Clutching a cloth filled with betel nuts, the old lady—she has seen more than a century go by—looks over her uninvited guests with suspicion. "In da la mi daka" ("What do you lot want?") she demands in a thick Torajan accent. She is standing at the front door of a lookout house in Dende village, Tana Toraja, South Sulawesi. Her arched back makes it difficult for her to look up at the people before her.

When she had heard why TEMPO journ