Living with the dead

It was custom that successful chiefs or village elders who protected or defended the community in their lifetimes should offer protection after their death. As a fetish such elders were mummified by smoking and being kept in the upper level of the main hut.

Most of the century-old mummies were systematically destroyed as they didn’t match with modern belief systems being brought into Baliem valley in the 20st century. Some accounts inform that there are only three mummies left protecting the Dani people.

Akima, Baliem Valley, April 2009.

Mourning, mutilation, spirits and Dani women

Funerals once were the most important Dani rite. They lasted several years, starting with mourning and the cremation of the deceased to drive the ghost from the living area. Elaborate rituals were held for important men and those killed in battle. The ghosts of these men were particularly powerful. Corpses of important Big Men were not cremated but mummified to be kept for supernatural reasons.

Mourning can be observed nearly everywhere. Women usually smear their faces and bodies with yellow clay or ashes to express grief for the lost relative.

One of the adjuncts to the cremation ceremony was the cutting off of a girl’s finger upper part. The fingers were tied off with string half an hour before the ax fell. Afterwards, the finger upper parts were left to dry, burned, and the ashes were buried in a special place.

This cruel practice of impressing the spirits is now prohibited but many middle-aged or older women can still be seen with missing finger parts and even cut-off earlaps once too many relatives had died.Living a life devoted to the spirits of the dead Dani, at the price of a handicap for daily life.

Baliem Valley, Papua, April 2009.

Market scene in Papua's highlands

Wamena, Papua, April 2009.

Traditional Dani pig feast

A traditional Dani pig feast is something very special, not least due to the high pig prices on the market. Considering that a smaller pig starts at 1.5 to 2 million Rupiah (approx. US$ 180), such a feast is costly. Considering also decades of acculturation of the Papuan community by the Indonesian central government and such campaigns as ‘operation koteka’ designed to prevent Papuans from wearing their traditional clothes, we were not expecting that our contribution of a pig could be enough to revive traditions, but thankfully the traditions still exist, and can be taught to younger members of the community.

The pig feast involves a whole village, men, women, and children alike. Everybody has a distinct responsibility. Men take care of the pig and light the fire, women collect leaves and herbs in the forest and get sweet potatoes from the fields, and the children observe what the adults of their respective sex are doing, learn from them and help with minor and easy tasks.

The Dani tribesman responsible for the organization of the feast kills the pig with a single arrow shot, placed in such a way that bleeding can occur easily and that the entrails bag is not torn (see above). Once the pig is dead, another person cuts its ears and tail with a sharp bamboo piece (see below). These are to be kept as a memory of the feast.

In between, a fire had been lit using bamboo and straw, and a ‘pyre’ with tree trunks and branches erected to heat the stones which would be going to line the cooking pit. The heat generated was also used to rid the pig off its fur.

Burnt fur is easier to remove, a task performed by using a sharp piece of bamboo or fingernails as seen below.

The pig was put again on the fire to clean its skin.

The men then cut the pig open, removed the bag containing the entrails and took out some of the fat. The entrails were also separated. Young boys were helping in this operation, learning how to perform a perfect cut, what to keep and what to throw away.

In the meantime, the women and some young girls had come back with different kinds of leaves and herbs and emptied their full noken into the open pit. Once enough leaves were available, the women left again for the fields, to collect sweet potatoes.
After a first lining of leaves had been done, hot stones were carried into the cooking pit using wooden prongs.

Both men and women attended the hot stone business.

More leaves were put in, the sweet potatoes were neatly placed on the leaves, with some stones in between to ensure regular heat.

After this operation, the whole pit was more than full. It was then covered with straw and fastened with rattan to prevent it from collapsing.

More leaves were put on top of the heap, banana leaves added and the pig placed on top of them.

Here again, some hot stones were put under the thicker parts of the pig to ensure they would be cooked. The pig parts were then covered with leaves and ferns. Again, some straw was added on top of the heap, and a layer of leaves placed on it where the halved buah merah was laid. Hot stones were put in the hollow buah merah to ensure cooking, and the red fruit was covered with leaves and straw.
Rattan was again used to ensure the stability of the heap.

After nearly three hours, the stack was untied and the straw and leaves removed. The buah merah was pressed to make an oily red sauce in which to dip the sweet potatoes. The meat was shared in equal parts among all people, and everybody enjoyed the rare treat.

Suroba, Baliem Valley, Papua, April 2009.

The eternal art of dressing well

Very few Dani still wear their national attire consisting for men only of a different and quite innovative sort of underwear (see above). The koteka made out of gourd is being placed over the penis to be hold with two strings, one placed over the testicles, the other around the waist. It's quite comfortable and remarkable that this fashion never made it out of stone-age culture. For Karl Lagerfeld this art of dressing may be too pre baroque, but sorts like Jean-Paul Gaultier may like kotekas made out of leather or just in pink, purple or black. What about the essence of koteka as a new perfume?

Seeing Dani women’s backs is as unlikely as seeing the bare front of a female tourist on a Dubai beach (see below). The noken, a woven bag made of inner tree bark fibers and carried on the back supported by a band over the forehead is the ultimate answer to combining clothing and accessoires.

Suroba, Baliem Valley, Papua, April 2009.

Crossing the mountain: Visiting the Dani tribe of Papua

Baliem Valley and the Dani tribe waited a long time to be discovered. It was Richard Archbold who discovered the well hidden valley during an aerial reconnaissance flight in 1938. Literally, he had seen over the mountain wall—some summits higher than 4,000 meters—and broken the seal on a stone-age culture.

Nowadays the tiny 60×30km Baliem valley which lies about 1,600 meters above sea level can easily be accessed by plane from Jayapura, the coastal capital town of Indonesia's Papua province. Reaching Jayapura isn't difficult but flying there takes time. Jayapura is at the very Eastern end of Indonesia, some 5,200 km away from Indonesia’s most Northwestern tip, Aceh province. Put into transatlantic terms, these two Indonesian cities are as far from each other as Dublin from New York.

21^st century Baliem Valley has still remnants of the stone-age, knives made out of bone or bamboo are still in use, traditional pig feasts are still celebrated, some hundred year-old mummies have survived purges by the government, and old fences surrounding the land of the villages are still in use. Stone-axes, the weapon for occasional tribal wars had been used well up into the 1950/60s but then what we would call civilization entered the Baliem Valley and missionaries and civil servants began to transform century-old value systems.

Photo above: Dani watch tower, a witness of times when tribal wars were still being fought.