Traditional customs pit young versus old in Indonesia's Torajaland

The Torajanese people of Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, have long been renowned for their extravagant celebrations of the dead in funerals, graves, and effigies. Just outside of Rantepao, the regional capital of Torajaland, ostentatious and costly funerals take place often. But increasingly, such rites are dividing generations. As in other indigenous cultures around the world, a growing rift between the young and old is calling the foundations of tradition into question.

The Torajanese, or highland people, have maintained a cultural legacy that predates the introduction of Christianity through missionaries in the 1600s. For centuries, the people of Toraja have treated death with great ceremony, through dramatic rituals and elaborate funerals. The Torajanese entomb their dead in a variety of impressive if unlikely ways: in boulders, limestone cliff faces, hanging graves, caves and trees. Chambers are hand-chiseled out of the rock, a process that takes up to a year to complete and is particularly costly. Graves markings range from simple wooden doors to ornate tau taus, or carved wooden effigies. Babies are buried in the hollows of trees and their corpses are eventually subsumed by the living bark.

While maintaining cultural traditions is important to the Torajanese, the costs of their customary funerals are enormous. At the heart of the clash between the young and old of Toraja lies a grave economic problem. The funeral practices are so lavish and expensive that many families go deeply into debt to pay for the post-mortem celebration of a loved one. These debts are carried through generations, so that children are often born owing money for the funeral of a person they never knew and must spend their whole lives trying to pay back. Funerals breed impoverishment, but their social importance is so high that families will give up anything from a better house or farming equipment to higher education for their children—all to pay the cost of an appropriately profligate funeral.