The Acehnese

Most devoted to islam

Situated in the Special Region of Aceh the northernmost provincial-level unit of Sumatra, the more than 3.4 million Acehnese are most famous throughout the archipelago for their devotion to Islam and their militant resistance to colonial and republican rule. Renowned throughout the nineteenth century for their pepper plantations, most Acehnese were rice growers in the coastal regions in the early (...)

The Asmat	Populating the alluvial swamps of Irian Jaya

The approximately 65,000 Asmat people of the south-central alluvial swamps of Papua 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 th (...)

The Badui	The Badui

Badui territory to the south of Rangkasbitung, West Java is a special interest for anthropologically minded.Approximately 3,000 of these redusive people live in 39 villages within the 51 sq. km by boundaries of Desa Kanekes. The Territory lies a little more than 35 km south of Rangkasbitung in hilly country ranging from 300 or 400 meters in height to maintain passes, near Gunung Kendeng which (...)

The Balinese	Proud of their ethnic identity

There is probably no group in Indonesia more aware of its own ethnic identity than the nearly 2.5 million Balinese. Inhabitants of the islands of Bali and Lombok and the western half of Sumbawa, Balinese are often portrayed as a graceful, poised, and aesthetically inclined people. Although such descriptions date back six centuries or more and are at least partially based on legend, this characteri (...)

The Batak	Many small groups form a population again

The Batak, a colorful and notoriously forthright and aggressive people, inhabit a cluster of spectacularly beautiful and fertile volcanic basins at the northern end of the Bukit Barisan range, focusing around Lake Toba, with the huge island of Samosir at its center. There are about six million Batak, more than half of whorn live in the highlands surrounding Lake Toba, divided in a number of d (...)

The Chinese	Most 'integrated' towards Indonesian lifestyle and looks

Identifying someone in Indonesia as a member of the Chinese (orang Tionghoa) ethnic group is not an easy matter, because physical characteristics, language, name, geographical location, and life-style of Chinese Indonesians are not always distinct from those of the rest of the population. Census figures do not record Chinese as a special group, and there are no simple racial criteria for membershi (...)

The Dayak	Inhabitants of the inland

The first discoverers were suprised by the populations which lived in the heart of Borneo at tha time, and are named Dayak all together. Just like the modern travellers and tourist, European adventurers and ethnographers were mainly impressed about the big longhouses on pillars, and the remarkable and beautifull expressions of art and last but not least, the headhunting. That the Dayak were phisyc (...)

The Jambi	The Jambi

Dutch colonial ethnographer van Eerde noted that he could find no greater cultural contrast in Indonesia between the highly civilized people of Bali (with their lavish costumes, elegant dances and elaborate religious ceremonies) and the primitive Kubu tribesmen of southern Sumatra, who wandered naked in the jungle, lived in simple huts and foraged for food. However, if Van Eerde had the opportunit (...)

The Jawanese	All living together in the rukun

There were approximately 70 million Javanese in the early 1990s, the majority of whom lived in East Java and Central Java and the rest of whom lived on Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and other islands. Altogether, some 100 million people lived on Java. Although many Javanese expressed pride at the grand achievements of the illustrious courts of Surakarta and Yogyakarta and admired the traditional (...)

The Kamoro	The coastal people of West Papua

When asked briefly to describe the Kamoro people of Papua, celebrated photographer and ethnologist Kal Muller said: "The Kamoro people are lovers, not fighters." There are about 18,000 members of the Kamoro, one of dozens of tribal groups in Papua. They live in the southwest coastal area of Mimika regency in West Papua. Geographically, they are close to tribal groups like the Asmat, Amungme and Se (...)

The Kanum	People in the Wasur region of Irian Jaya

I visited the area under the auspices of UNESCO in 1996, and did a survey of the area, but focussed on Kanum for documentation purposes. In 1998 I again went to the area for more general literacy work, and additional documentation work, funded this time by the Endangered Languages Fund ELF and the Foundation for Endangered Languages FEL. This time the work was not just with the Kanum,but also inte (...)

The Korowai	Head-hunters drove Papuan tribe into tree-houses

The forest-dwelling Korowai, a Papuan tribe in the southeast of Papua (the former Dutch New Guinea), were forced to adapt their lifestyle to cope with the danger posed by a tribe of neighbouring head-hunters, the Citak. They did this by building their houses at the tops of 40-metre high trees. A recent book about these tree-dwellers by two Dutch researchers, linguist Prof. Lourens J. de Vries and (...)

The Kubu	Nomads of the rainforest

The Dutch colonial ethnographer Van Eerde wrote in the 1920 that there was no bigger contrast in Indonesia than the highly civilized people from Bali - with their costumes, dances and difficult religious ceremonies - and the primitive Kubu in southern Sumatera, which wandered through the forest naked, lived in simple huts and searched for food. 50 years later members of these two ethnical groups m (...)

The Minangkabau	Visiting relatives at the Minang

Western Sumatera is the habitat of about four milion Minangkabau (normally called Minang), an energic population which is known all over Indonesia for their strong relations, it's sharp mind of trading, hot kitchen and strong believe in islam. The Minang are also travellers and migrants, because of their tradition of merantau, young people trying to find their luck elsewhere, it's most like (...)

The Sundanese	The people of western Jawa

Although there are many social, economic, and political similarities between the Javanese and Sundanese, differences abound. The Sundanese live principally in West Java, but their language is not intelligible to the Javanese. The more than 21 million Sundanese in 1992 had stronger ties to Islam than the Javanese, in terms of pesantren enrollment and religious affiliation. Although the Sundanese la (...)

The Tanimbarese	A Maluku population living in small villages

In the southeastern part of Maluku Province lived more than 60,000 residents of the Tanimbar archipelago in the early 1990s. They resided in villages ranging in size from 150 to 2,500 inhabitants, but most villages numbered from 300 to 1,000. Nearly all residents spoke one of four related, but mutually unintelligible, languages. Because of an extended dry season, the forests were much less luxuria (...)

The Toraja	A minority getting national attention

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, rugge (...)

The Warembori	Warembori, and the Lower Mamberamo family

The Warembori language (locally: Waremboivoro) is spoken by the inhabitants of three villages along the northern coast of Papua, at and to the west of the mouth of the Mamberamo river, split between the districts (kabupaten) of Yapen-Waropen and Jayapura. It is (probably) a non-Austronesian language, and has not previously received any linguistic attention past the level of basic wordlist collecti (...)

The Weyewa	A population living in Nusa Tenggara

The Weyewa inhabit the western highlands of Sumba, Nusa Tenggara Timur Province, where they cultivate rice, corn, and cassava using slash-and-burn farming methods as well continuous irrigation of padi fields. They supplement this income through the sale of livestock, coffee, and their distinctive brightly colored textiles. Until the 1970s, there had been relatively few challenges to the (...)