In most Western cultures, death is taboo - it’s something to be mourned, avoided, even feared.
But some cultures have an entirely different outlook on death.
The Toraja people of Indonesia have no fear of death - in fact, just the opposite.
They live with dead people for years and treat corpses like a part of the family.
The Toraja people live in the mountainous highland regions of the remote Indonesian
island of Sulawesi.
They existed there for centuries in isolation, having little contact with the outside world
before 1906 when the Dutch first occupied Indonesia.
The Toraja place tremendous importance on family relationships, and they live in small,
tight-knit villages of mostly extended family members.
Their villages are highly cooperative, with inhabitants helping each other farm, raise
their families, build and repair their homes, and complete their spiritual rituals.
After the arrival of the Dutch in the early 20th century, the native inhabitants of Indonesia
- including the Toraja - were largely converted to Christianity, though they retained many
of their ancient animist rituals and beliefs, blending these ancient practices with their
new Christian faith.
One of the most interesting ancient Toraja rituals that survives to this day is the practice
of ancestor worship and their elaborate funeral rites.
Rather than treat death as something to be feared and avoided, the Toraja embrace death
with reverence, gratitude and worship, and their love for their ancestors is stronger
than their fear of death.
They don’t rely on modern medicine to keep ill people alive, and instead allow death
to happen naturally.
To the Toraja, death is not an ending or a goodbye - they believe that the dead never
really leave us, and that the spirits of the dead continue to watch over and protect surviving
family members long after they’ve passed into the afterlife.
The Toraja do not fear death, nor do they fear dead bodies - in fact, they live alongside
them for weeks, months or even years after death.
The Toraja don’t consider someone to be dead as long as their corpse remains at home.
When a loved one dies, they are considered to makula’ - a sick person - until their
funeral has taken place, often weeks or even years after their death.
Until then, the corpse remains a part of the family, and is very much involved in the day-to-day
life of surviving family members.
The deceased’s loved ones will continue to live with the corpse until the funeral,
and will treat them much the same as they would have in life.
When a family has a recently deceased loved one at home, they will care for them as they
would a sick person.
At mealtimes, they will present the deceased with full servings of rice, stewed meat, fish
and local fruit, and family members will take care to gently offer drinks to the corpse
as they would to an ill person, holding the cup up to their mouth and wiping away any
spills.
If the deceased was a smoker, family members will continue to offer them cigarettes, lighting
them and placing them in the corpse’s mouth.
Every evening, the family will make sure to turn on the light in the deceased person’s
room so that they can see what the family is doing around them.
Family members will sit and visit with the dead person’s corpse, talking to them and
praying with them as if they were alive.
The family will also take care to dress the deceased regularly in fresh clothes, and will
be sure to keep the corpse clean, wiping away any dirt or debris, removing bugs and preserving
the body with a solution of formaldehyde and water, eventually mummifying the corpse until
the family can afford to hold an appropriate funeral.
Toraja funerals are incredibly elaborate affairs.
Only once a suitable amount of money has been raised, and every single extended family member
has been contacted and notified of the death of their loved one, can the funeral and burial
preparations truly begin.
It can take years to plan and save for an elaborate Toraja funeral, and during this
period, the corpse is kept at home and treated as if they were simply sick, not dead.
According to Yacob Kakke, a Toraja cultural expert, how long a deceased loved one is kept
at home depends on the family’s status.
Lower class families may only keep their dead at home for mere weeks, middle class families
may keep them around for months, and high-class families can keep their dead at home for years
while they save and prepare for their elaborate funeral.
The Rambu Solo funeral rites are an incredibly important part of Toraja culture and are an
opportunity to showcase the status and importance of the deceased and their surviving family.
These extravagant rituals can be very costly, with families often going into debt to afford
to give their deceased loved ones an appropriate funeral.
It’s not uncommon for lower and middle-class Toraja families to spend the equivalent of
$50,000 on a loved one’s funeral, and high-caste families have been known to spend $500,000
or more to ensure that their loved ones are sent into the afterlife with appropriate pageantry.
Toraja funerals usually take place in August or September, and can last anywhere from a
few days to a few weeks, depending on the deceased’s importance and status.
The family will erect a ceremonial site, called a rante, in an open field, building shelters
for the audience and other ceremonial structures for the event.
Toraja funerals are not intimate, private affairs - the entire village and every member
of the deceased’s extended family participate in the festivities - the funeral of an important
person might be attended by thousands.
Even total strangers are enthusiastically welcomed at this most sacred event for a Toraja
family.
In recent years an influx of tourists have flooded these remote Indonesian communities,
and it is considered a mark of the family’s high status to have foreign tourists as guests
at a Toraja funeral.
During the funeral, relatives gather together to show how much the surviving family love
and respect their deceased relative.
For days, they will engage in public displays of mourning, praying, weeping and wailing
for the deceased, but a Toraja funeral is not an overly sorrowful event - they will
also celebrate the life of their loved one with ritual dancing, chanting and singing
and even ceremonial cockfights.
The cornerstone of a Toraja funeral is the ritual sacrifice of the water buffalo.
The Toraja people believe that the water buffalo is the vehicle to the afterlife, and that
the more water buffalo a deceased person has to carry them into the afterlife, the faster
and easier their journey will be.
The more important or high-status a deceased person was in life, the more water buffalo
their family will buy to join them in death.
A single water buffalo can cost anywhere from 10,000 to 40,000 dollars, and many families
will go deeply into debt to ensure that their dead relative has as many buffalo as necessary
to ensure that their journey to the afterlife is smooth and swift.
During the funeral ceremony, the buffalo will be paraded around in front of the crowd and
will be made to perform feats of strength, slamming their horns together and fighting
to showcase how important the deceased is.
After the spectacle is over and the funeral’s master of ceremonies has made a speech, the
throats of the buffalo will be cut and the animals will bleed out in front of the crowd.
Once dead, the heads of the buffalo will be removed and lined up as a display of the dead
person’s status, and the animals’ meat will be butchered and distributed to the deceased’s
family and friends so that they can feast in honor of the dead.
On the final day of the funeral celebrations, the deceased is ceremoniously carried on the
shoulders of their young male relatives to their final cliff-side resting place.
Toraja tombs are typically carved into the side of a cliff, and the higher up a loved
one is buried, the higher their status.
Higher-caste families often have their own private ancestral funeral towers to signify
their status and importance.
These extravagant stone towers are built by craftsmen who specialize in tomb construction
without the use of any climbing or safety gear, which is quite impressive considering
that these funeral towers can be as high as 100 feet tall.
Family members will leave gifts for the deceased, or place the dead person’s favorite belongings
alongside them in their coffin.
Elaborate bamboo effigies called tau tau are placed on a balcony in front of the tomb in
honor of the dead person.
It often costs a small fortune to have these detailed tokens made in the image of the deceased,
and, since grave robbery is a sadly common problem at Toraja tombs, these expensive effigies
are often kept at home, instead.
Finally, the deceased is laid to rest in their tomb, and, having been properly celebrated
and adequately prepared for the journey, they can finally begin their passage into the afterlife.
The Toraja value all life, from the oldest elder to the smallest child, and when a baby
dies they are celebrated and shepherded to the afterlife with similar ceremony and reverence.
If a baby dies before it is old enough to have its teeth come in, it is buried in a
special hollowed out tree alongside other infants who have passed into the afterlife.
These “baby trees” are believed to absorb the spirit of the children buried within as
it grows, allowing them to live on after death.
Reverence for the dead doesn’t end after the funeral is over and they have been laid
to rest in their tomb.
The Toraja have another important ritual, called Ma’nene, to continue to honor their
dead long after the funeral rites have taken place.
Every 1 to 3 years, during the usually dry month of August, families will gather in crowds
at their ancestral tombs to pay their respects to their deceased relatives in a very tangible
way.
The Toraja don’t simply visit the tombs of their dead relatives, but they actually
interact with the deceased themselves.
The dead are removed from their tombs so that the tomb can be swept and cleaned, and their
bodies are removed from their coffins to be inspected for decay - a well-preserved body
is seen as a blessing in Toraja culture.
As the tomb is being cleaned, the body is laid out in the sun to dry, before family
members methodically clean the corpse, carefully brushing away any dirt, treating any signs
of decay, and removing any bugs by hand.
Once the family has dressed the corpse in a fresh suit of clothing, they spend time
visiting with their deceased relative as if they were still living.
The purpose of Ma’nene is to remind the living to show love and gratitude toward their
ancestors.
For those whose relatives have recently departed, Ma’nene offers an opportunity for renewed
mourning.
During Ma’nene, a grown woman might be seen openly weeping as she gently strokes the decaying
face of the corpse of her mother, who died a year ago.
A young man might be carefully sweeping the tomb of the brother who died years ago in
childhood as his parents gently clean and redress the boy’s mummified corpse outside.
Ma’nene is also an opportunity for younger generations to connect with their family lineage,
which goes back hundreds of years, and to remind them that, like the ancestors they
have come to visit, their own legacy will continue for decades after their death.
It’s not uncommon to see young Toraja people visiting with long-dead relatives whom they
had never met in life - a young man might share a cigarette with the newly cleaned and
redressed corpse of his great-grandfather, who died decades ago; a young woman might
be seen taking a selfie with the mummified corpse of her great-great-grandmother, after
the body has been cleaned and dressed and propped up against the cliff wall for photo
opps.
Ultimately, Ma’nene is a reminder to the Toraja people that they are connected to a
long line of ancestors who came before them, and without whom they would not exist.
Toraja member Petrus Kambuno perfectly explained the Toraja view on death when he told a visiting
journalist: "My father is in here,” he said, pointing at his family tomb, “but I am here,
so he is not really dead.
My mother is in here, but I have daughters, so she is not really dead.
My daughters have been exchanged for my mother.
I have been exchanged for my father.”
Not all cultures look at death as something to fear.
The Toraja people of Indonesia embrace death and honor their dead long after they’ve
left this earth.
They even live with dead people for years before sending them into the afterlife, and
they continue to visit the decaying bodies of their deceased ancestors for decades after
their death, believing that our loved ones never truly leave us.
If you thought this video was fascinating, be sure and check out our other videos, like
this video called “Strange Customs Around The World That Are Still Happening”, or
perhaps you’ll like this other video.
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