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Indonesia Asmat
The approximately 65,000 Asmat people of the
south-central
alluvial swamps of Irian Jaya Province are descended from
a Papuan
racial stock. They live in villages with populations that
vary from
35 to 2,000. Until the 1950s, when greater numbers of
outsiders
arrived, warfare, headhunting, and cannibalism were
constant
features of their social life. Their houses were built
along the
bends of rivers so that an enemy attack could be seen in
advance.
Houses in coastal areas in the twentieth century were
generally
built on pilings two or more meters high, to protect
residents from
daily flooding by the surging tides of the brackish
rivers. In the
foothills of the Jayawijaya Mountains, Asmat lived in tree
houses
that were five to twenty-five meters off the ground. In
some areas,
they also built watchtowers in trees that rose thirty
meters from
the ground.
The Asmat are primarily hunters and gatherers who
subsist by
gathering and processing the starchy pulp of the sago
palm, and by
fishing and hunting the occasional wild pig, cassowary,
grubs, and
crocodile. Although the Asmat population steadily
increased since
contact by missionaries and government health workers, the
forest
continued to yield more than an adequate supply and
variety of food
in the early 1990s. According to anthropologist Tobias
Schneebaum,
"[s]ome Asmat have learned to grow small patches of
vegetables,
such as string beans, and a few raise the descendants of
recently
imported chickens. With the introduction of a limited cash
economy
through the sale of logs to timber companies and carvings
to
outsiders, many Asmat now consider as necessities such
foods as
rice and tinned fish; most have also become accustomed to
wearing
Western-style clothing and using metal tools."
Asmat believe that all deaths--except those of the very
old and
very young--come about through acts of malevolence, either
by magic
or actual physical force. Their ancestral spirits demand
vengeance
for these deaths. These ancestors to whom they feel
obligated are
represented in large, spectacular wood carvings of canoes,
shields,
and in ancestor poles consisting of human figurines. Until
the late
twentieth century, the preferred way a young man could
fulfill his
obligations to his kin, to his ancestors, and to prove his
sexual
prowess, was to take a head of an enemy, and offer the
body for
cannibalistic consumption by other members of the village.
Although the first Dutch colonial government post was
not
established in Asmat territory until 1938, and a Catholic
mission
began its work there only in 1958, the pace of change in
this once
remote region greatly increased after the 1960s. Many
Asmat in the
early 1990s were enrolled in Indonesian schools and were
converting
to Christianity. As large timber and oil companies
expanded their
operations in the region, the environmental conditions of
these
fragile, low-lying mangrove forests were threatened by
industrial
waste and soil erosion. Although Asmat appeared to be
gaining some
national and international recognition for their artwork,
this fame
had not resulted, by the early 1990s, in their having any
significant political input into Indonesian government
decisions
affecting the use of land in the traditional Asmat
territory.
Data as of November 1992
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