World Tribe ~ Marind Anim people inhabit the vast plains of southern West Papua, from the Strait of Muli (Strait of Marianne) to the Indonesian border with Papua New Guinea. Some of them are also scattered around Buraka, Bian, Eli, Kumbe and Maro river basins. The area is within Okaba sub-district, Merauke, part of Kimam and Muting sub-districts in Merauke district, West Papua province. This area is a lowland bersavana with its flora that resembles the flora of the Australian continent and swampy plains overgrown with sago trees in the rivers. The population is about 5,000-7,000 people.
The word Anim means male (anem for men, anum for women). The tribe has a number of sub-tribes, such as Canum-Anim, Yei-Anim or Yei-Nan, Yab-Anim, Maklew-Anim and Kurkari-Anim (In Papua New Guinea). The neighboring tribes include the Yelmek in the northwest, the Manikor (Mani) and the Kurhari in the east, the Manggrat-Rik downstream of the Maro River, the Boazi near Lake Fly and Murray whose water flows into the territory of Papua New Guinea .
Livelihood Marind Anim Tribe
The main livelihood of Marind-Anim people is cultivating with plants such as sweet potato, cassava (cassava) and kava (a kind of plant for liquor). Sago includes their essential staple food, as well as trying to catch fish and other aquatic animals in rivers and seafront. Men like to hunt wild animals like wild pigs, cuscus, wallabi (small kangaroo), cassowaries, rats, lizards and various species of birds. To fulfill the need for tobacco, they plant a kind of plant called tumuku or beats.
Marind-Anim people until now still known as tribal pengayau. His men have a very high role in their daily lives, comparable to the Asmat tribes who live far to the northwest of their territory. In the old civilization they developed weapons for battle and hunting, such as bamboo bows, arrows from reeds, spears and wooden cuds, stone axes and long boats (roughly 15 meter) rowed standing, tools stabbings and cutters of bone or shell. They cook by using bamboo tubes or by utilizing hot stones.
Their home architecture and carving art are very simple. The houses were erected with ground floors, solid wooden walls, roofed with weeds or nipah leaves. Carvings are only made to decorate the pillars of their sacred buildings. However, Marind Anim's art is famously the most interesting and vibrant, especially the clothes of the soldiers and dancers. Marind Anim Art is similar to Asmat art.
The Marind Anim people live in villages that usually have at least a single house they call gotad. Men since adolescence live in this house. In the meantime around the gotad stood the family houses (oram aha) or the smaller women's house size. A village, usually formed from the bonds of relatives (patrilineal clan) or in the form of territorial ties eksogamik totemisme nature, because the Marind Anim community is more concerned with its role in the family environment. The formation of a kampong or a village federation by the totemism clan system led to a group of moiety totems in a village settlement. The marriage is exogamous and they adopt a patrilineal kinship system, in which a wife must enter and join her husband's female relative. An early wife lives in the house of her husband's parents' parents. If the house was too crowded he could have made an oram aha to her husband and her husband's relatives. He moved into his new home and was ready to accept his daughter-in-law.
Religion and Beliefs Marind Anim
The Christian mission first entered the territory in 1910, at Okaba. The original religion of the Marind Anim people themselves is more oriented towards the existence of the spirits they call the special concept of demas. This deity is a supernatural force in nature, or in the form of the spirits of the dead. They are also related to their concept of totemism. Hence there are revered natural demons besides their own totem demons. There are demas that appear in front of human-shaped human also or animal-shaped. There are so called yorma (sea dema), wonatai (crocodile totem), yawi (coconut dema) and others.
Referensi : Baal 1966, Boelaars 1985