Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T06:18:07.109Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Camera and the House: The Semiotics of New Guinea “Treehouses” in Global Visual Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2011

Rupert Stasch
Rupert Stasch*
Affiliation:
Anthropology, University of California, San Diego
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

One of the most frequently encountered representations of West Papuan people internationally today is a photographic or video image of a Korowai or Kombai treehouse (Figure 1). Circulation of these images first exploded in the mid-1990s. In 1994, an Arts & Entertainment Channel film about Korowai was broadcast in the United States under the title Treehouse People: Cannibal Justice, and in 1996 National Geographic published a photo essay titled “Irian Jaya's People of the Trees.” Korowai and Kombai treehouses have since been depicted in dozens of magazine and newspaper articles and twenty television productions, made by media professionals from the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Finland, Japan, Australia, Switzerland, Italy, Croatia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Vietnam, and recently West Papua itself. Some representations have had mass global distribution through programming partnerships and satellite transmission agreements, and international editions of major magazines. Recently, several reality television programs have been produced about white travelers' stays in treehouses with Korowai or Kombai hosts. These include an episode of Tribe broadcast on BBC and Discovery in 2005, the six episodes of Living with the Kombai Tribe shown on Travel Channel and Discovery International in 2007, and an episode of Rendez-Vous En Terre Inconnue televised to much acclaim on France 2 in 2009. Treehouses were widely seen by Australian audiences in 2006 in the Sixty Minutes segment “The Last Cannibals,” and during a subsequent media firestorm that surrounded a rival show's unsuccessful effort to film their anchor accompanying a supposedly endangered Korowai orphan boy to a safer life in town. In 2009, a BBC film crew filmed Korowai house construction for the forthcoming blockbuster series Human Planet, and in 2010 National Geographic began researching a possible second story on Korowai treehouses. In late June and early July 2010, photos of Korowai treehouses were published by newspapers in Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Paraguay, Spain, Romania, Hungary, Turkey, Finland, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and other countries, to illustrate stories reporting the Indonesian census bureau's announcement that it had counted Korowai thoroughly for the first time (e.g., Andrade 2010; most stories drew their content from Agence France-Presse). In August 2010, production began for a feature-length Indonesian film about physical and romantic travails of Javanese protagonists who sojourn with Korowai in their jungle home; no filming is being carried out in the Korowai area or with Korowai actors, but treehouses figure prominently in the film's early written and visual publicity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , January 2011 , pp. 75 - 112
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Andrade, Alfonso. 2010. Indonesia localiza y censa en Papúa una tribu perdida que vive en los árboles. La Voz de Galicia, 24 June. http://www.lavozdegalicia.es/sociedad/2010/06/25/0003_8571548.htm (accessed 10 July 2010).Google Scholar
Armstrong, Carol. 1998. Scenes in a Library: Reading the Photograph in the Book, 1843–1875. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Ballard, Chris. 2009. The Art of Encounter: Verisimilitude in the Imaginary Exploration of Interior New Guinea, 1725–1876. In Jolly, Margaret, Tcherkézoff, Serge, and Tryon, Darrell, eds., Oceanic Encounters: Exchange, Desire, Violence. Canberra: Australian National University E Press, 221–57.Google Scholar
Barringer, Tim. 1998. The South Kensington Museum and the Colonial Project. In Barringer, Tim and Flynn, Tom, eds., Colonialism and the Object: Empire, Material Culture and the Museum. London: Routledge, 11–27.Google Scholar
Barrows, David P. 1903. The Head-Hunters of Northern Luzon. The Independent 55, 2841: 1140–46.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. 1972. Myth Today. In Mythologies. New York: Noonday, 109–59.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. 1981. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Howard, Richard, trans. New York: Hill and Wang.Google Scholar
Batchen, Geoffrey. 1997. Burning with Desire: The Conception of Photography. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Beard, James Carter. 1897. Curious Homes and Their Tenants. Appletons' Home Reading Books, Division I, Natural History. New York: D. Appleton and Co.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. 2008. The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility: Second Version. In Jennings, Michael W., Doherty, Brigid, and Levin, Thomas Y., eds., The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 19–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benveniste, Emile. 1971. The Nature of Pronouns. In Problems in General Linguistics. Miami: University of Miami Press, 217–22.Google Scholar
Bode, Achim, Frey, Michael, and Linke, Andreas. 1999. Where We Live. New York: Prestel Publishing. German edition, 1999.Google Scholar
Boelaars, J. H. 1958. Papoea's aan de Mappi. Utrecht: De Fontein.Google Scholar
Bogner, Piet. 1995. Die Pfahlbauten der Asmat: Ethnographische Notizen über die Pfahlbauten und Siedlungsweise der Asmat von Irian Jaya (Südwest-Neuguinea), Indonesien = The Pile Buildings of the Asmat: Ethnographic Notices about the Pile Buildings and Settlements of the Asmat in Irian Jaya (southwest New Guinea), Indonesia. Munich: Gesellschaft zur Erforschung der Naturvölker.Google Scholar
Brandes, E. W. 1929. Into Primeval Papua by Seaplane: Seeking Disease-Resistant Sugar Cane, Scientists Find Neolithic Man in Unmapped Nooks of Sorcery and Cannibalism. National Geographic Magazine 56, 3: 253–332.Google Scholar
Burns, Philp, and Company, Limited. 1899. Handbook of Information for Western Pacific Islands. Sydney: John Andrew and Co.Google Scholar
Caire, Nicholas and Lindt, J. W.. 1904. Companion Guide to Healesville, Blacks' Spur, Narbethong and Marysville. Melbourne: Atlas Press.Google Scholar
Célérier, Philippe Pataud. 2010. ‘Indonesian Democracy Stops in Papua’: Autonomy Isn't Independence. Le Monde diplomatique, English Edition, June. http://mondediplo.com/2010/06/14indonesia (accessed 12 Oct. 2010).Google Scholar
Chalmers, James. 1887. Pioneering in New Guinea. London: The Religious Tract Society.Google Scholar
Chalmers, James and Gill, W. Wyatt. 1885. Work and Adventure in New Guinea, 1877 to 1885. London: Religious Tract Society.Google Scholar
Clark, David. 2003. Ultimate Treehouses. London: Salamander Books.Google Scholar
Collins, Candida. 2009. The Treehouse Book. New York: Skyhorse Publishing.Google Scholar
Colonial and Indian. 1886. Colonial and Indian Exhibition: New South Wales and New Guinea. Illustrated London News 84, 2470 (21 Aug.): 209–10, 212–14.Google Scholar
Cookson, Michael B. 2008. Batik Irian: Imprints of Indonesian Papua. PhD thesis, Department of Pacific and Asian History, Australian National University.Google Scholar
Coulter, John. 1847. Adventures on the Western Coast of South America and the Interior of California: Including a Narrative of Incidents at the Kingsmill Islands, New Ireland, New Britain, New Guinea, and Other Islands in the Pacific Ocean; with an Account of the Natural Productions, and the Manners and Customs, in Peace and War, of the Various Savage Tribes Visited. 2 vols. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans.Google Scholar
Daily Telegraph. 2010. The Koroway in Pictures: Tribe Living in Remote Indonesian Forest Officially Recognised as ‘Tree-dwellers.’ 9 July: 15.Google Scholar
De Lorenzo, Catherine and , Deborahvan der Plaat, . 2004. “Our Australian Switzerland”: Lindt, Humboldt and the Victorian Landscape. Studies in the History of Garden and Designed Landscapes 24, 2: 133–49.Google Scholar
De Lorenzo, Catherine and van der Plaat, Deborah. 2006a. Southern Geographies and the Domestication of Science in the Photography of J. W. Lindt. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Art 7, 1: 143–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Lorenzo, Catherine and van der Plaat, Deborah. 2006b. Sublime Amenity at Lindt's Hermitage. In Studies in Australian Garden History. Vol. 2. Melbourne: Australian Garden History Society, 39–62.Google Scholar
Departemen Penerangan. 1964. Buatlah Irian Barat satu zamrud jang indah: kumpulan amanat-amanat dan pidato-pidato penting chusus mengenai Irian Barat 1 Mei 1963–1 Mei 1964. Djakarta: Departemen Penerangan.Google Scholar
Dutton, Tom. 2003. A Dictionary of Koiari, Papua New Guinea, with Grammar Notes. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University.Google Scholar
Fabian, Johannes. 1983. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Farndon, John. 2007. Do Not Open: An Encyclopedia of the World's Best Kept Secrets. New York: Dorling Kindersley/Penguin.Google Scholar
Fermin, Jose D. 2004. 1904 World's Fair: The Filipino Experience. West Conshohocken, Pa.: Infinity Publishing.Google Scholar
Fort, George Seymour. 1942. Chance or Design? A Pioneer Looks Back. London: R. Hale Ltd.Google Scholar
Francon, Mellie and Gentil, Cédric. 2008. Papua Barat. Le Locle, Switzerland: G d'encre.Google Scholar
Garve, Roland. 2004. The Last Tree-Dwellers in New Guinea. Detail: Review of Architecture and Construction Details 12: 1418–21.Google Scholar
Gentil, Yanick. 2008. Korowai: Free People. 26 min. Television film in the series Papua Barat. Switzerland: M5EuropeImages International.Google Scholar
Grosvenor, Gilbert H. 1905. A Revelation of the Filipinos: The Surprising and Exceedingly Gratifying Condition of Their Education, Intelligence, and Ability Revealed by the First Census of the Philippine Islands, and the Unexpected Magnitude of Their Resources and Possibility for Development. National Geographic Magazine 16, 4: 139–92.Google Scholar
Haddon, Alfred. 1900. Studies in the Anthropogeography of British New Guinea. The Geographical Journal 16: 265–91, 414–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haddon, Alfred. 1901. Head-hunters Black, White, and Brown. London: Methuen & Co.Google Scholar
Harris, John. 2003. Treehouses: View from the Top. Guilford, Conn.: Globe Pequot.Google Scholar
Hastings, Peter. 1982. Double Dutch and Indons. In May, R. J. and Nelson, Hank, eds., Melanesia: Beyond Diversity. Canberra: Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, 157–61.Google Scholar
Henderson, Paula and Mornement, Adam. 2005. Treehouses. London: Frances Lincoln.Google Scholar
Hibbert, Adam. 2003. 100 Things You Should Know about World Wonders. Great Bardfield, Essex: Miles Kelly Publishing.Google Scholar
Hoesterey, James B. n.d. The Adventures of Mark and Olly: The Pleasures and Horrors of Anthropology on TV. In Whitehead, Neil and Wesch, Michael, eds., Human No More: Digital Subjectivities, Un-Human Subjects and the End of Anthropology. Boulder: University of Colorado Press (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Jakarta Post. 1991. Korowai Tribe in Irian Jaya not all Female. 20 Mar: 3.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. 1992. Signatures of the Visible. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jones, Shar. 1985. J. W. Lindt: Master Photographer. South Yarra, Victoria: Currey O'Neil Ross.Google Scholar
Kirsch, Stuart. 2006. Reverse Anthropology: Indigenous Analysis of Social and Environmental Relations in New Guinea. Stanford: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krarup Nielsen, Aage. 1928. Mellem kannibaler og paradisfugle [Between cannibals and birds of paradise]. Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag. Dutch edition 1930.Google Scholar
Lawes, W. G. 1879. Ethnological Notes on the Motu, Koitapu, and Koiari Tribes of New Guinea. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 8: 369–77.Google Scholar
Lindt, J. W. 1887. Picturesque New Guinea: With an Historical Introduction and Supplementary Chapters on the Manners and Customs of the Papuans: Accompanied with Fifty Full-Page Autotype Illustrations from Negatives of Portraits from Life and Groups and Landscapes from Nature. London: Longmans, Green.Google Scholar
Lindt, J. W. 1888a. Notes on Modern Photography, with Descriptive List of Apparatus, Chemicals and Requisites. Melbourne: McCarron, Bird and Co.Google Scholar
Lindt, J. W. 1888b. British New Guinea: Ethnographical Collection and Samples of Raw Products, Exhibited by Her Majesty's Special Commissioner for the Protected Territory. Melbourne: Centennial International Exhibition.Google Scholar
Lindt, J. W. 1920. A Tale about a Wayside Inn: “The Hermitage” on the Blacks' Spur, Victoria, Australia. Melbourne: D. W. Paterson.Google Scholar
Lopez, Frédéric and Stine, Pierre. 2009. Rendez-vous en terre inconnue: Zazie chez les Korowaï de Papouasie Occidentale. 107 min. First broadcast on France 2 on 30 June.Google Scholar
Lovejoy, Arthur O. and Boas, George. 1935. Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Lutz, Catherine and Collins, Jane. 1993. Reading National Geographic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
MacKenzie, John M. 1984. Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion, 1880–1960. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Marsh, Lewis, ed. 1915. Australasia and Malaysia. The Rambler Travel Books: The Countries of the World as Described in Works of Travel. London: Blackie and Son Limited.Google Scholar
Militaire exploratie. 1920. Verslag van de militaire exploratie van Nederlandsch-Nieuw-Guinee, 1907–1915. Weltevreden: Landsdrukkerij.Google Scholar
Miller, Charles. 1958. Life among the Cannibals. London: Robert Hale.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Timothy. 1988. Colonising Egypt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Moretti, Franco. 1983. Dialectic of Fear. In Signs Taken for Wonders: Essays in the Sociology of Literary Forms. London: Verso, 83–108.Google Scholar
Narrative of the Expedition of the Australian Squadron to the South-east Coast of New Guinea, October to December, 1884. 1885. Sydney: T. Richards.Google Scholar
Nelson, Peter. 2004. Treehouses of the World. New York: H. N. Abrams.Google Scholar
Newton, Gael. 1988. Shades of Light: Photography and Australia 1839–1988. Canberra: The Australian National Gallery.Google Scholar
Nixon, Caroline and Tomlinson, Michael. 2008. Kid's Box 3: Pupil's Book. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Olivares, José de and Bryan, William Smith. 1899. Our Islands and Their People as Seen with Camera and Pencil. 2 vols. St. Louis: N. D. Thompson Publishing Co.Google Scholar
O'Neill, Thomas. 1996. Irian Jaya: Indonesia's Wild Side. National Geographic 189, 2 (Feb.): 2–33.Google Scholar
Pitzer, Bill and Holland, Earle. 1997. GEOFACTS: Where Do People Live in Tree Houses? New York Times Syndicate, GF507. Published in Houston Chronicle, Travel Section, p. 2, 9 Mar.; Redding Record Searchlight, Family Learning Page, C-5, 28 June; and other regional papers.Google Scholar
Pratt, Antwerp. 1906. Two Years among New Guinea Cannibals: A Naturalist's Sojourn among the Aborigines of Unexplored New Guinea. London: Seeley & Co.Google Scholar
Quanchi, Max. 1999. Tree-houses, Representation, and Photography on the Papuan Coast, 1880 to 1930. In Barry Craig, Bernie Kernot, and Anderson, Christopher, eds., Art and Performance in Oceania. Honolulu: University of Hawaìi Press, 218–30.Google Scholar
Quanchi, Max. 2007. Photographing Papua: Representation, Colonial Encounters and Imaging in the Public Domain. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Quartermaine, Peter. 1992. Johannes Lindt: Photographer of Australia and New Guinea. In Gidley, Mick, ed., Representing Others: White Views of Indigenous Peoples. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 103–19.Google Scholar
Rafael, Vicente. 2000. The Undead: Notes on Photography in the Philippines, 1898–1920s. In White Love and Other Events in Filipino History. Durham: Duke University Press, 76–102.Google Scholar
Raffaele, Paul. 1996. The People that Time Forgot. Reader's Digest 149, 892 (Aug.): 100–7.Google Scholar
Raffaele, Paul. 2006. Sleeping with Cannibals. Smithsonian 37, 6 (Sept.): 48–60.Google Scholar
Raffray, Achille. 1879. Voyage en Nouvelle-Guinée, 1876–1877. Le tour du monde: nouveau journal des voyages 37: 225–88.Google Scholar
Ratzel, Friedrich. 1896. The History of Mankind. 3 vols. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Rykwert, Joseph. 1981. On Adam's House in Paradise: The Idea of the Primitive Hut in Architectural History. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Schoeman, Jan, Martin Elands, Michaela Schok, and Meijer, Marten. 2003. Uit de schaduw van Indië: De Nieuw-Guineaveteranen: erkenning, welzijn en solidariteit. In Elands, Martin and Staarman, Alfred, eds., Afscheid van Nieuw-Guinea: Het Nederlands-Indoneisische conflict 1950–1962. Bussum: THOTH, 164–99.Google Scholar
ScienceDaily. 1998. Head-Hunters Drove Papuan Tribe into Tree-Houses. 9 Mar. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/03/980309043026.htm (accessed 10 May 2010).Google Scholar
Scratchley, Peter and Cooke, C. Kinloch. 1887. Australian Defences and New Guinea. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Sherwood, George H. 1911. General Guide to the Exhibition Halls of the American Museum of Natural History. New York: American Museum of Natural History.Google Scholar
Shields, Rob. 1991. Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Stasch, Rupert. 2009. Society of Others: Kinship and Mourning in a West Papuan Place. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Stasch, Rupert. 2011. Textual Iconicity and the Primitivist Cosmos: Chronotopes of Desire in Travel Writing about Korowai of West Papua. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 21 (forthcoming).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stasch, Rupert. n.d. Korowai Treehouses as Artworks: Patterns in the Everyday Representation of Time, Belonging, and Death. Currently under review as part of a special journal issue on “Framing the Art of West Papua,” edited by Lissant Bolton and Nick Stanley.Google Scholar
Stein-Holmes, Emma. 2009. Heuan Nai Look [Homes around the world]. Luang Prabang: Big Brother Mouse.Google Scholar
Steinmetz, George. 1996. Irian Jaya's People of the Trees. National Geographic 189, 2 (Feb.): 34–43.Google Scholar
Stone, Octavius. 1880. A Few Months in New Guinea. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington.Google Scholar
Stuntz, Homer C. 1904. The Philippines and the Far East. New York: Eaton and Mains.Google Scholar
Tagg, John. 1988. The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Krista A. 2006. An Eye for the Tropics: Tourism, Photography, and Framing the Caribbean Picturesque. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Thompson, Lanny. 2010. Imperial Archipelago: Representation and Rule in the Insular Territories under U.S. Dominion after 1898. Honolulu: University of Hawaìi Press.Google Scholar
Thomson, James P. 1892. British New Guinea. London: George Philip & Son.Google Scholar
Valsiner, Jaan. 2000. Culture and Human Development: An Introduction. London: Sage Publications (repr. 2003).Google Scholar
van Kampen, Anthony. 1961. Beeld van Nieuw Guinea / New Guinea To-day. Hilversum: C. de Boer.Google Scholar
Walker, H. Wilfrid. 1909. Wanderings among South Sea Savages and in Borneo and the Philippines. London: Witherby & Co.Google Scholar
Wamafma, Alex. 2008. Bertemu Orang Pohon [Meeting tree people]. In Visser, Leontine and Marey, Amapon Jos, eds., Bakti Pamong Praja Papua di Era Transisi Kekuasaan Belanda ke Indonesia [The devotion of Papuan civil servants in the era of transition from Dutch to Indonesian sovereignty]. Jakarta: Penerbit Buku Kompas, 149–74.Google Scholar
Webb, Virginia-Lee. 1995. Manipulated Images: European Photographs of Pacific Peoples. In Barkan, Elazar and Bush, Ronald, eds., Prehistories of the Future: The Primitivist Project and the Culture of Modernism. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 175–201.Google Scholar
Who Was Who. 1973. Who Was Who in America, with World Notables, vol. 5. Chicago: Marquis Who's Who, Inc.Google Scholar