The Eastern of Indonesia areas consists of several main islands and hundred of small islands. The biggest island is Papua, Nusa Tenggara Timur (NTT), Maluku and North Maluku islands. These places are highly rich in natural resources, such as gold, nickel, copper, natural gas, oil, horticulture, fish products as well as tourism industry growing up recently. People in the Eastern part of Indonesia has unique native cultures and traditions, especially the war dance. In Papua it is famous with “tari perang” or “velabhea”, in Flores NTT, they called “tari caci”, and most of the areas of Maluku and North Maluku is known as “cakalele” dance.

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Cakalele is a war dance usually performed by a group of men armed with machetes and wooden shields along with traditional music instruments. I assumed because of various tribes in these areas (including mine), sometimes they have conflict in the past and cakalele dance is being performed for years, however now the performance is to welcome guest or in traditional events such as wedding ceremony.

One of the famous war dance  or cakalele in Maluku province is called “ma’taenu”. A war dance from Pelauw, Haruku, Central Maluku district. This dance has a strong Muslim tradition in the people of Pelauw. Each year they perform ma’taenu, hundreds of men carrying their (very sharp) machetes and knives, they wear white clothes and walk into the road in villages to celebrate this event. When they are walking through the villages they slice out their body parts from the face, including tongue, until feet with their machetes but nobody is wounded. You can see on the YouTube video below. This is a documentary video published by an Indonesian television branch in Maluku. Many villagers who watching the ceremony often screaming due to the extreme performance and sometimes scary. Spoiler alert on this video! The video is in Indonesian language but you can skip to see the ma’taenu performance.

The ma’taenu dance has been performed for years. Prior to the ceremony, the men attend this event need to be purifying from their mistakes or sins from family members and relatives. One of the important element of this ceremony is the machetes or knives must be as sharp as possible to use during ma’taenu. The men will start walk from 06:30 am in the morning through villages road to the sacred places and will finish in a mosque to relieve the spiritual power. I inspired to write this story because this is one of the hundreds even thousands of unique cultures in Indonesia especially in my areas in Maluku/North Maluku. Thanks for reading! Any comment or question just write below this article.