Korowai

ETHNONYMS: Kolufo(-yanop), yanop ("person")

Orientation

Identification and Location. The term Kolufo refers to a people who share one language rather than to a tribal unit, with the patrician being the relevant unit for self-identification. These Papuan people of the subdistrict of Kouh in the Merauke district in the Indonesian province Irian Jaya live between the Eilanden and Upper Becking rivers, east of the Becking headwaters, in swampy mixed rain forests that contain transitional hill ranges to the central New Guinea mountains. The mountains are visible from the higher spots (fium) and from the Eilanden banks. The environment does not feature wide water surfaces. The climate shows a transition between that of the southern coast and that of the Trans-Eilanden area without including a clear monsoon shift.

Demography. Based on helicopter surveys from 1986 through 1990, a tentative estimation was made of approximately four thousand native Korowai speakers. Over 70 percent of the population still live on their original territories, with less than 30 percent having moved to a more or less regular village life in eight settlements. Approximately fifty clan territories are registered by name, and another fifty are thought to exist.

Linguistic Affiliation. The Kolufo language belongs to the Awyu-Ndumut family of southeastern Irian Jaya, part of the Trans-New Guinea phylum. The Korowai distinguish the dialect of the Lower Becking and Eilanden banks from the Ilol-Kolufo-aup ("Stone-Korowai") spoken in the upriver regions. There is no significant linguistic relationship with the neighboring Kombai and Citak languages.

History and Cultural Relations

Little is known about Korowai history before 1978. According to neighboring Citak witnesses, the Korowai experienced headhunting raids by the Citak until the 1960s. A missionary in the Upper Digul reported incidental contacts with Korowai clans near Waliburu and Firiwagé in the period 1959-1973. The first regular contacts with Korowai clans began in 1978. After several helicopter surveys, Dutch Reformed missionaries entered Korowai territories by river from the Citak area. The first real encounter between Korowai people and the missionary Johannes Veldhuizen took place on October 4, 1978, through the mediation of a Citak-Kombai man who had an avuncular relationship with Lower Becking Korowai groups.

Between 1978 and 1990 the majority of downstream Korowai clans encountered the outside world when several missionary expeditions were made to their territories. After that time dozens of younger people moved into Yaniruma village and, after 1987, into the villages of Manggél, Yafufla, and Mabül. Influenced by their kin who remain in the forests, they stayed in the village only temporarily. Because of the relatively long distance between the village and the Sago Gardens, the absentee rate is often more than 90 percent.

Despite community development programs by the Indonesian government since 1985, the development of regular Korowai village life has not been successful. In 1992 Yaniruma and Manggél received the status of desa, an administrative unit below the subdistrict level.

Tourist groups and film crews have visited the Korowai territories near the villages since the early 1990s.

Settlements

Originally, Korowai clans lived in their own territory (bolüp), sometimes with friendly relations with neighboring clans and often in isolation from each other. Clan territories include one to five clustered tree houses (khaim) with an average height of 26 to 39 feet (8 to 12 meters). Some houses in upriver territories may be as high as 148 feet (45 meters). To build a tree house, a solid tree is selected as a central pole. Operating from scaffolds, the builder removes the top of the tree and constructs the floor, which is supported by four to ten poles. The floor (bülan) is constructed of spars and covered with bark from the Oncosperma filamentosum tree. The walls (damon) are made of the wooden shafts of sago leaves. The roof (lél-baul) is covered with sago leaves.

Village houses known as khaü ("bivouac") are built by following the customary construction pattern in Irian Java's southern coast. As in the tree houses, their rectangular interiors are divided in two or three rooms, at least one for males and one for females, with every room having a fireplace.

Yaniruma, the first settlement near the Korowai, was established in March 1979. An elementary school and a clinic were opened in the early 1980s. During the first years of the mission station at Yaniruma, various contacts were initiated by Johannes Veldhuizen and Henk Venema with Korowai from the Lower Becking River banks. In the late 1980s Kombai-Korowai villages were opened 5 and 8 miles (8 and 13 kilometers) upriver from Yaniruma, respectively, at Manggél and Yafufla.

In 1990 the village Mabül was opened at the Eilanden banks. At that time some small, more inland settlements were formed, such as Fumbaum-Nakhilop and Férman. However, those settlements soon were abandoned, primarily because of witchcraft-related conflicts. More viable were the villages with a mixed Citak-Korowai population in Mu, Jaim, and Mbasman and the Kombai-Korowai settlement of Khaiflambolüp.

Economy

Subsistence. The Korowai are horticulturalists who practice shifting cultivation. The basic food items are sago (kho, ndaü) and bananas (dup, dendü, sakhu). Each clan has its own gardens (yasim) near its tree houses where it also cultivates Ipomoea batatas (khaw), Colocasia tubers (simbelu) and tobacco (dépon, saukh, sii).

Pigs (gol) and dogs (méan) are the only domesticated animals. Pigs function mainly as objects of exchange and compensation. Dogs are raised for company and hunting, and their teeth are considered extremely valuable. Hunting (bétop abokhai/abolai) for wild pigs is done with bows and arrows (atikhayo). Pigs that are caught in pits or traps made with a special fence construction are shot or pierced with spears. Cassowaries (küal, sandum, sanip) are shot or trapped with ropes (nan) strung across their paths. Smaller game, such as birds, reptiles, rodents, marsupials, and smaller bats, is hunted by the young.

For fishing the Korowai use bows and arrows, poison, and basketlike constructions placed in artificial dams. In precontact days crocodiles (semail) were hunted for consumption; they are now hunted for commercial reasons.

Green vegetables, grass, and cane species are collected from the jungle, as well as wild fruits during the appropriate seasons, such as the sweet fruits of the Ponnetia pinniata and wild apples.

Commercial Activities. Monetary exchange was introduced by the missionaries. Some Korowai groups were engaged in building and maintaining the Yaniruma airstrip, and others worked at the mission station. At first they were paid with steel axes, machetes, and clothing, but later they were paid in currency that could be spent for goods such as salt, clothes, fishhooks, razor blades, and matches in the small shop at Yaniruma. Some people shopped in more distant villages such as Wanggemalo and Bomakia and in the central villages of the subdistricts Kouh and Senggo (Citak-Mitak).

During the late 1980s and early 1990s some groups were involved in timber projects run by foreign companies, and the downriver Korowai were paid for their services as guides or as rowing crew in the dug-out canoes that were rented by tourist groups.

Industrial Arts. The Korowai produce bows and arrows. The shafts are made of bamboo, and the tips of bamboo splinters (daup) or bones. For cutting trees rather than for warfare, stone axes (khul) are tied to the tops of relatively light wooden handles. Oval lightweight shields (wolumon) the height of a person are cut from one piece of wood and are used mainly as banners during sago-grub festival dancing rather than as defensive weapons. Ornaments such as necklaces and nose and hair decorations are made of natural materials such as pig and dog teeth and cowrie shells.

Trade. Little is known about Korowai trade patterns. Stones for axes originate from the mountain area and seem to have been transmitted from the Brazza region through exchange. The same can be said of cowrie shells, which apparently come from the southernmost coastal regions. By means of exchange, voluntarily, or in case of adat -based obligatory retribution, domesticated pigs often are traded. Sago never seems to be exchanged for other objects, including currency.

Division of Labor. Big game hunting is a male occupation, smaller game can be caught by younger boys, and little children hunt very small animals by using arrows made of sago leaf ribs (kailon). Rearing pigs and food collection are the responsibility of adult females. Gardening is done by both males and females; the heavier work is done by the men, and the lighter work by the women. Other gender-nonspecific activities are cutting firewood and fishing.

Men are responsible for the planting of young sago sprouts. They also do the heavy work of cutting and splitting full-grown sago trees; chiseling and pounding the starch from the inside are done by women. Women are expected to process the final product, a procedure in which the flour is separated from the washing water through a structure built from the woody shafts of sago leaves.

Tree house construction is a cooperative endeavor done by both sexes, with the heavier work done by men. Public religious activities such as the performance of pig sacrifices are reserved for males.

Land Tenure. There is a distinction between land-using and landholding rights. The grounds of Yafufla are the property of the trans-Becking Korowoi-clan Maliap, while permission to build a village at that place was given by the Kombai man Bofo Khomei, who had an affinal relationship with the Maliap. Uninhabited areas that are not claimed by clans are called "spirit-places" (laléo-bolüp). Some clans have subclans that share a single territory. Different clans may share similar clan names but live relatively far from each other.

Kinship

Kin Groups and Descent. The patrician is the central unit of social, economic, and political organization. Patricians claim ties to ancestral territories through folktales and stories about totemic ancestors.

Kinship Terminology. Kinship terminology follows the Lounsburian Omaha I pattern, which is also found in Kombai and Mandobo societies. The central opposition between cross and parallel relationships is expressed in the morpheme sa- (lal, "parallel female child," versus sa-lal, "cross-female child").

Kinship-related similarities are also found with neighboring Awyu groups, with the strongest being related to the avunculate. The mother's brother (mom) and his potential legal and social successors are actively involved in the marriage arrangements for his sisters' children. The terms khaimon ("husband's brother") and khamokh ("brother's wife") function in the context of an institutional levirate to express the fact that a man is his brother's legal successor as husband to his widow if the first man dies.

A kind of affinal avoidance relationship exists between a man and his wife's mother. When a man violates the avoidance taboos with his mother-in-law, his children are believed to become ill. This type of avoidance relationship can be explained, as Rupert Stasch proposed, "by a 'dyad-centric' model of subjectivity and social life according to which individuals are foundationally constituted through their bonds with strange others." In the affinal kinship terminology there is a general term for the wife's parents (ban) with a wide range of reference, in contrast to a specific term that identifies the wife's mother or her sister (bandakhol).

Marriage and Family

Marriage. Marriage is exogamous and polygynous. There is an institutional levirate based on the completion of the bridal payment. There is a preference for marrying the mother's mother's brother's daughter, who is called "grandmother" (makh). Because of the required bridal payment, males usually cannot marry their first spouse until about the age of twenty. Females are married in their early teens or even younger.

Domestic Unit. A basic household consists of a man, his wife or wives, and his unmarried children. The household also may include his widowed mother and unmarried siblings and the unmarried children of his siblings, particularly his sisters' orphans. A household may reach a maximum of fifteen people. The average contacted clan territory with more than two tree houses is populated by twenty to thirty persons. Families that have moved into a village tend to be smaller.

Inheritance. The ownership of a clan territory is transferred to the male clan members. This is also the case with regard to personal properties belonging to the clan members. When a person dies, within the avuncular framework it is felt appropriate to share gifts with the deceased's mother's brothers, usually through the transfer of pigs.

Socialization. Children (mbambam) are raised mostly by their mothers and other clan females and grow up in the females' room. Boys move to the males' room in their early teens. Babies are always carried in net bags (ainop) and are breast-fed as often as they desire.

There is no formal education, and children learn how to behave in the practical daily life circumstances of the household. The females teach them how to avoid danger and at home inform them about rules and taboos. Storytelling, sharing gossip, and teaching songs and sayings that contain practical wisdom are elements of socialization.

A little girl is actively involved as soon as possible in all female duties. At the age of about ten she is married to a much older man who expects her to be competent with respect to economy, social life, and sexuality. A young married girl has to learn how to adapt herself completely to her husband's caprices and desires, often by enduring corporal punishment.

When a boy reaches his teens, adult males teach him to discharge a man's duties. Then the boy is informed step by step about intraclan and interclan sensitivities and tensions.

At the age of about fifteen he fully participates in hunting and warfare. In the same period a boy can be initiated into the ancestral wisdom about the origin and maintenance of the universe.

A Korowai youth is strongly discouraged in regard to asking questions, for he is expected to wait until older people provide the appropriate information. At an early age the Korowai make children familiar with the all-comprehensive concept of manop ("good") versus lembul ("bad"), which has a wide range of connotations with respect to ethics, social life, cosmic balance, health, sexuality, and traditional wisdom and knowledge, including dealing with the invisible spiritual world.

Sociopolitical Organization

Social Organization. The patrician is the central sociopolitical unit. Korowai society is relatively egalitarian in the sense that all families have equal access to resources.

Political Organization. Physically, mentally, and verbally strong males called letél-abül ("strong man") or khén-mengg(a)-abül ("man with fierceness") dominate the clan. Their leadership is tied to personal qualities rather than being institutional or hereditary. Institutionalized authority structures related to interclan domination are absent.

Social Control. Intraclan conflicts are caused by adultery, theft, murder, and the khakhua —witchcraft complex. Adultery is punished by the husband, who has the right to shoot his wife and her lover through their thigh bones; the lover is asked to hand over a pig for retribution. Repeated adultery-related conflicts caused by the same person are usually settled by capital punishment and resolved by the compensation that follows a death. A person repeatedly identified as a thief is called dadamtalé ("naughty") and is forced to compensate the victim. If the behavior continues, he is killed by his kinsmen. Ordinary murder is punished by the application of the death penalty, after which the usual compensation gifts are exchanged.

For lethal crimes committed by a male witch (khakhua) the solution is to slaughter the witch, after which the body parts are distributed among friendly clans for consumption. This type of cannibal justice is based on the need for radical elimination of evil within the clan and the desire to reestablish social and universal balance. The khakhua complex seems to be the only context in which cannibalism occurs among the Korowai.

Conflict. Interclan conflicts are related to the crimes mentioned above and the abduction of females. Abduction-related conflicts usually are settled by the giving of a bridal payment. Adultery often causes serious interclan warfare, which is resolved by compensation gifts. When property is stolen from a friendly clan, one usually resolves the problem in the manner used to settle intraclan theft. When a hostile clan is involved, warfare is not unusual.

The killing of a member of another clan requires a vendetta. Similarly to witchcraft-related murder, the injured clan will seek the ultimate revenge by eating the murdered witch. If this does not occur, long-lasting mutual enmity, often including witchcraft-related assaults, dominates the relationship.

Religion and Expressive Culture

Religious Beliefs. The active presence of a high deity is not reported except in the tradition of the sleeping Sèif-abül ("shiver-man"), whose awakening causes an earthquake and eventually the destruction of the universe. According to the myth of origin, the creator spirit Ginol created the universe from the mythical pig Faül's carcass. The first human couple is said to have been originally male siblings who received their offspring after a castration ritual, after which Ginol does not seem to play a further role in humankind's history.

There is no explicit link between this creation myth and the Korowai cosmology, in which the terrestrial universe is imaged as three concentric circles. The innermost circle, the world of the living (bolüpbolüp), and the second circle, the realm of death, called bolüplefupé ("[at] bolüpbolüp's margins"), are surrounded by a third circle, the endless ocean, which is called méan-maél ("dog-water"). In the context of ideas about the final universal destruction, the monstrous fishes of a siluriformes species (ndewé) that populate the great ocean are thought to swallow all the living and the dead at the future day of doom (wola/lamol).

The Korowai consider the universe to be full of dangerous spirit beings (loléo), some of which are thought of as personal, while others are considered more impersonal. Apart from this concept, a significant role is assigned to the somehow present spirits of dead ancestors (mbolombolop). Korowai life is surrounded by and immersed in numerous taboos (ayulekha) and secret and/or sacred matters (khandin).

Religious Practitioners. Institutionalized religious specialty is unknown among the Korowai. Some older women are said to have knowledge of divination and healing techniques. They claim the ability to communicate with ancestral spirits and other spiritual beings to neutralize disastrous events or detect witches. Some males are known for their knowledge of methods for harming objects, places, people, and entire clans by burning human residues such as hair or fingernails or charmed magical arrow tips (ayulekha daup).

Ceremonies. Central notions of fertility and prosperity are connected with the lengthy preparations and celebration of sago grub festivals (gil), which include an abundant distribution and consumption of food items, particularly the grubs (non, gèkh) of sago beetles (khip). The grubs are considered the bearers of life power. The festivals are performed in the presence of numerous guests who gather in accordance with kinship-related rules for chain invitation. The final ritual takes place after the guests have departed and involves the removal of a fence that had been placed around the central sacred pole (khandin-fénop) in the long festival bivouac while the clan members sing the Gom song to accompany fertility dances performed by the younger males. These festivals are organized by a clan at least once in a lifetime.

In times of trouble a ritual pig slaughter is performed during which the male clan members call on the spirits to compensate them for the sacrificial gift by providing protection, health, and a general improvement in the conditions of life.

Within the context of tree house building, the positioning of the supporting poles and the construction of the roof are accompanied by magic rituals to defend against witchcraft and evil spirits and to assure future prosperity. Before moving permanently into a new tree house, the tenants perform a simple but expressive nocturnal ritual by beating the walls with a piece of wood to expel evil powers.

Fishing and hunting are governed by various magical techniques, taboos, and restrictions, some of which are based on totem traditions. Special magical arrows (khayo-lamol) are used as objects of reinforcement in times of trouble.

Arts. At least four genres of oral texts are found among the Korowai: origin myths (lamolaup) known only by older males, folktales (wakhatum) shared by all the people, magical sayings (ndafun-mahüon) not likely to be known by children, and totem traditions (laibolekha mahüon) that are commonly known.

Woodcarving art is done in various ways. The tops of arrow shafts are decorated with abstract motifs that sometimes have magical significance. The large mouthpieces of bamboo tobacco pipes are decorated with refined leaf motifs. Shields are carved with stylized motifs and painted with white clay, charcoal, and the red sap of the pandanus and other fruits. Some of the decorations seem to be connected with symbolism of a mythical and sexual nature.

Medicine. Healing techniques involve the application of charms, herbs, and magical manipulations with tobacco pipes and stones. Although many people have learned the advantages of the missionary clinic, they simultaneously resort to traditional healing methods.

Death and Afterlife. A central notion with respect to the afterlife is the khomilo -concept, which covers all stages from being "in deep sleep" to being "really dead." The Korowai believe that the souls (yanop-khayan ["real person"]) of individuals travel over the big road (debülop-talé) from the land of the living to the realm of the dead, where they are welcomed in their own territory and receive a new body. After a while they may be summoned to return and to be reincarnated in a baby at the moment of its birth. The khomilo-concept seems to provide an opportunity for souls to be transformed into animals. This transformation-metamorphosis theme occurs in various oral traditions. Simultaneously, the Korowai believe that the shadow/ghost (maf ), the last manifestation of a deceased person, keeps wandering for a period in the neighborhood of that person's tree house. Informants say that the shadow/ghost enters the body of a torrent lark (kham), a bird that plays a role in divination techniques for the detection of witches.

The deceased are buried near the tree house in shallow graves, providing an opportunity for resurrection in case of temporary unconsciousness.

For other cultures in Indonesia, see List of Cultures by Country in Volume 10 and under specific culture names in Volume 5, East and Southeast Asia.

Bibliography

De Vries, Lourens (1995). "Spirits and Friends: Expletive Nouns in Korowai of Irian Java." In Tales of a Concave World: Liber Amicorum Bert Voorhoeve, edited by C. Baak, M. Bakker, and D. van der Mey. 178—188. Leiden: Department of Languages and Cultures of South-East Asia and Oceania of Leiden University.

Stasch, Rupert (2001). "Figures of Alterity among Korowai of Irian Jaya: Kinship, Mourning, and Festivity in a Dispersed Society." Unpublished Ph.D dissertation. University of Chicago.

—— (2002). "Joking Avoidance: A Korowai Pragmatics of Being Two," American Ethnologist 29(2)

Van Enk, Gerrit J. (1993). "Khenilkhenil—In the Beginning: History of the Korowai Mission Project (1978-1991) Described by an Indigenous Participant," Reflection, International Reformed Review of Missiology 3(3/4): 16-43.

——, and Lourens de Vries (1997). The Korowai of Irian Jaya: Their Language in Its Cultural Context. New York. Oxford University Press.

GERRIT J. VAN ENK