Korowai Tribe Rituals

The Korowai, also known as Kolufo are individuals who reside in southeastern of West Papua in the Indonesian Province, very close to the border with Papua New Guinea. They are known to be one of the wildest tribes in the country. Their population number is usually around three thousand to four thousand people. The Korowai are forgagers and horticulturalists who practice shifting cultivation. The hunting and fishing is performed by the men. The men hunt for wild pigs, cassowaries, and small insects such as snakes, lizards, rodents, marsupials, bats, and birds. The men usually hunt with bows and arrows. The Korowai have several different arrow tips and they all have different uses. They hunt with dogs that help the locate and kill pigs and other

It is the way they live. These customs of the Korowai are completely normal but non frequent. This practice is a ritual used to keep members of their tribe from a demon called the Khakhua, a male witch that is disguised as a friend or member. It is known to be revenge consumption of the demon that has taken the skin of a human and consumed another. Even children can become Khakhua, but they are not traditionally killed and eaten until puberty. During an interview with Bailom, a man from Korowai, he stated with no remorse, “Revenge is part of our culture, so when the Khakhua eat a person, the people eat the Khakhua.” (Smithsonian Magazine) Punishment and retribution is displayed at its finest to a traumatic

They take up food as moral recognition, hunting and gathering, and basic representation of personal identity. Being that there are partners that refer to each other by food gift of the dead. There is no such thing as a natural or accidental death in the Korowai tribe. The Korowai tribe suspect that all human deaths are provoked by witch masters. Recently, men accused of being witches were transported across the country to be executed and eaten by non-kin and others were just simply arrested. They say that one’s death is then followed by a spontaneous bodily transformation. This bodily transformation is from human to animal. The people of Korowai also believe that their dead ancestors can return to the land of living at any time by their kinsmen in the land of the dead. The others of this tribe consume the animal’s corpse to prevent kinship between animal and man.

When the kinsmen kinship is formed, the corpse becomes inedible, due to reciprocal reincarnation. The reciprocal reincarnation takes place in form as a newly born infant of their clan. Though, the people of Korowai made it simple to eat their criminals and fallen peers, they were equal and fair to those who obeyed. It may seem brutal and out of place to us because we are on the outside looking in, but it actually is a functioning judicial system there in the tribe of