preview

Korowai People Research Paper

Decent Essays

The Indonesian archipelago, in the middle of the rainforest contains a very isolated province south-east of Papua New Guinea. Inside the province lives the clan of Korowai, or ‘the treehouse people’. From the closest city, Jayapura, traveling to the clan requires a total of three days: by

1 Spirn, A. W.(1988b), “The Poetics of City and Nature: Toward a New Aesthetic for Urban Design,” Landscape Journal 7: 108-126. Human and Nature: A Complicated Love Story 3

airplane, dugout canoes, and a day of walking in the swampy jungle.2 The Korowai people live in the inaccessible jungle. They are hunter-gathers living in a small community of close knitted family ties who needs to share all they have in order to survival. Unheard of to the rest of the world before 1975, the Korowai are believed to have a population of 3,000, scattered in clans of ten to twenty people in the jungle.3 Even today, many of the korowai still have not been accounted for because they are difficult to locate.

The jungle seems impenetrable to many people, but …show more content…

Whether it is the location or the choice of construction materials, the Korowai takes advantages of the forest diversity to live their live. The Korowai usually build their treehouse eight to twelve meters above ground level, but in some upstream areas, houses can be as high as 45 meters above ground. 4 The strategic position of the tree houses protects families against mosquitoes, attack from the animals, evil spirits, and flood. The tree house is built with a sturdy tree trunk as the central pole, with four to ten smaller poles around it to support the floor frame. The roof is made of Sago Palm leaves and wood, and the frame of the house is made of branches tightened with bindings.5 They use dry tree trunk with notches as ladder to get up to the house, and due to their small body frame, they can swiftly climb up and down. The house has the capacity for 20 to

Get Access