For a while now, the Korowai people of Western Papua have been the go-to primitive tribe for documentary-makers. The Korowai were unknown to the outside world until the 1970s — but they’ve certainly made up for it since, with their Stone Age tools, jungle treehouses and penis gourds becoming almost as familiar to TV viewers as Brian Cox on top of a mountain.
No wonder, then, that Will Millard’s introduction to My Year with the Tribe (BBC2, Sunday) smacked of mild desperation as he sought to distinguish his new series from its many predecessors. (No fixers laying on anything in advance! Not just one snapshot of Korowai life, but four over 12 months!) In the event, however, he needn’t have worried. Although he clearly set off with the customary aim of presenting the Korowai as a last, precarious remnant of our hunter-gatherer past, what he discovered instead was far stranger and more surprising than that.
At first, everything went pretty much as you’d imagine. Millard and his crew pitched up in Mabul, a village on the edge of Korowai territory, and inquired where the more traditional tribal members could be found. They then loaded several small boys with heavy kit and began macheteing through the jungle while Millard commented wonderingly on how people could live in such isolation. A few hours later, he’d arrived at a treehouse where a penis gourd-wearer called Markus proudly showed off his naked family and fine collection of pigs’ teeth. He also agreed to take Millard on a hunting expedition — although, somewhat anti-climatically, in search of insect grubs.
Only later that evening did we get the first sign that not everything was as it seemed when Markus’s family demonstrated an unexpected knowledge of how Millard’s smartphone worked.
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