Analysis of Tribal Life (PART 1)

In this blog post I am going to analyse a few of the tribes I am very interested in for various reasons and explain why. I want to look further into their ways of life, for example, their environment, housing, rites of passage and personal objects. This will give me a better insight into how each tribe I have focused on varies from one another and it will also give me a wide range of knowledge to create a "mashup" of influences towards the design stage of my project. I don't want to hone in on just one or two tribes yet, so these tribes I am looking at are very varied from one another in many ways. This is part 1 of a post made of 3 parts

XHOSA

The Xhosa tribe resides in South Africa, they are one of the largest tribes in the country with 18% of the South African population speaking Xhosa. The women of the tribe decorate themselves with various intricate dots as a sign of beauty, similarly to the reasons we apply make up in the Western World. The men of the tribe paint their faces entirely white as a coming of age ritual, the initiation rite is called Abakwetha and shows that they are now ready for adult duties and responsibilities.

The Xhosa live in mud huts to keep cool from the harsh South African climate.

Women of the Xhosa tribe

 The male coming of age ritual 

 Landscape

Housing and utensils

MENTAWAI

Mentawai people live in the Mentawai islands of Indonesia, hunting and gathering from surrounding areas of coast and rainforest. There are believed to be around 64,000 Mentawai people alive, making this tribe a very large one. What fascinates me about the Mentawai tribe is their ideas and different forms of Beauty. The women of the tribe will often sharpen their teeth into points in the quest for beauty, and most tribes people will tattoo themselves with lines and shapes all over the body. These tattoos are created with a nail and hammer, but what I find really fascinating is how the tattoos tell a story of the person’s life. Events such as successful hunts, births and deaths will be recorded on a person’s body in ink, this I find really fascinating. Many people in the Western world also get tattoos to represent special times and events in their lives, whether they be joyful or in remembrance. I am really interested in the ways that some cultures are so different from ours, yet some traditions are very similar, with lack of any communication.

 Head dress and hand tattoos

 Mentawai tribe, linear tattoos

  

 Beautiful images of Mentawai Women, their tattoos and their necklaces

 Mentawai women sharpen their teeth in the quest for Beauty

Mentawai tattooing with a nail

An Uma, traditional communal living space

Rainforest landscape

Coastal Landscape

This post has helped me to engage my creative mind and draw comparisons between western and tribal practices in beauty, tattooing and lifestyle. I have become very excited by the Mentawai tattooing telling a story and the Xhosa rites of passage, I will bear these ideas in mind and maybe they will come through later on in my work.

PART 2 WILL BE POSTED SHORTLY