Saturday, October 1, 2016

10 Bizarre Tribal Practices

 
Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Until early in the 20th century, some tribal peoples remained isolated from the rest of the world, continuing to practice rituals, ceremonies, rites, and customs that seem strange to many members of mainstream modern society. In the West, tattooing, body modification, unusual hairstyles, and surreal costumes have become more common than ever before. Looks that might once have been shocking are, more and more, mundane, if not exactly conventional, today. Nevertheless, some tribal practices, past and present, are so extraordinary that most people outside the tribes themselves are apt to consider them more than merely eccentric, as this list of 10 bizarre tribal practices suggests.
10 Roasting Dead Relatives



In Wogi, Indonesia, the Dani, a New Guinea tribe “undiscovered until 1938,” don't bury their dead. They roast them over an open fire for weeks, before storing the cooked cadavers. The smoke from the fire preserves the flesh, transforming the corpses into charred mummies. Cooking the corpses, the Dani believe, is a sign of “respect.” Although Wogi is near the regional capital, Wamena, it remains an isolated village, unsupported by roads. Although the Dani no longer practice this bizarre custom, they refuse to bury their dead. The tribe's chief, Eli Mabel, showed photographers one of his ancestors, Agat Mamete, presumably a male, whose seated mummified remains lean forward, head down, bent knees drawn toward his chest, arms along his sides, wearing a necklace and a cloth skullcap edged in fur and adorned with a single feather. Although Mamete's eyes, ears, and hair are gone, his other features are intact. (LINK 1)
9 Wearing Nose Plugs



The ladies of the agricultural Apatanis of Arunachal Pradesh, India, were once regarded as the loveliest of the state—so lovely, according to folklore, that men of other tribes abducted them. To make them less attractive, tradition says, the Apatani men tattooed the women's faces and instituted the practice of making them wear nose plugs. (LINK 2)
The practice, like the tribe itself, is slowly disappearing. None of the women born into the tribe after 1970 wear nose plugs. (LINK 3)
8 Collecting Frog Medicine


The sapo frog lives in the South American rain forests, where tribes use its secretions for medicinal purposes. Following its capture, the live frog is “immobilized in a spread position,” which causes it to secrete copiously. The secretions are “scraped off the frog,” and the amphibian is released, unharmed, except for the “stress” it undergoes during the procedure. The secretions “increase the natural activity of the brain’s own opiates, block painful sensations, and cause a trance-like state accompanied by reduced motor control.” (LINK 4)

The application of the secretions is just as bizarre as the procedure used to obtain them. A “burning stick” is used to make “five small burns . . . on one arm” so “small blisters” appear. The blisters are “scraped away,” leaving “exposed capillaries in the skin.” Another stick is used to apply the secretions. After a while, “peptides in the sapo secretion enter the bloodstream,” producing “a sense of lassitude, . . . gastrointestinal distress . . . vomiting,” and a “pounding head and heart,” which last about 30 minutes. Thereafter, the person feels stronger, has heightened senses, and experiences reduced “hunger and thirst.” Sharpened senses give the tribe's hunters an advantage in “detecting prey,” and their ability to forego “food and water” benefits them during the hunt. (LINK 5)
7 Performing a Canine Marriage



Five thousand guests attended the wedding of two dogs in a ceremony, performed in the Kaushambi district of Uttar Pradesh, India, on March 12, 2016. The canine marriage was conducted according to Hindu “rituals,” complete with a marching band, which played “upbeat and peppy” music “true to the style of an Indian wedding.” (LINK 6)
The married couple were chauffeured in a lavishly “decorated car.” As it drove through a narrow street, throngs of jubilant guests followed on foot, capturing the moment with their cell phone cameras, as the party was cheered on by bystanders watching from behind the walls of their yards. The groom wore a white dress shirt, with rolled sleeves, a black tie, a yellow coat, and orange trousers; the bride wore pink ribbons, a pink gown, and a colorful garland. The weeping father of the family carried the groom to the ceremony, accompanied by girls carrying plates of prepared food. (LINK 7)

6 Performing a Canine-Human Marriage

In Manik Bazar, Jharkhand, a 7-year-old boy, Mukesh Kerayi, had the bad luck to grow a tooth “in the upper part of his mouth.” The fact that his horoscopes predicted his first wife would die young cinched it: the youngster would have to marry a dog. His family “dressed the dog in a bridal outfit,” and the villagers appeared as guests to celebrate the matrimonial affair. Mukesh’s grandfather, Ashok Kumar Leyangi, 43, said, “We believe the marriage will ward off any bad omen attached the boy. This is traditional practice in our tribal community, and we still believe in these old customs.” Although married to Kerayi, the dog is homeless, “living on the streets.” It is hoped Kerayi's second wife, who will presumably be human, will escape the predicted fate of his first bride. (LINK 8)

5 Taking Urine Showers



The Mundari tribe of South Sudan devote their lives to their livestock, “their most valuable assets,” which provide for the Mundari people's welfare in a number of ways. Women milk the animals to obtain food for their children. Older members of the tribe “drink milk straight from the cow's udder”; use “burnt cow dung” as “a mosquito repellent”; and even shower in their cows' urine, bending low behind their rumps, to bathe in the flow as the large animals relieve themselves. They believe urine showers “protect” them “from skin infection,” can “prevent cancer,” and have “healing properties.” A “cult of Hindu worshipers” not only bathe in the cows' urine, but drink it as well. (LINK 9)
4 Eating Human Brains

During funerals, as a demonstration of their respect for the dead, the Fore people of Papau New Guinea once engaged in “mortuary feasts,” during which the men consumed the flesh of deceased individuals, while the women and children ate their brains. The practice backfired, though, when the women and children became ill with kuru, a “degenerative illness” caused by a “deadly molecule in the brains they'd eaten. “At one point,” 2 percent of the tribe died from the disease. (LINK 10)
The “epidemic began to recede” after the mortuary feasts were “outlawed in the 1950s,” but not before “some Fore . . . developed a genetic resistance to the molecule that causes several fatal brain diseases, including kuru, mad cow disease and some cases of dementia.” With rare exceptions, due to cannibalism, “vertebrate animals,” including humans, “have an amino acid called glycine.” The Fore are one of these exceptions. Their genome has “a different amino acid, valine,” which prevents the function of “prion-producing proteins,” protecting them from kuru and possibly such other prion-caused illnesses as mad cow disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and dementia. (LINK 11)

3 Parading Naked “Witches”

In Amapada village, in Odisha, India's, “tribal-dominated” Sundergarh district, police halted a procession involving three women and an elderly man, all of whom were naked. Villagers, having accused them of practicing witchcraft, stripped them, before parading them naked through the village. The “witches” were charged with “meeting at night” to practice magic to “eliminate other villagers.” The village had “summoned” them, demanding a confession and an apology, but the four victims refused to comply, whereupon they were stripped, their faces were “blackened,” and they were forced to walk through Amapada and “nearby villages.” The police said their investigation of the incident was likely to lead to additional arrests.
(LINK 12)
2 Drinking Cows' Blood


The traditional food of the Massai tribe, who live in south Kenya and northern Tanzania, is beef. They mostly rely on the meat and milk of cattle, although they sometimes consume the animals' blood as well, although the blood is usually reserved for “special occasions,” when it is given to circumcised individuals, women who've had children, and the ill. However, elders often drink blood “to alleviate intoxication and hangovers.” Although blood benefits the immune system, its consumption “is waning” because of reduced “livestock numbers.” (LINK 13)
1 Participating in Annual Corpse-Cleaning Festivals


In India, the people of the island of Sulawesi include their dead in a yearly festival. Wearing gloves and “nose covers,” the islanders dig up their loved ones' bodies, laying them out on blankets or rugs. As a demonstration of respect, the living clean the corpses and dress them in “their favorite clothes.” The islanders adopted the practice from the Toraja, a neighboring tribe “who believed the spirits would reward them for taking care of the dead.” After cleaning and dressing the bodies, many of the islanders pose for photographs, standing next to the propped-up bodies of the dead. The corpses' wardrobes are as varied as those of the living. A male cadaver wears a baseball cap, a sweater, a shirt, and slacks. Another male body sports a pair of dark sunglasses, a gray sports jacket, and blue slacks. A female corpse wears a curly blonde wig, a sweater, and a dress. An older female body is dressed in a shorter blonde wig, a gold blouse, and a blue skirt. Despite this bizarre practice, many of the islanders “consider themselves Christians.” It's just that, despite their conversion when the Dutch established colonies on the island, the islanders' former traditions die hard. (LINK 14)















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