![]() Our ancestors came from nature, nature was part of them. They understood, at least unconsciously, the cycles of rain and drought. Our very earliest ancestors, well before the development of agriculture and writing, before the wheel and fire, groveled with other animals, fought them for carrion, found shelter in the forests, opportunity in the plains. This connection is deep, ancient, very Jungian in its impact on our collective unconscious. Nature feeds us, physically and emotionally. We come from nature, we are part of nature. Perhaps this arrogance towards wilderness partly stems from man’s “need-fear” relationship with nature. The same dynamic is at work in regards to destruction of nature - my American ancestors “conquered” the West by decimating Indians and wildlife today’s American leaders propose to drill for oil and “conquer” the Arctic Wildlife Refuge in Alaska for the benefit of people in the cities.Īnd throughout the tropics, governments and entrepreneurs feel little remorse in “conquering” the wilderness that frequently consists of forest-dwelling people and tropical forests. He’s not at all an evil man, but he perpetuates a “we vs them” attitude that has been at the root of “brown-brown” discrimination that has existed since city/states were created. Given the chance for a holiday, there’s no question he’d head for a city like Jakarta and not to inner-Halmahera. To him, the interior is a place of jungle and potential danger. He’s never been to the interior forests of Halmahera, and has no interest in doing so. Right away it was clear that this wasn’t the wild lost white tribe.Īlbertus Paspalangi, my fisherman friend, is a “lowlander.” Although he certainly isn’t rich, he has a nice house, he follows a monotheistic religion, he speaks the national language, he sends his kids to school, he has electricity and a TV and he knows the names of Indonesian politicians and pop stars. We came to a small village of 25 families, and the Togutils were sitting around, as if waiting for us. We then climbed on back of motorcycles for a dusty hour, then walked for another 45 minutes. Starting from the volcano-dominated island of Ternate (historically famous as the origin of cloves and base-camp of Alfred Russel Wallace, who developed the theory of natural selection while in Ternate), we took a few journeys in open boats to reach the depressing frontier town of Subayim on Halmahera. ![]() ![]() With the help of friends who work for BirdLife International, which is hoping to establish Halmahera’s first national park in the deep forests occupied by the 3,000 or so Togutils, my friend Bill and I ventured into the far end of this seldom-visited island. The Orang Togutil (literally “Togutil People”) live in Halmahera, some three times zones and thousands of kilometres from Indonesia ’s capital Jakarta. Paul near the summit of Mount Gamalama (Paul Sochaczewski) ![]() My experience told me that the odds of actually finding such ethnic oddities are only slightly better than locating Brigadoon. Paspalangi, who has spent his entire life on the coast, said the Orang Togutil live in the isolated hills on the far side of this K-shaped island in eastern Indonesia. In 1993 my friend Albertus Paspalangi, a fisherman who lives on the tiny island of Bobale, off the New Jersey-sized island of Halmahera, told me about a tribe of very tall, very naked and very xenophobic cannibals who kill unwanted visitors by hurling stones with their feet and eating their victims raw. I suspected a search for a lost tribe of giant white cannibals in eastern Indonesia was going to be a touch problematic. ![]()
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