The Korowai Tribe: Get to Know Their Culture & History

In the 21st century, it is hard to find a tribe that is untouched by the effects of colonialism. It is well-known that Western settlers attempted to erase traditional, native beliefs that didn’t align with their personal beliefs or were difficult to understand. The Korowai tribe and their traditions have largely escaped this historical narrative. Aside from occasional tourist visits, this tribe lives in isolation from the world.

Long before Western civilization and expansion, many different tribes existed and thrived throughout the world and were free to practice their traditions and religions. This is especially true for the Korowai tribe, a culture sensationalized and mythologized due to claims that its people still practice cannibalism. The Korowai tribe is a small, isolated tribe of an estimated 4,000 people that, until recently, have had no prior contact with the rest of the world.

There is a long, well-known, and well-documented history of Western colonialism eradicating the beliefs of the tribes they encountered. Historians believe this is because Westerners could not understand their views, so different from their own. Throughout history, such fear of the unknown has often resulted in colonizers trying to push their own morals and values onto newly encountered cultures, erasing traditional tribal views in favor of Western ones. This is especially notable when considering the work and actions of Christian missionaries. The practice of Christian missionaries traveling to faraway lands to preach the word of God is believed to have existed since Jesus himself instructed his disciples to spread the Gospel to all nations.

The aims of modern missionaries seem to differ greatly from Jesus’ original intentions, as seen, for example, in the Catholic Kingdom of Kongo in the late 1400s. During the Age of Exploration that began towards the end of the 15th century, the Portuguese and Spanish monarchies requested that missionaries join these voyages to spread the Catholic faith. The Congo was the first African country to convert to Christianity due to the teachings of the Italian and Portuguese missionaries credited with “discovering” it.

It is believed that it was easy for the Kingdom of Kongo to convert, as their traditional beliefs were already similar to Christianity’s monotheism. The people of the Kongo also believed in just one God, they just didn’t have a name for it, so the missionaries gave them one. Their religious conversion is said to have helped strengthen trade, capital, and literacy rates, but came at the expense of their own religious beliefs.

While fair to say that there were some similarities between Christian and Congolese beliefs, there is also evidence that missionaries intentionally erased their emotional and family connections to their religious beliefs and histories—some Capuchin priests were said to have been frustrated by the prevalence of tribal activities. The work done by the missionaries during the Age of Exploration only progressed over time.

As more countries began to “discover” new lands, more countries desired an empire. Missionary work expanded and became what it is today. In countries like India and China, as well as Canada’s Inuit territory, people experienced firsthand both the good and bad effects of colonization and missionary work. Having missionaries in these countries did aid in education and the building of new schools and hospitals, but at times, came at the expense of existing ways of life. For example, the medical missionaries who came to China in the 1930s oversaw half of the hospitals in Hong Kong and China and also established medical schools to teach new generations. However, medical missionaries preferred to use and teach Western medicine, as they understood it better than the ancient and traditional forms of Chinese medicine, and implemented Western medical practices.

Surprisingly, though, the Korowai survived for centuries unaffected by empire-building and missionary work. The Korowai tribe lived a private life, isolated from the rest of the world until a group of anthropologists (Peter Van Arsdale, Robert Mitton, and Mark Grundhoefer) undertook an expedition in 1974 and accidentally discovered the mysterious tribe. These anthologists studied the Korowai way of life, most famously the Korowai tradition of living in tree houses, but once their findings were published, media interest in the newly discovered tribe exploded.

Missionaries had been active in New Guinea since the British Empire had sought dominance in the northern areas of the country in the 1880s and preached the gospel throughout.

Many missionaries succeeded in their goals and were proud of their accomplishments, and would go on to repeat their work in other countries. However, for James Chalmers, this unfortunately wasn’t the case. When Chalmers first arrived in New Guinea in the 1870s, it was a virtually unknown and unexplored land. The land was then colonized in 1888 and renamed British New Guinea; it was missionaries like Chalmers who helped with the transition.

In 1901, Chalmers and his fellow missionary Oliver Tomkins undertook an expedition to the Goaribari Islands to explore and preach. While there, they were captured, killed, and eaten by the islands’ inhabitants. There is no evidence to suggest that this was done by the Korowai, but it highlights a history of hostility towards Westerners as well as the practice of traditional customs. When their deaths were discovered, British politician Sir George Le Hunte ordered that any natives seen on the Goaribari Islands should be killed instantly. This resulted in the deaths of 24 men.

Despite this, missionaries still pursued their mission and work there. When the Korowai tribe was discovered, the desire to further their mission increased.

West Papua had been colonized by the Netherlands in the late 1800s, and in the 1970s, missionaries began to live with the tribe. While the main aim of these Dutch missionaries was to convert the Korowai, they were also very interested in studying the tribe. This resulted in the production and distribution of many books, documentaries, and articles surrounding the Korowai, with some famous examples including the Smithsonian’s 2006 Sleeping with Cannibals, as well as the documentary primarily responsible for the mass media interest and coverage of the tribe, Lords of the Garden. Interestingly, this documentary was also distributed under the more dramatic title Treehouse People: Cannibal Justice, suggesting an intention to shock and provoke the audience. In this 1994 documentary, anthropologists studied the tribe, and mainly focused on their way of living. However, it was the subject of cannibalism that intrigued audiences more than their living in treetops.

Like many Indigenous tribes, the Korowai believe their ancestors live on as spirits. In contrast with the Western concepts of heaven and hell, the Korowai instead believe that the spirits of the dead travel down a “big road” into the land of the dead. Once the spirits arrive there, they are given healthy, new bodies or reincarnated into a newborn baby or an animal. The living Korowai maintain a close relationship with their dead and perform ceremonies to contact the dead to communicate with them over tribal matters. These tribe members will also connect with their ancestors’ spirits to help with fertility, harvests, and crops and to ward off bad spirits, like the khakhua.

The khakhua is an entity or spirit that haunts and possesses the Korowai, and the khakhua is to blame for unexpected deaths or tribe members attempting to harm one another. This evil spirit will impersonate their target’s friend or family in order to lure in the person that they want to kill. The khakhua will then begin to eat their victims from the inside out, replacing their insides with ash from a fire so the victims aren’t aware of what’s happening to them. After eating their victim, the khakhua will shoot what the Korowai believe to be a magical arrow through their heart, ultimately killing them. The Korowai believe that any unexplainable death (a death that doesn’t come from battle, for example) is due to the actions of the khakhua. When a member of the Korowai tribe suddenly dies for seemingly no reason, it is believed that the khakhua is behind this loss.

In order to ensure the khakhua doesn’t harm or possess any other tribe members, the khakhua has to be killed. The dying victim must name the khakhua who attacked them, as the khakhua is still possessing their body and living on through them. However, the act of simply killing the khakhua-inhabited body is not enough to thoroughly ensure that the bad spirit has been removed and banished back to the spirit world; the body must be eaten until just the bones, hair, and teeth are left.

From the Korowai perspective, they eat khakhua, not people. The eating of the khakhua is supposedly a form of deterrence, and serves as an act of revenge and criminal justice. The bones of the deceased are placed near the entrances of the treehouses to warn bad spirits away and to protect the Korowai, and after the khakhua has been killed and eaten, the tribe members perform a protection ritual, banging the treehouse walls with sticks.

The West sees pure cannibalism, but the Korowai do not. The Korowai do not believe that people possessed by the khakhua are human any longer and perform the practice of eating the flesh of the deceased to fully remove the khakhua’s presence. Nevertheless, what is not understood becomes feared, and the Korowai tribe has been mythologized into something dangerous when that is not the case.

Throughout Western history, a belief in the ultimate correctness of the Western way of life has led to both Empires and missionary work, to encourage “new” lands to follow in these Western footsteps. This, unfortunately, has resulted in the eradication of Indigenous beliefs and cultures.

Both the Indonesian government and missionaries attempted to pursue the same path with the Korowai tribe, but the Korowai have continued to isolate themselves from the rest of the world and have not changed their way of living. Interestingly, the distrust of outsiders that has thus far protected them is rooted in their spiritual beliefs: once the pale-skinned ghost demons, the laloe, colonize their land, the whole way of being will be destroyed by volcanoes. The Korowai are polytheistic, but Ginol is the most powerful and feared spirit. After destroying many other worlds, Ginol created this one, but if the laloe ever inhabits their land, then Ginol will cause the mountains to fall and the earth beneath their feet to split apart, and in its wake, a new world will be built. It is clear to see why outsiders are so discouraged.

This, however, does not mean that the popular interest in the Korowai did not have consequences. Whether due to public knowledge of their cannibalistic rites or not, it is believed that the Korowai’s practice of this ritual has steadily declined over the years. Some also argue that claims of cannibalism have been exaggerated to boost tourism, but the Korowai belief in the laloe suggests this isn’t the case. Some tribe members are also leaving their land in search of something new, highlighting the dangers of forced Western contact and its responsibility for the number of truly isolated tribes dwindling.