© 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.
A Dani war chief passes through the oval courtyard of a traditional fortress-like compound as he prepares for a ritualized mock battle that is about to take place 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. Digital film scan, shot with a Pentax point-and-shoot pocket camera directly under the noonday sun, circa 1996.
Battle Dress
He is adorned with a large decorated bib of nassa (snail) shells, an upturned boar’s tusk nose piece, rare bird-of-paradise plumes and other feathers, a bailer shell chest piece (with smaller shell pieces attached to a tightly woven bush-twine neck band of cowrie shells), an ornamental wristband of finely woven pandanus fibres, arm bands of dog fur, and the iconic long koteka or penis gourd – all part of traditional Dani ornamentation and battle dress. His forehead is smeared with a thick layer of charcoal-blackened pig grease.
Ritualized Warfare
Many Dani elders in the valley today were once engaged in an elaborate system of ritualized warfare, organized around changing political alliances and large shifting confederations across the Grand Valley. War was embedded in Dani culture as a constant and immediate part of everyday life. Brawls, feuds, and wars would begin with conflicts between individuals that would escalate to prolonged intergroup fighting.
Much of the fighting ended in the 1960's under an enforced Indonesian government pacification programme, although it is likely that certain forms of traditional fighting still occurred in isolated pockets of the region up to the late 1990's. Most fighting is now expressed through mock combat rituals that includes women and children in some of the ritualized running patterns.
Trembling on the Edge of Change
The Grand Valley Dani are accomplished gardeners and pig farmers with a sophisticated neolithic (late Stone Age) culture and technology that anthropologists see as "trembling on the edge of change.” Accelerated contact with the outside world is inevitable. The road up from the coast to the highlands and beyond has been under construction for more than two decades and is near completion. Little has been done to prepare indigenous Papuans for the inundation of permanent Asian migrants from other over-populated islands (especially Java) under Indonesia’s official state-sponsored transmigration resettlement programme.
Alienation of the land to foreign mining interests, organized tourism, the advent of cash and alcohol, and expanding state intrusion into indigenous Papuan affairs - all pose a serious challenge to the traditional Papuan way of life and very survival as an independent and culturally distinct indigenous nation.
Repression and Resistance
Indonesian state control in West Papua is particularly reminiscent of earlier times in the Americas and elsewhere when aboriginal peoples were contained through a colonization strategy of political subjugation and cultural assimilation. Indigenous Papuan resistance in the highlands has taken several forms, ranging from mass protests and sporadic hostage-taking to low-level guerrilla warfare and a loosely organized yet persistent political movement for separation and the creation of an independent Papuan state within Indonesia.
At the time of this photoshoot (February 1996), indigenous insurgents of the Free Papua Movement (OPM) had abducted 12 European and Indonesian nationals on a biodiversity research expedition to the highlands in an adjoining tribal region just 70 kilometres away, roughly five days by foot. They were held as hostages in the mountainous forests, moving across rugged ridges and deep river valleys from one makeshift prison camp to another as members of the International Red Cross tried unsuccessfully to mediate the crisis.
Papuan insurgents conducted the raid with bows and arrows and a handful of guns. Indonesian Army Special Forces ultimately launched a militarized hostage rescue operation with helicopter gunships and crack counter-insurgency troops with limited success. The controversial South African mercenary group, Executive Outcomes, provided both training and operational advice. Two of the hostages were executed during the struggle. Organized Papuan resistance continues to this day.
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 were 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.
About 50,000 Dani now 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.
~~~
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).
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"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.
~~~
Dani men on the long trek to market, 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.
Adornment
The Dani elder in the foreground is adorned with an upturned boar’s tusk nose piece, a single bird-of-paradise plume, a tightly woven bush-twine head band of cut shell pieces, an ornamental wristband of finely woven pandanus fibres, armbands of pigs’ scrotum above both elbows (thought to ward off ghosts), a walking stick, and the iconic long koteka or penis gourd.
Owning the Gaze
The men come from one of the scattered settlements under the mountain wall at the end of the infinity path that cuts across the valley floor in the backdrop below.
They pause for a moment on a high-ridge pass to observe an approaching stranger, the photographer-Other. The photographer's gaze is returned with a seemingly wary look of wonder and resistance as the observer become the observed. Subject owns the gaze for a frozen moment.
The Gardens
The path below passes through elaborate sweet potato gardens and a huge maze of sophisticated irrigation ditches. Sweet potatoes (over 70 varieties) are the staple food and account about 90 per cent of the Dani diet.
The Dani are accomplished gardeners and pig farmers with a Neolithic (late Stone Age) culture and technology that relies on polished stone adzes, axes and fire-hardened digging sticks. These tools are now being replaced with iron and steel.
First Contact
The indigenous peoples of West Papua migrated from southeast Asia and the Australian content 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.
Noritsu Koki QSS digital film scan, shot with a compact semi-automatic Pentax Zoom 35mm Point and Shoot Film Camera, film developed in a Sulawesi street-corner shophouse, circa 1996.
~~~
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).
© 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.
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Visual Anthropology
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Vanishing Cultures
An eldely Dani woman with a sharpened, fire-hardened digging stick pauses for a moment from work in an elaborat 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.
Finger Mutulation
The segments of two fingers on each hand were cut off as a child as a traditional form of mourning for a close relative who has died. Ethnographic accounts indicate that 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 practice of cutting fingers is now officially banned, although it seems likely that this longstanding Neolithic cultural practice continues today in a few isolated pockets of the region.
The Gardens
The Dani are highly skilled gardeners and pig farmers with a Neolithic (late Stone Age) culture and technology that relies on polished stone adzes, axes, and digging sticks. These tools are now being replaced with iron and steel.
The sweet potato gardens involve complex mazes of sophisticated irrigation ditches cut across the fertile grand valley floor. More than 70 varieties of sweet potato are the staple food accounting for about 90% of the Dani diet. The Dani spend most of their working lives in the gardens.
Ethnographic accounts indicate that daily life for a woman in Dani culture is limited to a routine of drudgery that seems to have a sullen or depressive effect on most women.
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 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).
Tags: West Papua Dani Grand Valley Indonesia Balim Valley Irian Jaya Melanesia highlands “South Pacific” Oceania indigenous tribe tribal culture ethnic bodyart portrait context portraiture street documentary digging stick clan mourning grieving finger mutilation Balim River valley travel gaze LPAbsence tradition Neolithic stone-age DavidSchweitzer DocumentaryPhotography StreetPhotography HumanInterest VisualAnthropology PhotoJournalism people DocumentaryPortrait StreetPortrait VanishingCultures film analog
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© All rights to these photos and descriptions are reserved. Any use of this work requires my prior written permission.
"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
Adorned with a wild boar's tusk, facial chalk markings, decorated goat-skin clothing and an ornamental clay lip-plate. Shot at a communal dance in a Mursi semi-nomadic pastoral settlement on the bank of the Mago River, a tributary that joins the essential Omo River in a remote corner of southwestern Ethiopia.
On the meaning of lip-plates in Mursi culture and society
The Mursi are one of the last groups in Africa where women still wear large wooden or clay plates in their lower lips. Most Mursi women wear lip-plates as an aesthetic symbol of cultural pride and identity, signifying passage to womanhood/adulthood. They are more frequently worn by unmarried or newly wed women and are generally worn when serving men food or during important ritual events (weddings, men's duelling competitions, communal dances, safari photo-ops).
Debunking popular myths
Contrary to popular opinion among travellers and other passing strangers, ethnographers found little or no connection between the size of a woman’s lip-plate and the size of her bridewealth (cattle, guns).
Anthropologists and ethnographers have debunked another popular myth surrounding the lip-plate in this region. They found no evidence that the labret originated as a deliberate attempt to disfigure and make women less attractive to slave traders, yet this myth seems to surface regularly in accounts by professional and amateur photographers, tourists, and bloggers alike.
The Mursi and Mursiland
The Mursi are semi-nomadic farmers and herders who depend on shifting hoe-cultivation (mostly drought-resistant varieties of sorghum) and cattle herding for their livelihood. They number less than ten thousand today.
Most Mursi live in small settlements dispersed across Mursiland, a remote territory of about thirty by eighty kilometres between the Omo and Mago Rivers in southwestern Ethiopia, near the border with South Sudan and northern Kenya.
The terrain varies from a volcanic plain dominated by a range of hills and a major watershed to a riverine forest, wooded grasslands and thorny bushland thickets. The climate is harsh and unstable with low rainfall and daily temperatures regularly exceeding 40°C in the shade during the dry season.
Cogent ethnographic accounts on the meaning of lip-plates in Mursi culture and society include:
• David Turton, "Lip plates and the people who take photographs: uneasy encounters between Mursi and tourists in southern Ethiopia", Anthropology Today, 20:3, 3-8, 2004.
• Shauna Latosky, "Reflections on the lip-plates of Mursi women as a source of stigma and self-esteem", in Ivo Strecker and Jean Lydall (eds.) The perils of face: Essays on cultural contact, respect and self-esteem in southern Ethiopia, Mainzer Beiträge zur Afrika-Forschung, Lit Verlag, Berlin, 2006, pp. 371-386.
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Peoples of the Omo Valley
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© All rights to these photos and descriptions are reserved. Any use of this work requires my prior written permission.
Mursi mother with ornamental clay lip-plate. Semi-nomadic pastoral settlement on the bank of the Mago River - a tributary that joins the essential Omo River in a remote corner of southwestern Ethiopia.
On the meaning of lip-plates in Mursi culture and society
The Mursi are one of the last groups in Africa where women still wear large wooden or clay plates in their lower lips. Most Mursi women wear lip-plates as an aesthetic symbol of cultural pride and identity, signifying passage to womanhood/adulthood. They are more frequently worn by unmarried or newly wed women and are generally worn when serving men food or during important ritual events (weddings, men's duelling competitions, communal dances, safari photo-ops).
Cow-horn designs are engraved along the borders of this labret, signifying Mursi dependance on cattle herding for their livelihood.
Debunking popular myths
Contrary to popular opinion among travellers and other passing strangers, ethnographers found little or no connection between the size of a woman’s lip-plate and the size of her bridewealth (cattle, guns).
Anthropologists and ethnographers have debunked another popular myth surrounding the lip-plate in this region. They found no evidence that the labret originated as a deliberate attempt to disfigure and make women less attractive to slave traders, yet this myth seems to surface regularly in accounts by professional and amateur photographers, tourists, and bloggers alike.
The Mursi and Mursiland
The Mursi are semi-nomadic farmers and herders who depend on shifting hoe-cultivation (mostly drought-resistant varieties of sorghum) and cattle herding for their livelihood. They number less than ten thousand today.
Most Mursi live in small settlements dispersed across Mursiland, a remote territory of about thirty by eighty kilometres between the Omo and Mago Rivers in southwestern Ethiopia, near the border with South Sudan and northern Kenya.
The terrain varies from a volcanic plain dominated by a range of hills and a major watershed to a riverine forest, wooded grasslands and thorny bushland thickets. The climate is harsh and unstable with low rainfall and daily temperatures regularly exceeding 40°C in the shade during the dry season.
~~~
Cogent ethnographic accounts on the meaning of lip-plates in Mursi culture and society include:
* David Turton, "Lip plates and the people who take photographs: uneasy encounters between Mursi and tourists in southern Ethiopia", Anthropology Today, 20:3, 3-8, 2004.
* Shauna Latosky, "Reflections on the lip-plates of Mursi women as a source of stigma and self-esteem", in Ivo Strecker and Jean Lydall (eds.) The perils of face: Essays on cultural contact, respect and self-esteem in southern Ethiopia, Mainzer Beiträge zur Afrika-Forschung, Lit Verlag, Berlin, 2006, pp. 371-386.
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