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Indonesia Toraja
One minority group that has been successful in gaining
national
and international attention is the Toraja of central
Sulawesi. This
group's prominence, beginning in the 1980s, was due
largely to the
tourist industry, which was attracted to the region
because of its
picturesque villages and its spectacular mortuary rites
involving
the slaughter of water buffalo.
Inhabiting the wet, rugged mountains of the interior of
Sulawesi, the Toraja grow rice for subsistence and coffee
for cash.
Traditionally, they live in fortified hilltop villages
with from
two to forty picturesque houses with large sweeping roofs
that
resemble buffalo horns. Up until the late 1980s, these
villages
were politically and economically self-sufficient, partly
as
protection against the depredations of the slave trade and
partly
as a result of intervillage feuding associated with
headhunting.
The Toraja have strong emotional, economic, and
political ties
to a number of different kinds of corporate groups. The
most basic
tie is the rarabuku, which might be translated as
family.
Toraja view these groups as relations of "blood and bone,"
that is,
relations between parents and children--the nuclear
family. Since
Toraja reckon kinship bilaterally, through both the mother
and
father, the possibilities for extending the concept of
rarabuku in several different directions are many.
Another
important kind of group with which Toraja have close
affiliations
is the tongkonan (ancestral house), which contrasts
with
banua (ordinary house). Tongkonan as social
units
consist of a group of people who reckon descent from an
original
ancestor. The physical structures of tongkonan are
periodically renewed by replacing their distinctively
shaped roofs.
This ritual is attended by members of the social group and
accompanied by trance-like dances in which the spirits are
asked to
visit. A third important kind of affiliation is the
saroan,
or village work group. These groups were probably
originally
agricultural work groups based in a particular hamlet.
Beginning as
labor and credit exchanges, saroan have since
evolved into
units of cooperation in ritual activities as well. When
sacrifices
and funerals take place, these groups exchange meat and
other
foods.
The flexibility of these affiliations is partly
responsible for
the intensity of the mortuary performances. Because there
is some
ambiguity about one's affiliation (that is, one's claims
to descent
are not only based on blood relationships but also on
social
recognition of the relationship through public acts),
Toraja people
may attempt to prove the importance of a relationship
through
elaborate contributions to a funeral, which provides an
opportunity
to prove not only a person's devotion to a deceased
parent, but
also a person's claim to a share of that parent's land.
The amount
of land an individual inherits from the deceased might
depend on
the number of buffalo sacrificed at a parent's funeral.
Sometimes
people even pawn land to get buffalo to kill at a funeral
so that
they can claim the land of the deceased. Thus, feasting at
funerals
is highly competitive.
The Toraja have two main kinds of rituals. Those of the
east--
known as rites of the rising sun and the rising smoke--are
concerned with planting fertility and abundance. Following
the rice
harvest are rituals of the west centering on the setting
sun,
consisting primarily of funerals. Both involve the
sacrifice of
water buffalo, pigs, and chickens as offerings to the
ancestors,
and a complex distribution of the meat among the living.
Through
the distribution of meat, an elaborate network of debts
and
obligations is established and passed to succeeding
generations.
With the oil boom in the 1960s and 1970s, there were
massive
outmigrations among upland Sulawesi young men looking for
jobs in
northeastern Kalimantan
(see
Petroleum, Liquefied Natural Gas, and Coal
, ch. 3). During this period, many of these youths became
Christians.
But when they returned to their villages as wealthy men,
they often
wanted to hold large status displays in the form of
funerals,
causing what anthropologist Toby Alice Volkman calls
"ritual
inflation." These displays provoked intense debates about
the
authenticity of what some regarded as rituals of the
nouveau riche.
During this same period, however, Indonesia promoted a
policy that
encouraged the development of the non-oil-related sectors
of the
economy. Part of this policy involved the development of
the
tourist trade, and following coverage by the American
media, waves
of foreigners came to see the carnage of buffalo
slaughter. These
numbers swelled in the early 1990s. Because of the
successful
efforts of highly placed Toraja officials in the central
government, their feasting practices were granted official
status
as a branch of Balinese Hinduism.
Data as of November 1992
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