Food and Trade

The Korowai are excellent hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists who practice shifting cultivation. Since the early 1990s some of them got involved with tour companies selling tours into the Korowai region and generating moderate cash income this way. To consider, they are same people who, less than two decades ago, never knew a world existed outside their jungle.

During the 90s outsiders started exploiting the Korowai region in search of the valuable gaharu (Agarwood). In 1997, 1 kg of gaharu collected by a local Papuan would have a value of about $4.00 when sold to a trader; the gaharu was eventually sold to Middle Eastern and European market for about $1000 a kilo. Gaharu also fuelled a rapid trade in prostitution into the jungles of Papua which has helped contribute to the current AIDS epidemic throughout Papua. Eventually this trade came to an end in 1999.

Several documentaries have been made about the Korowai people and countless articles written. In 1993, a film crew documented the Korowai tree house construction and the practice of cannibalism as a form of criminal justice. In 2011, the Korowai tribe was shown in the BBC documentary Human Planet.