Sago is one of man?s earliest and highest yield foods: a single tree provides sixteen hundred pounds of carbohydrate-rich flour, enough to feed a family of ten for six months..Sago is the Mentawai Tree of Life and main staple food. Its flour is wrapped inside its own leaves before being roasted directly over a fire...The Mentawai people live in the densest remote rainforest of Siberut Island, off the coast of Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia. Traditional clans on this remote tropical island...
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Sago is one of man?s earliest and highest yield foods: a single tree provides sixteen hundred pounds of carbohydrate-rich flour, enough to feed a family of ten for six months..Sago is the Mentawai Tree of Life and main staple food. Its flour is wrapped inside its own leaves before being roasted directly over a fire...The Mentawai people live in the densest remote rainforest of Siberut Island, off the coast of Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia. Traditional clans on this remote tropical island have long resisted cultural assimilation; their lifestyle has been unchanged for generations. The tattoo-covered sikeireis, or traditional shamans, are knowledgeable herbalists and lead the tribe in the practice of Jarayak, a form of animism: medicine men, rituals, ceremonies and taboos still define the Mentawai lifestyle...The endangered indigenous lifestyle of these Mentawai is one of the best preserved and most fascinating, yet one of the least known and protected. ..For more information on the Mentawai, visit Native Planet (www.nativeplanet.org), an NGO that we support.
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