"To possess the world in the form of images is, precisely, to re-experience the unreality and remoteness of the the real." Susan Sontag, On Photography
Anthropologists tend to downplay the meaning and significance of the few ancestral mummies or desiccated corpses that can still be found in the central highlands of West Papua (Irian Jaya, Indonesia).
This corpse is kept in the sleeping loft of a Dani men’s house where it has dried and turned shiny black from smoke rising from the ground floor, perhaps for more than a century but more likely around 60 to 70 years. It is adorned with fresh barkcloth neck strips and a long koteka or penis gourd. Ornamental wrist bands of pandanus fibres are worn by the Dani guardian.
Dani corpses are normally cremated during elaborate funeral rites. It is likely that this corpse was not cremated because it was of a man of great importance, a venerated "big man" or leader of a major political alliance at a time not so long ago when ritual warfare was a constant and ubiquitous part of everyday Dani life.
The desiccated corpse may be perceived by the Dani as having supernatural value, a way to placate the ghosts. Ethnographic accounts tend to suggest this but the ethnographers seem reluctant to draw any clear definitive conclusions.
There is little evidence that it is the object of organized ancestral worship more common in other Melanesian cultures. At the very least today, it is a "sensational" photo op staged for tourists and other passing strangers.
The indigenous peoples of West Papua migrated from southeast Asia and the Australian continent about 30,000 to 50,000 years ago during the Ice Age when sea levels were lower and distances between islands shorter.
Western "first contact” with West Papua's Grand Valley Dani was established in 1938 during American-led botanical and zoological expeditions to the central highlands, less than sixty years before this photograph was taken.
~~~
Ethnographic efforts at demystifying Dani neolithic cultural practices and ritualized warfare in the region are associated with the early ground-breaking 1961 Harvard-Peabody Expedition. They include anthropologist Karl Heider’s accounts in “The Dugum Dani: A Papuan Culture in the Highlands of West New Guinea,” Aldine Publishing (1970) and “Grand Valley Dani: Peaceful Warriors” (Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology), Wadsworth Publishing (1996); also filmmaker Robert Gardner’s classic ethnographic documentary, “Dead Birds” (1965) and Peter Matthiessen’s “Under the Mountain Wall: A Chronicle of Two Seasons in Stone Age New Guinea,” Viking Press (1962).
Noritsu Koki QSS-31 digital film scan, shot with a compact semi-automatic point-and-shoot Pentax camera, circa 1996.
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Tags: Dani Dugum Dani Grand Valley Dani West Papua Irian Jaya Papua Melanesia Indonesia Balim Valley highlands david schweitzer penis gourd koteka man indigenous ethnic jewellery tribe tribal travel portrait ethnic elder decoration culture body art Bigman mummy corpse desiccated “vanishing cultures” “ethnic jewellery” body context portraiture street documentary Balim River Valley LPSpooky gaze Neolithic stone-age DocumentaryPhotography StreetPhotography HumanInterest VisualAnthropology PhotoJournalism people DocumentaryPortrait StreetPortrait VanishingCultures film analog
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© National Geographic Yourshot (Editor's Favourite, July 2018). Story and assignment: “Not Just a Face."
"To possess the world in the form of images is, precisely, to re-experience the unreality and remoteness of the the real." Susan Sontag, On Photography
An elderly Dani woman with a sharpened fire-hardened digging stick pauses for a moment from work in an elaborate sweet potato garden near her compound high in a remote corner of West Papua's central highlands, 1600m/5200ft above sea level - "Grand Valley" of the Balim River, Irian Jaya, Indonesia.
Mourning and Finger Mutilation
The segments of two fingers on each hand were cut off as a child as a traditional form of sacrificial grieving or mourning for a close relative who had died. Most females above the age of about ten have lost four to six fingers in connection with funerals and efforts at impressing, placating or driving away the ghost of the deceased.
Finger mutilation or the traditional practice of chopping fingers off at the first joint is now officially banned, although it seems likely that this longstanding neolithic cultural practice continues today in a few isolated pockets of the region.
Ethnographic accounts indicate that daily life for a woman in Dani culture is largely limited to a routine of drudgery that appears to have a sullen or depressive effect on most women.
The Gardens
The Grand Valley Dani are accomplished gardeners and pig farmers with a neolithic (late Stone Age) culture and technology. They rely on polished stone adzes and axes, sharpened pig tusks, bamboo knives, and fire-hardened digging sticks - tools that are gradually being replaced with iron and steel.
The gardens involve complex mazes of sophisticated irrigation ditches cut deeply across the fertile grand valley floor. The sweet potato (over 70 varieties) accounts for about 90% of their diet. Digging sticks are used to weed and maintain the gardens. Both men and women spend most of their working lives in the gardens.
First Contact
The indigenous peoples of West Papua migrated from southeast Asia and the Australian continent about 30,000 to 50,000 years ago during the Ice Age when sea levels were lower and distances between islands shorter.
Western "first contact” with the Grand Valley Dani was established in 1938 during American-led botanical and zoological explorations the central highlands, less than sixty years before this photograph was taken.
Today, about 50,000 Dani live in small compound clusters or settlements scattered across the fertile and densely-populated "Grand Valley" of the Balim River (about 40 miles long by 10 miles wide) in West Papua's central highlands.
High resolution Noritsu Koki QSS digital film scan, shot with a compact Pentax point-and-shoot film camera. Film developed in a Sulawesi street-corner shophouse, circa 1996.
© All rights to these photos and descriptions are reserved and protected by international copyright laws. Any use of this work requires my prior written permission.
~~~
Ethnographic efforts at demystifying Dani Neolithic cultural practices and ritualized inter-clan warfare in the region are associated with the early ground-breaking Harvard-Peabody Expedition of 1961-63. They include:
• Anthropologist Karl Heider’s accounts in “The Dugum Dani: A Papuan Culture in the Highlands of West New Guinea,” Aldine Publishing (1970); and “Grand Valley Dani: Peaceful Warriors” (Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology), Wadsworth Publishing (1996).
•Filmmaker Robert Gardner’s classic social documentary, “Dead Birds” (1965).
•Writer Peter Matthiessen’s gripping first-hand accounts in “Under the Mountain Wall: A Chronicle of Two Seasons in Stone Age New Guinea,” Viking Press (1962).
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Tags: Papua Dani Indonesia Balim Irian Jaya Melanesia highlands Oceania indigenous tribe culture ethnic portrait context portraiture street documentary stick clan mourning grieving finger mutilation travel gaze dramatic South Pacific Oceanea Grand Valley vanishing cultures hands DavidSchweitzer DocumentaryPhotography StreetPhotography HumanInterest VisualAnthropology DocumentaryPortrait StreetPortrait PhotoJournalism People analog black&white monochrome film bw
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© National Geographic Yourshot (Editor's Favourite, August 2018). Story and assignment: “Rethinking Portraiture.”
"To possess the world in the form of images is, precisely, to re-experience the unreality and remoteness of the the real." Susan Sontag, On Photography
A married Dani woman with carrying net prepares for a pig feast inside the oval courtyard of a traditional fortress-like compound high in a remote corner of West Papua's central highlands, 1600m/5200ft above sea level - Grand Valley of the Balim River, Irian Jaya, Indonesia.
A Dani warrior appears in the faded backdrop as he prepares for a ritualized mock battle that will take place outside the compound. He is adorned with an upturned boar’s tusk nose piece, bird-of-paradise plumes, arm bands of dog fur, white clay body markings, and the iconic koteka or penis gourd – all part of traditional Dani ornamentation and battle dress.
The indigenous peoples of West Papua migrated from southeast Asia and the Australian continent about 30,000 to 50,000 years ago during the Ice Age when sea levels were lower and distances between islands shorter. Western "first contact” with West Papua's Grand Valley Dani was established in 1938 during American-led botanical and zoological expeditions to the central highlands, less than sixty years before this photograph was taken.
High resolution Noritsu Koki QSS digital film scan, shot with a compact semi-automatic Pentax point-and-shoot film camera, circa 1996.
© All rights to these photos and descriptions are reserved and protected by international copyright laws. Any use of this work requires my prior written permission.
~~~
Ethnographic efforts at demystifying Dani neolithic cultural practices and ritualized warfare in the region are associated with the early ground-breaking 1961 Harvard-Peabody Expedition. They include anthropologist Karl Heider’s accounts in “The Dugum Dani: A Papuan Culture in the Highlands of West New Guinea,” Aldine Publishing (1970) and “Grand Valley Dani: Peaceful Warriors” (Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology), Wadsworth Publishing (1996); also filmmaker Robert Gardner’s classic ethnographic documentary, “Dead Birds” (1965) and Peter Matthiessen’s “Under the Mountain Wall: A Chronicle of Two Seasons in Stone Age New Guinea,” Viking Press (1962).
Street Portraiture | Social Documentary | BodyArt
Tags: Dani West Papua Irian Jaya Indonesia Balim pig feast tribe woman people indigenous Melanesia tribal portrait highlands culture body-language koteka documentary context portraiture blackandwhite vanishing cultures carrying net neolithic stone-age DavidSchweitzer DocumentaryPhotography StreetPhotography HumanInterest VisualAnthropology PhotoJournalism DocumentaryPortrait StreetPortrait black&white monochrome film analog bw
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Daily communal life at a traditional Iban longhouse or Rumah Panjang tends to converge around an elongated wooden veranda that serves as an open social area and shared meeting space. This longhouse is naturally positioned along a remote rainforest stream about a half day's jungle trek from Kapit, a small riverine supply town that caters to the many Iban and Orang Ulu longhouse communities in the upper Rajang River region of Sarawak, East Malaysia (Borneo). Digital film scan, Asahi Pentax Spotmatic, circa 1973.
The wooden longhouse structure and veranda are raised on tall stilts with a row of separate family apartments sectioned off on the other side of the main housing structure. Notched logs are used as ladders that lead up to the longhouse. Traditional hand-tapped tattoos on the headman's back are seen as having magical protective powers.
~~~
Postscript - Few traditional wooden longhouses of this kind remain today. Most longhouses are now made from concrete and milled timber with access to electricity, satellite TV, and the perennial corrugated tin roof. Nowadays, the Rejang riverine region can be reached overland by taxi or bus, and by air on cheap Expedia flights. Express boats with air-conditioning and cushioned first-class passenger seating ply the Batang Rejang daily, cutting longboat travel time from Kapit to Belaga by a day or more. Organized package tours to the longhouses flourish. Digital smartphones and credit cards dictate the travel experience. The modern era of fast travel and organized tourism has arrived.
Accelerated contact with the outside world has contributed to sweeping social changes and a gradual erosion of the region's original charm. While the legendary warmth and hospitality of the Iban longhouse communities persist, much of the mystery and serendipity of independent travel to this remote region deep in the heart of Borneo is sadly on the wane.
~~~
Context - Around the time this photo was taken, a robust ethnic Chinese-dominated communist insurgency was fully underway in the region. Malaysia's postcolonial government was about to launch an ambitious counter-insurgency operation. Government agents would travel upriver on longboats or by foot through dense tropical rainforests to remote riverine settlements and indigenous longhouses “to explain” why it was in their interest to support the government in the renewed anti-communist insurgency campaign.
The campaign appeared to have been effective at the time because the Malaysian government soon scored a major victory with the surrender of a key insurgent leader, Bong Kee Chok, along with about 500 of his supporters. With the subsequent capture or surrender of other members in the movement, communist activities in the Rajang river basin began to subside. The communist movement of Sarawak finally ended in 1990 with a signed peace accord that coincided with the final collapse of outside communist support and the end to the global cold war.
© All rights to these photos and descriptions are reserved. Any use of this work requires my prior written permission.
National Geographic | Social Documentary | Lonely Planet
Tags: Borneo Malaysia Sarawak Kapit Belaga Rejang Asia indigenous Iban Ulu insurgency longhouse DavidSchweitzer DocumentaryPhotography StreetPhotography HumanInterest VisualAnthropology PhotoJournalism people DocumentaryPortrait StreetPortrait VanishingCultures Panjang veranda communal SoutheastAsia communist counter-insurgency modernization tradition ethnic culture film analog family portrait Faces travel outdoor
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An Iban family settles in an open communal area inside this traditional longhouse or Rumah Panjang. The wooden longhouse structure and veranda are raised on tall stilts with a row of separate family apartments sectioned off on one side of the main housing structure. Notched logs are used as ladders that lead up to the longhouse.
The longhouse is naturally positioned by a remote rainforest stream about a half day's jungle trek from Kapit, a small riverine supply town that caters to the many Iban and Orang Ulu longhouse communities in the upper Rajang River region of Sarawak, East Malaysia (Borneo). Digital film scan, Asahi Pentax Spotmatic, circa 1973.
© All rights to these photos and descriptions are reserved.
Tags: Borneo Malaysia Sarawak Kapit Belaga Rejang Asia indigenous Iban Ulu insurgency longhouse DavidSchweitzer DocumentaryPhotography StreetPhotography HumanInterest VisualAnthropology PhotoJournalism people DocumentaryPortrait StreetPortrait VanishingCultures Panjang veranda communal SoutheastAsia communist counter-insurgency modernization tradition ethnic culture family film analog traditional portrait Faces travel gaze outdoor
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