INTRODUCING
IRIAN JAYA
As the 19th Century wound down, only one of the world's great
lands still remained cloaked in mystery: New Guinea. Here was
a place where pulp writers could indulge their fits of fancy,
populating this great unknown island with strange beasts and
even stranger people, and no one could yet prove otherwise.
The Baliem Valley, where agriculture had been going on for 9,000
years, and which supported a population density of almost 1,000
people per square kilometer, first felt the gaze of an outsider
in 1938.
Today hardy travelers can still get a special thrill pulling
out a good, US produced flight map of Irian Jaya and seeing
the words "Relief Data Incomplete" printed across great swaths
of territory. Irian's 1.6 million people from a patchwork of
ethnicity, speaking by estimate as many as 250 distinct languages.
The island's great size and rugged terrain have isolated them
from one another for thousands of years, and each has developed
a distinct culture and lifestyle.
The Dany of the central high islands, perhaps the best-known
of the Irianese, live in communities of tidy little thatch-and-wood
huts, surrounded by neatly kept gardens of sweet potato vines.
The scene has reminded more than one writer of the farm country
of the American Midwest, and as such it is remarkably incongruous
sight on an island otherwise unmarked by the hand of man. Although
the stone axe was unceremoniously abandoned as soon as steel
became available a few decades ago, the Dani remain resolute
in sartorial matters: penis gourds for men, and fiber skirt's
for women. Even a concerted effort by the fledgling Indonesian
government failed to convince Dani men that's pants were superior
to their horim.
If Dani are Irian's most famous group, the Asmat of the South
Coast of the island's most motorious. Historically, Asmat Culture
was centered around a cycle of head hunting. Fresh enemy heads
were necessary to bring about the periodic spiritual rejuvenation
of the village. As long ago as 1770, Captain Cook's landing
party was sent packing from their territory with valley of arrows
and frightening bursts of lime, but the Asmat's most famous
victim may have been Michael Rockefeller, who disappeared after
his boat capsized of Irian Southern shore in 1961. He could
just as well have met a more prosaic death by drowning, however,
or been devoured by a saltwater crocodile. Today, the mention
of cannibalism-or ritual warfare in the highland-yields embarrassed
smiles and shrugs, and it has of course been banned by the government.
But there are still pockets of this great island where mention
and government haven't yet reached, and no one can say what
cultural practice exist here. Modernization and tourist infrastructure,
have come to Irian Jaya, in much more limited way than in western
Indonesia. Wamena in the heart of Baliem Valley, is an hour-long,
daily flight from Jayapura, Irian's bustling and the South Coast,
require quite a bit more patience and organization.
The reward of a visit to Irian are manifold: snorkeling in clear,
coral-field water off Biak; smoking a clove cigarette and cracking
pandanus nuts in a warm hut in the highlands; or laying back
in a canoe, a livid sunset lighting up the sky, the only sounds
the rhythmic strokes of the paddles and the sweet, mournful
singing of the Asmat. |
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