Culture is something we experience everyday, yet often times we are oblivious to the backgrounds and traditions that make a certain culture a culture. Growing up in a Japanese environment, my culture had taught me to walk to school on my own at the age of five, acquire a taste for octopus, and where robe-like apparel called kimonos. To anyone who has never been exposed to Japanese ideas, the thought of a child walking alone might scare them; touching an octopus might appall them; wearing a kimono might just confuse them. However, these traditions are all completely normal in my case.

As I looked into the cultural traditions of Torajans in South Sulawesi, Indonesia, my perception changed. In this region, Torajans “celebrate” the death of loved ones by holding extravagant, party-like funerals after their corpse is mummified and kept in the house for weeks, months, even years. These funerals are festive and lively, evident in the vendors who sell food and cigarettes, the men who participate in mud fights, and the water buffalo that are sacrificed in order to follow the deceased into the afterlife. The most shocking part of all: periodically there is an event called the Ma’nene festival, where families and friends exhume the corpses of ancestors who died anytime between a week or a hundred years ago. 

This comes as a surprise, but also allows me to understand through my own confusion of Torajan culture at how others might be confused by my own. In some ways, I can understand the unpleasantness upon first learning about the practices of Torajan tradition due to first-hand experience. Nevertheless, researching more into this topic and looking into the views of various sources allowed me to put the discomfort aside and find this culture quite fascinating. 

The Torajan view of death is different from our perception due to contrasting beliefs and traditions. Open-mindedness is a valuable principle to recognize when understanding that our way of thinking is not absolute and that many of our opinions are not always universal. Although death may be a sensitive topic, we should often be ready to embrace new ideas, for learning about this new culture might lead to the better acceptance of unfamiliar concepts. Everyone deserves to know that a person is never truly gone, and that a deceased loved one can still be part of one’s life just based on his or her own outlook. With that being said, one’s outlook can be the key to open-mindedness. The ways of the Southern Sulawesi region beg the question – how are Torajan attitudes toward death so different from those of our Western culture, and why do we not practice the same traditions as this small Indonesian population? 

In a National Geographic article by Amanda Bennett, a Harvard graduate and former editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Lexington Herald-Leader, the remarkable characteristics of Torajan funerals and the cleansing of corpses are described. Through major values in her article such as her personal encounter with Torajan families, she affirms that Torajans are probably more deeply attached than Westerners are to the desire to stay connected to the deceased in both body and spirit; they believe that no one is really gone forever. “[They do not] escape grief when loved ones die. But far from pushing death away, almost everyone here holds death at the center of life. Torajans believe that people aren’t really dead when they die and that a profound human connection lasts well past death…. It is not a severing but just another kind of connection.” With that in mind, Bennett explains how during the Ma’nene festival, bodies of ancestors are brought out from their graves – they are then cleaned, dressed, fed, and introduced to new family members as if they were still alive. Moreover, Bennett mentions the lavish funerals that occur in order to celebrate the life that one lived, showing less emphasis on the mourning of a loved one. “A funeral is a wedding, a bar mitzvah, and a family reunion all in one.”

The difference in attitude toward death between Western and Torajan cultures might also be explained through Torajans’ religious belief in spirits, as confirmed by Dr. Dimitri Tsintjilonis, an anthropology professor at University of Edinburgh. As mentioned in sections of Tsintjilonis’s academic journal, it is argued that the belief in spirits is what drives those indigenous to South Sulawesi to mummify and pamper their deceased ones as well as hold extravagant funerals. It is out of respect and love for the dead that Torajans perform these cultural traditions. In his article, Tsintjilonis presents a case in which he visited Indonesia to greet his deceased friend. There, he states what the family explained to him: that Tsintjilonis’s friend could see and hear him, and that she “knew” he was there. Major evidence for Torajan spiritual belief is also present in the conviction that unless a corpse is shown proper respect, the deceased can harm those who are near by using their senses to “snare” others and share with them their “illness”. This would explain why Torajans take such care of corpses during Ma’nene festivals and again, why there is a need to mummify their bodies. 

It is also evident that religion and social origin influence Torajans today, according to chapters in Michaela Budimans’s book, Contemporary Funeral Rituals of Sa’dan Toraja: Aluk Todolo to New Religions. Mentioned in Torajans’ practiced religion, Aluk Todolo, “souls of those for whom no animal [is] sacrificed [will] continue to wander the world, pestering the living until one of the relatives finds at least one sacrificial animal.” In explanation, this would answer the question as to why water buffalo are slaughtered for sacrificial rituals during funeral ceremonies – “Toraja… believed that the more animals were sacrificed, the larger the number of animal spirits would accompany the soul of their relative [into the afterlife].” This viewpoint closely relates to Tsintjilonis’s earlier statements as well. 

 In addition, the author states, “it is not in fact in contradiction to the Aluk Todolo philosophy to simply wash the deceased, dress him, wrap him.” Due to belief that the soul of the deceased can only “set forth on the journey to puya [spirit realm] only after the sacrificing of the first animal,” bodies of the departed are often mummified, clothed, and kept company in the family home until the day of the funeral, where animal sacrifices are practiced. However, funerals can take up to years to organize. “Until then, they are only regarded as ill, or… ‘makula.’” Relatives treat their dead family members by bringing them food and drink throughout the day, sometimes even cigarettes. 

Back hundreds of years, it was believed that Torajans had to follow established rules for funeral ceremonies. “By performing the necessary ritual, the bereaved family secured for themselves safety, happiness and prosperity on earth. If, however, the relatives neglected their duty, they believed that they would be plagued thereafter by misfortune.” These set rules may have been modified gradually over the years to accommodate present day beliefs; however, it is still inferred that Torajans hold extravagant and ritualistic funerals in order to prevent adversity and to increase good fortune, thus explaining social origin’s influence. A generally universal religion like Aluk Todolo that widely accepts spiritual belief would explain how certain practices date back to hundreds of years, and why they are still accepted presently. As mentioned by Bennett in her National Geographic article, she also agrees that social origin, dating back to ancient times, is why current Toraja traditions are kept despite the cultural changes that gradually occurred over time to other regions and countries outside of South Sulawesi.

Moreover, May-Ying Lam – writer and photo editor for The Washington Post – and Laura Connor, writer for Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, Sunday People and Mirror Online – give parallel arguments to one another in that Westerners are quick to avoid death. Lam states through photography used in her article that death is viewed as a part of the norm in the Toraja province, compared to how in our culture we tend to try to stay away from it. Connor elaborates on how our way of respect toward our ancestors vary with the ways of the Torajans in that we pay our respects through the occasional visit to the cemetery (if at all), whereas those from South Sulawesi clean and dress their dead relatives. Ma’nene is a way for the deceased to be kept in the minds and hearts of family members, as well as part of the family. Through the events and photographs taken in this article, it is again evident that death is widely incorporated and accepted into everyday life in contrast to Western culture. 

A YouTube documentary titled “Ghosts of Sulawesi” further elaborates what death and funerals really entail in Southwest Sulawesi. The narrator describes in detail, for example, on how grandiose funerals include mud fights and long jogs from the funeral location to the burial site as boys and men carry a coffin upon their shoulders. This obviously contrasts with the norm of Western cultures. However, it is argued that perhaps our traditions and perceptions are not completely different from those of the Toraja community. Bennett disputes, “So what is the difference between [a daughter’s] reluctance to let her mother go and our own? Or between [a woman’s] conversation with her dead husband and the ones Western widows secretly hold with theirs? Or [another’s] family’s feeding ritual compared with novelist Joan Didion’s reluctance to part with her dead husband’s shoes, lest he need them when he returns?” Although these are key similarities seen both in Torajan and Western culture, the biggest difference is that “we Western people ... don’t think of the end. Here, they have been preparing for years.” 

Lindsey Fitzharris, a writer for The Guardian as well as medical historian and TV presenter, chooses to assess our own possibilities for the future in her article titled, “We think our attitudes to death are unchanging. They’re not,” instead of simply observing the differences between Western and Torajan practices. She asserts that although the ways of South Sulawesi may seem alien to us, perhaps we will eventually adopt some unfamiliar cultural practices later in the future – if not those of Toraja peoples. She states an excellent point: “Cremation was once considered a radical alternative to burial in Britain. Today, approximately 75% of Britons are cremated.” Cremation is also practiced in the United States today, but of course there must have been a period where it was not as widely accepted as it is at present time. Someone had to embrace this new thought, and as a result it became a huge part of Western tradition. National Geographic mentions, “some Western tourists who come to Toraja seeking the exotic pageantry of funerals find that human connections, unflinching contact with death… help shift their thinking about their own culture’s habits.” Perhaps our culture is already starting to change, slowly but steadily. 

Similar to this argument is Andrea DenHoed’s article in which she affirms, “‘the modern westerner has lost loss’…. And examining the customs of others… might help us to see our own traditions with new eyes, and to fix what has gone wrong with them.” DenHoed explains that we should not keep denying death, but instead accept it and embrace it such as the Torajans do. In this way, we may be able to grieve healthily. “How odd to put blush on a carcass and try to forestall its decomposition because it might seem slightly less dead that way. How sad that so many people die in the antiseptic surroundings of hospitals because the hopes offered by medicine can shade into denial about the approaching end.”

As surprising as it is, not all cultures view death as we do. In our eyes, it is seen as morbid and grievous and exhausting – a producer of negative energy. Although this may be the case in many countries most of the time, the way in which it is dealt allows death to be considered in a different light. In addition, Bennett makes this final argument: “The best thing to resolve grief is time. What if we, like the Torajans, gave ourselves more time to unspool it at its own rate?” Would we find more closure if we spread out the grieving process? Perhaps it is possible that subconsciously we have a much more difficult time moving forward because we do not feel we have had enough time to “prepare” for one’s death or to find closure. Often times we tend to dismiss other perspectives of death other than our own – but why not keep an open mind and think outside the box? Although some may not agree with the way in which Torajans practice their ancient traditions, it is important to recognize each other’s contrasts while broadening our horizons. 

In conclusion, how are Torajan attitudes toward death different from those of our culture? Why do we not celebrate it like people in Southern Sulawesi? There are multiple factors that go into why this might be. South Sulawesi traditions such as the Ma’nene festival and its ornate funerals and rituals have been practiced for hundreds of years. Generations of families have grown up to believe in ancestral spirits while practicing the tradition of mummifying and cleaning corpses in order to show respect. These corpses are often kept in the family home for long periods in order to elongate the process of “death”, allowing more time for families to process one’s passing and find closure. 

Societal norms have allowed these indigenous peoples to become immune to the sight of death – however grievous it may be – and accept it as a part of everyday life. As a result, this perception of death doesn’t mean the end for Torajans, but a new kind of connectedness that continues forever. In contrast, Western cultures seem to emphasize “goodbye” as soon as a loved one passes away. This is considering the fact that funerals and burials are held right after death. We are taught that constant reminders of a deceased loved one will only keep us from moving on, and so perhaps this is why Westerners might be more reluctant to try to incorporate events like Ma’nene into their lives; it tends to be hard for us. Some might feel that exhuming a body in order to cleanse, dress, and feed it is a bit exaggerated; especially when we can still show respect and love someone in a different way. In our minds, letting a body rest in the ground is our own way of respect: it allows the soul to rest in peace. 
