Sikerei
the last Sikerei, the shamans of the Mentawai people, live on a remote island in the “Sonda” archipelago off the coast of Sumatra. Their traditions survived the long colonial occupation and subsequently Sukarno’s nationalist government, thanks to the great isolation, the tenacity of these people and the impenetrable equatorial forest. The great green Mother protected the Mentawai population of which the Sikerei represent the traditional soul linked to the cult of nature and the spirits that animate it. After having experienced the rise and decline of the “India Company”, of Western raiders, of local generals and coups d’état, today the last exponents of this ancient tradition see their lifestyle threatened by a god who does not consider nature but inhabits in the greed of mankind. The very profitable palm oil industry increasingly threatens this last virgin forest sanctuary and with it biodiversity and peoples with millenary traditions who, in balance with the world that hosts...
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