The dance these men are performing indicates that, in a small village called Kete, someone
important has just died.
Now, his relatives must organise very complicated, and very expensive funeral rites, which will
mark the return of the deceased to the world of his ancestors.
For the Toraja, it is very important that the funeral should be success. If the dead
man is satisfied, he will watch over, protect and bring luck to his family.
The ceremony will last for several days, and once it is over, the coffin will be placed
in a sacred rock, along with his ancestors.
But before that moment arrives, the family
must build a city, sacrifice over forty buffalo, and welcome and entertain over 2,000 guests
in a ritual which is unique in the world.
In the highlands of Sulawesi, the island in the shape of an orchid, the rice fields are
ready to be harvested.
For centuries, this has been the home of the Toraja, an Indonesian ethnic group structured
in a very hierarchical society, and ruled over by nobles called “puangs”.
Rice, along with the coconut palm, is the base of their economy, and even the tiniest
scrap of land is used to grow it. For centuries, they have gradually sculpted terraces along
the valleys and mountains, creating in the process one of the most beautiful landscapes in Asia.
The land here is rich and generous, and in a good year it is possible to obtain three crops.
But this dominance of rice cultivation is relatively recent. In the past, these people
lived by hunting and gathering, and their constant tribal conflicts
forced them to adopt a nomadic lifestyle.
But, with the arrival of the Dutch empire, peace returned to the
island, and its inhabitants began to settle and cultivate the land.
Though the Portuguese were the first to arrive on the island, in 1512, the Dutch began to
impose their supremacy from 1607, when Sulawesi became an important province of the Dutch
East Indies Company, a government enterprise whose monopoly extended from the Cape of Good
Hope to the Magellan Straits.
These companies were created in Western Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
in order to exploit trade with Asia, and the most important of them had deeds of constitution
granted by their respective governments, which authorised them to acquire territories and
exercise government functions over them.
On the lowlands, the rice fields give way to the palm groves,
the most important economic resource in Sulawesi.
Thanks to the palm, its people are among the most prosperous in Indonesia,
especially in the north, where alongside the coconut palms there are plantations
growing coffee, vanilla and cloves.
The possibilities these trees offer the inhabitants of the island are almost unlimited: they eat
the flesh of the coconut, and drink the milk; they use the wood of the trunk to build their
houses; the palm leaves serve to make roofs, hammocks, baskets and ropes; and the oil is
used for cooking and lighting, and is sold to the cosmetics multinationals to make soaps,
perfumes, moisturisers, and even nitroglycerine.