The Asmat is the natives tribes inhibiting the southern part of Papua, including the coastal marshes of land directly opposite the Arafura sea, to the north of tropical rain forest that borders with mountainous Jayawijaya.
The Asmat beliefs once there's a man named Fumeripits stranded of the mouth of the river as his boat hit by the storm. Location where Fumeripits stranded now knowns as Agats City, the district of Asmat land. In his solitude, Fumeripits make shaped carvings of men and women. Besides, he also made tifa, a sort of drums. When one day he was beating the drums to ward loneliness, miraculously the carved became alive. That's the legend about the origin of Asmat.
The totality of Asmat life having a personal relationship with the spirits of the ancestors. Their relation with the spirit world was cemented through traditional rituals and realized in the form of carving. Carve is something that sacred to Asmat. The Asmat carving is the form of communication between the living and the dead, between the human community and the spirit world.
Time brings changes. In earlier 50's, Roman Chatolic teachings began to spread by the missionaries. So was began the inculturation. Inculturation is a term used in the Roman Chatolic Church. Referring to the adaption of the way church teachings are presented to non-Christiany cultures and to the influence of those cultures of the evolution of these teaching (Wikipedia.org)
