Mentawai

The Mentawai are the Austronesian people of the rainforest islands of Siberut, Sipura and the Pagais off the west coast of Sumatra. Their ancestors are thought to have moved south from Nias in migrations beginning roughly four thousand years ago and continuing until about 500 BCE.

The archipelago remained almost untouched by outside powers until a Dutch vessel made contact in 1621. In 1337 the Mentawai lived as semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers of the coastal forest, organized into patrilineal clans sharing stilted bamboo longhouses called uma.

Their animist order, Arat Sabulungan, held that animals, plants and rivers had spirits; shamans called sikerei mediated between the community, its ancestors and the forest. Game skulls decorated the longhouses, while tattoos made with charcoal dye, known as titi, marked identity and status and were believed to let ancestors recognize the wearer after death.