The Indonesian island of Sulawesi, or Celebes, was once famous as the homeland of Buginese traders and pirates. Until recently, however, little was known in the West of the hundreds of thousands of Toraja people who lived in the mountainous interior of the island.In the early 1970s, the West suddenly discovered the Toraja. Within a decade, Toraja sculpture was exhibited in major North American museums (1981), and tour groups led by well known Anthropologists and Social Scientists visited the regency described by a Museum of Natural History brochure as "the land of the heavenly kings of Tana Toraja." All this was the outcome of a shift in Indonesian government policy in the late 1960s, when the government embarked upon a vigorous promotion of tourism as a means of generating foreign exchange.
In 1971, about fifty European visitors attended rituals in the northwestern corner of Tana Toraja (known as Tator in acronymical Indonesian). In 1972, more than 400 tourists visited the area, where many witnessed the funeral ceremony for the Puang of Sangalla, believed to have been the highest-ranking nobleman in the land. The Puang's death rite became the first international media event to emanate from these highlands; recorded by a British film crew (financed by Ringo Starr), it was televised in several European countries. In the same year, the first of a spate of small publications in English and Indonesian appeared, naming, describing, and interpreting Toraja ritual and culture for the outsider. In 1976, 12,000 tourists may have visited the regency. The number of tourists has grown dramatically since then, as witnessed by the growth of hotels, Chinese restaurants, and souvenir shops in the two major towns, and by the opening of an airport in the regency last year.
Why tourism in Tana Toraja? Some of the answers are obvious. For one, Jakarta's own campaign has been complemented by the promotion of European tourist agencies, particularly in France and Germany, which sponsor package group tours. Secondly, the area is blessed with magnificent, lush scenery and a cool mountain climate. With cascading rice terraces, immensely tall bamboo stands, and misty mornings at altitudes between 3000 and 6000 feet, Tator is a sensory delight and a refuge from the tropical lowlands. Thirdly, perhaps most intriguingly, Toraja has been billed as a more remote, unspoiled alternative to Bali (now old hat to seasoned tourists), and, more fundamentally, as an alternative to the mundane, secular world of the West.
Source : http://www.culturalsurvival.org/
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