Korowai
The
Korowai, also called the
Kolufo, are a people of eastern
Papua (i.e. the eastern part of the western part of
New Guinea). Their numbers are very roughly estimated at about 3000. Until the
1970s, they were unaware of the existence of any people besides themselves and some immediately neighboring tribes. Only a few of them became literate thusfar. The majority of the Korowai clans live in treehouses on their isolated territoria. Since 1980 some moved into the then recently opened villages of Yaniruma at the Becking River banks (Kombai-Korowai area), Mu and Mbasman(Korowai-Citak area). In 1987 a village was opened in Manggél, in Yafufla (1988), Mabül at the banks of the Eilanden River (1989), and Khaiflambolüp (1998). The village absenteism rate is still high, because the relative long distance between the settlements and the food (
sago) resources.
In the late 1970s a few Christian (Dutch Protestant) missionaries began to live among them. For a long time the Korowai have had the distinction of being considered the people most resistant to religious conversion. In the end of nineties, however, the first converts were baptized. Fall 2003 a small team of bible translators (from Wycliffe/
SIL) moved to Yaniruma.
Reference
The Korowai of Irian Jaya: Their Language in Its Cultural Context (Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics, 9) by Gerrit J. Van Enk, Lourens De Vries, & Enk De Vries Van ISBN 0195105516
Korowai: in Encyclopedia of World Cultures - Supplement (Editors: Melvin Ember, Carol R.Ember, and Ian Skoggard) pp.183-187 by Gerrit J.van Enk. Macmillan Reference USA / Gale Group ISBN 0028656717
Figures of alterity among Korowai of Irian Jaya: Kinship, mourning, and festivity in a dispersed society (Indonesia). PhD Dissertation, by Rupert Stasch, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago (Unpublished)
External links