Abstract
Jos Platenkamp’s presence as ‘another person from elsewhere’ in a Tobelo community (North Moluccas, East Indonesia) required that one provided him with the social and cosmological relations that would shelter him from violence and misfortune. He describes in this chapter how to that end people successively assigned to him the ritual status of an in-marrying husband, of a member of the indigenous Protestant Church, and of a novice of a shamanic healer. These relations connected him with ancestors, the Christian God, and spirit beings. Only by taking part in the appropriate exchanges could such connections be forged. The gifts that he contributed reflected in their material composition as well as in their foreign provenance—his status as a ‘person from elsewhere’, a social category that complements that of ‘local’ people.
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- 1.
The thought that worried me on my first journey to Tobelo, that I might be associated locally with a morally abject Dutch colonialism, proved unwarranted. On the contrary, the elderly’s elaborate praise of Dutch schools, hospitals, and an incorruptible practice of justice were rather a source of embarrassment to the politically correct student of anthropology in the late 1970s.
- 2.
At an individual level, relations with “friends” (ma hobata) developed during my fieldwork that were neither considered as relations of kinship with their specific exchange obligations nor were they ritually constructed. Important as these were for us, their analysis is beyond the scope of this chapter.
- 3.
Unless indicated otherwise all indigenous words are in Tobelo language.
- 4.
See Nijland (1985) for a visual documentation of this particular conduct. The rule of avoidance emphasises the idea that in-laws do not share relations with the same ancestors. Hence, they should not utter each other’s names, bring weapons into each other’s houses, or in any other way express the familiarity which testifies to being related to the same source of ancestral image (Platenkamp 1992).
- 5.
If the groom’s family is unable or unwilling to provide the “living money” (o tiwi ma ngango) of the bride wealth the groom should live with and work for his in-laws until his debt with them has been paid off. Otherwise the day following this phase an elaborate exchange of marriage gifts takes place at the bride’s, entitling the groom’s House to bring their “in-married woman” (mol*oka) home. In the present case, only the first phase of the marriage ritual was performed, anticipating my remaining to live as “in-marrying stranger” for the many months to come.
- 6.
Much later, the same healer explained that when one cannot see one’s face reflected in its surface a drink has been poisoned.
- 7.
Such ‘pagan’ acts testified to ‘animism’, and in the regime’s understanding of the Pancasila Constitution acknowledging only scriptural religions as legally admissible “animism is communism” (Indon. animis mengada kommunis).
- 8.
Upon my return to Paca in 1982 these had been whitewashed.
- 9.
Under the Suharto regime of the day shamanism was deemed a heathen practice indicative of political subversion; see note 7.
- 10.
Shamanic journeys to the realm of the highest Deity o Gikiri Moi (“The One Life”) described later to me confirmed this fundamental axiom. By offering the gift to the Deity the human ‘images’ in His presence begin to ‘move’: it is the life-giving act par excellence (cp. Platenkamp 1996).
- 11.
Quisqualis indica (Jacobs n.d.).
- 12.
Unidentified.
- 13.
Unidentified.
- 14.
Of old, assessing the suitability of potential shaman apprentices was a delicate affair. Most ‘medical’ knowledge can be applied both for healing and killing purposes (Platenkamp op.cit.) so that the tutor must ascertain that the apprentice’s ‘consciousness’ is oriented in the right direction.
- 15.
The lexeme widadari derives from Sanskrit vidyadhari, literally “bearer of wisdom” (Stutley and Stutley 1977: 332), a concept the reception of which appears to have been meditated by the Hindu–Buddhist kingdoms of mediaeval Java, in whose trade networks the Moluccas were integrated at the time.
- 16.
These included incenses, a white earthenware plate, a shield and a sword tied together with a white cloth, a white head cloth and a long black/blue veil—black/blue being “the colours of the widadari spirits” (see note 17). Added were one measure of palm wine, a plate of rice prepared with cumin, and seven slices of chicken meat.
- 17.
One healer articulated this uniqueness arguing that the shape of his familiar spirit was completely identical to that of his own body, “for how else can the spirit enter me?” That a comparative analysis of their repertoires of ‘medicines’ and incantations show these to be largely overlapping (cp. Platenkamp 1996) is of course quite irrelevant.
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Platenkamp, J.D.M. (2019). To Be Made Part of the Tobelo Society (North Moluccas). In: Platenkamp, J., Schneider, A. (eds) Integrating Strangers in Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16703-5_8
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