Asmat now crafts totem poles for money

By Dini S. Djalal

JAKARTA (JP): Men in grass skirts swayed to the rhythm of a primeval drum beat. A woodcarver, Bird of Paradise feathers nestled atop a mass of braids, sat solemnly on the floor crafting a miniature totem pole. The dancers, decked out in equally extravagant traditional costumes, hollered tribal chants.

But neither the pounding of a chisel on bark nor the bellowing of a war cry could drown out the sound of tinkling champagne glasses held by diamond-adorned wrists.

Such was the surreal atmosphere at the Asmat Cultural Evening, held on Wednesday at the Mercantile Club.

Sponsored by the Sheraton Timika Hotel, this display of tradition was part of the hotel's efforts to promote tourism on Irian Jaya's famed southern coast. It was not mere philanthropy -- greater tourism would benefit the Rimba Irian Golf Club and their own establishment, a five-star den of luxury surrounded by the rain forests at the foot of Lorentz Nature Preserve.

During his speech to the largely expatriate audience, which began only after the woodcarver was told to stop carving, Urs Klee, general manager of the Sheraton Timika, described the Asmat as a tribe completely isolated until the 1950s. Asmat traditional culture is a peerless tourist attraction for this very reason, he said.

Klee was confident of the area as a great holiday spot, as the Asmat's rich cultural arts are complemented by the recently completed 18-hole golf course. He qualified his comments with some advice. After warning that malaria remains a serious problem there, Klee added: "Just don't go too far into the jungle to find the balls."

What bad golfers would find in the Asmat jungle is the stuff of legend. By the magnificent Asmat canoes prominently displayed at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art stands a photograph of philanthropist Michael Rockefeller shortly before he vanished in the Asmat swamplands in the 1960s.

For the rest of the decade, and even now, both New York socialites and academics gossiped in fear: did the marshes' saltwater crocodiles eat him, or angry Asmat warriors? Cracking that mystery may take as long as comprehending the breadth of Asmat traditions, many of which have yet to be understood by even the most discerning anthropologists, admits Philippe Delanghe, a UNESCO cultural expert who spoke at the event.

Much has changed in the 30 years since Rockefeller's disappearance. His expedition to gather Asmat artifacts for the New York Museum of Primitive Art cost him his life, but collecting Asmat carvings today entails little more than a first aid kit as a safety precaution.

The totem poles, once standing tall at Asmat villages as ancestral tombstones and war monuments, now grace European penthouses and are hot currency among the art world's glitterati.

Acknowledging the momentum in tribal art, the Sheraton Timika is arranging travel and accommodation for the this year's annual Asmat Art Auction, held at Agats on Oct. 13-16.

"It's maybe the first time that you can reasonably get there," said Marianne Murphy, the auction's cosponsor and wife of Paul Murphy, president director of mining giant Freeport Indonesia.

Considering that Timika was built largely to support its nearby 6.5 million acres of operational concessions, Freeport's patronage is no surprise. Often accused of neglecting the local community and operating under considerable ethnic strife, its higher profile in local cultural events show some effort to, as Paul Murphy explains, "respect and understand the culture of the Irianese". This agenda of cultural preservation has included construction of a new wing in the Agats art museum.

Sponsoring the auction also means helping empower local craftspeople. One can always buy Asmat carvings from the art shops at Irian Jaya's major cities Timika, Jayapura and Merauke, which are then often sent to and sold for higher prices in Jakarta and Bali, but this chain of crafts brokering often excludes Asmat participation.

Woodcarving may be a major source of income for the Asmat, whose sources of livelihood outside of fishing and hunting are limited, but the benefits they accrue from their hard work remain below their needs.

Instead of being controlled by the craftspeople who make the art, explains Philipppe Delanghe, Irian Jaya's art market is dominated by nonindigenous people. Local dealers buy crafts from villagers and then sell to shopkeepers in the cities, he said.

Tired of being out of the loop, in December last year the Asmat carvers asked UNESCO to help them set up a workshop and market their products themselves. Part of the marketing tool is holding events such as the Asmat Cultural Evening.

"What we're trying to do is stimulate the fabrication of art and the direct selling of art. Whatever we sell goes directly to the local community. This is an important breakthrough," says Delanghe.

Carving for money

"Local community" is a relative term. Decky Asyam, the 40-year-old woodcarver on display at the event, left Merauke for Bandung in 1982 under the auspices of a Ministry of Education and Culture skill-building program, and has never returned.

"Maybe when I'm older, I'll go back there," said Asyam.

Rather than being a spear-carrying warrior as his costume suggests, Asyam actually works at Jakarta's Taman Mini. Carving provides an added income, earning him Rp 30,000 per figurette, which takes one week to finish.

"In 1972, when we first started selling these carvings, we would get only Rp 1,000 per statue from the traders," he added.

The size of the statues, Asyam recounted, have greatly shrunk in the passing years. "When I started carving at 10 years old, our totems were huge! They were 12 to 15 meters high, because we carved them for ceremonial purposes," he said.

Asyam confessed that commerce rather than ritual now sets the course.

"Of course (the art) is not pure anymore. We make them small now so they can be shipped overseas," he said, disclosing a business savvy symbolizing the triumph of imported ideologies upon indigenous communities. Neither is Asyam uncomfortable with perpetuating the lucrative chimera of a "primitive" Asmat, admitting, "We do it because we need to eat".