The Korowai
Have you ever wondered about the indigenous tribal people living in some of the most remote and secluded corners of Indonesia?
While we are busy scrolling through our social media feed, they are busy hunting for tonight’s dinner, building their tree-homes, tattooing themselves, dancing and chanting as they celebrate traditional rituals they still practice today. What if we say, you can actually visit some of them?
In a world where babies are now welcomed with the luxury of the warm filled bathtub, it is indeed captivating to learn about the Korowai Tribe-One where the pregnant women are sent alone, far from their homes and deep down into the jungle to give birth all by themselves!
These hunter-gatherers in west Papua have been living up in tree houses for the centuries in order to avoid attacks from rival clans, and it is only in the 1970s that they got to know about the existence of other people like us. Korowai tribe value religion and believe in the existence of the spirits as well as reincarnation; they pay special tribute and respect their ancestors by celebrating with occasional feats. As Korowai people don’t have medication that can cure jungle diseases, their life spans are often short, so the village has very few elderly (most of them live till middle age) but expect lots of kids! Living with little knowledge about the outside world, it has been said that the tribe is no longer practicing cannibalism ((only for the ritual purposes) and has sadly become attractions for the crowds of sensation-hungry tourists. On an even sadder note, in recent years, the Indonesian Government has been building cities right in the middle of the rain forests, as well as roads towards the Korowai, so it might be possible that the tribe might become endangered in the future.