28 images Created 10 Jun 2021
Tree People
In 1995 George had the rare opportunity to document clans of tree-dwelling people in Indonesian New Guinea that had no prior contact with anyone outside their language group. I went there with Gerrit Van Enk, a Dutch missionary-anthropologist who at the time was the only outsider who spoke their language. Together they crossed what Gerrit termed the “pacification line”. Although these tree people live in a remote part of the lowland forest, they had been seeing overflying aircraft for several years, and aggressively resisted contact with outsiders as they feared it would bring an end to their world. George’s team went there to make as accurate a recording as possible of their way of life before they were inundated by the modern world, as had almost every other culture on the island of New Guinea.
The Korowai and Kombai live in tree houses surrounded by clearings they have carved out of the forest. Beyond the pacification line, they live without clothing, metal, or any form of cooking vessel. Although slowly dying out, at that time there was still cannibalism in the area. Gerrit saw it as part of their criminal justice system. The Korowai believed that most deaths were caused by sorcery, and they would try to find out who the sorcerer was to kill and eat them. It was a very difficult and dangerous environment in which the team could only make first contact by getting an invitation to cross the pacification line through relatives who had married into a neighboring clan. These were not easy invitations to get. The team spent six weeks on the ground there, and the photos were published in both National Geographic and GEO Magazines. George and Gerrit’s experience was steeped in the awareness that they may have been documenting their effect on the Korowai rather than how it was before they arrived, and the pacification line was like a rainbow that was always just outside our grasp. But their goal was to make as accurate a documentation of a vanishing way of life as possible, for them and their future generations as much as for the outside world.
The Korowai and Kombai live in tree houses surrounded by clearings they have carved out of the forest. Beyond the pacification line, they live without clothing, metal, or any form of cooking vessel. Although slowly dying out, at that time there was still cannibalism in the area. Gerrit saw it as part of their criminal justice system. The Korowai believed that most deaths were caused by sorcery, and they would try to find out who the sorcerer was to kill and eat them. It was a very difficult and dangerous environment in which the team could only make first contact by getting an invitation to cross the pacification line through relatives who had married into a neighboring clan. These were not easy invitations to get. The team spent six weeks on the ground there, and the photos were published in both National Geographic and GEO Magazines. George and Gerrit’s experience was steeped in the awareness that they may have been documenting their effect on the Korowai rather than how it was before they arrived, and the pacification line was like a rainbow that was always just outside our grasp. But their goal was to make as accurate a documentation of a vanishing way of life as possible, for them and their future generations as much as for the outside world.
