Korovay

Main article: Western New Guinea

The name Korovay is a Dutch pronunciation of the original name Kolufo with variants of the spelling klufo, klufwo or karufo, meaning "people." Their full name is Klufo Fumanop or Kolufo Yanop, meaning "people who usually walk" to distinguish them from the Chitak and Mitak tribes, who usually use canoes.

Foreigners divide the Korowai tribe into two parts;

• Korowai Batu is a group that still uses traditional tools made of stone, and
• korovai Besi, who already use tools made of iron.

As of 2024, the number of korovaev is about 4 thousand people.

Territory: Pulau and Digul interfluve

Korovaev land is located on a patch of rainforest (about 1200 km2) deep in the southern part of the island of New Guinea and is bounded on two sides by the large Pulau (formerly Eilanden) and Digul rivers, and on the north by the foot of the Central Mountain Range.

The geographical distance from the coast and from large settlements, the peculiarities of the landscape, the associated elusive reach, as well as the specifics of the scattered settlement of Korovaev in the forest allowed them to avoid interaction with strangers for longer than most ethnic groups of Papua.

Rainforest, 2016

For the same reasons, Korovai have not lost their territory, access to natural resources and the usual practices of life support. The lands of most ethnic groups living south fell under the redistribution associated with the transmigration program actively implemented by Indonesia in the 1970-1980s, the urbanization of coastal territories, the alienation of land for oil palm plantations and the extraction of minerals^[1].

Life in the woods

In 2013, approximately a third of Korovai lived in villages and another third wandered from forest to village and back, the rest remained in the forest constantly.

Saga palm starch is a staple food

The main food of korovai is sago - starch extracted from the saga palm.

Trunks growing from 10 to 15 meters in height are cut down, cleared of leaves and bark, then split.

Starch-containing core is ground with stone axes or axes with metal nozzle. The powder is kneaded in water and passed through the fabric to extract starch. Water with starch flows into the trough, where the starch settles. After several washes, the starch is ready for use in cooking.

The population of sage palms in the territory is controlled by the owners of the land by regular planting of young shoots and mass felling in preparation for holidays/feasts. In the trunks of the saga palm, korovai breed red palm weevil larvae in modest quantities for everyday consumption and in huge quantities as a treat for Gil feasts.

The larvae of black palm weevils (Rhynchophorus bilineatus), which these insects deposit in sage palms, are considered a delicacy in New Guinea. The Asmat, Korovay and Kombay peoples also value larvae highly as a food source.

Adult weevils lay eggs in damaged parts of palm trunks. After hatching, the larvae make passages in the trunk and feed on the tissues of the tree, which often leads to the death of host plants. To start the process of breeding larvae, korovai cut down the saga palm and wait for the right time until the larvae deposited in it are ready for consumption in raw or processed form.

Bananas, taros, pineapples and other crops are planted by land owners on a forest-cleared site near the house or in the forest.

Korovay use several species of wild plants as food. The protein diet obtained by hunting and gathering is composed of: reptiles, arthropods, crustaceans, spiders and insects (both adults and their larvae), fish, small marsupial mammals, birds. The largest prey is cassowaries and wild pigs (domesticated pigs are used for payments and compensation).

Homes for Forest Living and Tree Houses

In climatic conditions, rainforest buildings are rapidly dilapidated.

When building houses, numerous poles, from which the main structure is created, are connected by rattan, and when it collapses and becomes unusable, it becomes deadly to use such a house. This is especially true of tree houses.

A change of place and home due to its natural aging is required approximately once every couple of years. However, the reason for the move can be the death of a family member, a series of unexplained diseases or a fire.

Tree houses were previously used by cows to hide from bounty hunters from neighboring tribes. By the mid-2010s, due to the disappearance of the threat, they were built mainly to attract tourists. Sometimes this happened not at the request of the already arrived group, but for the future, in the hope that tourists would come and look at them. It happened that no one came, and the houses were simply destroyed. Work on the construction of tall houses for Korovaev-an investment in the fact that tourists will come and an exchange will take place for their money and goods, wrote Ekaterina^[2].

Clan Territories: Bolup

Traditionally, korovai are settled by small patrilineal family groups (often no more than 10 people) on clan possessions (bolup), which are areas of forest with all the resources necessary for life and on which the sacred places of each clan are located. The land of the clan is inalienable and its owners are closely associated with their place, which defines them as a community (gun), different from others. The territory of korovaev is divided into many dozens of bolup.

As food resources are developed, the most important of which is the saga palm, and if necessary, the korovai change their place within the clan territories. Moving through the forest is possible only on foot, since the small rivers and streams that cut the landscape are not suitable for navigation.

If people move freely on the land of their clan in search of food and on other routine matters, then the exit beyond it is due to a complex system of social ties based both on kinship and on the exchange and debt relations^[3].

Organization of the company

Lack of central power and pursuit of equality

As of 2024, Korovaev does not have a central government in any institutionalized forms. The social structure is characterized as egalitarian.

James Woodburn, who has researched egalitarian societies, defines them as striving for equality and systematically overcoming states of inequality and hierarchy. He emphasizes that the state of equality is not neutral and requires constant significant efforts and special equalizing measures. Woodburn classified such societies into societies with immediate return systems and societies with delayed return systems (Woodburn 1982). In Korovai, the return period depends on the context in which the exchange takes place, and must meet the expectations of the host to avoid conflict.

Sensitivity to inequality does not allow people to accumulate things, surplus is immediately distributed voluntarily or according to requirements. The obligation to share is offset by territorial and social separation. The autonomy of Korovai reduces the likelihood of envy and discontent from outsiders and allows you to manage the resources of your land without entering into a dependent relationship with anyone. Nevertheless, people highly appreciate social ties and especially ties to distant clans that expand their spatial freedom.

Rupert Stash defines political autonomy and egalitarianism as the basic values of Korovai (Stasch 2009). At the same time, inequality is systematically manifested in certain contexts.

The hierarchy among Korovai arises situationally. The statuses are distributed depending on who is on whose land, who in relation to whom is the debtor. In addition, the most aggressive and powerful man can for some time, through actions and threats of force, gain the appropriate status that will allow him to freely exercise his will.

The autonomy of Korovai is also evident in the fact that people are free to act without regard to others, guided by their thoughts and feelings. In order to assert their rights to the desired, Korowai men can be aggressive and often resort to violence in resolving controversial issues when defending their claims, despite the fact that these requirements may violate the accepted moral norms. Stash refers to such actions as "brinkmanship" (Stasch 2009:183). In an effort to achieve equality, Korovaev society constantly balances between states of peace and conflict.

Absence of police, rules of customary law apply

There are no law enforcement agencies on the land of Korovaev - the army or the police. The church does not have much influence and can only influence explanations and beliefs. Regulation of order takes place in accordance with customary law. If the debt is repaid by blood or life, it will require compensation, which means that debt relations may arise again. At the same time, such exchange relations can be called stable - with predictable risks and an understandable response scheme.

Economy

Currencies

Dog canine necklaces

Korovaev has an interesting analogue of money - dog teeth. Great value is associated with their limited volume in circulation. Only fangs are used, the dog is not killed for the sake of teeth.

The deceased animal is buried in a tree away from the trails to hide the putrid smell, and only a skeleton is waiting for it to remain. At this stage, there are abductions of valuable teeth. Thus, to get four fangs, you need to keep a dog for about ten years.

Dog canine necklace. Asmatian Museum in Agathes. Western New Guinea. Photo by TAdviser

Basically, such necklaces serve as wedding money - they pay for the bride of a son or nephew. This is the most significant part of the ransom. Decoration may be required in case of unforeseen problems.

Domestic pigs in korovai are also intended for use as compensation, for example in connection with the death of a relative or as a payment for a bride. The pig is estimated by the number of years it has been cared for.

Indonesian rupees

Indonesian rupees have built into the Korowai economy as another component of bride pay and compensation for material or moral damage in addition to pigs and dog fangs necklaces, which continue to serve as currency in 2025.

However, not all korovai have access to money from outside. They can either be obtained by precocious labor in cities, enduring additional deprivation away from the resources of their land and the network of social relations, or by working with tourists - strangers, whom Korovai call olan tulis (from Indonesian orang - man, turis - tourist), tulisanop (kor. yanop - human) or simply tulis.

Debt is the basis of communication for people living autonomously

Demands for compensation or the return of debt and efforts to return it make up a large share of the life concerns of Korovaev. Time-stretched debt is a social glue that holds people together, living in disjointed and autonomous ways. This is what makes them think about each other, fear each other, ask each other for help. In the absence of political hierarchy, this takes on a special meaning. Each korovai seeks to bring this uncomfortable state back into a state of equilibrium, equality, but it does not last long - the debt paid off is replaced by the next^[4].

The largest debts of Korovaev are debts for his wife. The amount is usually so large that rarely anyone can pay it right away.

Along with payments for women, most of the social and economic life of Korovaev is occupied by compensation for the dead. Claims for compensation for loss are made to people who lived with the deceased, those who saw him only from time to time (see also: Stasch 2009).

In addition, there are other types of compensation payments, for example, for murder or for a domestic pig accidentally shot in the forest.

Compensation transactions are always complex, uncertain, contradictory and practically difficult to implement, since claims caused by strong feelings often exceed real solvency. Relatives are called upon to help cover the debt. Requirements can change both up and down. There are no generally accepted sustainable orders to this effect, other than that people are entitled to do what they want (Stasch 2009).

Debt can weaken or grow stronger over time. Or even arise spontaneously as if from scratch.

In her article "Exchange and debt among the cows of New Guinea," Ekaterina Belyakova gives an example. One of her familiar men once married a beautiful healthy woman who gave birth to three children in marriage. The man paid for his wife completely. And so, when the eldest son was already five years old, his wife's relatives came and said that they were demanding an additional fee, which plunged the man into despondency, but it did not occur to him to resist their decision. You'd think it wasn't fair. But not from the point of view of Korovaev, for whom this event does not go beyond their kinship and debt relations. The payment was made only for the woman and her potential opportunity to give birth to children to another clan, but now that the children have been born and grown up, the amount of the payment can be revised. Older relatives raised her so hardy that she not only did not die at the first birth, which is often the case, but not a single child died either. Now relatives miss her, feel the shortage and demand compensation.

If the repayment of the debt is too delayed, according to the waiting party, then this can develop into an open armed conflict. Outrage at injustice and violence are considered appropriate to the debtor, and his task is to rectify the situation. The party to which the requirements are imposed is in a vulnerable position. Lenders can from time to time remind of debt, demand it in various forms - from making hinting painful visits to direct demands, threats and warning wounds.

Tourism

The fame of cows as recently "discovered" cannibals living in trees constantly fuels the interest of journalists, tourists and other adventurers. Outside of their land, the Korowai quickly gained fame for photo essays and films. At first, it was a major media such as National Geographic, the BBC and Discovery, programs about adventures and travel from different countries. The images presented in these films reinforced the stereotypes of cows as "Stone Age" people untouched by civilization, building houses under the very sky. Since over the past decades, interest in cows has not faded, in addition to wealthy tourists, with the development of the Internet, representatives of new generations of film crews went for the material.

Since the 1990s. the Korovaev forest has been visited by a significant number of such strangers, enough for its inhabitants to determine their place in their world and integrate relations with them into their socio-economic system. The category tulis (tourists) includes any strangers who from time to time come to the cows, regardless of goals and ethnicity. According to Stash, Korovai perceive tourists as a kind of ethnic community (Stasch 2016), living in large cities filled with all kinds of material benefits, namely things and money.

As Ekaterina Belyakova wrote, Korovai distinguish foreign or Indonesian tourists by the place from which they came, while not attaching importance to the difference between cities, regions, states - Jakarta and Bali, Jayapura and Makassar, Russia and Korea, Germany and America. The village, city and country for 2025 differ for Korovaev only in the scale and volume of available material goods, and the toponyms known to them denote imaginary places outside the forest from which strangers flock.

For the Korovai, the tourists "big bodies, their huge backpacks filled with loads of stuff, are a testament to the never-ending abundance of the world they came from. Korovay are on average short and thin in build, so they perceive tourists as "big."

The transfer of money and things by tourists korovai is understood as confirmation of self-pity. The idea that tourists come to share comes from Korovai egalitarianism. This is what they do themselves, feeling sympathy for those who lack something, for example, orphans (Stasch 2009:164). According to this logic, korovai also explain the behavior of tourists. There is a common notion that deceased relatives go to live in big cities and send tourists from there to help the living (see also: Stasch 2023). If someone breaks the balance of not wanting to share, it can cause outrage and anger.

For Korovaev, the willingness to pay with things or money for social relations is a recognition of their value, and the demand for payment is a manifestation of the desire to establish this connection. Tourists often consider payment with money to be a regrettable side effect of their interaction with cows, if they know about payment at all, because sometimes they remain in the dark, and the guides make transactions.

For aktiviti, during which the saga palm is cut down and the family goes to cut it together with tourists, the price of 2 million Indonesian rupees was once set (about 10 thousand rubles at the rate in 2025).

Consumption

For 2025, in addition to payments and compensation, large amounts of money are spent by cows on teaching children in city schools in the hope that through them their relatives will gain access to the benefits of the urban world.

Another category of expenses is convenient and prestigious consumer goods of factory production. Among such goods, a large share is occupied by clothes, tobacco, battery-powered flashlights, lighters, instant noodles, soap and rice.

Feasts

Korovai holidays (gil) are traditional feasts arranged by each clan approximately once every five to ten years, due to the growth cycle of the saga palm.

Hundreds of people from dozens of other Korovai clans and even neighboring ethnic groups convene for big holidays. To prepare the treat, hundreds of sag palms are lying around. Gil has an important function in maintaining horizontal social ties, including between clans in strained relationships.

Preparations begin in a few months. It is necessary to clear a section of the forest, create a special long structure standing on the ground for the holiday (which is called gil, like the holiday itself). It hosts the climax of the feast, which lasts a day. In addition to everything, small houses (khau) are being built to accommodate guests, which, like the main building, are not intended for other purposes and remain in place until they rot and are absorbed into the jungle.

Simultaneously with the construction work, it is necessary to cut down palm trees, prepare sago and provide conditions under which larvae from eggs laid by a red palm weevil will develop in fallen saga palms.

Each stage of preparation requires well-coordinated collective work, and the appointed date cannot be postponed, otherwise the larvae will turn into beetles and fly away.

History

2019: Internet emergence in some villages

Government subsidies (subsidies) served as an incentive for the cows themselves to form new villages, which entailed changes in everyday practices, food habits and preferences.

In 2019, limited access to the Internet appeared in some settlements, and with it to a variety of information, which comes mainly from acquaintances (which is associated with the peculiarities of the use of this new opportunity by cows - not for searching for information, but for communication through social networks).

2016: Due to conflict with Canadian director, Korowai refuse to host all Canadians

The refusal of the Canadian director in 2016 to pay for the construction of many houses for his failed film leads to the fact that the Korovai refuse to host all Canadians^[5].

2000s: Failures in the Christianization of Korovai due to their lack of leaders

Due to the lack of opportunity to agree with the leader (since there are none), attempts to Christianize the Korovai were not as successful as, for example, in the mountainous regions of Papua, where missionaries began their activities in the 1950s. According to the stories of informants Ekaterina Belyakova, back in the early 2000s. missionaries who did not abandon the attempt to Christianize the Korovai had to flee from the arrows and rebuild the mission buildings destroyed by arson over and over again.

Even in 2024, there are only a few believers among Korovai Christians. At the same time, almost every village has its own pastor (as a rule, these are Papuans from mountainous areas - tribute or lani). Sometimes American and Dutch missionaries come to the southern villages, who continue to work in Papua.

1980s: Missionaries and authorities begin construction of villages to resettle Korovaev in them

In the 1980s with the participation of Christian missions, the first wave of construction of typical villages took place, many of which were empty for a long time, and some of them remained uninhabited. However, under the influence of missionaries, and later the Korovai authorities, they began to settle in villages on the banks of two large rivers near the borders of their territory, while traditionally they did not live in such open spaces available for attacks by their neighbors of Chitaks and Asmats - bounty hunters.

By the early 1990s. six such villages were formed. By 2024, there are more than thirty villages on the territory of Korovaev, built at different times on the initiative of missionaries or the state, and in recent years the Korovaev themselves. At the time of the events described, some families still lived in the forest, and some regularly moved between their clan lands and villages.

1979: Beginning contacts with Christian missionaries

In 1979, when Dutch missionaries settled near the southern border of Korovai land on the territory of the neighboring Kombai language group, the first regular contacts of Korovai with the outside world began. It is precisely about the regular contacts of some Korovai clans with missionaries. The news of the "light-skinned demons" spread several years earlier as a result of accidental clashes between individual Korovai and Dutch geologists and their Indonesian assistants, who conducted exploration south of the Korovai territory. Geological exploration of this area did not give the results that could be the basis for the development of infrastructure.

Soon, on the territory where the mixed transitional combine-Korovai clans lived, with their permission, the village of Yaniruma was built, which later became the main "gateway" for journalists, tourists and researchers wishing to visit Korovaev.

Attempts to Christianize and acculturate Korovai were accompanied by difficulties associated with the peculiarity of the social (political) structure of Korovai society, characterized by the autonomy of each clan (clan) group. Such a device did not allow strangers to move deep into the forest, and therefore for a long time regular contacts with cows took place on the border areas of their land. So, 20 years after the first contacts with the cows, it was not yet clear where the northern border of their territory passes (Enk van, Vries de 1997: 4-7).

Researchers

The first researcher to pursue cows was the Dutch linguist Lawrence de Vries. He studied the languages of the Avyu-Ndumut group (to which the Korowai language belongs) between 1982 and 1991 and lived in the village of Yaniruma for a total of over two years. In 1997, a book by Laurence de Vries and missionary Gerrit van Enk (Enk van, Vries de 1997) was published, which contains basic information on Korovai culture, as well as a basic dictionary.

In 1995, he began conducting research among Korovai American linguistic and sociocultural anthropologist Rupert Stash. In 2009, his book "Society of Others" was published, in which, on rich ethnographic material, the author reveals the features of the social relations of Korovaev (Stasch 2009).

In the 2010s, Ekaterina Mikhailovna Belyakova began research on Korovaev, in 2024, a junior researcher at the Department of Australia, Oceania and Indonesia, the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamer) of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg, Russia).

Cow movies

• The BBC series "Planet of People," series 4 "Jungle," 2011. In the episode about cows, a house about 20 meters high, built at the request of the film crew, is presented as residential, which is not true.

See also

• Asmaty

Notes