Population of the Dani

         The Dani people have a population over 220,000 people. From this population, around 100,000 of the Dani live in the grand Baliem valley. The rest of the population, around 120,000, live in the north, south, and west sides of West Papua. In West Papua, the Dani are one of the most populated tribes.
          Most of the Dani are divided into two patrilineal moieties, the Wida or Waija (especially in the grand Baliem Valley). During marriage, the men have to marry a woman from the different tribe. Due to the marriage and cultural patterns of the Dani, the Dani have a relatively a small population growth rate.

Andersen, Øystein Lund 
        2011 The Baliem Valley and Dani Culture West-Papua. Electronic document,
              http://www.oysteinlundandersen.com/West-Papua/Baliem-valley/Baliem_valley_dani_tribe.html, accessed November 13
Wren, Paul
         2004 The Grand Valley Dani: A Vanishing Culture in the Highlands of New Guinea. Electronic document,
               http://www.wannabe-anthropologist.com/wba_writing_dani.php, accessed November 14

Language of the Dani Tribe of Papua New Guinea

The Dani are Paupuans and the language in all of the cultures in New Guinea were called Papuan, or non-Austronesian. "Dani" is a linguistic group and not a political or social unit. The origin of "Dani" is uncertain and it is derived from the Moni or Uhunduni term "Ndani" which is used for the Western Dani who live in the East. 

Almost all of the languages that were spoken in the Highlands Districts of East New Guinea belonged to a single phylum, which was the East New Guinea Phylum. Dani was considered to be closely related to the Stock.

The four language families of the West New Guinea (Micro-) Phylum were
1. Wissel Lakes-Kemandoga Language Family
2. Uhunduni-Amung Language Family
3. Dem Language Family
4. Greater Dani Language Family

The Greater Dani Language Family included the Wano Subfamily.
The Central Dani Subfamily includes the Western Dani language and the Grand Valley Dani language. In addition, the people in the Dugum neighborhood speak a dialect of the Grand Valley Dani language. 

There are four sub-groups of the Dani language that have been identified by linguists. The first one is the Lower-Grand Valley Dani, which consists of 20,000 speakers. The second one is the Mid-Grand Valley Dani, consisting of 50,000 speakers. The third is the Upper-Grand Valley Dani is 20,000 speakers and finally the fourth is the Lani or Western Dani, consisting of 180,000 speakers.

In the Dani language, they only differentiate between two types of colors, cool/dark and warm/light. The colors that are represented as cool/dark are blue, green and black and are referred to as “mili”. The warm/light colors are red, yellow and white, referred to as “mola”. This shows a link between intellect and language. 

There are 3 different verbal stems which are used in indirect constructions to express a  relation of a person or thing that benefits from the action of the verb. For example, "give", "put", "see" and "hit". 



Heider, Karl G.
        1970. The Dugum Dani: A Papuan Culture in the Highlands of West New Guinea. Chicago:  
        Aldine Pub. accessed November 10

2010 Dani Tribe - Indigenous to Western New Guinea, Electronic Document.                       
        http://www.therainforests.info/people/dani-tribe.html
        accessed October 30

Kottak, Conrad P.
2012 Mirror for Humanity: A concise
         Introduction to Cultural Anthropology.
         New York: McGraw-Hill.

Dani Subsistence

The Dani live a tropical highland on Papua New Guinea, where they have created a very intensive irrigation system. They dig channels in order to gather water from the numerous streams that run through the valley in which they live in. These ditches are dug in a special fashion to allow the fields to be watered in the dry season and drained in the rainy seasons.  Their irrigation system also provides a way to fertilize their land with runoff of topsoil and rotting plants, which enables the Dani to skip fallowing their fields. The crops that are planted in these fields are mainly sweet potatoes. In fact, 90% of one’s diet is sweet potatoes. The rest of their diet is usually pork. Although their diet is very dull, the Dani people are quite healthy.

Schwimmer, Brian
             1997 Dani Subsitence: Intensive Cultivation. Electronic Document,
                        http://umanitabo.ca/faculties/arts/anthropology/tutor/case_studies/dani/cultivation.html,    
                        accessed November 4

Gender Roles

Dani domestic organization is established around strict spatial separation of the genders. Most adult men spend their time sleeping and hanging out in a common men’s house. Their wives and other older women have singular huts around the perimeter of their area. Men visit their wives during the night; however intercourse is regulated by an extended after birth taboo.

            Work obligations are allocated through gender differences. Men are expected to do more labor intensive work such as clearing farmland and maintaining irrigation ditches. Women help out by planting, weeding, and harvesting the crops. They also have to take care of their children, feed the farm animals, and help with the production of salt. Salt is important in the tribe and for trade. While these task look to be rather simple, they require more regular labor and longer hours. Women can have a hard time preforming these tasks because of the practice of finger amputation. This is a part of Danu mourning rites.

           

Men spend a large amount of time involved in public operations like warfare, ceremony, and trade. Women have little participation in these activities. Yet, wives can have power over their husbands by threatening to abandon the marriage. It is an easy process to separate from your partner and requires the man to retract his major source of agricultural labor.

              Schwimmer, Brian
     1997 Dani Gender Roles, Electronic Document,   
              http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/anthropology/tutor/case_studies/dani/gender.html  
              accessed November 4.

  

Kinship, Marriage, and Family

              The Dani men and women sleep separately in different huts (called honai), the men in one, women and children in another. Due to old traditions, sex is taboo for the women after giving birth, for 2 to 5 years. As a result, the Dani raise fewer but healthier kids since the women’s focus is on babysitting during the first years of the child’s life. This is one reason for the existing polygamy, even though many Dani’s are Christians today. Dani marriage patterns reflect a pervasive moiety structure and a system of polygyny based on bride wealth payments.

              

             All Dani are divided into two exogamous patrilineal divisions, or moieties, named Wida and Waija. Accordingly, a Wida man or woman is forbidden to marry or have sexual relations with Wida member of the opposite sex and must marry into the opposite moiety. Waija people must follow the corresponding rules for their group. Dani men are allowed to marry more than one wife but women are restricted to a single husband. Most multiple marriages involve two or three wives, but one man was recorded as married to nine women. Polygyny among the Dani is based on an unequal age of marriage between the sexes. Dani men are allowed to have as many wives as they can afford. A man should give 4-5 pigs to the girl’s parent he wants to marry. For Dani men, his social status are initiated by the number of wives and pigs he has.

             

             Almost all women are married shortly after puberty and may even perform a wedding ceremony before then, as sexual relations are allowed only several years after the initial rites. Men, however, wait many years after maturity before marriage. The actual exchange of bride payments takes on a complex character spread over a number of transactions between the husband's and wife's family during the course of the marriage. Occasions for exchange include the wedding, at which a girl is dressed in an adult woman's skirt to mark her maturity and sent to her husband's household and the consummation of the marriage, at which the husband is given permission to begin sexual relations with his wife.

            

             When a family member dies, all related females voluntarily cut off part of a finger as a way of showing their grief. This is done using a special cutting tool, after which the severed portion of the finger was burned to ashes, which were then stored in a special place.

             The children learn their roles in the tribe by imitating those older than them. For example, the young boys play war, copying the men. The young girls make play farms, and plant seeds after the women. Their duties to the community are clear. 


Schwimmer, Brian
        1997 Dani Marriage Patterns. Electronic Document,
              http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/anthropology/tutor/case_studies/dani/marriage.html,   
              accessed November 10.

N.d. Dani - Marriage and Family. Electronic Document,
              http://www.everyculture.com/Oceania/Dani-Marriage-and-Family.html, accessed November 11.

N.d. The Dani Tribe Papua, Electronic Document,
              http://www.papuatravels.com/The_Dani_Tribe_Papua.html, aceesed November 11.

Religon and Customs of The Dani Tribe

   The Dani tribe, of the Balieum Valley, based their actions around their belief in the ghosts of the recent dead as well as water and land spirits. They believed that these ghosts wreaked havoc on the tribe, causing bad luck, sickness, disaster, as well as future misfortunes. They kept these ghosts away from their land by wearing mud masks during a recent death to scare the ghosts away or by building small houses in which they would lure the ghosts into in order to keep them away from the tribe, preventing any harm or damage.

      The Dani tribe's practices though changed in the 1950s when the Western Dani region experienced a nativistic cargo cult-like movements that swept ahead of the Christian missionary advance. These movements had no effect on the more conservative Grand Valley Dani, but recently in the 1990s, many Dani are practicing Christianity. Although they accepted Christianity many of ceremonies they still incline to culture old derived by their fathers. Dani believe in rekwasi. All religious ceremony accompanied by a singing, dance and offerings against their fathers.

    During the time of the war, ceremonies became frequent. Battles themselves were seen as ceremonies directed at eliminating the ghosts. There were also ceremonies celebrating the death of an enemy or funerals for people killed by the enemy. At the cremation ceremony for someone killed in battle, one or two fingers of several girls would be chopped off as sacrifices to the ghost of the dead person. Men occasionally chopped off their own fingers or cut off the tips of their ear. (Today, the practice has been prohibited – but many women are left as a living example of a long time tradition.)These actions were signs of personal sacrifice and mourning. Funeral ceremonies as well as wedding ceremonies continued after the main event. Both were concluded in the great pig feast held every four to six years, in which the entire alliance participated.     

     The Pig Feast, one of the main festivals in Dani culture, is held for many important occasions where one or more pigs will be slaughtered and then prepared and cooked in a traditional earth oven. The whole village and neighbors and guests are invited. The ceremony last almost an entire day and ends in sitting and talking until late in the afternoon. Sometimes tourists get an invitation, but it is also possible to arrange a (paid) Pig Feast, where traditional dances, mock-war are also shown. The Dani people will then wear their traditional clothes and paintings.Throughout the compound, all are dressed in traditional costume. The men wear koteka and the women dress in grass skirts. The men's faces are painted; beautiful headdresses made of exotic feathers adorn their heads.

   The Dani also believe that their fate was determined by a race between a snake and a bird as seen in Anthropologist Robert Gardner films in 1964 called Dead Birds. The Dani have a legend about a race between a bird and a snake. The race in the document was to determine the lives of human beings. Should men shed their skins and live forever like snakes, or die like birds? The bird won the race, dictating that man must die.This relates to the tribe’s belief in their Ataikin, their thought of a seed like soul, and seeds keep the birds alive. (In 1961, as a member of the Harvard-Peabody study, filmmaker Robert Gardner began recording the Dani of the Baliem River Valley. In 1965, he created the film Dead Birds from this experience.)
 
      Other aspects of the Dani's culture:

• The Dani had no art beyond decorations on arrow points and personal ornaments of furs, feathers, and shells..
•  They too had no internal medicine, but they did rub rough leaves on their forehead to relieve headaches. For serious battle wounds, they draw blood from chest and arms. Until the recent introduction of malaria and venereal diseases they were quite healthy.



If somebody dies, Dani women color their body with mud.  



Dani women have their finger segments cut for deceased relatives.

               

Manna Communication
             April 17, 2011,  The Dani people of West Papua, Electronic Document. 
                  http://mannaismayaadventure.com/2011/04/17/dani-people/, accessed November 5