The Korowai of Irian Jaya, coined the term "pacification line" for the
imaginary border separating
Korowai clans accustomed to outsiders from those farther north. In a
separate phone interview from the
Netherlands, he told me that he had never gone beyond the pacification
line because of possible danger
from Korowai clans there hostile to the presence of laleo in their territory.
As we pass through Yaniruma, I’m surprised that no Indonesian police
officer demands to see the
government permit issued to me allowing me to proceed. "The nearest police
post is at Senggo, several
days back along the river," Kembaren explains. "Occasionally a medical
worker or official comes here
for a few days, but they're too frightened to go deep into Korowai
territory."
Entering the Korowai rain forest is like stepping into a giant watery
cave. With the bright sun overhead I
breathe easily, but as the porters push through the undergrowth, the tree
canopy's dense weave plunges
the world into a verdant gloom. The heat is stifling and the air drips
with humidity. This is the haunt of
giant spiders, killer snakes and lethal microbes. High in the canopy,
parrots screech as I follow the
porters along a barely visible track winding around rain-soaked trees and
primeval palms. My shirt clings
to my back, and I take frequent swigs at my water bottle. The annual
rainfall here is around 200 inches,
making it one of the wettest places on earth. A sudden downpour sends
raindrops spearing through
gaps in the canopy, but we keep walking.
The local Korowai have laid logs on the mud, and the barefoot porters
cross these with ease. But,
desperately trying to balance as I edge along each log, time and again I
slip, stumble and fall into the
sometimes waist-deep mud, bruising and scratching my legs and arms.
Slippery logs as long as ten
yards bridge the many dips in the land. Inching across like a tightrope
walker, I wonder how the porters
would get me out of the jungle were I to fall and break a leg. "What the
hell am I doing here?" I keep
muttering, though I know the answer: I want to encounter a people who are
said to still practice
cannibalism.
Hour melts into hour as we push on, stopping briefly now and then to rest.
With night near, my heart
surges with relief when shafts of silvery light slip through the trees
ahead: a clearing. "It's Manggel,"
Kembaren says—another village set up by Dutch missionaries. "We'll stay
the night here."
Korowai children with beads about their necks come running to point and
giggle as I stagger into the
village—several straw huts perched on stilts and overlooking the river. I
notice there are no old people
here. "The Korowai have hardly any medicine to combat the jungle diseases
or cure battle wounds, and
so the death rate is high," Kembaren explains. "People rarely live to
middle age." As van Enk writes,
Korowai routinely fall to interclan conflicts; diseases, including
malaria, tuberculosis, elephantiasis and
anemia, and what he calls "the khakhua complex." The Korowai have no
knowledge of the deadly germs
that infest their jungles, and so believe that mysterious deaths must be
caused by khakhua, or witches
who take on the form of men.
After we eat a dinner of river fish and rice, Boas joins me in a hut and
sits cross-legged on the thatched
floor, his dark eyes reflecting the gleam from my flashlight, our only
source of light. Using Kembaren as
translator, he explains why the Korowai kill and eat their fellow
tribesmen. It's because of the khakhua,
which comes disguised as a relative or friend of a person he wants to
kill. "The khakhua eats the victim's
insides while he sleeps," Boas explains, "replacing them with fireplace
ash so the victim does not know
he's being eaten. The khakhua finally kills the person by shooting a
magical arrow into his heart." When
a clan member dies, his or her male relatives and friends seize and kill
the khakhua. "Usually, the
[dying] victim whispers to his relatives the name of the man he knows is
the khakhua," Boas says. "He
may be from the same or another treehouse."
I ask Boas whether the Korowai eat people for any other reason or eat the
bodies of enemies they've
killed in battle. "Of course not," he replies, giving me a funny look. "We
don't eat humans, we only eat
khakhua."
The killing and eating of khakhua has reportedly declined among
tribespeople in and near the
settlements. Rupert Stasch, an anthropologist at Reed College in Portland,
Oregon, who has lived among
the Korowai for 16 months and studied their culture, writes in the journal
Oceania that Korowai say they
have "given up" killing witches partly because they were growing
ambivalent about the practice and
partly in reaction to several incidents with police. In one in the early
'90s, Stasch writes, a Yaniruma
man killed his sister's husband for being a khakhua. The police arrested
the killer, an accomplice and a
village head. "The police rolled them around in barrels, made them stand
overnight in a leech-infested
pond, and forced them to eat tobacco, chili peppers, animal feces, and
unripe papaya," he writes. Word
of such treatment, combined with Korowais' own ambivalence, prompted some
to limit witch-killing even
in places where police do not venture.
Still, the eating of khakhua persists, according to my guide, Kembaren.
"Many khakhua are murdered
and eaten each year," he says, citing information he says he has gained
from talking to Korowai who
still live in treehouses.
On our third day of trekking, after hiking from soon after sunrise to
dusk, we reach Yafufla, another line
of stilt huts set up by Dutch missionaries. That night, Kembaren takes me
to an open hut overlooking the
river, and we sit by a small campfire. Two men approach through the gloom,
one in shorts, the other
naked save for a necklace of prized pigs' teeth and a leaf wrapped about
the tip of his penis. "That's
Kilikili," Kembaren whispers, "the most notorious khakhua killer."
Kilikili carries a bow and barbed
arrows. His eyes are empty of expression, his lips are drawn in a grimace
and he walks as soundlessly
as a shadow.
The other man, who turns out to be Kilikili's brother Bailom, pulls a
human skull from a bag. A jagged
hole mars the forehead. "It's Bunop, the most recent khakhua he killed,"
Kembaren says of the skull.
"Bailom used a stone ax to split the skull open to get at the brains." The
guide's eyes dim. "He was one
of my best porters, a cheerful young man," he says.
Bailom passes the skull to me. I don't want to touch it, but neither do I
want to offend him. My blood chills
at the feel of naked bone. I have read stories and watched documentaries
about the Korowai, but as far
as I know none of the reporters and filmmakers had ever gone as far
upriver as we're about to go, and
none I know of had ever seen a khakhua's skull.
The fire's reflection flickers on the brothers' faces as Bailom tells me
how he killed the khakhua, who
lived in Yafufla, two years ago. "Just before my cousin died he told me
that Bunop was a khakhua and
was eating him from the inside," he says, with Kembaren translating. "So
we caught him, tied him up
and took him to a stream, where we shot arrows into him."
Bailom says that Bunop screamed for mercy all the way, protesting that he
was not a khakhua. But
Bailom was unswayed. "My cousin was close to death when he told me and
would not lie," Bailom says.
At the stream, Bailom says, he used a stone ax to chop off the khakhua's
head. As he held it in the air
and turned it away from the body, the others chanted and dismembered
Bunop's body. Bailom, making
chopping movements with his hand, explains: "We cut out his intestines and
broke open the rib cage,
chopped off the right arm attached to the right rib cage, the left arm and
left rib cage, and then both
legs."
The body parts, he says, were individually wrapped in banana leaves and
distributed among the clan
members. "But I kept the head because it belongs to the family that killed
the khakhua," he says. "We
cook the flesh like we cook pig, placing palm leaves over the wrapped meat
together with burning hot
river rocks to make steam."
Some readers may believe that these two are having me on—that they are
just telling a visitor what he
wants to hear—and that the skull came from someone who died from some
other cause. But I believe
they were telling the truth. I spent eight days with Bailom, and
everything else he told me proved factual.
I also checked with four other Yafufla men who said they had joined in the
killing, dismembering and
eating of Bunop, and the details of their accounts mirrored reports of
khakhua cannibalism by Dutch
missionaries who lived among the Korowai for several years. Kembaren
clearly accepted Bailom’s story
as fact.
Around our campfire, Bailom tells me he feels no remorse. "Revenge is part
of our culture, so when the
khakhua eats a person, the people eat the khakhua," he says. (Taylor, the
Smithsonian Institution
anthropologist, has described khakhua-eating as "part of a system of
justice.") "It's normal," Bailom
says. "I don't feel sad I killed Bunop, even though he was a friend."
In cannibal folklore, told in numerous books and articles, human flesh is
said to be known as "long pig"
because of its similar taste. When I mention this, Bailom shakes his head.
"Human flesh tastes like
young cassowary," he says, referring to a local ostrich-like bird. At a
khakhua meal, he says, both men
and women—children do not attend—eat everything but bones, teeth, hair,
fingernails and toenails and
the penis. "I like the taste of all the body parts," Bailom says, "but the
brains are my favorite." Kilikili
nods in agreement, his first response since he arrived.
When the khakhua is a member of the same clan, he is bound with rattan and
taken up to a day's march
away to a stream near the treehouse of a friendly clan. "When they find a
khakhua too closely related
for them to eat, they bring him to us so we can kill and eat him," Bailom
says.
He says he has personally killed four khakhua. And Kilikili? Bailom
laughs. "He says he'll tell you now the
names of 8 khakhua he's killed," he replies, "and if you come to his
treehouse upriver, he'll tell you the
names of the other 22."
I ask what they do with the bones.
"We place them by the tracks leading into the treehouse clearing, to warn
our enemies," Bailom says.
"But the killer gets to keep the skull. After we eat the khakhua, we beat
loudly on our treehouse walls all
night with sticks" to warn other khakhua to stay away.
As we walk back to our hut, Kembaren confides that "years ago, when I was
making friends with the
Korowai, a man here at Yafufla told me I'd have to eat human flesh if they
were to trust me. He gave me
a chunk," he says. "It was a bit tough but tasted good."
That night it takes me a long time to get to sleep.
The next morning Kembaren brings to the hut a 6-year-old boy named Wawa,
who is naked except for a
necklace of beads. Unlike the other village children, boisterous and
smiling, Wawa is withdrawn and his
eyes seem deeply sad. Kembaren wraps an arm around him. "When Wawa's
mother died last
November—I think she had TB, she was very sick, coughing and aching—people
at his treehouse
suspected him of being a khakhua," he says. "His father died a few months
earlier, and they believed
[Wawa] used sorcery to kill them both. His family was not powerful enough
to protect him at the
treehouse, and so this January his uncle escaped with Wawa, bringing him
here, where the family is
stronger." Does Wawa know the threat he is facing? "He's heard about it
from his relatives, but I don't
think he fully understands that people at his treehouse want to kill and
eat him, though they'll probably
wait until he's older, about 14 or 15, before they try. But while he stays
at Yafufla, he should be safe."
Soon the porters heft our equipment and head toward the jungle. "We're
taking the easy way, by
pirogue," Kembaren tells me. Bailom and Kilikili, each gripping a bow and
arrows, have joined the
porters. "They know the clans upriver better than our Yaniruma men,"
Kembaren explains.
Bailom shows me his arrows, each a yard-long shaft bound with vine to an
arrowhead designed for a
specific prey. Pig arrowheads, he says, are broad-bladed; those for birds,
long and narrow. Fish
arrowheads are pronged, while the arrowheads for humans are each a hand's
span of cassowary bone
with six or more barbs carved on each side—to ensure terrible damage when
cut away from the victim's
flesh. Dark bloodstains coat these arrowheads.
I ask Kembaren if he is comfortable with the idea of two cannibals
accompanying us. "Most of the
porters have probably eaten human flesh," he answers with a smile.
Kembaren leads me down to the Ndeiram Kabur River, where we board a long,
slender pirogue. I settle
in the middle, the sides pressing against my body. Two Korowai paddlers
stand at the stern, two more at
the bow, and we push off, steering close by the riverbank, where the water
flow is slowest. Each time the
boatmen maneuver the pirogue around a sandbar, the strong current in the
middle of the river threatens
to tip us over. Paddling upriver is tough, even for the muscular boatmen,
and they frequently break into
Korowai song timed to the slap of the paddles against the water, a
yodeling chant that echoes along the
riverbank.
High green curtains of trees woven with tangled streamers of vine shield
the jungle. A siren scream of
cicadas pierces the air. The day passes in a blur, and night descends
quickly.
And that's when we are accosted by the screaming men on the riverbank.
Kembaren refuses to come to
their side of the river. "It's too dangerous," he whispers. Now the two
Korowai armed with bows and
arrows are paddling a pirogue toward us. I ask Kembaren if he has a gun.
He shakes his head no.
As their pirogue bumps against ours, one of the men growls that laleo are
forbidden to enter their sacred
river, and that my presence angers the spirits. Korowai are animists,
believing that powerful beings live
in specific trees and parts of rivers. The tribesman demands that we give
the clan a pig to absolve the
sacrilege. A pig costs 350,000 rupiahs, or about $40. It's a Stone Age
shakedown. I count out the
money and pass it to the man, who glances at the Indonesian currency and
grants us permission to
pass.
What use is money to these people? I ask Kembaren as our boatmen paddle to
safety upriver. "It's
useless here," he answers, "but whenever they get any money, and that's
rare, the clans use it to help
pay bride prices for Korowai girls living closer to Yaniruma. They
understand the dangers of incest, and
so girls must marry into unrelated clans."
About an hour farther up the river, we pull up onto the bank, and I
scramble up a muddy slope, dragging
myself over the slippery rise by grasping exposed tree roots. Bailom and
the porters are waiting for us
and wearing worried faces. Bailom says that the tribesmen knew we were
coming because they had
intercepted the porters as they passed near their treehouses.
Would they really have killed us if we hadn't paid up? I ask Bailom,
through Kembaren. Bailom nods:
"They'd have let you pass tonight because they knew you'd have to return
downriver. Then, they'd
ambush you, some firing arrows from the riverbank and others attacking at
close range in their
pirogues."
The porters string all but one of the tarpaulins over our supplies. Our
shelter for the night is four poles
set in a square about four yards apart and topped by a tarp with open
sides. Soon after midnight a
downpour drenches us. The wind sends my teeth chattering, and I sit
disconsolately hugging my knees.
Seeing me shivering, Boas pulls my body against his for warmth. As I drift
off, deeply fatigued, I have
the strangest thought: this is the first time I've ever slept with a
cannibal.
We leave at first light, still soaked. At midday our pirogue reaches our
destination, a riverbank close by
the treehouse, or khaim, of a Korowai clan that Kembaren says has never
before seen a white person.
Our porters arrived before us and have already built a rudimentary hut. "I
sent a Korowai friend here a
few days ago to ask the clan to let us visit them," Kembaren says.
"Otherwise they'd have attacked us."
I ask why they've given permission for a laleo to enter their sacred land.
"I think they're as curious to
see you, the ghost-demon, as you are to see them," Kembaren answered.
At midafternoon, Kembaren and I hike 30 minutes through dense jungle and
ford a deep stream. He
points ahead to a treehouse that looks deserted. It perches on a
decapitated banyan tree, its floor a
dense latticework of boughs and strips of wood. It's about ten yards off
the ground. "It belongs to the
Letin clan," he says. Korowai are formed into what anthropologists call
patriclans, which inhabit
ancestral lands and trace ownership and genealogy through the male line.
A young cassowary prances past, perhaps a family pet. A large pig, flushed
from its hiding place in the
grass, dashes into the jungle. "Where are the Korowai?" I ask. Kembaren
points to the treehouse.
"They’re waiting for us."
I can hear voices as I climb an almost vertical pole notched with
footholds. The interior of the treehouse
is wreathed in a haze of smoke rent by beams of sunlight. Young men are
bunched on the floor near the
entrance. Smoke from hearth fires has coated the bark walls and sago-leaf
ceiling, giving the hut a sooty
odor. A pair of stone axes, several bows and arrows and net bags are
tucked into the leafy rafters. The
floor creaks as I settle cross-legged onto it.
Four women and two children sit at the rear of the treehouse, the women
fashioning bags from vines and
studiously ignoring me. "Men and women stay on different sides of the
treehouse and have their own
hearths," says Kembaren. Each hearth is made from strips of clay-coated
rattan suspended over a hole
in the floor so that it can be quickly hacked loose, to fall to the
ground, if a fire starts to burn out of
control.
A middle-aged man with a hard-muscled body and a bulldog face straddles
the gender dividing line.
Speaking through Boas, Kembaren makes small talk about crops, the weather
and past feasts. The man
grips his bow and arrows and avoids my gaze. But now and then I catch him
stealing glances in my
direction. "That's Lepeadon, the clan's khen-mengga-abül, or 'fierce
man,'" Kembaren says. The fierce
man leads the clan in fights. Lepeadon looks up to the task.
"A clan of six men, four women, three boys and two girls live here,"
Kembaren says. "The others have
come from nearby treehouses to see their first laleo."
After an hour of talk, the fierce man moves closer to me and, still
unsmiling, speaks. "I knew you were
coming and expected to see a ghost, but now I see you're just like us, a
human," he says, as Boas
translates to Kembaren and Kembaren translates to me.
A youngster tries to yank my pants off, and he almost succeeds amid a gale
of laughter. I join in the
laughing but keep a tight grip on my modesty. The Rev. Johannes Veldhuizen
had told me that Korowai
he’d met had thought him a ghost-demon until they spied him bathing in a
stream and saw that he came
equipped with all the requisite parts of a yanop, or human being. Korowai
seemed to have a hard time
understanding clothing. They call it laleo-khal, "ghost-demon skin," and
Veldhuizen told me they believed
his shirt and pants to be a magical epidermis that he could don or remove
at will.
"We shouldn't push the first meeting too long," Kembaren now tells me as
he rises to leave. Lepeadon
follows us to the ground and grabs both my hands. He begins bouncing up
and down and chanting,
"nemayokh" ("friend"). I keep up with him in what seems a ritual farewell,
and he swiftly increases the
pace until it is frenzied, before he suddenly stops, leaving me breathless.
"I've never seen that before," Kembaren says. "We've just experienced
something very special." It was
certainly special to me. In four decades of journeying among remote
tribes, this is the first time I've
encountered a clan that has evidently never seen anyone as light-skinned
as me. Enthralled, I find my
eyes tearing up as we return to our hut.
The next morning four Korowai women arrive at our hut carrying a squawking
green frog, several locusts
and a spider they say they just caught in the jungle. "They've brought
your breakfast," Boas says,
smiling as his gibe is translated. Two years in a Papuan town has taught
him that we laleo wrinkle our
noses at Korowai delicacies. The young women have circular scars the size
of large coins running the
length of their arms, around the stomach and across their breasts. "The
marks make them look more
beautiful," Boas says.
He explains how they are made, saying circular pieces of bark embers are
placed on the skin. It seems
an odd way to add beauty to the female form, but no more bizarre than
tattoos, stiletto-heel shoes, Botox
injections or the not-so-ancient Chinese custom of slowly crushing infant
girls' foot bones to make their
feet as small as possible.
Kembaren and I spend the morning talking to Lepeadon and the young men
about Korowai religion.
Seeing spirits in nature, they find belief in a single god puzzling. But
they too recognize a powerful
spirit, named Ginol, who created the present world after having destroyed
the previous four. For as long
as the tribal memory reaches back, elders sitting around fires have told
the younger ones that white-
skinned ghost-demons will one day invade Korowai land. Once the laleo
arrive, Ginol will obliterate this
fifth world. The land will split apart, there will be fire and thunder,
and mountains will drop from the sky.
This world will shatter, and a new one will take its place. The prophecy
is, in a way, bound to be fulfilled
as more young Korowai move between their treehouses and downriver
settlements, which saddens me
as I return to our hut for the night.
The Korowai, believing that evil spirits are most active at night, usually
don’t venture out of their
treehouses after the sun sets. They divide the day into seven distinct
periods—dawn, sunrise,
midmorning, noon, midafternoon, dusk and night. They use their bodies to
count numbers. Lepeadon
shows me how, ticking off the fingers of his left hand, then touching his
wrist, forearm, elbow, upper
arm, shoulder, neck, ear and the crown of the head, and moving down the
other arm. The tally comes to
25. For anything greater than that, the Korowai start over and add the
word laifu, meaning “turn around.”
In the afternoon I go with the clan to the sago palm fields to harvest
their staple food. Two men hack
down a sago palm, each with a hand ax made from a fist-size chunk of hard,
dark stone sharpened at
one end and lashed with vine to a slim wooden handle. The men then pummel
the sago pith to a pulp,
which the women sluice with water to produce a dough they mold into
bite-size pieces and grill.
A snake that falls from the toppling palm is swiftly killed. Lepeadon then
loops a length of rattan about a
stick and rapidly pulls it to and fro next to some shavings on the ground,
producing tiny sparks that start
a fire. Blowing hard to fuel the growing flame, he places the snake under
a pile of burning wood. When
the meat is charred, I'm offered a piece of it. It tastes like chicken.
On our return to the treehouse, we pass banyan trees, with their dramatic,
aboveground root flares. The
men slam their heels against these appendages, producing a thumping sound
that travels across the
jungle. "That lets the people at the treehouse know they're coming home,
and how far away they are,"
Kembaren tells me.
My three days with the clan pass swiftly. When I feel they trust me, I ask
when they last killed a
khakhua. Lepeadon says it was near the time of the last sago palm feast,
when several hundred Korowai
gathered to dance, eat vast quantities of sago palm maggots, trade goods,
chant fertility songs and let
the marriage-age youngsters eye one another. According to our porters,
that dates the killing to just over
a year ago.
Lepeadon tells Boas he wants me to stay longer, but I have to return to
Yaniruma to meet the Twin Otter.
As we board the pirogue, the fierce man squats by the riverside but
refuses to look at me. When the
boatmen push away, he leaps up, scowls, thrusts a cassowary-bone arrow
across his bow, yanks on the
rattan string and aims at me. After a few moments, he smiles and lowers
the bow—a fierce man's way of
saying goodbye.
In midafternoon, the boatmen steer the pirogue to the edge of a swamp
forest and tie it to a tree trunk.
Boas leaps out and leads the way, setting a brisk pace. After an hour’s
trek, I reach a clearing about the
size of two football fields and planted with banana trees. Dominating it
is a treehouse that soars about 75
feet into the sky. Its springy floor rests on several natural columns,
tall trees cut off at the point where
branches once flared out.
Boas is waiting for us. Next to him stands his father, Khanduop, a
middle-aged man clad in rattan strips
about his waist and a leaf covering part of his penis. He grabs my hand
and thanks me for bringing his
son home. He has killed a large pig for the occasion, and Bailom, with
what seems to me to be
superhuman strength, carries it on his back up a notched pole into the
treehouse. Inside, every nook
and cranny is crammed with bones from previous feasts—spiky fish
skeletons, blockbuster pig jaws, the
skulls of flying foxes and rats. The bones dangle even from hooks strung
along the ceiling, near bundles
of many-colored parrot and cassowary feathers. The Korowai believe that
the décor signals hospitality
and prosperity.
I meet Yakor, a tall, kindly eyed tribesman from a treehouse upriver, who
squats by the fire with
Khanduop, Bailom and Kilikili. Boas’ mother is dead, and Khanduop, a
fierce man, has married Yakor's
sister. When the talk turns to khakhua meals they have enjoyed, Khanduop's
eyes light up. He's dined
on many khakhua, he says, and the taste is the most delicious of any
creature he's ever eaten.
The next morning the porters depart for the river, carrying our remaining
supplies. But before I leave,
Khanduop wants to talk; his son and Kembaren translate. "Boas has told me
he'll live in Yaniruma with
his brother, coming back just for visits," he murmurs. Khanduop's gaze
clouds. "The time of the true
Korowai is coming to an end, and that makes me very sad."
Boas gives his father a wan smile and walks with me to the pirogue for the
two-hour journey to
Yaniruma, wearing his yellow bonnet as if it were a visa for the 21st
century.
Three years earlier I had visited the Korubo, an isolated indigenous tribe
in the Amazon, together with
Sydney Possuelo, then director of Brazil's Department for Isolated Indians
[SMITHSONIAN, April 2005].
This question of what to do with such peoples—whether to yank them into
the present or leave them
untouched in their jungles and traditions—had troubled Possuelo for
decades. "I believe we should let
them live in their own special worlds," he told me, "because once they go
downriver to the settlements
and see what is to them the wonders and magic of our lives, they never go
back to live in a traditional
way."
So it is with the Korowai. They have at most a generation left in their
traditional culture—one that
includes practices that admittedly strike us as abhorrent. Year by year
the young men and women will
drift to Yaniruma and other settlements until only aging clan members are
left in the treehouses. And at
that point Ginol's godly prophecy will reach its apocalyptic fulfillment,
and thunder and earthquakes of a
kind will destroy the old Korowai world forever.
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KABAR IRIAN ("Irian/Papua News since 1994") www.kabar-irian.info -
www.kabar-irian.com
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