LIVING A WEEK with the DEATH TRIBE of Indonesia
warning this documentary contains images of graphic cultural events let's keep an open mind okay everybody should do in their lifetime sometimes two things one is to consider death to observe skulls and skeletons and to wonder what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up i travel to make myself uncomfortable to confront head on the things that i'm scared of to shed light in the dark corners to hopefully one day have very few of them a few years ago i had to confront death in my own life it was difficult i didn't quite know how to deal with it so i decided to travel to a remote corner of our planet deep in central indonesia a place called tana toraya also known as the land of the dead i went there to look for answers and in the end i think i might have found some but let's bring it back to the beginning we just arrived at a traditional village one of the most iconic things about this area of indonesia is these beautiful traditional houses called tongkanan and andrew just dropped this off quick and he ran over and said come come come and i have no idea what's going on but there's like 200 people here before arriving i was warned that animal sacrifice was an important part of tarian death rituals though i didn't expect to see chickens on that list this is how the funerals start and what what is it what does it give to the ceremony why is it part of the ritual it's kind of uh that we believe in the soul of them yeah of course dying the dying of the dying a rooster cog that will be also accompany the soul of the body this is my guide andre he was born here and will be helping me get around to the remote villages to see the death rituals what animals are sacrificed for these funerals there's chickens there's buffalo no chicken i guess it's they're fighting though right yeah yeah and then that little buffalo picks and pigs as well it spits and swelling and so what about what about the water buffalo the water bubble that will be sacrificed will ensure the body will ensure the body entering the soul of the body entering the puya ensure the body wasn't really something i understood at the time and if you're not quite sure what happens here either let me explain as we explore the village some more looking at some of these houses you can see the importance of animal sacrifice in this culture there are hundreds hundreds of water buffalo horns put up as decoration outside of the houses and these ones were only ones that were put there from the funerals the reason why i chose to come here is that the turians are known for their unique views on death and their elaborate funeral rituals while walking through the village i see an albino water buffalo i didn't think they existed it was tied up beside some standing stones and each rock monolith symbolizes a funeral that has happened here in the past some of the villages we visited this trip had full-on stonehenges built beside them instead of saving for an elaborate life they save a fortune for an elaborate death a celebration of death it's common for families to save for decades to send off their loved ones correctly and correctly means spending upwards of thirty thousand us dollars on buffalo to sacrifice buffalo are the vehicle to the afterlife they ensure the body's passage and just like going to prom you want to spend money on your ride to get there andrey tells me there's an entire sacrificial buffalo market nearby uh okay let's go but first breakfast looks delicious tastes like rice we arrive at the sacrificial buffalo market and see a familiar sight it's also a market for fighting roosters the locals believe that massaging their [ __ ] increases blood flow to the muscles making them stronger which i guess seems to be a universal truth water buffalo are bred specifically to be different colors because terrains believe the white marks on their skin emit light as they travel through the darkness of the afterlife the more buffalo sacrificed the faster your soul gets to pull you which is heaven because of the importance of this journey buffalo here are treated to like kings here at the market they get showered they get a haircut and they get hand-fit every single day and this one is all black with a white head which means something special yep like a uh buffalo that will light the foliage because the white is like a like a headlight yeah the white spot emits light and become a torch so he'd be front front of the entourage in front of the front of the group leading the other buffalo forward with his his forehead that glows like like kind of like you know rudolph the red-nosed reindeer rudolph the red-nosed ring a swing and a miss on my rudolph joke but this buffalo market wasn't the most shocking thing i saw that day listen to you some so who who are we going to meet today the husband or the wife yeah here in tana taraya the dead are still very much part of the family they have not yet had the funeral and therefore both her and her husband's spirits are still inside this home they are called tamakula which means sick and they are treated that way how long ago do they pass away the wife already five years husband just died kind of three weeks ago three was his three weeks twice a day the family brings them their favorite things food water cigarettes and play their favorite music they also speak to them they ask them questions they say the temacula respond in their dreams the couple will stay this way until the family have saved up enough money for their lavish funeral this sometimes means living for a decade with a dead body in your house or in this case two the funeral for this couple is a few weeks away it'll be a big thing for the family but we've been invited to visit another one tomorrow one that will last four days we head to bed it'll be a big day we're a little bit early which is great hello hello hello good morning good morning angela angela so how today is going to go down is at some point maybe about an hour or so the deceased hello is going to come out of the house the kids are super friendly the seat's going to be is going to be brought out of the house and they're going to be shaken to awaken them and ready them for their journey into the afterlife guests are going to arrive and the family is going to bring them gifts all of these little cabana style things are only built for this particular funeral they'll get taken down after us it's almost all temporary the giant canoe houses are always here it's traditional village but a lot of work a ton of work has been done today that's about all i know i if this is my first one i only know a little bit more than you guys i've talked to my guide a little bit i don't know what to expect but all what i do know is this today is gonna be a day i remember for the rest of my life i'm gonna see things that shock me i'm gonna see things that are gonna make me uncomfortable and that is the point of travel is to swallow that jagged pill and learn and experience and become a better more open-minded person that is my job that is the goal today and i hope you guys share the same attitude because i guarantee a few you're going to be shocked and with a scream and a gong the funeral begins days ago roosters were the first to join the spirit entourage next it was the pigs sacrificed in the square their spirits sent to feed the deceased and their bodies sent to feed us this causes sadness the sick are officially about to die temacula to tomate it is the moment for the family to truly grieve the black cloth surrounding this coffin means that it contains a woman and she had been widowed next the temacula the sick is shaken and spun to waken her up from her sleep after all she's about to embark on the greatest journey of her lifetime the one to puja but their loved one won't be alone in this journey the spirits of the roosters and pigs are already waiting now all they need is their protection a herd of special buffalo bread for a special reason their life's purpose to guard against the demons and dangers of the underworld emitting light in all directions plowing through the smoke the fog the darkness the soul may finally rest all right so that time has come for the water buffalo sacrifice today and it's going to mark my trip i didn't think it was going to be so sudden i wasn't ready for what i saw these are the first two buffalo of 24 that will be sacrificed over the coming week is this animal cruelty or does it just feel more cruel when we see it is it better when it's tucked away behind the stainless steel doors of a factory buried away like the guilt of what eating meat actually means these buffalo will be every piece in this elaborate death feast listen i know you guys can handle this but i've learned youtube can't i've had to put all the uncut versions of these experiences on patreon or else they get taken down if you'd like to support the channel and see parts of the funeral that i couldn't put here check out the link now let's continue with that act begins the journey of the guest of honor the woman into the afterlife the souls of those two buffalo will guide her will protect her in her journey and though extremely hard to watch i'm gonna remember that site for a long time it is part of the tradition here and a very important part of the death process here so yeah the funeral will last for the next four days with feasting and celebration after her body will be placed in a cliff grave with her ancestors we had seen these everywhere in toraya the dead are not only put in cliffs but also in caves and even trees with today's celebration ending andrea takes me away to see some of these graves nearby everywhere look there's bones everywhere these wooden effigies are called tau tau and they depict someone who was put to rest in this cave depictions of the deceased this is a luxury for royalty this place is like a hall of fame generations upon generations grandfathers upon the bones of fathers upon the bones of sons does it bring you comfort or discomfort thinking about your bones being mixed and piled with your great-grandfathers and strewn about a cave for myself i don't even know my great-grandfather's name let alone where he was buried but part of him is me we visit other locations they're everywhere here hanging graves most of which have fallen and shattered the wood rotten after centuries on a cliffside baby graves as well toothless children are buried in trees the youngest of the young the ones who were lost before they could even try a hole is carved with a machete then patched with palm they believe the sap of the tree replaces the milk of the mother nourishing the baby to grow fusing it body and spirit with the tree giving the child a second chance at life nearby there are stone graves carved into boulders in a seemingly impossible way these caves protect the deceased preserving them for the mane the giant family reunions where the living and dead come together again to pay respect to the ancestors this is what we call in the west the walking dead festival where the bodies are exhumed and cleaned by the family and that's where we've been invited for tomorrow we've arrived yeah we arrived this is it mike mike mr otto yeah where i come from come from canada canada okay yeah you come from soraya in here is your here my father here your father is in this yeah my father my mother and my uncle the sister-in-law here wow 23 years till now the last one yeah the last week and is the family how does the family feel are they happy excited of course we are very happy excited to meet the ancestors however grand spider and grants money upstairs is our ancestors shoot climber dressed for success with the bare feet and the suit whoa because look we are literally on the edge of this cliff of this bamboo forest so jenny's hands trembling as it holds onto my arm i'll be okay i'll be okay i promise rice hats old hanging coffins skulls welcome to the land of the dead these are hundreds of years old and they used to be hanging from the cliffs but over the years the wood deteriorates decomposes and the coffins fall here roasted pork beetle nut and tobacco are given to the dead to rise them from their slumber their 30-year risk yeah you need a touch um i should be okay i have a flashlight on my phone there's a hundred graves inside a hundreds coffins i can go in oh my god so i am now crawling inside a cave with about a hundred dead bodies a hundred coffins oh wow look how far it goes back right these are these are quite wet the coffins are quite wet right even some of them and you can see this there's mushrooms growing on them so part of the monene will be taking them out and drying them the spirits aren't the only ones who have called this place home but this is why menendez exists to care for the family even after death no name no date almost fully decomposed i would guess 100 years or something okay if you look over there you can see the entrance to the cave grave and now the coffins being taken out one by one to dry in the sun some of these are ancient they were saying there's coffins that are 200 years old in here in this particular cave grave this one right here we don't know his or her story she's been here or he's been here for such a long time that it's basically his bones and dirt now but it is wild to see this sort of thing up so close it is incredibly humid in here uh but it doesn't really smell really smells more like an old basement you can smell like a little bit of dirt but um for having 100 more than 100 200 dead bodies in here it smells like it smells right it smells like a cave you can feel the humidity especially on the cloth it's very very damp in here no surprise there's some heavy energy in there jeez so since this grave is hundreds and hundreds of years old and there's hundreds of bodies in there we are moving some of these down to a proper cave grave looks great it's also an ant problem i foreign then the family crowds in eager to get photos of their loved ones with a few laughs they try and put their great grandfather back together your father yeah this is a day of joy for the family i try to keep smiling but sometimes it's foreign foreign when they opened this coffin here one of the ladies came over to me grabbed me by the arm and pulled me closer and said this is my father and she had a huge smile on her face and she wanted me to capture the moment on film because she has not seen her father since he passed away so long ago that summarizes the feelings here at the menin today happiness joy and reunion of family members you haven't seen in a very long time i travel to collect pieces for a lens one to see this world through these pieces are beliefs views and experiences ways to live life and ways to view death whose view on death is right whose is wrong is this strange weird gross what do these words even mean but a shallow reflection of our inability to see beyond our own beliefs our lens i had to break my own lens and pick up a mosaic of pieces from different places to see where i fit in this world death doesn't have to be something we hide from it can be embraced accepted and celebrated there are ways to fill our hearts with love when all we feel is pain these are the answers that i found in tanataria the land of the dead that is the most is a very gloomy thing for contemplation but it's like manure just as manure fertilizes the plants and so on so the contemplation of death and the acceptance of death is very highly generative of creative life you'll get wonderful things out of that
2021-10-22 16:04
