The Yali tribe has similar way of life as the Dani people. The Yali lives on hills and flat terrain. The temperature of this area is 20 degree Celcius - 30 degree Celcius in the day time and at night 10 degree - 15 degree. The total populations of this area 30.000 people. Compared with the Dani, the Yali are more primitive. They are also less influence by outside world. The largest villages around are Angguruk and Kosarek. Air transportation to Angguruk or Kosarek is served by chartered plane of Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF)

A short look at Yali origin myth

The southern Yali versions of the Yeli myth as told at Ninia and Holuwon have a number of variations (and of course differ from those recorded by Zollner for Angguruk). At Ninia, the Yeli (having become a "wam" [pig]) bores/burrows through the mountains (from Angguruk/Pronggoli area) to Ferawe/Seimu (Seima) and the people who come out are pulled down valley by the Balim and climb out and climb up to spend their first night at Yalisili (above Holuwon).

Then the myth describes how the ancestors moved up the Heluk and settled in that area -- particularly the west side of the Heluk. At Holuwon, some of the people tell this version or similar; but others trace Yeli (having become a "dabi" [echnidna]) travelling from ??Korupun area into the Solo valley, down south through the Solo and into Uwam area (south east of Holuwon near mouth of Balim) and thence into Holuwon area.

So, in both cases, the origin is east, even though one migration comes back from the west and north to Ninia.

Also interesting is that Holuwon people who have the Seimu-Yalisili-Ninia track have a similar dialect to Ninia Yali, whereas those who tell the myth with the Korupun/Duram-Uwam-Holuwon track have a dialect similar to Seng/Solo Yali. Also, as I reported in Irian bulletin, we have two "secondary" initiations in the Heluk valley -- moroal (compare Angguruk "murual") and "kwalu". Moroal belongs to the east-west track versions, and kwalu to the Seimu-Yalisili-Ninia track versions of the Yeli heritage. So Kwalu is only practised on the west side of the Heluk, but Moroal is practiced througout the southern yali area from Solo to Heluk.

I have always (intuitively) believed that the myth/migration information had an historical basis. In 1987 when I was working on my Masters at Edinburgh University, I attended a seminar led by an African from Zambia who was talking about a New Religious Movement and its origins in myth and history. I don't have the details now but I recall how the myth described his people's migration from what we now know as Egypt, down through central Africa. He had various anecdotal linguistic and other data, but no scientific data. One of the people present was a professor of history who immediately (and vehemently) pooh-poohed the suggestion that there was anything historical about myth.

The African was dumbfounded by the vehemence of the attack. To him, myth and history were related. And I think they are. They must be rooted in history. Too often people in the west only think of myth as as untrue and non-historical or ahistorical. They don't understand that myth is a genre that bridges empirical with non-empirical, and that it uses great typical images to do so. Its purpose is not historical, but to deny any historicity is, I think, to be unrealistic about its origin as oral tradition!