Spirituality of Head-hunting...

Dayak headhunter in Borneo

More Stories from the Edge....

On my way to Antarctica back in 2010, I was in New Zealand and taken around the city of Christ Church by a Roman Catholic priest who had been to Antarctica as the chaplain at McMurdo Station many times.  No longer able to go down there due to health issues, he still enjoyed being part of the activities.  

He drove me around site seeing and he gave me the lowdown on the basics of doing ministry in McMurdo Station. 

As we ate lunch, I asked him about his life.  He told me he started out in ministry many years ago as a missionary.  His first gig as a new priest was serving with the native people in New Guinea.  He worked with headhunters and cannibals! 

Wow. 

I started feeling around my neck and asked him, "My gosh, weren't you just a little bit nervous?"

He replied in his Kiwi accent, "Well, they are actually very ethical people.  They don't just eat anyone, you know".

I did not know! 

I guess my reaction was typical, for I am from a culture and society that does not practice cannibalism or headhunting.   

But a month or so ago I watched an episode of "Secrets of the Dead" on PBS that was called "The Airmen and the Headhunters".  A true and very interesting story of some American airmen who were shot down over Borneo during WWII.  The Americans were found in the jungle and protected by the native people, who by the way were head hunters. 

The memory of the priest I met in New Zealand who ministered to headhunters in New Guinea popped in my memory and soon I was contemplating the spiritual and ethical aspects of headhunting.  

Yes really!

So I did a little research.  Many cultures around the globe have practiced headhunting, not just the natives of Borneo or New Guinea.   And yes, it was done, at least originally for spiritual reasons.  Skulls for many cultures have a special and very powerful spiritual energy about them.   

After a hunt, victims heads were brought to a village with much ceremony by the hunters.  The head or heads were handled with reverence and displayed in a place of honor.  The victims souls were ritually purified and welcomed to their new home.  Thus the souls of the tribes' enemies were recruited and thus became allies. 

A “good head” – that is a skull that was well looked after by an already powerful warrior or his descendants – could save a village from plague, produce rain, ward off evil spirits, or ensure good crops.

It may be easy for many of us from the USA to look at all this as horribly barbaric, and that it is a good thing many of these cannibal head-hunting natives have been converted to Christianity.  

But are we really so civilized?    

Life magazine 1944

Those who might sit smugly behind the idea that these barbaric practices lie far from Western civilized standards may want to think again.  In the 20th century, the two largest and most violent world wars  killed more people than ever in the history of humanity. 

In WWII, Allied troops are known to have collected the skulls of dead Japanese as trophies. (This actually has been a practice in most wars.)  Life magazine even published a photo of a young woman posing with a skull sent to her by her boyfriend in the US Navy.

Hmmm.

Perhaps we are all not that different after all.