Tana Toraj
Tana Toraja Regency is one of the regencies in the province of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. The capital city of this regency is in the Makale sub-district. Tana Toraja has an area of 2,054.30 km² and in 2021 has a population of 270,489 people with a density of 132 people/km². The Toraja tribe who inhabits mountainous areas and maintains a distinctive lifestyle and still shows an authentic Austronesian lifestyle that is similar to the culture of the Nias tribe in North Sumatra province. This area is one of the leading tourist attractions in the province of South Sulawesi. The indigenous tribes that inhabit Tana Toraja are the Toraja tribe. The Toraja people are a tribe who live in the mountainous region of the northern part of the province of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. The population of the Toraja people is estimated at around 1 million people, and 500,000 of them are in Tana Toraja Regency, North Toraja Regency, and Mamasa Regency. Most of the Toraja people embrace Christianity, while some adhere to Islam and an animist belief known as Aluk Todolo. The Indonesian government has recognized this belief as part of the Hindu Dharma religion. The word Toraja itself comes from the Bugis language, namely "to riaja" which means "people who live in the land above". In 1909, the Dutch colonial government called this tribe the Toraja. The Toraja tribe is famous for its funeral rituals, Tongkonan traditional houses and also various types of wood carvings typical of Toraja. Toraja funeral rituals are important social events, usually attended by hundreds of people and lasting for several days.
Before the 20th century, the Toraja tribe still lived in autonomous villages. They previously still adhered to animism and had not been touched by the outside world. In the early 1900s, Dutch missionaries arrived and began to spread Christianity. Then, around the 1970s, Toraja people began to open up to the outside world, and Tana Toraja district (before it was expanded) became a symbol of Indonesian tourism. Then there was the development of Tana Toraja tourism, and it was studied by anthropologists. So that in the 1990s-1s, the Toraja people underwent a cultural transformation, from a society of traditional and agrarian beliefs, to a society that was predominantly Christian and the tourism sector in the Tana Toraja area continued to increase.