2992 INDIA (Nagaland) - Ao Naga

2992 Ao man during Moatsü Mong festival

The Aos are one of the major Naga tribes of Nagaland, Northeast India. Their main territory is from Tsula (Dikhu) Valley in the east to Tsurang (Disai) Valley in the west in Mokokchung district. They were the first Naga tribe to embrace Christianity and by virtue of this development the Aos availed themselves to Western education that came along with Christianity. Racially the Aos are Mongolians, and is believed to have migrated from the far east 'through' Chungliyimti, in Tuensang district, where are still intact the six stones from which it is said that they emerged.

0061, 1510, 1666 MALAYSIA (Sarawak) - Iban people

0061 - Ibans performing ngajat dance in a longhouse

Posted on 05.12.2011, 04.04.2015, 14.06.2015
The population of Borneo (the third largest island in the world, divided between Indonesia,  Malaysia, and  Brunei), totaling 20 million, mainly consists of Dayak ethnic groups, Malay, Banjar, Orang Ulu, Chinese and Kadazan-Dusun. Dayak is actually a generic term that designate six native clusters subdivided into approximately 450 sub-clusters, each with its own dialect, customs, laws, territory and culture. One of the most important branch of the Dayak are the Ibans, or Sea Dayak, located in Sarawak, Brunei, a small portion in Sabah and West Kalimantan.

1501 - An Iban with his grandson

In the past, the Dayak practiced the headhunting, and the Ibans were pioneers of this custom, but after conversion to Christianity the practice was banned and disappeared, only to resurface in WWII (against the Japanese) and in the late 90s, when Dayak attacked Madurese emigrants. The Ibans live in longhouses (rumah panjai), a massive communal structures usually located along a terraced river bank (there are over 4,500 longhouses only in Sarawak).

1666 - Iban people in tradition clothes

They might reach up to 12m in height and to hundreds of metres in lenght, at times bringing more than 100 families under one roof, and affording safety from attacks during times of warfare. A traditional longhouse is built of axe-hewn timber, tied with creeper fibre, roofed with leaf thatch. Inside, the families live in separate apartments arranged along a central corridor (ruai), which serves as a communal area. Lack of class distinction favors this way of life. Or maybe vice versa? Anyway, in nowadays many have abandoned this system in favour of individual houses.

0745, 1346, 1389 INDONESIA (New Guinea) - Dani Tribe in Baliem Valley

Posted on 16.07.2013, 30.11.2014, and 01.01.2015
The Dani (also spelled Ndani) are a people from the Grand Valley of the Baliem River, a broad, temperate plain lying 1.800m above the tropical jungles of Papua, of the island of New Guinea. They are one of the most numerous tribes in the highlands, and simultaneously one of the most well-known, despite the fact that were discovered only in 1938. At least 50.000 Dani live on the valley floor, and another 50.000 inhabit scattered settlements along the steep-sided valleys around the Grand Valley. Temperature is mild, rainfall moderate, wildlife harmless and disease rare, so it can said that this is one of the world's most pleasant corners. Sweet potatoes are important in their culture as food, but also as the most important tool used in bartering, especially in dowries, and this is reflected in the over seventy different names used for this vegetable. They grow also ginger, taro, cucumber, carrot, greens, yam, and a single fruit: banana. As most Papuans, they consider pigs the most important living creatures besides people. Pigs mean wealth and social importance. Only the possession of several wives is as important and usually a man who has many pigs will have more than one wife.

Their tools are made of stone and bone, wood and bamboo. A few of the more exotic materials, such as seashells, furs, feathers and the finest woods, reach the Grand Valley along the native trade routes. Metals, and even pottery, were unknown to the Dani, but despite their primitive tools, their houses and gardens are complex. Their settlements are collections of compounds enclosed by a stockade, within which are four kinds of structures, arranged according to a traditional pattern. At one end of the oval courtyard is the circular domed men’s house. On both sides were long rectangular family or cooking houses and smaller circular structures in which each woman slept with certain smaller children and her husband, when he was not in the men’s house. Finally there are houses divided into stables where the pigs were kept. More about their houses I wrote here.

 

The men only wear long and thin sheaths for penis (kotekas), and the women short skirts woven from orchid fibers, decorated with straw, and woven bags (noken) across their backs. Their fondness for "dressing up" shows the most during the time of war, when put boar tusks in their noses, and headdresses made of Paradise birds feathers. Dani occupied one of the most fertile parts of Papua, so they often had to fight for their territory. Actually ritual small-scale warfare between rival villages is integral to their traditional culture, with much time spent preparing weapons, engaging in both mock and real battle, and treating any resulting injuries. Some sources say that they practiced cannibalism, others the opposite. Anyway, they were the most dreaded head-hunting tribe on the island. The tribe is also notorious for the custom that if someone dies in the village, each of his female relatives will have a segment of their finger cut off.

0716 TAIWAN - A Seediq pair from Nantou playing the jaw harp

The Seediq (Sediq, Seejiq) are an aboriginal people who live primarily in Nantou County and Hualien County, and were officially recognised as Taiwan's 14th indigenous group in 2008. Seediq and Taiya share cultural similarities, in particular the importance of face tattoos and the “chucao” tradition of headhunting. They are also closely related to the Truku (Atayal), both tribes having the same origin and culture, but separated early on due to different lifestyles.

0676 TAIWAN - Atayal women dancing

"Once upon a time, a stone named Pinspkan cracked apart and in it were three people. However, for an undisclosed reason, one of them decided to return back into the stone. Then there were two. The remaining one man and one woman then lived together for a very long time and they loved each other very much. Unfortunately, the man was too shy and would not approach the girl and tell her how he felt.The woman then came up with an idea because she could not bear to see how the man was too shy to confess to her. She firstly left her home and found some coal and with it, she blackened her face with it so she could pose as a different girl. After several days, she crept back into their home and the man mistook her for another girl and they lived happily ever after. Not long after, the couple bore children, fulfilling their mission of procreating the next generation."

0256 INDONESIA (Kalimantan) - "If has the short ears mean he’s a monkey"

About the Dayak (or Dyak) people, from Borneo, I wrote here, only that then I insisted on Ibans, the most important branch of this ethnic group. This time, the postcard is from Indonesia, which hold approximately 73% of Borneo's  territory, divided into four provinces: West Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, South Kalimantan, and East Kalimantan.

0250 ECUADOR - The tsantsa, or how to keep trapped the enemy's soul

Not even the conquer of the Inca Empire couldn't enrich all conquistadors, so those less fortunate began to explore beyond the borders recently achieved. Thus in 1549 Hernando de Benavente led an expedition into the tropical forest of the Amazonian lowlands, to the East of the Andes (now in Ecuador and Peru), venturing into the territory of the Shuar tribe, at the headwaters of the Marañón River, and attempting to settle in it. Aborigines proved hostile, so, for their own good, the Spaniards abandoned the idea.

0247 INDONESIA (New Guinea) - Asmat warriors

New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2, i.e. about as Germany, Poland, Austria and Switzerland together. From geographical point of view, it's located in the north of the continent of Sahul (the Australia–New Guinea continent), also known as Greater Australia, but also in Melanesia, sometimes being considered the easternmost island of the Malay archipelago. From geological point of view, in last 96 million years Australia and New Guinea were a single, continuous landmass, until about 8,000 and 6,500 BC, when the lowlands in the north of Australia were flooded by the sea, separating New Guinea and the continent.

0194 TAIWAN - A Saisiyat man smoking pipe

The 521.000 Taiwanese aborigines constitutes now only 2% of the island population, although they were the first who colonized it, with a few thousand years before that benshengren (literally "home-province person") come from the mainland. These natives Taiwanese, divided into 14 major groups, are Austronesians, with linguistic and genetic ties to peoples of the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Madagascar, Polynesia, and Oceania. Moreover, historical linguists consider Taiwan the original homeland of the Austronesian language family. The issue of an ethnic identity unconnected to the mainland has become a thread in the discourse regarding the political status of Taiwan.