In a free world as vast as possible, everyone is also free to do anything, including attacking and hurting others. Instead of a heavenly life, there will be a life full of cruelty, enmity and fear.
By
AGUSTINUS WIBOWO
·5 minutes read
AGUSTINUS WIBOWO
Children in Tais, Papua New Guinea play with their arrows.
The Tais people originally lived on the southern coast of Strachan Island, about 60 kilometers east of the Indonesian border near Merauke, Papua. At one time, their tribe was nearly wiped out by tribal wars and massacres.
Sitting by the fire, my Tais friend Sisi Wainetti recounted the horrific events he had heard from village elders. At that time, from the west, from the Merauke area, head hunters came to slaughter the people on the coast of the Arafura Sea.
Sisi was not sure when the incident occurred. But what was clear, the Tais people were powerless against the invaders.
“The tradition of head hunting was widely practiced before Christianity came here,” he recalled.
Before World War II, he said, tribal wars were common and he had experienced them. The attackers threw spears. Meanwhile, his family hid in their house, shooting arrows from between the bamboo slats on the walls.
Now, it all feels like faraway history.
AGUSTINUS WIBOWO
Overnight on Strachan Island en route to Tais, Papua New Guinea
But not fully far
The fear of these people in the interior of Papua New Guinea (PNG) of meeting other people speaking different languages, especially when traveling through the wilderness, showed that the history of tribal wars was still deep in their memory — still influencing the way they see the world.
Even at present, in Daru, there are rumors that Indonesians have snuck into PNG to headhunt, and the PNG people’s skulls would be used as foundations for tall buildings and bridges in Merauke.
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The headhunting tradition did not only exist in Papua, but also in other parts of the archipelago. The word kayau in Indonesian originated from ngayau, which is a past tradition of certain Dayak tribes in Kalimantan. In the local language, kayau means “enemies”. This tradition was usually associated with tribal wars or the need for additional spiritual power. The decapitated
heads of enemies were used in religious ceremonies and then displayed in long houses. Sometimes, these rituals also involved cannibalism.
This tradition of headhunting astonished 19th century European explorers and dominated their writings about the Dayak people, such as The Head Hunters of Borneo by Carl Bock, published in 1882.
In PNG, headhunting continued into the early 20th century, including in the interior of the Western Province.
AGUSTINUS WIBOWO
Residents of Tais, Papua New Guinea, go hunting with arrows.
As Gunnar Landtman noted, the headhunting took place between the 1870s and 1910s. The headhunters, called Tugeri, were fighters from the Marind tribe from an area around Merauke, in Dutch New Guinea (now Papua Indonesia). The targets of their attacks were villages on the southern coast of British Papua (now PNG), as well as Saibai and Boigu in the Torres Strait (now Australian territory).
Explorer John Strachan, in his book Explorations and Adventures in New Guinea, described the ferocity of the Marind headhunters when they attacked Boigu. About 1,000 people surrounded the village, then massacred its residents. About 30 of the 350 residents were able to escape into the swamp, while those who were still alive and caught were tied up in canoes. The conquerors ate them.
Sir William MacGregor, then-lieutenant-governor of British New Guinea, led an armed patrol and came into contact with Tugeri headhunters on Strachan Island in 1895. British troops captured and destroyed a number of canoes, but MacGregor expressed regret that he could do nothing against the Tugeri people. The reason was that they were from across the border, so they were Dutch followers who were not subject to British law.
Attacks by headhunters from across the border began to subside in the early 1900s, after the Dutch established permanent police posts in Merauke.
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Hearing the stories of tribal wars and headhunting, I realized how lucky I was to be living in this time because there is no need to worry about attacks from other tribes. Also, there is no need to fear that I will be beheaded by strangers as an offering to their gods.
But do we really want such a world? A world without borders, without state institutions and without laws?
Sometimes, we glorify the past, as if what happened in the past was all romantic, perfect and heavenly. And we often complain about the existence of borders, the product of the modern state system that seems to impede freedom. Indeed, we are creatures who long for freedom and freedom to be as vast as possible.
But do we really want such a world? A world without borders, without state institutions and without laws? In a free world as vast as possible, everyone is also free to do anything, including attacking and hurting others. Instead of a heavenly life, there will be a life full of cruelty, enmity and fear.
