Small-scale warfare between villages is integral to traditional Dani culture. Pig feasts and cooking rituals are a big part of every important event when several pigs are killed using a bow and arrow, portioned, wrapped in a banana leaf and traditionally cooked in the earth oven together with potatoes and cassava. A big part of funeral ceremonies is finger amputation of the female members for each death in a family or multiple pig slaughtering during celebrations to show the success of the community.
#HEADHUNTERS MOVIE AMAZON FULL#
Like most of the ethnic groups in New Guinea, Dani tribe lives in its own world full of odd rites and rituals. Men spend most of the time preparing primitive weapons, hunting and treating resulting injuries while woman look after the youngsters, grow sweet potatoes and tobacco. They live in so-called “honai honai”, tiny mushroom-shaped huts made out of thatch and reeds and they are hunters.
The Central Highlands of West Papua is home to the Dani people who had been waiting a long time to be discovered. Some of them stick to their tradition even today. There are 5 known tribes in the territory of West Papua (Indonesian Papua) that have been practising cannibalism for centuries. Ritual cannibalism manifests their strong belief – animism.
While for us – Westerners – the concept of cannibalism seems absolutely horrendous, for the locals it has always been a cultural norm, not an act out of hunger. Indeed, the Indonesian Papua is proudly a land of the headhunters – notorious tribal warriors, and there were many alarming cases of strangers being attacked, killed and eaten by the indigenous people. Today, West Papua is still a field of the possibly last surviving tribes in the world engaging in cannibalism. But that cases like this repeatedly occurred on the island of New Guinea is a fact.įrom past to the present, the remote island of New Guinea has a long meaty history of humans eating humans. If the young man really was killed by the Papuan cannibals will remain a mystery forever. These are words of Paul Hoffmann, from his book about the puzzling case of the American anthropologist Michael Rockefeller, who disappeared during an expedition in the jungles of West Papua in 1961.
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