Trip to Indonesia: Tribal tattoos and ancient traditional culture

This trip to Indonesia is designed to gain an in-depth understanding of the traditional lifestyle of the Mentawai and the Minangkabau. Their traditional lifestyle is being seriously threatened by globalization and the radicalization of Islam in the area.

The Mentawai Islands offer white sand beaches and warm water on their coast. But in the interior, in the middle of the tropical jungle, live some 65,000 people belonging to the Mentawai ethnic group. It is about a hunter-gatherer community famous for their aesthetics: the sharp shape with which they shape their teeth and the tattoos that decorate the different parts of their body are something unique. This community lived in isolation for many centuries and, although it has had contact with Westerners, its members still preserve many of their ancestral traditions intact.

The Minangkabau are the world’s largest matrilineal society whose ancestral heritage is passed down from mothers to daughters. This people settled on the island of Sumatra, on ancient animist kingdoms and, to this day, still mostly professing Islam, they are still governed by the Adat, which collects their ancestral traditions, and places women at the center of the society.

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