Tourism in Tana Toraja is a recent development, almost unheard of before the 1970s. The Indonesian government had concentrated on developing tourism (to great success) on other islands like Bali and Java, but Tana Toraja had something those other places didn’t: impressive, ritualistic death. They no longer wanted to be viewed by the rest of Indonesia as a place of “headhunters and black magic,” but as participants in a high culture tradition.
