Kalman Muller - The Kamoro

The Kamoro People of the south coast of Papua, Indonesia.
(Papua is the official name of the Indonesian half of the island of New Guinea)
Jan. 2000. By Kal Muller

While the Kamoro killed (but probably did not eat) their fair share of explorers, they missed the one man who could have brought them fame and fortune: Michael Rockefeller. The (denied) claim to that bit of notorious reputation goes to their next door neighbors, the Asmat. Although the young Rockefeller was probably drowned and his possible (involuntary) contribution to the essence of a cannibal meal vociferous denied by the Asmat, that makes poor journalistic copy. In the well-financed and high-powered search subsequent to Michael’s disappearance, the Asmat received tons of free publicity which subsequently helped to bring their carvings to the attention of the art world. That the young Rockefeller was collecting Asmat art when he vanished - he was last seen trying to swim to shore from an overturned boat - also helped, along with the later permanent exhibit of his collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. No such luck for the Kamoro.

From long before historical records reached the south coast of Irian Jaya, the Kamoro occupied their ancestral lands stretching along some 300 kilometers of the Arafura Sea, from Etna Bay to Asmat-land. Their population of about 15,000 souls are divided among some 40 villages and several transmigration sites in the vicinity of Timika.

The Kamoro homeland occupies a smallish portion of the huge island of New Guinea, the second largest island in the world after Greenland. The island is divided almost equally between the now independent nation of Papua New Guinea and the easternmost Indonesian province of Irian Jaya/Papua. Located just south of the equator, New Guinea boasts of one of the very few remaining tropical glaciers which lie at the foot of the highest peak between the Himalayas and the Andes: Puncak Jaya, at 4886 meters. The island is divided by a central cordillera of mountains running east-west, with alluvial plains of varying sizes to the north and south. The linguistic diversity is absolutely amazing: the five million Papuans speak some 1000 languages (not dialects) which represents some 15 per cent of the world’s languages in an area less than 0.15 per cent of the planet’s area. The island was one of the last places to be explored and there are still occasional completely untouched tribes coming out of the jungle.

Kamoro life-style

Hidden by the world’s richest and most profuse mangrove zone, the Kamoro people lived a semi-nomadic life-style, shifting their few belonging between the sago palm forests (which start at the furthest inland extension of the tidal zone) and the excellent fishing areas near the coast. The sago palm, whose trunk turns to pure starch just before the tree flowers and dies, provides the carbohydrate food supply to the Kamoro. The work of felling the trees and the process of separating the cellulose fibers from the starch requires some hard work but far less energy than other cultures spend in insuring their staple, be it rice, wheat, corn (maize) or any other grain. But while a family’s sago supply takes little time to process, say a few days each month, the pure starch contains practically no protein - unlike the grain staples of other cultures. However this is no problem: there is plenty of protein available from the abundant fishing in both the middle and lower reaches of the rivers, the estuaries and at the edges of the Arafura Sea. Fishing is complemented by the hunting of wild pigs, the large, flightless cassowary bird, the marsupial cuscus and other game. The ladies bring home mangrove crabs and bivalve mollusks, both of which proliferate in the mangrove swamps. Tobacco and a few vegetables were cultivated on small patches of land but the best efforts of missionaries and governments to turn the Kamoro into farmers have met with little success. By and large, the territory of the Kamoro provides them with an abundant and fairly well balanced food supply (although the kids could use more vitamins). But the very abundance of nature has created a problem for the Kamoro: with the basic food supply so easy, the need for change is difficult to appreciate for them.

But change they must. Already logging companies are busy in their area, offering only a few, temporary jobs. Chunks of their land have been taken over for transmigration programs without the knowledge and approval of many of the Kamoro. The modern world is intruding on them and the Kamoro must take some initiative and make better use of the educational opportunities available if they are to survive as a viable culture. As with any group, the Kamoro must also understand, preserve and be proud of their culture, to hold to their roots as the foundation of their identity, in order to face the modern world with solid psychological support. While in the past their traditional culture was denigrated by church and state, the situation has now changed. Both the Roman Catholic Church as well as the Indonesian government fully approve of most aspects of traditional Kamoro culture. But because of a long period when elements of the traditional life-style and religion were either forbidden or discouraged, many of the Kamoro lost pride in (and knowledge of) their culture. The Kamoro festival was held to reverse this trend, to encourage the culture by restoring pride in the ancient traditions.

Good old days, bad old days

As in Africa, Oceanea, among the Dayaks and elsewhere, the Kamoro society produced great sculptures, powerfully expressive pieces with simple lines and tools. It was this type of art which inspired many modern painters, especially the cubists and in particular Pablo Picasso whose famous painting, Les Demoiselles D’Avignon (The Maidens of Avignon, a town in France but here referring to a bordello in Barcelona...) features female figures with two of the faces like African masks.

Long ago, before the overwhelming intrusion of the outside world, the wood sculptures of the Kamoro people qualified them as one of the world's greatest carving cultures, on a par with the world-famous Asmat, their better known neighbors. As with other traditional societies, the so-called ‘primitive’ art of the Kamoro was an integral part of their culture, with the most spectacular pieces serving an essential function in their religious life. But when the spiritual underpinnings of the traditional religion were cut by the Catholic Church, the carvings lost their raison d’être. The art of the Kamoro was set to die out. Almost but not quite. Pieces were still made for ceremonies, essentially initiations, which however were ‘sanitized’ by church and state: nose-piercings and post-ritual sexual hanky-panky were forbidden.

Thus the art of the Kamoro people, along with their culture in general, suffered traumatically from the mid-1920s when the Dutch government and the Roman Catholic Church established themselves in the area of Kokonau. The Kamoro were also strongly discouraged from following their semi-nomadic existence: free spirits are the bane of governments everywhere. Settled populations can be counted, educated, taxed, controlled. Wandering folks do as they please, a dangerous precedent. But before we totally condemn the interference of the outside world on the Kamoro, let us remember that their life span was on the order of some 30 years, with infant mortality from malaria reaching 50 per cent of live births. (The population of the whole island of New Guinea, now well over six million, never exceeded one million until the colonial powers brought in western medicines and forced the cessation of tribal warfare.) The Kamoro were also the prey species of the more aggressive and better organized Asmat. There are records of devastating raids, with many Kamoro heads heading east (minus the bodies of their owners) to decorate Asmat houses and appease bloodthirsty spirits there. The Dutch-trained police and modern firearms drastically swung to balance of forces to the advantage of the Kamoro, and soon the Asmat understood that, brave and clever as they might be, they would only lose their own heads if they persisted in raiding the Kamoro villages.

The pre-contact Kamoro social structure had developed to a point somewhere between loose bands and permanent villages. While bands number members in the dozens and shun permanent settlements, tribal organization involves hundreds, with fixed villages. At the Kamoro stage of social organization, land belongs to clans called taparu, not to villages or the tribe as a whole unit. To the chagrin of Dutch and Indonesian administrators, the Kamoro have not yet developed any centralized chieftainship structure which could lead the entire ethnic group. They do not even have the position of a traditional village leader. In their level of organization, or political hierarchy, the Kamoro are closer to what Jared Diamond (in his book Guns, Germs and Steel) calls “an informal, egalitarian government [where] information and decision making are both communal. Not only is status not inherited; no member of a traditional tribe can become disproportionately wealthy by his or her own efforts, because each has individual debts and obligations to many others.” So the current leadership structure, such as village chiefs, are impositions, for the convenience of the outside world and not sure-fire mechanisms for dealing with the Kamoro. It’s not like the chief makes all the decisions and all the Indians meekly accept this decision. The Kamoro society is based on ‘taparu’ or clan-like divisions, with some ancient matriarchal bases and each of whom own and control chunks of land. Each taparu has one or two male leaders. And most villages have several taparu, some large, some small, to complicate matters.

While the Kamoro culture had suffered greatly, it had not been extinguished by the Dutch government and the Catholic Church. But in the 1960s, the missionary Frank Trenkenschuh paints a bleak picture indeed: “Mimika strikes a person as a dead area filled with zombies. There is no work and no interest in work. Religion of the past is no longer celebrated and the Christian religion means nothing to the people. The past is gone forever. The present lacks vitality. The future holds no hope.” It was difficult, he continues, to keep missionaries interested in the area: from 1959 to 1969, the East Mimika area had 13 different pastors, leaving no time for the people to know and trust their priest. In 1982, according to Father Trenkenschuh, almost 40 years had passed since local feasts had been held. Already by 1970 it was believed that almost all local art disappeared and only old men could still carve. Trenkenschuh completes his most negative assessment: “This is a society without pride in itself and one which totally lacks any sense of excitement or enjoyment of life.” Far too many were devoted to drinking the fermented juice of the segero palm as "in not one village was there a single job which essentially demands an educated person....the Freeport Copper Project [in the early 1970's]....by and large, bypasses the ordinary Mimikans. The wall of indifference the Mimikan people have erected around themselves has made it impossible to hire even simple labor forces from among the Mimikans. The mountain peoples are the backbone of the local work force for Freeport. The Mimikans are not willing to work".

But perhaps the real picture was not quite so bleak. As the anthropologist Jan Pouwer already remarked in the mid-1950s, the Kamoro were totally Christian in the presence of a priest but totally traditional when left alone. They succeeded in preserving at least a part of their culture through passive resistance to changing their nomadic and spiritual way of life. So rituals went on, unbeknown to the church.

With the ever growing influence of Freeport on the scene, the Kamoro saw that not everyone depreciated their culture. Their carvings were brought by the company for public display as well as by individuals for their homes. Dances were sponsored for company events. And contrary to the assessment of joblessness among the educated Kamoro, Freeport also offered excellent opportunities to any Kamoro with a good education. By encouraging both the traditional culture and education, the mining company had gone a long ways to bring the Kamoro culture out in the open and proud of itself, ready to face the modern world from the firm base of a self-assured culture. This is one of the many unsung accomplishments of Freeport Indonesia, completely ignored by the company’s critics who have not taken the time necessary to visit and study the Kamoro.

Bibliography

The only commonly available book in Jakarta is the Periplus Edition Guide, Irian Jaya by Kal Muller. This is a general overview, covering geography, history and the most important ethnic groups, along with practical advice on how to get around. With a bit of luck and contacts abroad, you might still be able to obtain Peter Matthiessen’s Under the Mountain Wall, New York, Penguin Books, 1987 (first published in 1962) about the what life was like in the Baliem Valley before the invasion by the outside world. The author is among the very finest contemporary writers in the English language. For nature and conservation, we recommend Ronald G. Petocz’ Conservation and Development in Irian Jaya, Leiden, E.J. Brill 1989. For general historical background, try Gavin Souter’s New Guinea: the Last Unknown, New York, Taplinger, 1966. If all else fails, there is always what is perhaps the finest book on Indonesia, Alfred Wallace’s Malay Archipelago, first published well over a century ago and with several recent reprints.

Written by Kalman Muller