Fiber Woven Skirt or Cape

The wild and rugged ridges of western Papua were long considered uninhabited. Only in 1938 a pilot flying over saw beneath him a large valley dotted with fields and circular huts. Some time later a plane landed and first contact with the Lani and Dani tribes was made. The Baliem Valley started to open up to the outside world and the first missionaries arrived in the fifties . The Indonesian government followed in 1969. Nowadays most of the Lani and Dani have become civilized. They are allowed to display their culture to tourists once a year during the Baliem festival.Dani and Lani women wear hula skirts made of fibre which they roll between their fingers and their laps to produce coiled dense fringes that are dyed with mud and indigo.