When you think of a funeral what do you think of? How many days does it last? Are people crying and whaling as loud as they can? For most people living in a westernized culture the funeral procedure is roughly the same. We mourn, gather, eat, and repeat for a day or two then we go on our way. It would be absurd if someone brought a buffalo to be sacrificed in honor of Nana, but, as the video shows, in some cultures the funeral process is drastically different from ours. For the Torajan’s native to Sulawesi the funeral lasts for days and the killing of buffalo is a regular occurrence.
Is the procedure the Torajan go through wrong because it differs so much from ours? No, cultural standards change with differing geographical locations. As geographers, we have to understand that other people’s behaviors differ based on history, geography, and culture. Once we start to look deeper into the cultures of the unknown is when we can finally try to understand them. Or as the French-Algerian philosopher Albert Camus once said “The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.”
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