EPISODE 13

Father’s

SUMBA ISLAND, INDONESIA

Sumba island is home to Marapu, one of Indonesia’s oldest animistic religions, with traditions that reach back centuries. Even though the majority of Sumbanese people are now Protestant, they still hold on to their indigenous roots through ritual. Funerals are revered in Sumba and have become hybridized expressions of both of these two pillars of Sumbanese belief. Recently, a king from Tabundung township passed away, and so people from all over the island must journey to Praingkareha village to honor his legacy.

A young man named Tono and his family from Lewa village will be attending, and it is tradition that they offer one cow for the ceremony. It’s hard to weather the expense of this offering during the economic downturn of the pandemic, but it is tradition that the king’s family give them a live pig in return as a gesture of thanks. Tono and over a dozen family members pack into a small flatbed truck with their wild cow, and venture to Praingkareha Village to bid farewell to the king.

The king’s funeral was meant to be an enormous spectacle with a Megalithic stone pull and rituals performed by traditional Marapu Priests called Ratu. But much of the Marapu traditions were eliminated because of cultural conflicts and the struggling finances caused by the pandemic. The funeral organizer holds a strictly Protestant ceremony, but keeps true to some ancestral rituals. Tono fulfills his commitment to this ceremony, but things go astray as his family discovers the funeral agreements were not followed according to tradition. This time, they will not be going home with a live pig. The experience of this funeral reveals the difficulties of life in this impoverished part of Sumba and explores the power dynamic established in the process of Sumbanese funeral rights.