North Carolina State University
News Services
Campus Box 7504
Raleigh, NC 27695 (919) 515-3470
Media Contacts:
Dr. Anne Schiller 919/515-2491or 515-9015 (voicemail)
Pam Smith, News Services 919/515-3470, [email protected]
March 24, 1997
NC State Anthropologist Studies Death Rituals in Borneo's Interior
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
On March 30, Dr. Anne Schiller, NC State assistant professor of anthropology, will be featured in National Geographic Explorer's "Borneo: Beyond the Grave," a documentary about how the Ngaju Dayak people, once legendary head-hunters, prepare the remains of deceased family members for the afterlife in a festive and complex ritual called tiwah.
The documentary will be airing nationally at 7 p.m. EST on the TBS SuperStation. Check your local television or cable listings.
Since 1983 Schiller has been traveling to Central Kalimantan Province in Indonesian Borneo to study tiwah, the essence of which involves disinterring the bones of kin, cleaning them and placing them in above-ground bone repositories in preparation for life in the Prosperous Village. She has published a book on nine years of research, "Small Sacrifices: Religious Change and Cultural Identity Among the Ngaju of Indonesia," also to be released on March 30 by Oxford University Press.
"This celebration is not about head-hunting. It is about caring for your parents, your grandparents, your spouse or any of your children who have died," Schiller says. "The point of tiwah is to remind family members their strength comes from unity within the family."
Schiller has made four trips to Borneo, once staying for 18 months in the rainforest to participate in and observe the life of the Ngaju, who live in small villages along rivers. With no electricity, no roads, few schools and only their feet and small boats for transportation, the Ngaju would seem to be untouched by modern life. But, says Schiller, this is far from the case.
The laws of the modern Indonesian state -- especially one requiring all Indonesians to claim one of five official religions -- have forced the Ngaju to learn quickly how to operate within a state system or risk losing their ethnic identity.
"They chose the Hindu religion because it was politically expedient," Schiller says, "but their religion, Kaharingan, doesn't look very much like Hinduism elsewhere in Indonesia. We're not talking about the wild men of Borneo here. These are a people who feel their culture is on the line."
How the Ngaju people use their native religion to preserve identity in a period of rapid social change -- they were declared Hindu in 1980 -- is the focus of Schiller's research. One way the Ngaju, an ethnic minority of about 800,000, are asserting their identity is through performing tiwah.
"They are calling upon one of their oldest rituals to help define themselves in a new way," she says.
Threats to Ngaju identity have come from more sources than the Indonesian government, says Schiller. In particular, she continues, misinformed attacks have come from the popular press, which portrays them as blood-crazed head hunters, still requiring fresh skulls for tiwah. And earlier in the century great changes were forced by Christian missionaries and Dutch colonists, who were repelled and frightened by the rituals of tiwah, especially occasional human sacrifice.
Schiller, though sympathetic to the people whom she studies, says she has not romanticized the Ngaju, one of the historical perils of her profession. Many of their practices would upset typical Western sensibilities. For example, she points out that blood is central to their kin-based culture. They sacrifice animals -- pigs, chickens, water buffalo -- stabbing them slowly to maximize the blood loss. They use the blood in many rites, often anointing one another with it. They use exchanges of human blood to forge new bonds of kinship.
The tiwah ceremony takes about 30 days and may cost up to $30,000, an incredible expense for people who make about $300 to $400 a year. Scores of family members are dug up for the ceremony. Chanting for hours on end, eating, dancing, animal sacrifice and continuous rituals make up the event. During tiwah, the host village is considered to be part of the supernatural world where souls of the dead come and go until closing purification rites are performed. While tiwah is in progress no one is allowed to leave or enter the village.
"A village in the midst of tiwah is between the world of men and the realm of the gods," says Schiller.
--stock-windsor--
NOTE TO EDITORS: Color slides of Dr. Anne Schiller conducting research in Borneo are available by calling NC State News Services, 919/515-3470.
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