Jungle Culture. by Alex Dick-Read.
The Mentawai jungle people of Siberut Island are one of those rare, endangered peoples who still live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. They have existed in virtual isolation from the rest of the world for centuries, surviving - thriving - on only what their thick rainforest environment supplies. Like so many indigenous people around the world, their culture is seriously under threat. Surf Charters are the least of their worries and may indeed have sparked radical changes that could benefit the jungle people. It is the force of western-style 'growth' and ' development' that threaten to take away their unique and important way of life.

Siberut is the most northern of the Mentawai Islands chain and it sits 60 miles west of Sumatra. It is a large island - 1500 square miles - and hilly but not mountainous. The terrain consists of peaks and valleys with rivers running like arteries throughout. For the jungle people, these rivers are highways and the smaller tributaries in the forest, their byways. The old culture here is different to that of all the Mentawai's neighbors. West Sumatrans are predoominantly Muslim, Minangkabau people, and the islands' northern neighbors are different again - the Tello Islands and Nias cultures bearing little resemblance to the Mentawai. Here, the communal, hunter-gatherer lifestyle of the jungle is dictated by the animistic belief in living spirits and ancestors. These forces are ever present and communication between the different worlds is conducted by the shamans - medicine-men, or 'kerei' - who are the nearest thing the Mentawai have to leaders.

Where the Mentawai culture originally came from, and how it developed so uniquely, is the subject of dispute among western scholars, but they aren't alone in their confusion. Even Mentawai storytellers recount varying versions of their own myth of origin. One story suggests a surf connection - recounting how the original Mentawai landed on the shores of NW Siberut in a boat, washed ashore by an enormous wave. Appropriately then, or perhaps ironically, they surfed into existence.

Over the centuries outsiders have had very little impact on the Mentawai jungle culture. Occasionally, ocean-going traders from Sumatra passed through and swapped rice, beads, and metalware for coconuts, sandlawood, and basketwork. Some of them settled in the islands, but it wasn't until this century that substantial settlement by Muslim Sumatrans began to occur. Dutch missionaries were the first Europeans to settle here and they found more converts on the lower Mentawai Islands of North and South Pagai than on Siberut, where the people preferred to hold on to their world of ancestors and spirits.

However, over time, some areas on Siberut's fringes became mixed communities of Sumatran Muslims, Catholic, and Protestant missionaries, and Mentawai jungle converts who moved into these villages.

Official government of the islands was always conducted from outside and, whether ruled by the Dutch or Indonesia, the islanders were long considered to be no more than stone-age savages. After 1950, when Indonesia gained independence, an all out assault on the old Mentawai culture began. Families were ordered to move from the jungle, from their communal homes, or ' uma' and into small modern houses with tin roofs; conversion to Islam or Christianity was ordered by Sumatran government decree and women were forcibly sterilized by doctors. It can only be described as an attempted genocide.

Most damaging to the culture as a whole, the shamans, who both symbolize and hold the secrets of the spirit traditions, were persecuted. Until the late 1990's a shaman encountering government officials was likely to have his head shaved to symbolically diminish his status; his rituals were banned; army units were sent into the forest to confiscate his 'magic boxes'; he was forced to wear clothes and uma were regularly burned down. Even tattoos, symbols of strength and power, were outlawed.

Generally peaceful people, the attack on the Mentawai was successful and large portions of the population left the jungle for the lower villages. thus, they landed on the lowest rung of the ladder known as the modern world, and on the coasts of Siberut, North and South Pagai, as well as the smaller islets off their shores, these are the Mentawai people you'll encounter today. Economically poor, often living in their mixed religious communities - as the existence of the charity organization Surf Aid attests, theirs is not an easy lot. But, despite their move into the new world, almost every community still has roots running deep into the jungle - uncut, though weakening all the time.

Many islanders didn't succumb to the oppression. The deep forest culture, with it's powerful rituals and taboos, remains surprisingly intact. For these Mentawai people, tradition has an answer for almost everything, and the forest still supplies most of their needs.

In some ways things have been getting better for them. The assault on their culture slowed in the mid 1990's when the Sumatran rulers saw new value in preserving the old Mentawai world - not for its own sake, but for the tourist and conservation dollars it might attract. There is now an autonomous government of the islands allowing many important decisions to be made locally, and well financed thanks to the new development grants. How the money is used as the new district government takes shape is the question everyone over there seems to be asking.

Aside from this, there are other positive signs. Unlike in the past the jungle Mentawai now realize that their ways are under serious threat. This has forced re-evaluation of their position and raised collective consciousness in regard to their old traditions. Enough Mentawai have been out of the jungle and seen the other side, and many have returned convinced that their culture is preferable. "Our traditional ways are strong and adaptable," one shaman told me. "And they work."

So the future is not all bleak, but how long these people will really hold out against the enormous forces threatening them, no one can say for sure.

"I think we are seeing the last generation real Mentawai shaman people" said Didit, our local guide, expressing a view common among observers on the ground. Even in the deep jungle, outside influences constantly bear in at the weakest points of the culture. Clothes, other religions, kids learning different languages in school, emigration, and money arriving at an increasing rate - they're all affecting this previously ' unaffected' world. Which of these influences end up having destructive or useful effects, depends to a large extent on the communities themsleves.

But let's not forget the loggers. Most of Siberut is National Park - 190,000 hectares of it, which UNESCO designated a 'Man and Biosphere Reserve' in 1981 - so technically there shouldn't be any logging in this forest. But money talks, and it's not exactly crawling with Park Rangers. Areas outside of the park have also been parcelled off to logging companies and private foreign interests that plan to exploit the cheap timber and the potential for a coconut oil industry, which they say will require thousands of non-Mentawai immigrant workers. So the environment the jungle people live in, is itself under threat and the isolation that has so far stopped them from becoming just another lost culture in a homogenous world, might cease to exist at any time now.

With a new district government coming into place on the islands, the jury is out on how much protection will be afforded to both the trees of the Mentawai jungle, and the people who live among them. Thankfully, as you'll read in the following pages, the consensus seems to be that us surfers, who have invaded their fringes in search of our own fantasies of communing with nature, are having a more positive impact upon their chances, than negative. Let's hope, through good judgement and our shared respect for nature it stays this way as the Mentawai story continues to unfold.

 

MASSIVE thanks to Alex Dick-Read for allowing us to republish this on our website. For detailed information about the "Surfer's Path" please click here.

 

 

Wave of Compassion would not be possible without the incredible amount of help support we've received from Robin, Dave, and the entire Surfline crew. Surfline's commitment to our efforts and willingness to help us promote this event on their website has been a huge factor in our overall success. From all of us at Surf Aid, Terima kasih! Check out their website: Surfline.com