Living With The Dead In Tana Toraja - Indonesia
March 14, 2025 by Dreamtimesail | Language: EN Play Time: 00:18:44 | SAILING YOUTUBERS
The unique and intricate death customs of Tana Toraja have been celebrated for centuries, making them some of the most complex and expensive funeral traditions in the world. Before Dutch Christian Missionaries arrived, Torajans practiced Animism, the belief that non-human entities possess a spiritual essence. Despite now nominally following other religions, the Torajans still practice their ancient funeral customs which are known to be some of the most elaborate in the world.
During their lives, the Torajans work extremely hard to accumulate wealth. But unlike other societies, the Tarajans do not save their money to achieve materialistic status for themselves, rather they save for a good send off in death. In fact, it is the extravagance of their funeral, which marks a family’s position in Torajan society. People will live under the same roof as a deceased family member for months or years until the money is in place to pay for their elaborate, ritual funeral.
After leaving Our Dreamtime at anchor in Palopo under the watchful eyes of our buddy boaters, Daniel and Emma, we travel over treacherous roads into the highlands of Sulawesi to the town of Rante Pao in the Region of Tana Raja. We’ve sailed nearly 200 miles and spent hours driving through the mountainous jungle to attend the funeral of someone we don’t even know. Why? Because it’s Tana Toraja and not just any funeral.
In this episode we experience one of these remarkable rituals firsthand before exploring the incredible natural beauty and unique culture of this world famous region of Indonesia.
If you’d like access to our live-tracker to see where we are in real time, receive almost daily Sit Rep updates when we’re sailing via an exclusive crew Facebook Group, early, add free access to our episodes, free or heavily discounted downloads of all our e-books plus other exclusive benefits, you can become a member of our Dreamtime Sail Virtual Crew through either Ko-fi or Patreon. The funds help us offset the cost of upload data, music and editing software subscriptions, storage hard drives plus camera and audio equipment to improve the quality of our shows. Thank you so much crew. You’re the guys and girls who float our boat and keep us motivated.
Ko-fi https://www.ko-fi.com/dreamtimesail
(Note: Ko-Fi has become our preferred platform for support as they take no commission from Crew Member’s contributions)
Patreon https://www.patreon.com/DreamtimeSail
Our Books and eBooks are available via Payhip https://tinyurl.com/DreamtimeSailebooks
This video contains mostly original music with other provided by Epidemic Sound.
SOCIALS
We’re on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/DreamtimeSail
Follow our Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/dreamtimesail/
We’ve been blogging since 2011. Check it out at https://www.dreamtimesail.blogspot.com
You can find Karen’s recipes and tips from Our Galley at https://dreamtimesail.blogspot.com/p/our-galley.html
Cheers Rob and Karen
The unique and intricate death customs of Tana Toraja have been celebrated for centuries, making them some of the most complex and expensive funeral traditions in the world. Before Dutch Christian Missionaries arrived, Torajans practiced Animism, the belief that non-human entities possess a spiritual essence. Despite now nominally following other religions, the Torajans still practice their ancient funeral customs which are known to be some of the most elaborate in the world.
During their lives, the Torajans work extremely hard to accumulate wealth. But unlike other societies, the Tarajans do not save their money to achieve materialistic status for themselves, rather they save for a good send off in death. In fact, it is the extravagance of their funeral, which marks a family’s position in Torajan society. People will live under the same roof as a deceased family member for months or years until the money is in place to pay for their elaborate, ritual funeral.
After leaving Our Dreamtime at anchor in Palopo under the watchful eyes of our buddy boaters, Daniel and Emma, we travel over treacherous roads into the highlands of Sulawesi to the town of Rante Pao in the Region of Tana Raja. We’ve sailed nearly 200 miles and spent hours driving through the mountainous jungle to attend the funeral of someone we don’t even know. Why? Because it’s Tana Toraja and not just any funeral.
In this episode we experience one of these remarkable rituals firsthand before exploring the incredible natural beauty and unique culture of this world famous region of Indonesia.
If you’d like access to our live-tracker to see where we are in real time, receive almost daily Sit Rep updates when we’re sailing via an exclusive crew Facebook Group, early, add free access to our episodes, free or heavily discounted downloads of all our e-books plus other exclusive benefits, you can become a member of our Dreamtime Sail Virtual Crew through either Ko-fi or Patreon. The funds help us offset the cost of upload data, music and editing software subscriptions, storage hard drives plus camera and audio equipment to improve the quality of our shows. Thank you so much crew. You’re the guys and girls who float our boat and keep us motivated.
Ko-fi https://www.ko-fi.com/dreamtimesail
(Note: Ko-Fi has become our preferred platform for support as they take no commission from Crew Member’s contributions)
Patreon https://www.patreon.com/DreamtimeSail
Our Books and eBooks are available via Payhip https://tinyurl.com/DreamtimeSailebooks
This video contains mostly original music with other provided by Epidemic Sound.
SOCIALS
We’re on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/DreamtimeSail
Follow our Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/dreamtimesail/
We’ve been blogging since 2011. Check it out at https://www.dreamtimesail.blogspot.com
You can find Karen's recipes and tips from Our Galley at https://dreamtimesail.blogspot.com/p/our-galley.html
Cheers Rob and Karen
Living With The Dead In Tana Toraja - Indonesia Locations
- Tana Toraja Regency (-3.0753003,119.742604)
Dreamtimesail
Come sailing with us. https://www.youtube.com/Dreamtimesail?sub_confirmation+1 Rob & Karen are an ordinary Australian couple who live aboard and sail a Whitby 42 ketch, 'Our Dreamtime'. Cruising fulltime since 2011 we have sailed over 20,000 nautical miles in Australia, SE Asia, the UK and the Mediterranean. We are currently cruising remote areas of Indonesia. We provide a glimpse of our life through our vlogs, blogs, published writings and artwork. We love our nomadic existence and like to share the amazing things we see and experience as we sail to unbelievable destinations. You may already know us through our regular blogging over the past 10 years but now we have joined the video world with this YouTube channel
Channel Information:
- Joined: February 14, 2017
- Subscribers: 3,860
- Videos: 162
- Views: 328,761
- Latest Video: June 05, 2025
- AU
- Language: en
Social Media Links:
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