Ekari

The Ekari (also Mee , Bunani Mee , Ekagi or Kapauku ) are an ethnic group with about 157,000 members in the south of the Indonesian part of the island New Guinea in the Province of Papua , which occupy an area in the central highlands immediately to the north of the settlement areas of the Mimika adjacent and is similar in size. Western neighbors are the Amungme .

The settlement area belongs to the Paniai administrative district with Enarotali as the capital, named after the lake district in the interior of the territory ( Paniai lakes ). The Paniai are often referred to as the Wissel Lakes . The Ekari are now largely Christianized (95%). On Islam account for 2%, on other, mostly ethnic religions , 3%.

The Ekari language of the same name ( ISO 639-3 : ekg ), which is named after the ethnic group, is derived from the Wissel-See languages (including Auye, Dao, Moni, Wolani and Ekari ), which in turn are subspecies of the southern part of the Island (around the Arafura Sea ) are predominant Trans New Guinea languages . Dialect of the language are Mapiya-Kegata, Mee, Simori, Yabi (Jabi) . The language is most similar to that of the Wolani . The language is the most widely used after that of the West Dani .

Individual evidence

↑ Benny Giay, Zakheus Pakage and his communities: Indigenous religious discourse, socio-political resistance, and ethnohistory of the Me of Irian Jaya , Vrije Universiteit, 1995 ISBN 90-5383-397-8 .
↑ Ekari

Web links

S. Eben Kirksey, Kiki van Bilsen: A road to freedom. Mee articulations and the Trans-Papua Highway . In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- and Folklore. Leiden, 158 (2002), No. 4, pp. 837-854. (PDF; 1.1 MB; English)

[1] Benny Giay, Zakheus Pakage and his communities: Indigenous religious discourse, socio-political resistance, and ethnohistory of the Me of Irian Jaya , Vrije Universiteit, 1995 ISBN 90-5383-397-8 .

[2] Ekari