In the rainforest of West Papua...
..there lives a tribe that is one of the most ancient and isolated cultures on Earth.
The Korowai were not visited by outsiders until around 40 years ago,
when anthropologists and missionaries
returned with stories of cannibalism,
Stone Age tools
and extraordinary houses built in the trees.
Over the years, other documentaries have been made about them,
but most film crews visit only once.
And everything will have been set up for them in advance
by a producer or local fixer.
In this series, I'm trying something different.
In order to get closer to the heart of Korowai culture,
I'm going back to the same place four times
over the course of the year.
And this time, nothing has been prepared for me.
THEY GREET EACH OTHER
When I first got here eight months ago,
I found a family living in a remote tumbledown tree house.
Quite possibly the last of their generation
still living in the traditional way.
THEY GREET EACH OTHER
On my next trip, however, it became apparent that their adopted son,
August, no longer lived in the forest,
and had moved his family to the new village of Muara,
four hours' walk away.
It's becoming clear that I've landed in the middle of a culture in transition.
This is absolutely incredible.
This is beyond my wildest dreams.
And now I'm on my third trip,
navigating a path between the ancient and the modern,
it's turning out to be much more complicated than I ever imagined.
THEY SHOUT
My name is Will Millard.
I'm a writer and expedition leader.
I've spent much of the last decade travelling across West Papua.
For the last eight months, I've been coming to visit the Korowai,
to try to better understand the challenges they face
as they collide with the modern world.
What I have seen is a tribe of people who have all but given up
living in the forest.
But I've also met two old men, Haup and Halap,
still living the traditional way.
Yes! Gotcha!
They are my last chance to understand an ancient,
hunter-gatherer way of life.
A lifestyle which was shared by all our ancestors,
but has now almost completely disappeared.
THEY LAUGH
To get the complete picture of Korowai life,
I'm also going to spend time with their adopted son, August, who,
like most people around here,
now lives in a Government-built village.
But when I arrived at his house a couple of days ago,
I found that everyone had gone to a festival,
a day's walk into the forest.
THEY CHANT
A group from another village just arrived,
and everyone just picks up their bows and arrows.
And this has started.
There are roughly 4,000 Korowai, and I'm told that as many as 10%
of the entire population are going to descend on this place
in the next few hours,
to dance and feast on a local delicacy, sago grubs.
Amazing!
Birds of paradise on heads, cassowary feathers, football tops,
the works, it's amazing!
THEY CHANT
I speak Indonesian, but not Korowai,
so I'm relying on my interpreter, Perez,
to help make sense of it.
Ow.
No problems, you've got to forget, lupa masala! Yeah.
Apparently grub festivals began as a way of maintaining peace amongst
their neighbouring clans.
By coming together and sharing food,
the villagers were able to settle disputes.
Today, there is not much tribal warfare left,
but the Korowai still perform war dances
as they enter the feast.
Absolutely extraordinary. I can't believe it.
But I am crying because of the smoke!
THEY CHANT
On these trips, I've been made to consider where the line between
the authentic and performance lies.
But here is an undeniably ancient tradition,
being kept alive and adapted by the modern Korowai,
and it is all the more meaningful for that.
THEY CHANT AND BLOW WHISTLES
This is Muara and Baygon combined.
Two of the villages with the worst reputation
in the whole of the Korowai region.
I'm here to try and find August and his wife, Amel,
who I first met eight months ago,
and who I've been filming with on and off ever since.
When I first met Amel, she was seven months pregnant,
and when I came back on my second trip,
I was there the night her child was born.
HE CHUCKLES
Ahh!
THEY GREET
August!
August is here!
Cigarettes!
August, I've literally just arrived, mate.
Ohhh!
Hey, Dodi! Is this for me?
HE CONVERSES IN KOROWAI
Look at that. Amazing.
That's fantastic.
Oh, the family are all here.
Oh, goodness me.
Aww, no!
And the first one is going to be a beetle!
Which is my least favourite.
HE LAUGHS
Sharing round the sago grubs, I can't believe it!
I can't... Oh, look at that one.
Oh!
Dodi!
HE LAUGHS
That was the best one yet!
Ah, it's good to see you.
August's child has a name, Sophie.
HE LAUGHS
It's just a carpet
of sago with sago grubs.
The feast culminates with the sharing out
of the giant sago grub pizzas.
Really hot, that is.
Yeah. Filled with grubs, amazing!
But that here means more than just handshakes, smiles...
A thousand welcomes!
That means you matter.
And thank you so much for coming.
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
THEY CHANT AND WHISTLE
It's dawn. They have not stopped all night.
That's it.
It's finished.
That was the last act, that was the last dance.
Everyone's going home.
Who knows when or where it will ever happen again.
SHE SINGS
I want to try and understand what life is like for today's Korowai,
who have left the jungle behind and moved into villages.
And so, August has agreed to take me back to his home
in the village of Muara, a day's walk away.
Muara was established less than three years ago by the Government,
and has a reputation for being lawless and volatile.
There is no police post, no school, no shops,
just a small collection of wooden huts.
Going round to August's house,
which is over here.
It's where he lives, but as I understand, he doesn't own it.
I think it's owned by his uncle.
Hey, Mama.
August only moved into the village a year ago,
and there is almost no way to earn money here.
He relies on his garden and hunting to support his family.
But his experiences with the world outside means he has developed
tastes well beyond the forest.
And he's always asking me for noodles.
Three bags of noodles, I think, has gone into that, and it's fed
over ten people, definitely,
and August hasn't even had any himself, yet.
Despite the obvious poverty,
the Government claim that establishing villages like this
helps them look after the Korowai better.
But critics say they're only trying to clear the forests
of tribal people, so they can sell off the mining and logging rights.
# Hallelujah
Hallelujah... #
One thing is certain, though -
in order to persuade them to stay,
they must also sell them the idea of modernity,
and for this, they rely on the church to help spread the word.
A MAN SPEAKS INSIDE
On all my trips to Papua,
I've been paying porters from the village around £10 a day each,
and a couple of cooks another £40 a day.
On top of that, I've been paying August and his family for helping us
to make the film, and letting us stay with them.
But it's always difficult to know how much to give.
Too much leads to jealousies,
and too little feels exploitative.
Oh!
Here we go.
Cool.
Oh, August!
Oh, yeah.
Ahh!
Yeah?
That's really cool! Look at that.
Look how that's been adapted.
That's brilliant.
Look at this, this is so clever.
Ah, I see.
But it works! It works.
There is something akin to a gold rush in that village, right now.
There is a fever, and it revolves around getting stuff,
getting stuff from the modern world.
And the reason is, is because the Korowai, for as long as they knew,
they thought they were centre of the universe.
But now, they've realised that they are not the centre of the universe.
In fact, they are on the absolute edge of the universe,
and they are far, far behind everybody else.
They want things from the modern world, and they wanted it yesterday.
That is how they are going to get their subscription back,
is by getting everything they possibly can,
as quickly as possible.
And that means everything. Everything from pots and pans,
to Supermi noodles,
to mobile phones where they can't even call people.
The problem they've got, though,
is getting access to money to buy those things.
And right now, the only way of getting money is through me.
August doesn't have anything, really, to show for the amount of
money that I've given him. I've given him quite a lot,
and when I look through the things that he has in his house,
I can see that they are nowhere near equivalent to the amount of cash
that I've given him. They're just not.
And what I've realised in recent times is that, actually,
what's been happening is,
people in this village have been asking him for things,
and he hasn't been able to say no, but also,
that he's owed Amel's brothers and uncles quite a lot of money
in compensation for her hand in marriage,
and he's given money to them, too.
The difficulty is,
is that as far as August is concerned,
that means he's never been paid by me,
but because he's given that money away,
it means that he hasn't got anything for himself.
And I'm beginning to get the impression
that he feels that he almost needs
a backdated payment of everything that he's done.
Whereas, obviously, in my culture, and from my perspective,
that's not how it works.
You're free to do what ever you will with your money,
but your problems are your problems.
I wish he wouldn't give it away,
but I can't exactly start paying him again
for everything that's gone in days past.
A boat and an engine would cost around £600.
About the same as three months' wages for a local policeman.
I've been coming to West Papua for long enough to know that in
the context of the village, that's an absolute fortune.
And I worry that if I pay him so much,
I'd be dangerously distorting the entire local economy.
Of all the places I've ever stayed in the world, I've never been
to a place where there's so much pressure placed on me to
provide things, to give money,
to buy stuff.
To provide an opportunity for escape.
And it's quite hard, in many respects,
and, obviously, I want to give everything I can,
and everything we can afford,
but also I know there is a line that,
you know, once you get to, you can't push any further,
and I'd like to think I've given everything I possibly can.
But I also have to keep one eye on the fact that I know that...
..I can't set unrealistic expectations
and just say yes to everything all of the time.
To give us both some time to think about it,
I decide to go back into the forest with my cameraman and interpreter,
Perez, to see Haup and Halap.
It's just a four-hour walk from Muara,
but in all the time I've been here,
I've never heard of anyone else, other than these two old men,
who are still living full-time in the forest.
Theirs is quite possibly the last permanently inhabited tree house
in the entire Korowai territory.
Is anyone in? I can see movement.
Hey, hey!
HE LAUGHS
HE COUGHS
Aww, still...
As their tree house began to collapse,
Haup and Halap abandoned it
and moved into the huts which were made for me
and my film crew, eight months ago.
HE SPLUTTERS
Where we in the modern world measure time in months and years,
the Korowai measure time in tree houses they have lived in.
But Haup is suffering from arthritis
from a fall he had many years ago,
and as his heart begins to fail,
his legs are becoming increasingly swollen.
Without the strength to build a new tree house,
this will be Haup and Halap's last.
It's hard to conceive that this broken tree house is all that is
left of the greatest expression of Korowai culture.
That, for centuries, offered protection from tribal warfare,
the animals of the jungle and attack by black magic.
For I've read that the Korowai believe that evil spirits,
known as hahua, roam the forest floor and steal people's souls.
It's all too easy to sit at home, miles and miles away from
a hostile forest, and kind of laugh at stuff like this.
But when you're here in the middle of it...
..hours and hours from a village with people,
it does feel very real, and it's very real to Haup and Halap,
the things that they're talking about, this isn't a game or a laugh,
these things exist.
The gradual collapse of Haup and Halap's tree house is the beginning
of the end of the Korowai's tree house-dwelling culture.
But it is also much more than that.
For the last 10,000 years,
hunter-gatherers have survived by harnessing fire
and using stone, wood, bone and antlers for their tools.
But the next generation of Korowai have already rejected
this way of life,
replacing it with cigarette lighters, batteries
and processed food.
Once the experience of living the old way goes, it is lost forever.
I've come back to the village of Muara.
It's time for me to return to my home in Wales.
My plan is to make one final trip to Korowai territory
in a couple of months' time.
But before I leave, I want to settle things with August.
I'm really worried that if I give in to August's demand for a boat,
I'll be opening myself up to even more excessive demands
next time I come.
And that August, too,
will come under yet more pressure to give out money
to the wider community.
So far, with the help of my local producer, Shinta,
we've tried to pay everyone
a fair amount for the work they've done.
HE SPEAKS KOROWAI
Uh...
So...
HE SCOFFS
Right.
OK, well, I'm going to have to go.
Come on, Perez, let's go, mate.
Perez, come on, mate.
The demands are escalating quickly.
20 million rupiah is twice as much
as August was asking for
just a few days ago.
Come on, Perez.
Come on.
Really? Yeah.
Great.
Everybody's running now to get stuff ahead of me.
I don't know what's going to happen.
Doesn't look great, to be honest.
That went down badly.
He asked for 20 million rupiah. He asked 20 million?
And he said he's not going to do anything,
anything else with us now, because I don't give him 20 million rupiah
this morning, so.
Oh. That's it, then.
There's nothing you can do. We need to get going.
Yeah.
I think we might need to get gone.
This is the price we're all paying for trying to do things differently.
On other trips, producers like Shinta would take care of all
of these sorts of negotiations off camera,
and the audience would be none the wiser.
But, this time, I wanted to film everything that happens openly
and honestly, but because things are going wrong,
the result is very uncomfortable for us all.
Of course I'm disappointed.
I really didn't think it would end that way,
but I thought we would at least be able
to find some common ground,
but, actually, in reality, it's worse than I thought.
He's asked for even more money than I thought, overnight,
and his reaction
was one of anger and annoyance.
He obviously thinks that what I've done's really wrong,
and I don't agree with him,
so there we go. It's a real, real sad end.
I've been thinking long and hard
whether to come back to Muara at all.
But I feel uneasy about leaving things
in such a bad place with August.
I've also promised that I'd bring Haup and Halap some medicines,
which my medic prescribed for them.
So, two months later,
I'm back at the gateway to Korowai territory, in Mabel,
a six-hour boat journey from the village of Muara, where August lives.
This is the fourth and final trip.
It feels quite weird, really. I thought I'd
feel quite exhilarated, in a way, actually, when it got to this stage
that, um...
..you know, it was coming to an end, but,
actually, in reality, I feel quite tense. I feel nervous.
Things weren't good with me and August at the end of the last trip,
to say the least, and you never know what's going to happen
when you turn up in Muara.
I'd really like to be able to resolve things with August
before heading back into the forest to see Haup and Halap one last time.
It's quiet.
But it is raining.
Yo, all right, mate?
HE GREETS HIM IN KOROWAI
All right, Sun?
August is back from the forest, or wherever he's been.
But there's a bit of a meeting of minds, to be honest,
over at Barnabas' place.
A lot of the youth that weren't here the last time I was here have come
back into town, and they're all sat together at the end of the hut,
so I don't know what's being said.
August?
SPEAKS KOROWAI
Oh, I'm going to go over. This is ridiculous.
All right, mate?
August, August.
Good.
Perez tells me that August is refusing to talk to me
unless I meet his demand for a boat.
We're in a stalemate.
So to try and clear things up, I go to August's house to look for him.
Hello?
No, he's not here, mate.
But he's nowhere to be found.
Until I'm awoken by shouting the next morning.
HE SHOUTS IN KOROWAI
Come on, mate.
August...
THEY CONVERSE IN KOROWAI
Come on.
Oi, come on.
FROM BEHIND CAMERA: This has got to stop now, Will.
We have to physically restrain this guy. No, we don't.
Calm your fucking self, all right? He's got a bow and arrow. All right?
We don't physically restrain him.
Come on. August.
August, come on.
Come on, man, come on. August.
August! August. Come on, man.
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey!
What's that? He doesn't get anything.
Oh, come on.
Oh, come on, man.
Where were you all? Where was everybody?
What?
The whole village has now turned against us.
Without boatmen and porters to help, there is no way to leave.
The threat feels very real and the nearest police post is six hours away.
No, he's gone. He's gone off again.
We can't go. CANNOT go?
Cannot go.
I'd hoped that by returning to the same place four times over the course
of a year, I'd form closer relationships with people and get a deeper
understanding of Korowai life.
But it appears I've made enemies instead.
OK. All right, we'll go away,
we'll all have a chat together and then we'll try and figure out where we're at.
But that's already come down a lot
from the 50 million that we originally had to pay, you know, so... OK.
OK.
So, the thought is that
we go back to them with 25 million,
but there's a massive part of me that would still really like to say
goodbye to Haup and Halap.
My feeling is that we get the circus out of town,
everybody leaves, and then they'll know that the money's gone as well,
and I just go in tonight,
say my goodbyes, and then I leave alone first thing tomorrow morning
with Perez. I think we can assist you if something happens.
At least we'll be here and we have a base here.
All our stuff is here. Mmm.
Um, yeah, I think everyone is safer together.
Vanya, you look absolutely terrified!
No, no, no!
Really, Will, why you look at me like that? I'm OK.
How do you feel? I'm still OK.
We must finish here.
Must. We are a team, so we must stick together.
Absolutely.
Muara epitomises the difficulties
that tribal cultures in transition face.
Only a few years ago, when the Korowai were living in the forest,
we loved to film them in their tree houses.
We wanted what they had.
Now most of them have left the forest behind and entered the cash economy,
THEY want what WE have.
The rules have changed and neither of us knows the right way to behave any more.
THEY CONVERSE IN KOROWAI
OK, so...
OK. There we go.
OK.
All right.
Will you get that handshake now? I don't know.
I don't really want to shake his hand, to be honest, Gav.
I mean, it's robbery, right?
OK, cool. All right?
I'm sorry.
Sometimes it doesn't work out, does it?
Good luck. God bless you.
Tomorrow. Now I've paid,
I'm free to go back into the forest to see Haup and Halap...
All the best, guys. Stay safe, yeah?
..albeit without the film crew.
Instead, I'm taking Perez to translate, and his friend Daniel
to help carry our things.
It's about an hour before sunset and
I can see the smoke of a fire coming up in the clearing ahead.
Yo!
In one of our old huts,
I can see Haup and some women and children from the village
who are passing through.
Aw!
I'm so, so happy that I've managed to see Haup today.
With any luck, Halap might come along tomorrow.
That would just be awesome,
but if he doesn't, at least I managed to come back.
And I'll take small mercies like that on a day like today.
HE SPEAKS KOROWAI
HE SIGHS
Here he comes.
HE LAUGHS
So, Halap is insisting that we don't leave until we've eaten some of his fish,
providing for us until the last.
There it is. OK, boys.
These guys - they actually have a place to live, ironically,
out of all of these crew's huts that we have here.
Maybe it's not going to be good enough for their futures.
Who knows what their futures hold?
But the traditional Korowai way is to live in the moment and that's what they're doing.
Halap!
THEY SPEAK KOROWAI
He's got his stuff.
Cool, Halap.
Haup.
WILL LAUGHS
OK, cool.
And there we go.
They drift back off into the forest...
..and I drift out of the forest.
HE SIGHS
I'm SO glad that I got to say goodbye to Haup and Halap.
But I am also aware that I've had an impact on the lives
of everyone I met - some good, some bad,
and that the process of making these films has often changed the very
thing I wanted to document in the first place.
I've got much closer to understanding the truth
of how the Korowai live today
but in the process, I've also been pushed further away from them.
OK.
Here we go.
There's the guys.
How's things, guys? Good, good. Want some water?
I'd love some water, thank you.
COCKEREL CROWS
THEY SPEAK INDONESIAN
Cool.
You know, this is what a tribal society in transition looks like.
It's deeply complicated,
and it's that difficulty that you rarely see in television or even
experience with your own two eyes.
It's something utterly, utterly unique, and for that reason,
I don't regret coming here,
despite the fact that it's been difficult,
because I know I've experienced something
that I'll probably never experience again.
Haup and Halap represent the last gasp of a hunter-gatherer culture
which for tens of thousands of years defined us all and has shaped our
bodies and minds today.
They have a rich and deep understanding of a world
which I don't share and can never attain.
Six months after leaving the Korowai, I'm now left wondering -
are they still out there?
Does their way of life even exist any more,
or did I just witness its disappearance - forever?