death and the toraja people

▸ Type: Article
▸ Creator: Caitlin Moore
▸ Host: Moore Misadventures
▸ Year: 2020

The Living Dead: Understanding the Culture of Tana Toraja

Tana Toraja takes the cake as the most unique place I’ve ever visited. Then again, not many places let visitors meet mummified family members and invite them to the funeral of a stranger.

• a culture defined by death
• death is cause for celebration
• death and funeral are separate events, sometimes by years
• the deceased remain part of the household
• sacred animals (buffalo) are spiritual currency

just some thoughts

I encountered this article while researching the Dutch military occupation of Indonesia for a short story I am writing. While my views on death do mostly align with those of the Toraja people, I find myself trying to understand how those beliefs are lived out in practice.

It’s a very human thing to grapple with the role death plays in life, the question of an afterlife, and how the answers we arrive at impact the way we perceive our time on this Earth. Religion, of course, looms large in that.

Reading this article, I started wondering how I might have experienced the first open casket funeral I ever attended, when I was about ten years old - or the funerals that followed - if death had been a natural part of life for me. And I wonder, am I shaped by the beliefs that are culturally ingrained in me, even though I no longer share them? Or am I shaped by my first encounter with death? Can you ever fully undo the way your early years have formed you?

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more ponds

• rendezvous with death
• the science behind jamais vu

index