Baining – tribu más aburrida
Fire dance of Baining people in the mountains near Rabaul puts to rest spirits of the recently deceased. Dancers put possession of the dead on bonfire and kick burning wood into the air in a nightlong ceremony of dancing and chanting to the beat of bamboo poles pounded onto wooden benches. This ceremony is held only once or twice a year. On this night there were some sixty male fire-dancers.
This picture was taken on a six-week trip by private sailboat through the seldom-visited islands north of New Guinea, in an area of the South Pacific known as the Solomon Sea. Most of the islets here have no airport or regularly scheduled boat services, and their way of life is traditional by economic necessity.
