This vast region makes up 21% of Indonesia’s land area and is considered the last inaccessible frontier of the archipelago. Irian Java is located on the western side of New Guinea and is part of the second largest island in the world after Greenland, with an area of 414,800 square kilometers. The Province was transferred by the Netherlands to Indonesia in 1963.
For the most part, Irian Java is an impenetrable territory, made up of swamps and marshes, the thickest jungle and towering highlands criss-crossed by rivers with rapids and spectacular waterfalls. This landscape is dominated by towering rocky peaks that reach 5,000 m. high and are covered by perennial glaciers. Mandala is one of the highest peaks, followed by Trikora and Puncak Java, the latter having a height of 5,000 m. and rushes headlong over the reefs of the Arafura Sea.
Beyond the geography, Irian Java also has an incomparable flora of orchids, ferns, lianas and ancient trees and is the habitat of more than 700 species of birds, among which the great cassowary and the mythical bird of paradise stand out. In addition there is a variety of fearsome marsupials and reptiles, dangerous crocodiles and poisonous snakes.
Irian Jaya is home to the world’s most primitive and isolated populations numbering only 1.6 million inhabitants, with a density of just three inhabitants per square kilometer. This territory is part of a colorful and distracting mix of cultures and ethnic groups. Many isolated tribes such as the Sawuy, the Asmat, the Moni, the Ekari, the Dani and the Damal rarely have contact with the outside world and still belong to a primitive era where the tribes fought each other with spears and arrows, practiced cannibalism. and spoke completely different languages.
Among the groups that can be reached and that are being carefully studied by anthropologists and missionaries, is the Dani tribe, which lives in the Baliem Valley. Some 210,000 people who have managed to keep their lifestyle and traditions unchanged, despite the presence of missionaries and contacts with foreigners in recent years.
This culture is completely primitive; The numbers, the value of money and the art are unknown. Pigs and bones are considered exchange goods and circulate freely as dowry for marriages, funerals, and ritual feasts. This town lives from agriculture and pig farming and measures its technological success from its elaborate irrigation system.
Dani’s attractiveness is most amazing and strange; the men are naked, covering her penis with an empty gourd of different sizes tied to the waist, called a Koteka. The women wear skirts made of reeds or grasses with the back covered by bags made of cords tied together to protect them from spirits trying to enter their bodies. These same cords are also used to carry children or the harvest.
The unassuming male attire is usually adorned with feathers, leaves, flowers and multicolored makeup, noses adorned with bits of bone and boar tusk and during festivities they wear a bodice made of pigskin.
The Dani people live at heights of 1,700 m.; an altitude that registers very low temperatures. To neutralize this problem, they smear their bodies with animal fat.
A surprising fact is its family and sexual uses: men and women live apart from each other and relations between the sexes are very rare, in fact, there is a rule for the respect of sexual abstinence for a period of five years after giving birth. . birth of a baby; a practice that is still widely followed and attributed to the will of the spirits.
Another group that can be easily reached is the Asmat tribe, who live in different physical conditions than the Dani. The Asmat live in swampy lands that are continually flooded, both by rain and by tides.
This harsh environment of dangerous crocodiles and reptiles is one reason the Asmat are nomads with no permanent villages. They live by hunting, fishing, and eating herbs, shrubs, insects, lizards, and sago (a flour extracted from the sago palm, which is cooked in palm leaves).
The Asmat, who are renowned headhunters, are also gifted and talented sculptors.
Among the tribal masterpieces, you can find the Bisj or totem poles, and tall tree trunks carved with crouching phallic figures, ceremonial shields, reproducing crocodiles and jungle animals, as well as elaborate canoes, with richly carved bows. Intricately decorated skulls can still be found among his furniture.
Complicated rites emphasize the ceremonial cycle of the Asmat; among them, a picturesque ceremony of sexual purification, during which the women of the village deny their husbands upon returning from the forest, throwing stony and blunt spears. There is also the practice of exchanging wives with the aim of strengthening tribal solidarity, and such exchange arrangements sometimes last a lifetime.
Rapid changes are taking place in various parts of Irian jaya and especially in the areas closer to the coast: the exploitation of large mineral deposits in Tembagapura or on Mount Bijih, where entire mountains have been stripped in a few years for copper extraction and gold – the discovery of vast oil fields; wood reserves, thanks to the unlimited forests that cover 75% of the region; and the richness of its seas, which happen to be the most abundant in fish in the world, are factors that favored the arrival of multinational companies with foreign capital and American, Japanese and European technicians and engineers.
All of this has pushed, in one fell swoop, this isolated town to the bustling threshold of the modern age. In recent years, entire infrastructures have been built with cities, highways, modern ports, airports, schools and hospitals.
Highlanders were abruptly introduced to modern planes, helicopters, and other machines, benefiting in part from this flow of these modern pioneers.
However, all this has not changed the life, traditions, customs and tribal way of life of these people. In fact, both the Dani and the Asmat continue to live their traditional way of life; revering their ancestors and practicing war in homage to those warriors who have fallen in battle. The men wear incredibly multicolored martial outfits and are equipped with spears and axes and carry out wars that can last for tens of years. Victories can be celebrated with cannibalistic rites and bountiful spoils of war including bones, pigs, and women. The presence of the missionaries has only appeased, but not stopped, this martial instinct.
For its part, the Indonesian government has promoted martial arts and sports competitions in order to direct and channel this instinct for violence, and has favored a transmigration program bringing people to Irian Jaya from Bali, Java and other regions of Indonesia. .
These contacts have not changed the primitive reality of the people, who live the drama of having to face cultures so different from their own, without having the advantage of slowly absorbing them in the passing centuries and stages, from which all previous civilizations they had benefited.