The ultra-remote Dani tribe, from Indonesia’s Baliem Valley in the Highlands of West Papau, were snapped performing traditional war dances at their week-long cultural festival.
The tribesmen performed the rituals wearing an eye-catching item of clothing known as a koteka, or “penis sheath”, while women cooked wild pigs on an open fire. Koteka is made from dried out fruit and are held in place by two loops of string – one around the chest and the other around the scrotum.
The Dani people also spelled Ndani, and sometimes conflated with the Lani group to the west, are a people from the central highlands of western New Guinea (the Indonesian province of Papua). They are one of the most populous tribes in the highlands and are found spread out through the highlands.
The Dani is one of the best-known ethnic groups in Papua, because of the relatively many tourists who visit the Baliem Valley area where they predominate. “Ndani” is the name given to the Baliem Valley people by the Moni people, and, while they don’t call themselves Dani, they have been known as such since the 1926 Smithsonian Institution-Dutch Colonial Government expedition to New Guinea under Matthew Stirling who visited the Moni.
People often think koteka is a sign of status, but they’re actually mainly a way of covering the wearer’s genitals traditionally worn by male inhabitants of certain ethnic groups across New Guinea. The Dani are also known for a gruesome practice whereby the tribeswomen cut off the end of their own fingers to mark the loss of a relative.
Photographer Hariandi Hafid, 30, documented the annual festival and bloody customs of the tribe, who only became known in the Western world by chance in the 20th century. Hariandi, from Makassar in Indonesia, said: ‘This festival is about carrying out sacred rituals to honor their ancestors.
The dances are inspired by wars that took place in the past, and occasionally still happen among Dani tribes.’ The Indonesian Dani tribespeople calls themselves the “Ndani” and there are at least four languages spoken in the communities, depending on where they’re based.
A famous curiosity of the Dani languages is that all colors are described with just two words. Mili denotes dark or cool shades like blue, green, and black, while mola covers light and warm colors like white, yellow, and red. Changes in the Dani way of life over the past century are tied to the encroachment of modernity and globalization, despite tourist brochures describing trekking in the highlands with people from the ‘Stone Age’.
Observers have noted that pro-independence and anti-Indonesian sentiment tends to run higher in highland areas than for other areas of Papua. There are cases of abuses where Dani and other Papuans have been shot and/or imprisoned trying to raise the flag of West Papua, the Morning Star.
