Papuan Ethnicity
One of thousand tribes in Papua, the Asmat (photo: Caters News Agency Daily Mail UK ) Papuans are the indigenous peoples of New Guinea both in the Eastern and Western part of the Papua Island. The Eastern part is known as Papua New Guinea which is home to over a thousand different tribal groups (and just as many languages) and the Western part currently consist of two provinces of Indonesia named Papua and West Papua . They share some ancestral roots dating back to the earliest inhabitants of the island in addition to the Austronesian people who migrated to the area several millennia later. Some Papuan tribes were not contacted until the 1970s, and several remain isolated from the wider world even today. One distinct element of Papuan culture is the sing sing festivity, wherein different tribes gather to perform dances and songs in elaborate costumes and body paint, depicting the distinct cultures of each group. The sing sing has long served as an opportunity for cultural exchang...