IRIAN JAYA
TRADITIONAL MELANESIAN CULTURE
Ignored for centuries, the island of New Guinea was like a lost world, where stone age tribes practise cannibalism and where plant life is found like nothing else on earth. It is a very old civilisation with carbon dating of remnants found on camp sites suggesting human habitation for the last 25,000 years.
In 1963, the then Dutch New Guinea was taken over by Indonesia making it the country's 26th and largest province. The raising of the national flag climaxed the long struggle of Indonesia to oust the Dutch from the last of their East Indies colonies.
Examples of the traditional tribal art of Irian Jaya
For the Indonesians, it seems to matter little that the people of New Guinea belonged to the Melanesian culture of the South Seas - that they had animist beliefs, a pig-based economy, a tradition of head hunting and cannibalism, and hardly anything in common with the Asian, predominantly Muslim culture that prevailed throughout the rest of Indonesia.
Today, Indonesia exerts iron control of Irian Jaya. Nevertheless, a deep-seated cultural conflict exists. While the Melanesian people believed that they were descendants from the forests, most Indonesians believed that devils live in the forests and that the forests must be destroyed.
Logging settlement, Irian Jaya
Indonesia sees the province not as one of the world's last sanctuaries of biodiversity but as a huge depot of natural resources. Rainforests, with their valuable timber, cover 85 per cent of the territory. Rich deposits of copper and gold have been found in the mountains and pockets of oil in the lowlands. One of the world's most crowded places, Java had experienced the relocation of people into Irian Jaya. There is little doubt that Indonesia would be most reluctant to forgo this province.
This Web site is intended to provide a window through which people may be able to get a glimpse of the traditional Melanesian people of Irian Jaya. There is little doubt that the Melanesian people of Irian Jaya had their culture under threat. It is the culture that is unquestionably Melanesian yet with its own distinct features that are found nowhere else in Melanesia.
A Korowai hunter armed with specialised arrows for killing birds, fish, reptiles - and humans - searches for the day's food. As the environment is short on sizeable game, success is unlikely, and insects are more commonly eaten than cassowaries. Domestic pigs are reserved for dowries or settling disputes. The lives of the Korowai are hard and their view of the world spare: Humans live in the inner zone; the dead inhabit an outer zone. Beyond lies the great sea where all will perish as the world ends.
There is no doubt that Irian Jaya had been brought from the stone age to the present in a very short time. Road works are under construction and it is expected that dozens of transmigration settlements will be open shortly. Most dramatic of all, the Indonesian government even as it signs over large areas to development has carved out an enormous nature reserve system that covered one-sixth of the province - at least on paper. It can only be hoped that under these circumstances some form of resolution of the cultural differences that are apparent in Irian Jaya can be achieved.
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