Kamoro

The Kamoro, also called Mimika, are a people of the southern coast of Western New Guinea, occupying the mangrove swamps, estuaries and rainforest of Mimika Regency between Etna Bay and the Otakwa River, which marks their border with the Asmat. Semi-nomadic fishers, hunters and sago gatherers, they move between river, coast and forest, and speak Kamoro, an Asmat-Kamoro language of the Trans-New Guinea phylum split into at least seven dialects, from Yamur by Etna Bay to the Mukumuga. Their self-name Kamoro means living people, while the name Mimika comes from the Mimiaika river, used by Portuguese sailors of the 1500s for the people of its banks.

Their smallest social unit is the taparu, a bilineal phratry of clans sharing a female ancestor; tradition demanded taparu exogamy and the matrilocal household, with village affairs settled in the kakurukame longhouse. Through long contact with Malukan polities such as Tidore, Namatota and Aiduma they took on titles of Malay-Molukan cast, calling their chosen paramount ruler ndati and his war leaders weyaiku. Kamoro carvers are known for the mbitoro, spirit poles up to seven metres tall whose hollow figures represent the ancestors, and for the emakame bone-house rites that honoured the dead and invoked fertility.