Korowai - Economy

Subsistence  Commerce  Industry  Trade  Labor  Land

 

SUBSISTENCE

The Korowai are horticulturalists who practice shifting cultivation. The basic food items are sago (kho, ndaü) and bananas (dup, dendü, sakhu). Each clan has its own gardens (yasim) near its tree houses, where it also cultivates Ipomoea batatas (khaw), cassave-like (Colocasia) tubers (simbelu), and tobacco (dépon, saukh, sü).

 

      

Pigs (gol) and dogs (méan) are the only domesticated animals. Pigs function mainly as objects of exchange and retribution. Dogs are raised for company and hunting, and their teeth are regarded as extremely valuable. Hunting (bétop abokhai/abolai) for wild pigs is done with bows and arrows (ati-khayo). Pigs that are caught in pitfalls or traps made wit a special fence construction, are shot or pierced with spears. Cassowaries (küal, sandum, sanip) again are shot, or trapped with ropes (nan) strung across cassowary paths. Smaller game, such as birds (dél-amol), reptiles, rodents, marsupials, and smaller bats, is also hunted by the young.

For fishing the Korowai use their bows and arrows, poison, and basketlike constructions, placed in artificial dams. In pre-contact days crocodiles (semail) were hunted for consumption, today they are hunted for commercial reasons as well.

Green vegetables, grass, and cane species are collected from the jungle, as well as wild fruits during the appropriate seasons, such as the sweet fruits of the Ponnetia pinniata and wild apples.

 

COMMERCIAL ACTIVITIES

Monetary exchange was introduced by the ZGK-missionaries. Some Korowai groups were engaged in building and maintaining the Yaniruma air-strip, and others worked for different jobs at the mission station. At first they were paid with steel axes, machetes, and clothing, but later they were paid in currency that could be spent for goods such as salt, clothes, fish hooks, razor blades, and matches in the small mission-station shop in Yaniruma. Some people went out for shopping in more distant villages such as Wanggemalo and Bomakia, and in the central villages of the sub-districts Kouh and Senggo (Citak-Mitak) .

During the late 1980's and early 1990's some groups were involved in timber projects run byof foreign companies, and the downriver Korowai were paid for their services as guides or as rowing crew in the dug-out canoes that were rented by tourist groups.

 

INDUSTRIAL ACTIVITIES

Craftmanship is spent in the production of bows and arrows. The shafts are made of bamboo, and the tips of bamboo splinters (daup) or bones.

For cutting trees, rather than for warfare, stone axes (khul) are tied to the tops of relatively light wooden handles.

Oval shaped light-weight shields (wolumon) the height of a person, are cut from one piece of wood, and are used mainly as banners during sagogrub festival dancing, rather than as defensive weapons.

               

Ornaments such as necklaces and nose and hair decorations are made of natural materials such as pig and dog teeth and cowrie shells.

 

TRADE

There is no relevant information about traditional Korowai trade patterns. Stones for axes originate from the mountain area and seem to have been transmitted from the Brazza region through exchange.

The same can be said of cowrie shells, which apparently come from the southernmost coastal regions.

By means of exchange, voluntarily, or in case of adatbased obligatory retribution, domesticated pigs often are traded, as well as the strings of dog- and pig teeth (méan-tebil, gol-tebil), which are common objects of exchange in almost every Papuan community.

Supposedly sago is never exchanged for other objects, including currency.

 

DIVISION OF LABOR

Big game hunting is a male occupation, smaller game can be caught by younger boys, and little children get their hunting practice on very small animals by using kailon arrows made of sago leaf ribs. Rearing pigs and food collection are the responsibility of adult females.

Gardening is done by both males and females; the heavier work is done by the men, and the lighter work by the women. Other gender-nonspecific activities are cutting firewood and fishing.

As to sago production the adult males are responsible for the regular planting of young sago sprouts. They also are involved in the heavy work of cutting and splitting the fullgrown sago tree; chiseling and pounding the starch are done by women. Women are again expected to process the final product, a process in which the flour is separated from the washing water through a structure built from the woody shafts of sago leaves.

Tree house construction is a cooperative endeavor done by both sexes, with the heavier work done by men.

Public religious activities such as the performance of pig sacrifices are exclusively reserved for males.

 

LAND IN PROPERTY

There is a distinction between landusing and landholding rights. The grounds of Yafufla are the property of the trans-Becking Korowoiclan Maliap, while the permission to build a village at that place was given by the Kombai man Bofo Khomei, who had an affinal relationship with the Maliap.

Uninhabited areas that are not claimed by clans, are called spiritplaces (laléobolüp). Some clans have sub-clans that share one single territory.

Different clans may share similar clan-names, but live relatively far from each other.