The Swagap tribe belong to the indigenous tribes of
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...
. They are also known as the Insect Tribe. They speak the
Nggala language (also called Swagap or Sogap), which is one of the
Sepik languages
The Sepik or Sepik River languages are a family of some 50 Papuan languages spoken in the Sepik river basin of northern Papua New Guinea, proposed by Donald Laycock in 1965 in a somewhat more limited form than presented here. They tend to ha ...
belonging to the
Ndu branch.
Homelife
The tribe lives in a village that sits above the waters of the
Sepik River, named Sawagap. The tribe live off fish and other animals that they hunt in the jungle, but their chief source of income comes from
crocodile skin.
Religious beliefs
They worship the
praying mantis
Mantises are an order (Mantodea) of insects that contains over 2,400 species in about 460 genera in 33 families. The largest family is the Mantidae ("mantids"). Mantises are distributed worldwide in temperate and tropical habitats. They ha ...
.
Discovery and outside contact
They were unknown to the outside world until the 1950s.
More recently, they were the subject of a documentary by
Donal MacIntyre
Donal MacIntyre (born 25 January 1966) is an Irish investigative journalist, specialising in investigations, undercover operations and television exposés. He has also worked as a presenter of both television news and documentaries on various U ...
in 2007, in which six members of the tribe, including their chief, Joseph, were flown to London as part of the special ''Return of the Tribe''.
Sources
Further reading
*http://www.tvthrong.co.uk/return-of-the-tribe
The jungle VIPs
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Ethnic groups in Papua New Guinea
Tribes of Oceania