6B Cultural Erosion
In some locations, cultural erosion (loss of language, traditional food, music, clothes, social relations (loss of tribal lifestyles in Papua New Guinea) has resulted in changes to the built and natural environment (de-valuing local and larger-scale ecosystems).
Because no where is untouched by globalisation the number of people able to live isolated, traditional lifestyles is now very small. Arctic Inuit, tribal groups in Amazonia and Papua New Guinea and mountain people in Nepal now all experience tourism and exposure to global media. Their traditional food, music, language, clothes and social relations are all being eroded, or else being turned into a 'show' for tourists.
Korowai tribe, Papua, Indonesia
- A small tribe of 3000 people living in the Becking River area of the south-east Papua province in Indonesia.
- They are primarily hunter-gatherers, fishing in the Becking River and gathering sago from sago palm. They also practise shifting cultivation.
- They had their first contact with the world in 1974 via an expedition led by a US anthropologist, Peter Van Arsdale.
Built environment
- Traditionally Korowai live in wooden longhouses with palm-thatched roofs raised on ironwood stilts 10m above the forest floor, raised deep above the rainforest.
- Their built environment has changed since 1987 when they were encouraged to move into villages in a clearing by the river, such as Yaniruma
- These house several hundred people with buildings constructed from clay bricks with corrugated iron roofs.
- They contain schools and they are periodically visited by health care workers.
- Education in villages takes place in Indonesian
- Some Korowai migrated to the town of Jayapura and their children speak don't speak the Korowai language
- Sugary drinks, e.g. Coca-Cola, and alcohol, e.g. Bintang Beer, is available in the villages
- Korowai used to carry out cannibalism of captured members of other tribes as a criminal punishment - but this is thought to have been eradicated.
- Traditional Korowai music uses pig-skin drums. Radio and television introduced the global music culture.
- Korowai traditionally only wear a loincloth, however most people now wear shorts and t-shirts, including Manchester United and Barcelona football shirts.
- Introduction of Christianity, by Dutch missionaries in the 1980s reduced the practice of polygamy and levirate marriage.
- Enforcement of Indonesian law eliminated slavery from inter-clan raids.
- Role of clan leader, traditionally the strongest warrior, diminished with a new elite system based on wealth.
- Ecosystem de-valued as sustainable shifting-cultivation abandoned for sedentary village life.
- Employment for logging companies or hunting of animals, e.g. tree kangaroo (now endangered), for sale as bush meat in villages or Jayapura town.
- Natural environment viewed as a resource for economic growth and higher income.
- Result is the over-exploitation of sago palms in the area around villages, deforestation for timber and agarwood exportation, and threatened species being overhunted to extinction.
