Indo Pino is a Taw-Waliya

In the Wana Language, the word "Taw" means "man", "human being".

The word "Waliya" designates the "beings of the forest"

This is how the Wanas call their shamen : the "Taw-Waliyas".

The Wana Wewaju who number about 1,600, live in Indonesia, in the eastern part of Sulawesi (Celebes Island), among the dense equatorial rain forest of the Tokkala Mountains.

We have been studying and filming the healing practices of their shamen since 1991. We have learned their language and these shamen themselves have initiated us to their conception of the world and therefore, as shown in the film, to their concept of health and sickness. In order to comprehend these ideas it is essential to note that, at least up to this day, the Wanas never had access to the modern medical therapy of the western world. It is in fact not possible to obtain medicines in the remote areas where they are living. In case of sickness, their only recourse resides exclusively in the ancestral practices of their shamen: the Taw-Waliyas.

In collaboration with some of these shamen and with the technical partnership of ORSTOM we have already made a film called "De l"Autre Coté de la Nuit" * . This film has been presented in march 1999, during the "Bilan du Film Ethnographique" of Paris. From a geographical point of view, the film is a record of a visit to a distant place, but essentially it is a voyage in time. It brings us back in time to medico-religious practices as probably known during their prime history by many civilisations including, probably, our own.

Apart from the ethnographic interest presented by such research on therapeutic rituals, the very fact that they still survive to these days makes their study particularly moving and the contact with their practitioners all the more attractive. As a consequence of that, very tight bonds have developed ,along the years, between these shamen and us.

* On the Other Side of the Night

During the months of April and May 1999 we went back to the Wanas of Sulawesi. One of the purpose of our visit was to show them the film that we had made with them, another was to resume our building of the filmed archive related to their shamanism.

It was during this last visit that we were confronted with an unforeseen and dramatic situation in which we played an involuntary part. As shown later this turned out to be utterly astounding from a therapeutic as well as a cinematogaphic point of view.

Actually, as we arrived in the land of the Wanas we found that Indo Pino was very seriously ill. Indo Pino is a woman, one of the most fascinating shaman that we have met and since the making of our first film with her we have really remained very close.

As always during our stays with the Wanas, we had in our possession a small supply of medicines destined for our own use.

The problem confronting us was then double, with concrete as well as moral implications.

On one side, we are not doctors and therefore unable to make a reliable diagnosis. Besides, it would have been quite an extraordinary bit of luck to have the appropriate medication in our personal stock.

On the other side, with the introduction of a foreign therapeutic practice, effective as modern pharmacopoeia can be on some diseases, we were taking the real responsibility of throwing doubts over the therapeutic power of the shamen who were caring for Indo Pino (and they sometimes had to come from far away for these healing rituals). Further more, besides some ethnologists and researchers, we are among the very few occidentals to have close contacts with them and no therapeutic follow up would have been possible after our departure because, in the actual state of things, there is no medical infrastructure in the remote regions where the Wanas are living,. Their only resort will have to remain, as ever before, the extraordinary "faith" that they have forever in the shamanic powers of those who they call "Taw-Waliyas". It was, in all objectivity, a great responsibility to question these powers, not only on cultural grounds (because the whole social relationship of the Wanas is based on that shamanism) but also on medical grounds when, as was the case, we had no sure treatment nor any therapeutic follow up to offer in exchange.

Furthermore, we were conscious that the use of such a "rogue" medication was creating the risk of lowering the acquired immunity which is the only thing upon which they can biologically rely.

On the other hand, from a human and personal point of view, what to do when you see somebody very dear to you in great pain and in all appearances close to death? How to resign yourself when you have medicines for your own use not to share them? That's what we did, right or wrong, by giving to Indo Pino the only large spectrum antibiotic treatment at our disposal ( in that case Augmentin).

From that moment on, willingly or not, we had put in place all the elements of a therapeutic challenge that can very rarely be observed and even less often filmed (this is however what happened as technically we were equipped to do so).

It so happened that Indo Pino during the whole course her life had never taken any medicine. She of course knew of their existence but she had a total mistrust of them. In fact, we ascertained later that she was only taking them because we were her friends. To the limit, it was mainly in order not to upset us.

From her point of view, it was once more the Tchetak, the spirit of the forest, who had stolen part of her blood. It was also that one of the Gods (Pue Bulanga), whose domain lays between sky and earth, had put fish hooks in her body. The rituals that the other shamen came to do for her consisted in the dispatch of Waliya Spirits to intercede with this God.

At the same time, these same shamen, which are also our friends and have confidence in us, were advising her not to forget to take the medicine that we had given her. Ourselves, we were there, at all time, to make sure that she did and during her moments of consciousness we could observe Indo Pino making little stacks with the tablets. This being what she found the most interesting about them.

At the same time, when she was not in too much pain, she was explaining to us that her Body-Spirit (which is an essential element of the concept that the Wanas have of the vital equilibrium of the human body) had gone to the Other Side of the Night and that Djoma, a reputed Shaman from the Posangke Mountain, who she admired and was awaiting with impatience, will go to bring it back. Then, and only then, she will recover.

Even so she was still, willy-nilly, taking her medicines ........

Everything therefore was intermingled: the concept, probably thousands of years old, of the state of equilibrium of the body and the modern therapeutic. They were accepting the latter from us only because they considered (and it was true) that we were people who admire their culture. Instinctively, they felt that we intended neither to destabilise their traditional values nor to question them.

We have filmed all of that...

Until one morning when Indo Pino, at the end of a rare shamanic ritual that is done only if death is close (in some way a last resort ritual), started to get better. Just the day before, as for the two previous weeks, she has been painfully gasping for air and each of her respiration was very painful. Miraculously, that very morning, she was up and apparently, as was confirmed later, on her way to recovery.

Unfortunately for administrative reasons and because our visas had run out, we were obliged, to our deepest regret, to return to France soon after hopefully leaving Indo Pino to recover her strength.

But we knew that it will be very difficult for us to have any news of her and we were frightened no to see her again.

Indeed in spite of all our efforts during the following months no news of her were received and we remained very worried, she might very well have relapsed and the disease this time might have taken her... We knew nothing and we had no way of getting in touch with any of the people who may have met her....

Time went on in this anxious climate of uncertainty and it is only in February 2000 that we decided, in spite of everything, to return to Sulawesi. It was the only way to have news of Indo Pino.

Fortunately they were good: Indo Pino was alive.

We heard it as soon as we start up the Rano river which leads to the land of the Wanas. As we were getting nearer the rumour was confirmed. Some Wanas had met her recently, she was gathering tree sap along the Tiworo river.

Ultimately, we did not catch up with her, it is her who did, she knew before us where we were. She had learned that we were back to see her and we had the surprise, one morning, to see her walking through the high grass near the hut where we had stopped.

It was her who had found us again.

Afterwards we followed her, in order to spend a few days alone with her and her husband near lake Vuah to where her family had just moved.

We had taken with us, to her intent, a first montage of the film recording the rituals performed during her illness of the previous year. We had made this montage with a strange feeling of uncertainty, made of worry and hope, not knowing if she would still be alive to see it. Thank goodness she was and after viewing the film, of her own accord, she explained to us what she had experienced during these rituals and how she had lived her illness and recovery.

Furthermore, she had integrated in a stupendous way the medicines that we had been giving her to her cultural conception of disease and therapy.

And above all, because we had taken care of her, she had integrated us to her shamanic world.

On a purely human point of view this integration, in itself, was already astonishing and very touching.

From the film point of view, if a film was still to come out of that (because of that we were no longer sure) we had to face the fact : we were part of it, like it or not.
In fact, to begin with, we had no plan to make this film. We came back only to present to the Wanas the film that we had made with them a few years before*. But hazard had it that our friend Indo Pino became ill during our stay and that Apa Rahu, another shaman, asked us to film the ritual that he intended to performed for her (we have to stress that it was not done at our initiative). As for us, we had pledged to ourselves - if she did not survive - not to show these rushes and in any case never to present the montage to the public. Now, not only she was alive but she was offering us a development to the film that we had never dared to imagine. In fact , she was in some way forcing it upon us: we had to do it.

Once more we left Indo Pino and the time went on. It was only one year later, in May 2001, after several months of work, that we set out again for Sulawesi. This time we were bringing for Indo Pino a nearly completed montage of the film, including the rushes of the year 1999 when she was very ill and those of the year 2000 when we had found her back in good health.

This time again, after an absence of nearly one year, we had the chance and the joy of finding her again.

However she had been ill again **...

One more time, she has believed that she will not see us again...

Then she took some of the tablets that we had left her in case of relapse....

Apa Rahu performed again the ancestral "Molawo" ritual for her .....

And once more she had survived...

As before, she was keeping on: healing the sick and meeting her "Waliya-Spirits" on the other side of the night to recover their wandering "Body-Spirits" and to blow them back into their bodies.

She was for ever Indo Pino the Taw Waliya, Indo Pino the shaman.

The one who was blowing on others to heal them.

* De l'Autre Coté de la Nuit

** According to medical information obtained in Indonesia and from the department of tropical
medicine of the Pitie-Salpetriere hospital in Paris, the symptoms of the sickness affecting
Indo Pino are characteristic of a liver infection resultant of chronic

Martine Journet et Gérard Nougarol