toraja
The Toraja are an ethnic group indigenous to a mountainous region of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Their
population is approximately 1,100,000, of whom 450,000 live in the regency of Tana Toraja ("Land of Toraja").[1] Most of the population is Christian, and
others are Muslim or have
local animist beliefs known as aluk ("the way"). The Indonesian
government has recognized this animist belief as Aluk To Dolo ("Way of the Ancestors").
The word toraja comes from the Bugis Buginese language term to
riaja, meaning "people of the uplands". The Dutch colonial government named the people Toraja in 1909.[3] Torajans are renowned for their elaborate
funeral rites, burial sites carved into rocky cliffs, massive peaked-roof
traditional houses known as tongkonan, and
colorful wood carvings.
Toraja funeral rites are important social events, usually attended by hundreds
of people and lasting for several days.
Before the 20th century, Torajans lived in autonomous villages, where they practised animism and
were relatively untouched by the outside world. In the early 1900s, Dutch missionaries first worked to convert
Torajan highlanders to Christianity. When the Tana Toraja regency was further
opened to the outside world in the 1970s, it became an icon of tourism in Indonesia: it
was exploited by tourism developers and studied by anthropologists.[4] By the 1990s, when tourism peaked, Toraja
society had changed significantly, from an agrarian model — in which social
life and
customs were outgrowths of the Aluk To Dolo—to a largely Christian society.[5] Today, tourism and remittances from migrant
Torajans have made for major changes in the Toraja highland, giving the Toraja
a celebrity status within Indonesia and enhancing Toraja ethnic group pride.[6]
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