LAURA BOHN
The Weight of Honour

In the highlands of Tana Toraja, a person is not considered dead until funeral rites are complete. Until then, the deceased remain in the family home, treated as ‘sick,’ while relatives gather the required water buffalo—twelve in this case, determined by social status. One by one, the restrained animals were brought forward to be killed, an act carried out by a butcher chosen by village elders. Heat, mud, blood, and smoke shaped the scene, with no separation between participants and the process. The sacrifices serve a practical and spiritual purpose, enabling the deceased’s passage to the afterlife. Every part of the buffalo is used and redistributed within the community. This series documents the ceremony as it exists—its cultural, emotional, and physical realities—without judgement or sensationalism, reflecting the intersection of belief, tradition, mortality, and the human and animal lives involved in maintaining an inherited system of honouring the dead, while creating more.

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