Photography by Toine IJsseldijk

Indonesia

Animal Skulls: Mentawai

The display of animal skulls in a Mentawai uma (traditional longhouse of the Mentawai people in Indonesia) is deeply symbolic and culturally significant. These skulls

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Highlights, Indonesia, Mentawai, Sakuddei, Siberut

The Sakuddei Clan – Siberut Island, Mentawai

The Sakuddei is one of the many clans of the Mentawai tribe, living in the remote west of Siberut, in the rain forest covered valley of the river after which they named their clan. Sakuddei is one of the few Mentawai clans holding on to their traditional communal lifestyle. In the late 60s the world’s leading expert on the Mentawai, Swiss Anthropologist Reimar Schefold, spend a couple of years with the Sakuddei. In 1979 he published his first major work in Dutch and German: “Speelgoed voor de zielen: kunst en cultuur van de Mentawai-eilanden” / “Spielzeug für die Seelen. Kunst und Kultur der Mentawai-Inseln”. The English version was only published in 2018: “Toys for the Souls: Life and Art on the Mentawai Islands” and is the most complete work on the Mentawai.
 
The origin of the Sakuddei clan actually lies in the Butui river valley, where “my” Mentawai family is living. The Butui river is a small tributary of the Rereiket river, the largest river in Southeast Siberut and today the area where most of the last traditional Mentawai live, scattered in the rain forest along the banks of the Rereiket river and its tributaries. In the late 1940s the population along the Butui river had grown to a size that started to put pressure on the natural resources in the area and land to open new plantations and raise pigs became increasingly scarce. When that happens usually some of the members of a Mentawai clan then move to a new area, create a new clan and set up a new community. This is why the Mentawai are sometimes described as “semi-nomadic”.
 
So in the late 1940s 3 young brothers decided to move to the southwest of the island, which was still pretty much inhabited. They took their wives and young children and crossed the hills forming the backbone of Siberut island and settled on the bank of the Sakuddei river. They named their newly formed clan after this river. Of the 3 young families that moved out of the Butui area there is still one member alive today: her name is Bali, and she is now well in her 80s; she is one of the oldest Mentawai alive, if not the oldest. More about her later…!

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