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A sago grub feast arranged for French tourists. The hosts of the feast are standing in a circle in the foreground, and exchange mock attacks with their guests before entering the feast house. (The tour group was on the edge of the clearing and not visible in this photo.) Group tourism started in the early 1990s in Korowai country, and generally consists of 3-4 groups per year of 10-15 tourists per group. The typical program is about a week of looking at various aspects of Korowai life, building a tree house, harvesting a sago tree, hunting in the forest, and culminates with a sago feast. Tourism brings roughly as much money into Korowai country as the former Dutch mission did, but is affecting the Korowai in different ways. All of the sacred parts of the festival were omitted, and the tourists brought in a lot of material goods to distribute freely. I was told by the Indonesian tour operator that most tour groups dance naked with the Korowai; the men tying their penis with a leaf, and the women wearing nothing but a grass skirt. Many of the attendees of this feast were the tour group’s porters and their relatives, who were asked to remove their clothes to give the tourists a “primitive” experience.

Filename
STNMTZ_19950601_41B.tif
Copyright
© 1995 George Steinmetz
Image Size
7378x4942 / 104.4MB
www.georgesteinmetz.com
Contained in galleries
Tree People
A sago grub feast arranged for French tourists. The hosts of the feast are standing in a circle in the foreground, and exchange mock attacks with their guests before entering the feast house. (The tour group was on the edge of the clearing and not visible in this photo.) Group tourism started in the early 1990s in Korowai country, and generally consists of 3-4 groups per year of 10-15 tourists per group. The typical program is about a week of looking at various aspects of Korowai life, building a tree house, harvesting a sago tree, hunting in the forest, and culminates with a sago feast. Tourism brings roughly as much money into Korowai country as the former Dutch mission did, but is affecting the Korowai in different ways. All of the sacred parts of the festival were omitted, and the tourists brought in a lot of material goods to distribute freely. I was told by the Indonesian tour operator that most tour groups dance naked with the Korowai; the men tying their penis with a leaf, and the women wearing nothing but a grass skirt. Many of the attendees of this feast were the tour group’s porters and their relatives, who were asked to remove their clothes to give the tourists a “primitive” experience.

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