Mentawai
Encyclopedia
Mentawai Islands
The Mentawai Islands are a chain of about seventy islands and islets off the western coast of Sumatra in Indonesia. Siberut is the largest of the islands. The other major islands are Sipura, North Pagai and South Pagai . The islands lie approximately 150 km off the Sumatran coast, across the...
, province West Sumatra
West Sumatra
West Sumatra is a province of Indonesia. It lies on the west coast of the island Sumatra. It borders the provinces of North Sumatra to the north, Riau and Jambi to the east, and Bengkulu to the southeast. It includes the Mentawai Islands off the coast...
, Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
. They live a semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer
Hunter-gatherer
A hunter-gatherer or forage society is one in which most or all food is obtained from wild plants and animals, in contrast to agricultural societies which rely mainly on domesticated species. Hunting and gathering was the ancestral subsistence mode of Homo, and all modern humans were...
lifestyle in the coastal and rainforest environments of the islands. The Mentawai population is estimated to be about 64,000. The Mentawai language
Mentawai language
The Mentawai language is an Austronesian language, spoken by the Mentawai-people of the Mentawai Islands, West Sumatra. The dialects of the language include: – Silabu, Sipura – Simalegi, Sakalagan, Saumanganja – North Siberut, South Siberut – Taikaku – Pagai....
belongs to the Austronesian
Austronesian languages
The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia that are spoken by about 386 million people. It is on par with Indo-European, Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one of the...
language family. The people are characterised by their heavy spirituality, body art and their tendency to sharpen their teeth
Human tooth sharpening
Human tooth sharpening is the practice of manually sharpening the teeth, usually the front incisors. Historically it was done for spiritual purposes, with some exceptions, but in modern times it is usually aesthetic in nature as an extreme form of body modification.-History:Historically, many...
, a practice they feel makes one beautiful.
Culture
The Mentawai live in the traditional dwelling called the uma which is a longhouse and is made by weaving bamboo strips together to make walls and thatching the roofs with grass, the floor is raised on stilits and is made of wood planks.The main clothing for men is a loin cloth and they are adorned with necklaces and flowers in their hair and ears. Women wear the same thing except they wear a piece of cloth wound around the waist. Women wear small sleevless vests and they sharpen their teeth with a chisel for aesthetic reasons. Tattooing is done with a needle and wood which is hammered on the needle.
Men hunt wild pigs, deer and primates. Women and children gather wild yams and other wild food. Small animals are hunted by women.The Mentawai keep pigs and dogs and sometimes chickens as pets.